Diane says, ‘There is this show I watched, called The Dark Net, where some girl found this cult online and she just kept listening to these podcasts all the time, I’m serious, about like twenty times a day. Then she did this thing where she wrote her parents a letter saying that she was gone and if she ever felt like seeing them again, she’d get in touch.’ She laughs a high, infectious laugh. ‘How about that? Fuck. I mean, I’m never going to leave my fucking mum, no matter how bad things are. I mean …’ She pauses, sighing, breathing out smoke that is infusing the front seats. ‘Sorry, Lauren, sorry, but I sometimes think about it. I sometimes look at that long road there stretching out to wherever. But that’s the thing about here, where we live. Where do you go?’

‘Sometimes,’ says Lauren slowly, ‘I think the same thing.’ What about the man in the basement? she is thinking. Are we never going to talk about that?

‘Oh my God,’ Diane says, looking down at her phone. ‘Oh my God. I’m not reading this straight. That girl that you hate, whatshername. Who’s got the farm.’

‘Maisie.’

‘Aye. My friend just text me, saying that girl found Ann-Marie’s hat. The black one.’ She looks straight ahead of her, then reads another message that has flashed up on-screen. ‘Apparently she won’t stop crying about it. They say “she’s had a shock”. She tried to cross that frozen lake in the field and fell through? Lucky someone in the search team rescued her.’

Lauren tips her head back and laughs, a round, generous laugh, as she watches white balloons float across the sky beyond the sunroof.

24

They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.

They see her, a slight figure, stumble out into the road at the bottom of the hill. She is bent over, her arms tightly folded. The sun is low between the trees but strong and Niall squints, keeping his hands steady on the walnut patches of the wheel, slowing his speed. He brings the truck to a halt by the trees.

Lauren opens her mouth to speak in the quiet space the engine has left. She makes an ‘Aa’ sound. Most of the name is still lodged in her throat.

‘Yeah,’ he whispers.

She is still wearing the same black jeans and her padded blue anorak, a ragged blanket over her shoulders. He remembers the anorak as she walked up the side of the road and he called after her to come back. He breathes hard. ‘Don’t get out of the car.’

A twin memory overwhelms him. How he had held her. Christine.