Across the road at the end of the alleyway behind her neighbour’s home is Bexland Park, and a pedestrian side entrance via a lichgate just a short way to her left. She takes it. The park is empty because kids and jobless mothers like herself prefer the park down the road. This one doesn’t have much to offer because it’s just a green the size of a football pitch with benches and a road cutting it in half, all enclosed in head-high hedge. That means she knows the Ogres will be able to take her, and nobody will see a thing. But there is someone here, a council worker with a hedge trimmer. At least he’s far away, his back to her as he pretties up the hedge. And the noise of his hedge trimmer means he doesn’t hear a car zip quickly inside as she approaches the road slicing the park in two. Some drivers use the road through as a shortcut, and the vehicle certainly has the speed to suggest it isn’t going to stop. Until it does with a screech of tyres right before her.

No chance to back out now. But she wouldn’t anyway. High trees around the edge of the park seem to lock her in with the car, casting gloomy shadows and creating just the sort of scene a novelist might imagine for a kidnap. But she knows she would let this happen even if it were one of Jane’s burning beaches full of bathers. That car, no matter the dangers it might hold, is the portal to Josie.

A back door opens and a man in a baseball cap pulled low steps out. She can see only his mouth, which makes big horse-like chewing motions. With no face to look at, her eyes drop to his hands. Clothing, which he drops to the ground.

She instantly recognises Josie’s Daffy Duck pyjamas…

A moan escapes as she stumbles forward and bends to grab Josie’s clothing. She knows it’s a trick to get her close, because they’re right at his feet, but what she knows and he doesn’t is that no trick is needed. She is going through the portal, no matter what, but she is desperate to do so with Josie’s belongings in her arms. No special necklace here, so thankfully her little girl might have been allowed to keep it.

Ball Cap grabs her ponytail and yanks her up. His other hand slaps over her mouth to stifle a scream that was never part of the plan. He turns and forces her into the car, grunting with exertion he doesn’t have to use. She sprawls across the back seat. In a flash of a second before he’s inside, on top of her, forcing her head down, she glimpses the back of the driver’s head: ginger hair with shaved sides.