Despite her family’s fears, Olivia Lockwood was not missing, nor was she dead. She was lying facedown, dirt in her mouth and nose, leaves tangled in her hair, disoriented and dizzy, but very much alive.

Twisted beneath her was the leg that had broken in three places when she had stumbled into the ditch during the darkness of the previous night. Her wrist had snapped when she had thrust it outward to break her fall. A large bruise was beginning to form near the top of her forehead. Although she did not know it yet, Olivia had suffered a linear fracture of her skull when she had smacked it against the corner of a wooden crate that had, in the extreme heat, worked its way to the surface of the dried-out and shrunken soil.

She had been unconscious for three or four hours after the fall, although she couldn’t remember the precise details of waking up, apart from an overwhelming sense of nausea. All she knew was the pain in her broken limbs had been so extreme that she had spent much of the last day in a semiconscious state, drifting in and out of a patchy sort of grayness, unable even to muster the energy to call out.

The fence, trees, plant detritus and the deep sides of the ditch that had hidden her from the house had also largely shielded her from the fierce gaze of the sun, although one of her legs had been exposed and sunburn blistered her calf.

Her tongue was swollen and rough and had stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her breath came in rapid gasps. She was badly dehydrated. As the rain fell onto her face, she tried to lift her head and wet her lips, but even that felt like too much effort, triggering another bout of dizziness.

She shifted in the dirt, trying to clear her vision, and experienced another landslide of pain. Olivia moaned again, and in her half-there state, she thought she heard one of her children calling to her. She knew, with certainty, that she had a son, although she couldn’t remember his name, couldn’t form a memory of him.

Nor could she remember returning from the car and catching the flicker of a flashlight at the bottom of the garden or stumbling into the ditch as she had gone to investigate.

Her mobile phone was lying amongst the leaves and insects a couple of meters beyond where she lay, its battery long dead. The sound of rustling leaves filled up the spaces in her head, and she thought that she might like to sleep for a very long time.

“Mummy.” Hands stroked her hair from her face, and she tried to smile, but the muscles of her cheeks could not seem to move. “Mummy, wake up.”