Diane is interviewed on TV, wearing black lipstick and a dog collar. People bundled up in hats and coats walk past as she talks about why she decided to use social media. ‘She’s my best friend,’ Diane says, her hoarse voice cracking. ‘If you’re out there, watching this, please come home. We need you.’

Ann-Marie’s parents arrive to a small group of press, shaken and gaunt, nodding at the camera while pleading for their daughter to come home.

Lauren looks around for her father; then she remembers he texted to say he’s searching in the woods already.

‘You all right, Lauren?’ asks Diane, sidling up to her from the cameras when it’s over.

‘No. It’s … I don’t know how I’m meant to feel.’

‘How d’you mean? We know she’s out there. We do. She’ll be back.’

‘But that’s not true. My mum’s never coming back.’

‘You poor wee soul. I know it’s all very mixed up at the moment, but we’ve gotta think positive for Ann-Marie, you know?’ Diane doesn’t look very positive. Her face is pale and anxious.

‘My mum.’ The images of death are involuntary and relentless: crushed snail shells, veins in meat, vampire teeth, soil filling a mouth. She remembers how, in the spring, one of Angela’s hens hatched chicks and she put them in a rabbit run. A polecat snuck under the run and ate all the chicks, leaving their heads in the grass. They didn’t know how it had entered at first until they saw a single scratch in the ground.

‘Police gave me my car back,’ says Diane. ‘C’mon.’

They leave the crowd of people with their dogs and crying children in buggies. Diane drives them through the dark lanes to her home, speaking too quickly. ‘People think I’m cool because I have my own car, you know. You don’t know. No. You’re too young. But it’s my mum’s car and I do all her shopping. I’m just trying to get my grades. I’m trying to take my mind off this.’ They drive past Lauren’s house and into the pines. ‘You don’t mind if I smoke, then we’ll go and meet your dad, shall we?’

Without waiting for an answer, she jerks the car to a halt in the muddy mound of her driveway, overshadowed by hazel and holly trees. ‘I’m smoking way too much now, but it’s all that’s helping. I’ll just be a minute, then I can drop you off at the field.’