‘You will clean this up.’ Mamma was looking at Matty through the mirror, the firmness back in her voice. ‘All of it.’

‘OK.’

‘And brush your teeth. Your breath does not smell good.’

Chapter 6

Matty waited until all the sounds of Mamma had stopped. TV. Wine glass down on the kitchen counter. Her slippers on the stairs, the creak on the fourth one from the top. Tap running. A few muttered words in Italian. The bedroom door shutting and the short thud as the headboard hit the wall. The finger-click of the light going off.

11.30 p.m. It was still hot, the room muggy. Matty slipped out from underneath the duvet, already dressed, and moved through the flat like a burglar. Missing out the creaky stair, leaning down to wiggle each trainer on. The front door was closed a millimetre at a time.

It was too dark to go through the woods the normal way. Matty took the main road up towards Hampstead, head down. It seemed better to walk than get the bus, so as not to draw attention. But it was like being a ghost – apart from one lady with a briefcase who had an acute stare as she opened the gate to her house, no one seemed to care that an eleven-year-old was alone at this time of night. You just had to look like you knew what you were doing.

Light slowly dwindled. There were fewer cars here, big houses lining one side of the road, the Heath lurking on the other. Matty veered into the car park, heart beating louder, and took the first path.

There were still people here, shadow-figures walking outwards rather than in, talking in low, sun-loosened voices as they headed for the road or the train station. You could only make them out once they were passing – a big man, two girls carrying picnic blankets, an older man with a walking stick.

Night scrubbed away familiar things and drew new, sharper ones. The black trees had different shapes against the sky. The moon, almost full, was the brightest sight now, not streetlights or cars. It made the algaed water of the first pond seem like a soggy lawn, one you could step out onto.

The second path grew darker as it climbed a shallow hill. It felt like walking into a black hole, leaving light and humanity behind. Each tiny sound flared and made Matty’s breath lurch, the crunch of a twig on the path or a dog distantly barking. Further up, there was a fire in a clearing, and a group sitting around it. Matty stopped dead, dropped down onto a knee. Private Ronan, US army, Golders Green division. But there was only the snap of wood and lazy laughter, and someone saying some words in a different language, over and over, a chant. A shriek.