Georgie read aloud: ‘Police are looking for the body of a young girl who may have jumped off the edge of Devil’s Point last week. The incident occurred on the afternoon of the first of November 1989. Police were called by local residents who had found the young girl – whose name is not yet known – standing on the edge of the cliff. Reports indicate that the girl then jumped onto the rocks below but her body was never discovered. Police are asking anyone with information to come forward.’

She drew several circles round the article and a question mark.

‘Devil’s Point,’ said Li. ‘That’s . . .’

‘Less than two miles from Tome,’ Georgie finished.

‘There must be more on this.’

Georgie pulled out all of the papers that followed the edition in which the tiny article was found for the next two months; they started to trawl through them. Li had started bashing keywords into Google through her phone. Half an hour later they had found nothing.

‘It doesn’t get another mention,’ said Georgie, baffled. ‘It’s like it never happened.’

‘Just this. It’s a website called Conspiracies, Myths and Urban Legends Revealed. The vanishing girl of Devil’s Point. There’s reference to the original article . . . then it talks about the fact that there was never any further media coverage . . . then . . . oh, right. The girl’s an alien. Obviously.’

‘She’s no alien,’ barked a voice from behind them. Georgie jumped and sent a ring binder clattering onto the wooden floor.

‘You shouldn’t creep up on people,’ said Li in an annoyed tone.

‘The girl of Devil’s Point,’ said Vern. ‘If that’s what you’re interested in.’

‘You know something?’ asked Georgie, lifting up the ring binder and depositing it back on the table. The rings had snapped and the papers had scattered everywhere. She started sorting through them.

‘I was there,’ he declared.

Georgie stopped messing around with the papers and looked up at the curator, noticing him properly for the first time. His beard spread outwards, silver and wiry and gave him a feline look, but the heavy white eyebrows topped a set of watery grey eyes that gave off an air of authority she hadn’t previously detected. Maybe there was more to Vern than a grumpy old man.

‘You were at Devil’s Point on the first of November 1989?’ Li asked, evidently wanting to be precise. Li rarely had time for time wasters.

‘Aye. And I saw the girl, too. She was real enough. Barely ten, maybe less. Beautiful long blonde hair, she had, I remember that. And sad eyes. Very sad eyes.’

‘What happened?’ asked Georgie, putting the broken binder aside and sitting up, her heart racing with excitement.