I went back inside and looked around. The dining hall was a mess. There was food all over the floor. The tables were covered in smears of jam and puddles of tea. Sponge and bucket, I thought. I was on automatic pilot, moving sluggishly. My mind was busy with other things.

I picked up a stack of plates and carried them into the kitchen. Something wasn’t right. Joyce was calling herself Aaron’s mum. She was pretending that Scott was his brother. According to her, they’d all changed their names because they were afraid of Krystal.

‘Bullshit,’ I said aloud, scraping plates into the compost bin. Afraid of Krystal McCall? Krystal was half Scott’s size. She’d been terrified of Joyce. And if the Rooneys had managed to track her down, why hadn’t the police dealt with her? How had she managed to escape?

Perhaps she hadn’t escaped. Perhaps she’d gone to jail and was out again now. But no; Joyce had said Krystal was still on the run. And I couldn’t imagine the Rooneys sneaking around under assumed names just because they were frightened of Krystal McCall. They wouldn’t have let Krystal ruin their lives. Once they had Aaron, they would have marched triumphantly back to Otford, daring Krystal to show her face there again.

They had to be frightened of something else. Or someone else.

I grabbed the broom and returned to the dining hall, where I started sweeping up crushed corn chips, dropped sandwiches, squashed bits of melon. At one point I peered under a table and saw the message that had been left there for me. It was a pair of scones arranged suggestively on either side of a banana. Underneath it someone had spelled out ‘F U BITCH’ in toothpicks.

I was fairly sure I was looking at Jake’s handiwork. Unless Joyce had been responsible? No; this felt like Jake. I dismissed the whole thing and turned my attention back to the Rooneys.

Why had they changed their names and moved to North Queensland? Why was Joyce calling herself Aaron’s mum? What had happened to his real mum?

I searched my memory as I swept up the rubbish. Krystal had disappeared on a Saturday night. She’d left everything behind except her son, her car, her phone and a load of packed suitcases. The car had been found two days later, empty except for my worksheet.

The trail had gone cold there, as far as I knew. Someone had told me that Krystal must have got rid of her phone after reaching Newcastle. Someone else had said that a slim woman driving Krystal’s car had been filmed stopping for petrol on the Pacific Highway—and that there had been someone small in the car with her.