‘Why can’t you do anything?’ She turns to Ann-Marie. ‘Where were you?’

Ann-Marie shakes her head in reply, her eyes on the messy truck floor.

Lauren reaches out to touch the blood on Ann-Marie’s T-shirt and Niall pulls her hand away.

‘Dad. We need to go.’ She looks up at the trees again. ‘There could be someone.’

‘Well, I’m not driving with you like that. Come over here.’ Lauren reluctantly scoots over on to his lap. She is getting too big for this now and it feels uncomfortable, bony. Her ponytail obscures his view as he starts the engine. ‘Move over further, I can’t see, come on.’

‘Fine. Ann-Marie, what’s wrong?’ Lauren says. ‘Speak to me. We need to know.’

Niall’s hands are shaking as he grabs the steering wheel. As he pulls back into the road he looks over and sees Ann-Marie’s hand is still clenched. There is a corner of something poking out of the side of her fist.

‘Right,’ he says and drives fast through the forest to where it breaks into ghost-white birches. Lauren sniffs with wet eyes.

‘Is she still bleeding?’ he asks.

‘I can’t see from here,’ Lauren replies.

He glances over and sees Ann-Marie sitting still, crusted blood on her face, in her hair, her hands, her skin. ‘Christ. Where the fuck were you?’

There is a long silence. Niall tries to watch the road.

‘I got lost, but I found an old shed to sleep in. There were strange fires. All around me. Burning in a circle. Like a dream.’

He sighs, glad she is alive, still breathing, still speaking, yet he isn’t sure where he is driving. Something like shame courses through him as he tries to picture Angela and Malcolm’s reaction. He left her by the woods that night. He drove away. She is alive, though, she is alive.

As they come to the fork in the road between the village and the town, he turns towards the Elms instinctively. They could call 999 from there, her house, with her parents. The shock begins to ebb a little. He starts to wonder what could have happened to her. He almost can’t bear to think. How injured is she? He glances over again and sees she is shivering. He turns up the heating. The windows start to mist, and Niall’s brain feels clouded. All of this is not happening. Not all of this is happening.

Niall stops the truck in the long driveway of the Elms. ‘Look,’ Niall says to Lauren. ‘I need some fresh air, just for a minute. You try and talk to her.’ He climbs out and rests his gloved palm on the frosty window. In the distance, at the top of the drive, dogs begin to bark.

He takes a deep breath and gets back into the pickup.

‘Well?’ says Lauren to Ann-Marie. The other girl looks down at her feet and closes her eyes.