When my sister looked at me, there was a wild look in her eyes that made my stomach go all cold. ‘Over my dead body,’ she said.

Chapter 33

33

This was the plan. We’d pack up our things, take food and blankets too, and we’d go to Dragon Bay Cave to hide out there. Mrs Baron and the other authorities would just assume we had run away in order to stay together.

It wasn’t exactly a solution to our problem, and we hadn’t considered what we would do when we ran out of supplies or clean clothes, but Mags said it would at least buy us some time in which we could – hopefully – come up with a better idea.

I was ready before Mags was.

‘Don’t forget to lock up the main door to the lighthouse, Pet,’ Mags called to me from our room.

‘I won’t.’

I put down a bowl of food scraps for Barnaby, and some fresh water too. I thought perhaps I could get a message to Edie and ask her to come and look after him while we were away. He was nowhere to be seen, though. Out chasing rabbits, as usual. It felt wrong that we were leaving without saying goodbye to him.

I waited outside the kitchen door with my bag at my feet, my heart feeling bulky and unfamiliar in my chest. It was just after half past four. Mrs Baron would be heading to the bus stop to meet us soon. What would she do when she realized we weren’t coming? I knew the answer already. She would be very cross. She would come here to look for us straight away. I felt a spasm of fear in my stomach.

I turned to look through the window at the time on the kitchen clock. Twenty to five now. We didn’t have long. ‘Hurry up, Mags!’ I called.

I cupped my hands around my eyes, peering through the window to see if there was any sign of her.

It was when I stepped back again that I saw something odd reflected in the glass. An unexpected shadow behind me. A dark flash of movement. I turned quickly, but there was no one there.

It couldn’t be Mrs Baron. Not yet. She’d be waiting for us at the bus stop, surely?

‘Mags?’ I called, wondering if, for some reason, my sister had decided to use the door to the lighthouse instead of the kitchen door. I walked around the side of the cottage towards the cliff edge. Hundreds of feet below, the sea churned chaotically, hurling itself against the chalk walls that our Castle stood upon. The dark sky seemed to be drawing down lower and lower, like a great black theatre curtain.

More quietly this time: ‘Mags?’

There was a noise to my right and, as I snapped my head around, I thought I saw a figure disappearing behind the nearest standing stone.