From his tone, she feels as though she has been thrown into freezing water. She pats him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry.’ It is all she can think to say amid a world that is breaking like a huge wave around her, its force crushing.

‘Why don’t you stay at home today?’ His voice is wobbly, unnerving.

She can’t face the idea of spending the rest of the day in the house with him, so gets ready for school again. He kisses her cheek as she leaves.

She boards the bus under a faded sky, finding a place in one of the unpopular seats, close to the front. Today there is a cold, unhappy silence below the rumble of the engine. She spends the journey scanning the passing farmland, trying not to think about the basement and looking for something that could be a clue. Miniature bodies of moles hang in lines from the wire fence that runs parallel to the road. Lauren wonders at their lack of eyes. She wonders whether they smelled death if they were not able to see it. When the bus passes the brown hillside, she sees a young wildcat hidden in the broom like a gift.

The silence of the bus creeps into the classroom like a haar and, after interval, the deputy head visits the classrooms one by one. Everyone must now know about the sad disappearance of Ann-Marie Walker, she says. Who was local but not a pupil at the high school. It has been over twenty-four hours, but this does not mean they won’t find her soon. Lauren struggles with the double negative, pushing her pencil lead hard into the corner of her jotter until it pierces the paper. She blots out the teacher’s voice by watching the seagulls swooping and jeering outside in the clammy, dreich sky. She doodles a scraggly flower of life in the margin. Her mother’s never coming back. Absences have hewn huge chunks out of the space she lives in, making it harder to breathe.

The teacher’s speech interrupts her train of thought. If pupils have any questions, or information, she is saying, they can come to her office at any time. They must not attempt to try and find Ann-Marie for themselves, she warns in a tone one would use for a pixie in a glen. Lauren thinks of hands in the dark. They must stay safe and let an adult know where they are at all times. An email is going out to all parents today. And if anyone has seen anything strange on the way to Raven’s Rock or near Evelix Gorge, they must let her know.

Lauren scribbles out the flower doodle and tries to draw the moon crown of the High Priestess and star lamp of the old hermit on his lonely, secretive path.