Lauren nods and pulls the duvet over her head. She wishes she had her worry dolls to talk to or her knife to flick. She thinks of her father and imagines him falling into a ditch or getting lost on the single-track lane. She texts him again and hears the front door slip shut and realizes she is alone with Billy and Lewis.

She slips in and out of sleep for a while, but when she wakes up it is after midnight and the house is still empty. Anxiety twists around her like ivy. She lies there, remembering what Craig and Kirsty said, how they mentioned Diane. They should have been back by now. Your mum and now your dad and now Ann-Marie, a voice inside her is saying. She can’t think, only feel what it would be like without them, as though they had all been swept away by a wave.

The dark outside is huge and cold, but she knows she should be out there. It’s no good trying to sleep. She feels as if she could run a mile. The grown-ups drive everywhere in their cars. They don’t know the fields like she does. She could walk the Loop through the woods blind.

She thinks of her dad and how he walks Jameson in the dark at Cowrie Point. Perhaps he’ll be OK. But perhaps he has been drinking again. Perhaps he came home and is so fast asleep, he didn’t hear Craig ring the doorbell. Ann-Marie, on the other hand, doesn’t really live here and is used to the city. It’s easy to imagine her losing her way.

She creeps upstairs and softly knocks on Billy’s bedroom door. When there’s no answer she goes in, making out her friend’s sleeping body on a bed along one wall. Out of his window, she sees a couple of cars parked at the side of the road at the front of the house and three spots of light in the fields to the right. The night is clear and still; snow gleams. The neighbours must be searching. The realization stings her like ice.