Courage is a choice, Corinne had said. One of the things Beth had learned from her. She had decided, right from the start, that Corinne had something to teach her, that the French girl was someone to be studied. And so, she had watched and learned and allowed herself to be led, to be moulded. Instinctively, her hand went up now to the back of her neck, fingertips feeling for the soft ridge of her scar. A source of ugliness, Corinne had drawn it out, made it something to be celebrated. The inked flower bloomed but Beth could not feel it.

That day in France, the flower newly inscribed on her neck, in that house with the dogs, she remembered the challenge in Corinne’s stare, the brittleness of her smile. A payment had to be made, and Beth had watched Corinne steeling herself for it, like an actor entering the character they were to play – she could become another person in that moment, sealing off her feelings. It was a transaction, nothing more.

Someone was saying her name. Once, twice – the second time sharply. Bracken was staring contemptuously at her, standing back to clear the way.

Beth summoned that same spirit now. She got to her feet, feeling it settling against her – the cold weight of it – and wondering if any of the girls staring at her could sense it. Her nerves steady, she moved towards the microphone.

Eva drove the car through the gates and into the car park, pulling to a halt in a space next to the edge of the grass. She looked across at the familiar building of the school, the horseshoe shape with the courtyard at its centre. The tall glass doors of the assembly hall where she had gathered with her peers every week for years. How distant and strange it all seemed now.

‘We’re a few minutes early,’ Eva remarked. ‘Dad told her ten thirty.’

But Abi was impatient. Her video call was at lunchtime and she was cutting it fine already.

‘Text her that we’re here,’ she told Eva. ‘We’ll give her five minutes, and then you go in.’

The boy couldn’t stop crying. Even after Mark had untied his wrists and ankles, taken the gag from his mouth, he kept gulping for air.

‘Get him a glass of water, will you?’ Mark asked Ursula, and while she was downstairs in the kitchen, Mark sat on the edge of the bed, and asked:

‘What happened? Who did this to you?’

Callum inhaled sharply, trying to control his breathing.

‘Your parents are worried sick about you,’ Mark told him. ‘Not knowing where you’ve been.’

‘She said I could stay here,’ the boy said. ‘She told me it would be all right for a few days.’

‘And this?’ Mark asked gently, nodding to the ties he’d removed from Callum’s wrists and ankles.