‘Niall. I don’t feel well. Please. Please. Stop right here. Stop here in the passing place. It’s almost … We’re almost at our house.’

‘Fine.’ He jerks the vehicle into the lay-by and they lurch in their seats again. ‘Ann-Marie. You’re a young girl. I canna … let you out.’

‘What?’ She curls back into the corner of the seat and the curve of the door.

‘I canna.’ He touches her on the shoulder, his fingers clumsily brushing her lapel. ‘I canna have you walking that way. On your own. In the trees and that.’

Ann-Marie looks at him and he sees then that she is scared. The trees are better than he is.

17

In a camp bed in the downstairs study of Billy’s house, Lauren wonders what’s happened to her father. If he is with Sandy, she can’t understand why he hasn’t texted her or phoned. She has to go to school tomorrow. Maybe he’s drunk. Maybe he had an accident. She tries to remember what he said he was doing that day, but it doesn’t come to her. She tries to think hard, to pick up psychic signals of some kind, but there is nothing. Before she went to bed, she looked out of the ground-floor window to see if she could catch sight of the pickup, but the road was empty.

Lauren is woken in the night by the Mathesons’ home telephone. She can hear Kirsty padding downstairs, her soft speech, her intake of breath. She jogs upstairs again. Some time later, Lauren hears a rumble of discussion in the kitchen next door. Kirsty is standing on the other side of the wall. She sounds upset. ‘We should.’

Lauren listens hard.

‘I know. I know. But we should.’

Then there is quiet, followed by a soft tap on her door. ‘Hi,’ Kirsty whispers. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Lauren whispers back.

Kirsty crouches by the camp bed, her face close. ‘I was just wondering. When’s the last time you saw Ann-Marie?’

‘When she was babysitting.’ Lauren looks out of the door, as if Ann-Marie might be there.

‘Did she tell you anything? Say that she might be going somewhere?’

‘No, why?’ Something is sinking inside her.

‘OK. Don’t worry. You try and get back to sleep.’ She walks out, more quickly than usual.

Lauren lies very still in bed, barely breathing to try and hear more. Craig is pacing the room and Kirsty is talking on the phone again. Their discussion grows a little louder. Lauren tilts her head towards the wall.

‘We’ll do what we can,’ Kirsty says.

‘We can’t both—’

‘Why not?’ Kirsty says.

‘Now is not the time to be a smart alec. You stay here. We’ve got work tomorrow. The kids need you. Your phone working OK?’ Craig says.

‘Fine. But don’t – don’t talk to me like that,’ says Kirsty.