My fingers curl into fists and my nails dig into the soft flesh of my palms. What’s it going to be like going back to school? Everyone staring at me and whispering behind my back. Someone put a note through the door yesterday. It was in a little flowery envelope addressed to me and, idiot that I am, I thought it was a sympathy card. Someone saying how sorry they were that I’d lost my best friend. But inside was a page torn roughly from a notebook, and on it the words “You killed Alice, you epileptic ginger freak” in big red letters.

I should have shown it to Mum and Dad, but I was too ashamed. Couldn’t bear to see their shocked faces. Didn’t want to hear Mum telling me all the usual stuff, like “You have to feel sorry for people like that, Lizzie. You have to pray for them.”

No way am I going to pray for the person who sent me that note. And no way was I going to upset my parents even more by showing it to them. I put it through Dad’s shredder so I didn’t have to look at it anymore. But the words are still in my head. They always will be now. Along with everything else I don’t want to think about.

Eventually, my limbs grow heavy and I feel myself sinking deep into the mattress. Suddenly, I jolt awake. Something has just hit my bedroom window. It sounded like a stone.

I get up and peer out at the dark, empty street. Maybe I was dreaming. I’m about to let the curtain fall when a figure emerges from behind the hedge. I drop the curtain, heart thumping in fear. Someone really is out there.

I move to the side of the window and peer round the very edge of the curtain. The figure is still there, staring up at me, and for one heart-stopping moment I think it’s Alice, come back from the grave, but whoever this is, she’s taller than Alice. She’s dressed in jeans and a shirt, a long scarf wrapped round her neck and the lower half of her face.

She stares up at the window, slowly unwinding the scarf with one hand. My breath freezes at the back of my throat. It’s Catherine Dawson, her hair fanning out in the breeze, her accusing eyes drilling into my face, just like they did at the funeral. Did she send me that note as well? What kind of adult does that to a child?