The Mountain Rescue called off the search this afternoon, but I can’t bear to tell her that. Saskia’s disappearance is now a police matter.

“Curtis says their parents will fly here?” Odette says.

“Oh, did he visit you? Yeah, they arrived yesterday and joined the search.”

I met them this afternoon when I called in at Curtis’s place to see if there was any news. I wish I could have met them under different circumstances.

A doctor approaches Odette’s bedside. From his somber expression and the way he holds the clipboard up between us as if it’s some kind of shield, I sense bad news.

The doctor says something to Odette in French. Parents. He’s asking where her parents are. They went to the canteen for something to eat. Which Odette tells him, presumably, because he edges out of the room. He’ll wait until her parents return.

Odette shouts and he pauses in the doorway. She wants to hear the news. I’d be the same if it were me lying there. Desperate to know.

The doctor returns to her bedside.

“Should I go out?” I say.

Odette’s eyes dart my way. “No. Stay.”

The doctor glances at his clipboard as though trying to delay the inevitable. At last, in a low and serious tone, he speaks.

And Odette’s face crumples exactly like Curtis’s and his parents’ faces did this afternoon. The doctor pats Odette’s arm and says something else.

A single word bursts from Odette’s lips. Then she clamps them tight and closes her eyes. The doctor nods and heads past me to the door.

Odette’s lips are quivering and trembling as though a terrible sound is trying to escape. A tear rolls down her swollen, bruised cheek. I stand there, no idea what to say. No point asking if she’s all right because she clearly isn’t.

Through clenched teeth she says: “Go.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“No. Don’t come back.”

“You don’t mean that?”

Odette closes her eyes again.

I chase the doctor down the corridor. “What did you just tell her?”

The doctor turns and hesitates, clearly confused by the dilemma I present. Does it breach patient confidentiality if he translates the prognosis I’ve just heard?

The beeping of his pager distracts him. He glances at it.

“I’m so sorry,” he calls in English as he rushes off. “With time, she may regain some upper-limb function, but she will never walk again.”

CHAPTER 61

PRESENT DAY

“Fuck.” Curtis sinks to the floor of the control room. “Fuck.”

“It’s not your sister,” Brent says.

Warning bells ring in my head. How can he know that?

Curtis’s face is white, eyes fixed to the figure on the screen. “Ten fucking years. Why would she do that to us? To my mum?”

“Listen, bro,” Brent says urgently. “Whoever that is, it’s not Saskia.”