Her phone rang. To her surprise she saw it was Dudley. She almost let it go to voicemail but in the end, she decided to answer. At the very least she could ask Dudley for the details of what had happened at Oakhangar Hall the day that Johnny and Amelia were playing their disappearing tricks.

“Lizzie!” He sounded so pleased to speak to her that Lizzie felt slightly sick. “Hey, how are you? The police told me Johnny’s turned up. Hopefully they’ll drop the investigation into Millie’s death and then we can unfreeze her and get on with our lives. I can’t wait.” There were voices in the background and the clink of bottles. Lizzie realised that Dudley was drunk. It sounded like a big party and she was suddenly fiercely glad she was nowhere near it.

“I can imagine,” Lizzie said. “Did you want anything in particular, Dudley?”

“Just to find out when you’re coming back to London,” Dudley said, a little plaintively. “It’s boring here without you.”

“But you’ve got Letty to play with now,” Lizzie said. “I heard she’d moved in with you.”

“Oh, Letty...” Dudley sounded vague as though he’d already forgotten. “Yeah, well she’s no fun to be around. She’s sick all the time.”

“I hear that can happen when you’re pregnant,” Lizzie said coldly. “You should be supporting her, Dudley. Surely it’s the least you can do.”

“Whatever.” Dudley sounded sulky now. “I’d rather see you, Lizzie. You were always more fun.” His tone lifted. “You’re coming back, right?”

“I’ve got a few things to sort out,” Lizzie said briskly. She knew that even if she did go back to London it would never be to the same world, least of all to hang out again with Dudley. “Listen, Dudley,” she said, wanting to capture him whilst he was still in the good mood phase, “can you just remind me of something? We were talking a while ago about the time you were at Oakhangar with Johnny and Amelia—”

“Little shit,” Dudley said randomly, suddenly vehement.

“And you said something about him being an emo kid, saying weird stuff and always appearing and disappearing like a ghost,” Lizzie said. She wondered suddenly if the police were tapping Dudley’s phone—or hers, for that matter. Well, they could make of this what they wanted.

“Yeah...” She could tell Dudley’s attention was slipping away.

“What did you mean?” Lizzie said. “About the appearing and the disappearing?”

“Fuck, Lizzie, how should I know?” Dudley said. “I can’t remember last week never mind something that happened years ago at Oakhangar.”

Lizzie was used to this. She waited and after a moment Dudley sighed heavily. “All I remember,” he said, “was that Johnny came to visit us for a weekend at Oakhangar a few years after Amelia and I were married. School holidays or something. It was fucking awful, if you want the truth—he was about eleven and into stuff like history and religion, and Amelia said I had to spend time with him so I tried, I really did. We played football together but he was useless and there was nothing to talk about, you know, and then I’d turn around and he’d just vanished like I was the most boring person in the world... I was really mad; Amelia and I rowed about it after it happened a second time and I told her he was weird.”