A woman who knows about leaving you wanting more, about making up people and names that don’t exist. Someone who, no matter what she calls herself, no matter what she does with her time, will always be first and foremost an inventor of stories.

Martha Wyers.

‘My understanding was that DC Dunning would be coming in person, and bringing a warrant with him,’ said Richard Bedell, Villiers’ deputy headteacher.

‘He will, on both counts,’ said Simon, who had been less than frank and done nothing to correct Bedell’s assumption that he and Dunning worked together. Bedell was younger than him, and wore faded jeans, a cream fleece and loafers. Simon had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t talking to an unusually confident sixth-former who’d been left in charge of his father’s office. The room was the size of most schools’ assembly halls. Simon was trying to sit comfortably on a lumpy plum-coloured chaise longue, and found he kept needing to raise his voice to make himself heard across an expanse of beige carpet that was set into a border of hardwood flooring, perfectly even on all sides.

Bedell’s oversized desk was covered with piles of exercise books at one end—red and dark green, some thin, some fat with paper inserts, all bedraggled—and telephones and mugs at the other. He had three phones, none of which was a mobile, and twice as many mugs, two of them navy blue and yellow, bearing the school’s logo. On the carpet beneath his desk was a coil of black wires from the telephones and his computer, printer and fax machine that looked as if it would take many years to untangle.

‘All I’m asking is to be pointed in the direction of Garstead Cottage,’ said Simon. ‘If Ms Trelease doesn’t want to talk to me, she doesn’t have to. We’ll wait for Neil Dunning to arrive with his warrant. I’d like to try, though. As I explained before, I’m concerned about her safety.’