When she reaches the kitchen it feels empty. Grace must have gone back home; it’s her turn to fetch the children later. Eve looks around, shivering. The house is cold and messy, it’s really far too big for them. There are dirty plates to stack in the dishwasher, and the floor looks unwashed. Eve stares out of the window, searching the garden as if to catch sight of her two precious daughters running away from her to the warm, tidy little bungalow hidden behind the trees.

Grace

The puddles in the road are bright with reflected lights, the streets packed with tired-faced shoppers carrying bags. Children skirmish on the pavements. It’s Christmas in a month’s time, fervour in the air already.

‘The search for missing six-year-old Sorrel Kershaw is now well into the second day. An estate worker who was helping police with enquiries has been released. The net has been widened to include nearby gardens and garden sheds, schools, parks, bus and train stations. Anyone who has any information—’

Grace switches off the car radio. The second day – children can be found sheltering in huts or doorways forty-eight hours after they abscond. Survivors of avalanches or earthquakes last that long, babies are pulled from the wreckage days after the event. Another voice whispers that if Sorrel has been abducted she faces far more danger than if she’d been in an accident; the harm isn’t random.

She swerves to avoid a car, distracted by a little girl with fair hair flying behind her as she skips along the pavement holding her mother’s hand. Ash had three Christmases, that’s all; Sorrel may not have another. Grace blots her eyes with her fingers as she draws up on the road opposite the Charter School.

Izzy and Poppy are waiting on the pavement. Izzy is standing near Poppy, leaning towards her and talking, but Poppy is staring blankly at all the other children who swirl about them in little groups as if they were inhabitants of a different planet. Grace gets out of the car and hurries over the road.

‘Hi, you two.’

Poppy stares at her, a question flaring in her face.

‘Sorry, Poppy. No news yet, but—’

‘Give us some credit,’ Izzy interrupts. ‘We knew there wasn’t.’

Poppy didn’t, Grace wants to retort – she was hoping for something, for a piece of news that might just have arrived. The girls climb into the back seat, Izzy sitting close to Poppy who stares out of the window.

‘Where’s Blake?’

Izzy shrugs, Poppy doesn’t answer. In the driving mirror Grace sees a tear roll down her cheek.

‘You don’t have to go to school tomorrow, Poppy; I’ll talk to your mum and dad.’

‘Like they’d care,’ Izzy mutters.

A message pings through from Blake. You need to come to the deputy head’s office.