Jasmine said eventually, after some thought, that we should bury the body. It would give us something to do and we were in a church with a graveyard so it was only right. After all, I mean to say, we all knew that we could take the body with us, but where would we take it? It would rot and start to smell and all the time it was reminding us of the horrible thing that had happened on the way here. And reminding us that poor Gabby was dead. There she was inside that sheet. Wrapped up like an old parcel. It was making me sick. People were getting hysterical. We didn’t think we would be there that long, but the search party wasn’t back yet even though Blue had sort of promised that they wouldn’t be away for long, and the hours were passing by, like the steady ticking hands of a clock ticking round. Jasmine was getting more and more stressed about it, saying, ‘We must bury her, we must bury her.’ It was making us all quite edgy.

Reece said that Blue had ordered us not to go outside, and I said that I had promised Ollie, but nobody was listening to me and Daryl Painter said he had been up on to the top of the steeple (the church tower) to have a look and there was nothing out there, it was just trees and grass and birds singing, things of that nature.

‘The body will smell more and more,’ said Jasmine, ‘and it will attract sickos from all around. They will come and try and get in. We should bury the body while it is quiet.’

Then Reece made a practical point. ‘How are we going to dig a grave?’ he asked. Jasmine didn’t know how we were going to do that. I think she really just mainly wants to get the corpse out of the church so that she doesn’t have to look at it all day long. Then Demi said something. She had been exploring the church a bit and had found a little room with a sort of office in it, and some keys on hooks. And she went and fetched one of the keys and it had a paper label fixed on by a bit of old string and the label said ‘tool shed’.

So she said there must be a tool shed and they might have spades in there, and other gardening things for looking after the grounds of the church. Daryl, who had been up on the steeple, said he had seen some sheds and things all among the trees and bushes behind the church and Reece said we should go and have a look.