‘She’s got a boyfriend?’ Niall calls back from the table.

‘Yeah. I can’t remember his name, but I saw this photo of them, on a beach.’ Could he hurt a person?

Niall comes to help her up to bed. ‘Where does he stay?’

‘He’s called Rory, I think, and he’s maybe at Ann-Marie’s school. I’m not sure. She didn’t want anyone to know.’

‘Don’t worry about all that now,’ he says, handing her her pyjamas. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

Once he’s sure Lauren has fallen asleep, Niall, having second thoughts, drives back to the shop and buys a bottle of Glenfiddich, two packets of crisps and a new Disney magazine for his daughter. It’s just gone eight. He is a methodical shopper. Sometimes he catches himself tracing a thumb over the drink label. Luckily Jill and Aileen are no longer on their shift.

Back at home, he checks on Lauren and puts the magazine by her bedside, pouring himself a dram downstairs. He can’t face talking to Angela so he phones Kirsty. She tells him that Cherie at the petrol station has told her the police have interviewed two girls in the village. They mentioned this boyfriend but don’t know much about him.

‘They’re working fast, aren’t they?’ he says.

Lauren sleeps for a while, then wakes up needing the bathroom, in a strange state of exhaustion and anxiety. She turns on the light, realizing only a couple of hours have passed. For a moment, the magazine on her bedside table makes her smile, then the sense of helplessness slides back. The day runs through her head, relentlessly, as the murmur of her father on the living-room phone drifts up from downstairs. She remembers Maisie, shoving her, then the strands of hair she grabbed as she fled.

She locks herself in the bathroom with the spaewife’s book and lights a candle for Ann-Marie, carving her wish for her return into the wax before she burns it.

She shivers when she thinks of Ann-Marie out there, somewhere, and wishes over and over again that someone or something will keep her safe.

Next, her anger still raw, she washes the clump of Maisie’s hair under the tap, and, wringing it dry, drops it into one of the Ziploc bags her father uses for guitar strings and screws. Lauren leaves the hair carefully by the soap dish and writes sleepily on a piece of paper: I hereby freeze Maisie and her friends to bind them from causing me harm. She folds the paper, puts it next to the hair and fills the pouch with water.

Her heart starts to beat fast as she creeps down to the living room and sees her father passed out on the sofa, his mouth open, snoring. She thinks about making a spell for her father, but decides against it. This evening has been enough.