Doctor Lyons pats my hand and smiles awkwardly. ‘That’s OK. Plenty of time. Now that you’re awake I think it will only be a matter of time. We’ll arrange for a psychiatrist to come and see you tomorrow if you feel up to it to help you piece together the bits you do remember and make sense of them. For example, until now we didn’t even know if you spoke English. We thought maybe you’d come from abroad. And that that’s why no one had reported you …’ She trails off.

‘No one has reported me …’ I prompt.

‘From the enquiries we’ve made so far, no one seems to have reported anyone fitting your description as missing locally. But I’m sure there’ll turn out to be a logical explanation for that,’ she adds briskly.

‘You must have got it wrong,’ I insist, tears now brimming and rolling down my cheeks. ‘Dad must have reported me missing. I never go anywhere without him. He’ll be beside himself. Someone needs to find him and tell him I’m OK. He’ll come and get me.’

My eyelids grow heavy and I fall back on the pillows.

17

July 2013

Inverness

I sleep a lot. Though I’ve only been awake for a day I’ve had loads of visitors. Not proper visitors; Dad still hasn’t come, just various medical people. They come in, take blood and other samples no one would want to hear about, ask questions, check my pulse, shine lights in my eyes. At one point they put me in a wheelchair and push me through the corridors to go for some scan or other. I say I can walk but as soon as I try to stand my head goes all swimmy and I realize I can’t.

‘It’s OK, you’re just weak from being in bed,’ the nurse tells me. ‘You’ll be fine in no time.’

As the doctor said she would, a psychiatrist comes to see me too. She asks me lots of questions about what I remember, but I can’t come up with anything, other than that I can picture Dad very clearly and that he will be looking for me. I’m really worried about him – he will be frantic. I can’t remember any other family, friends, or where I live, however many times and however many different ways she asks me, or how many sketch pads she puts in front of me. I’m not even sure how old I am, though the doctors think probably between fourteen and seventeen.

The most interesting visitor is the policewoman, PC Oaks. She is very young and pretty. She sits in the chair, close to my bed, fiddling with the edge of my hospital-issue blanket. A social worker Ellie sits next to her, watching me carefully.