Mum pulls a slip of paper from her handbag and gives it to me. It’s been ripped off from the notepad she keeps on the kitchen bench to write shopping lists and communicate with Faith.

I read the list. Sweetpea. Honeypie. Sleepover party.

Bile rises in my throat. ‘Gross. If a grown man called me any of these I would know for sure that he’s a certified paedophile.’

‘The detectives want to know if you’ve ever heard someone use these words, a teacher who might have left the school, or a substitute teacher. Or any of your sports coaches.’

‘Why didn’t they ask me directly?’ I try to hand the note back, willing my hands to stop shaking, but Mum pushes it towards me.

‘Keep it. I don’t want you obsessing over it, but if you hear anything even remotely similar, obviously tell me or your dad.’

‘And run a mile.’ I tuck the note into the pocket of my school bag. She doesn’t smile, of course she doesn’t.

This basically reminds me of the million questions I have like, why offer a reward now? Does this mean they’ve shifted to looking for Yin dead rather than alive? They’re acting awfully like we should be scared of someone very close to us. I think of all the rumours that are trickling through our year level, rumours that are scabs we can’t stop picking at, like that Doctor Calm takes baths with his victims and pretends that a rubber duck is talking in a tiny duck voice, that he likes to sing them to sleep with lullabies, that he puts on our school uniform and pretends to be a Balmoral girl.

I start to wonder if it’s better if she’s dead.

After I get out I see Mum arrange her makeup bag carefully on the seat so she can do her face on the freeway.

The supernatural mist soup sweeps me through to reception, where I swipe my attendance card, nodding at part-time receptionist Susan, who is one of the saddest people any of us have ever seen. Whenever we study a tragic story in English, I think of Susan.

Our usual nook, the triangle of couches next to the window that overlooks the quad like an observation deck, is depressing without my girls in it, besides which it’s littered with empty chip packets and none of the corridor lights are on yet. I reverse along the corridor and try not to look at the morbid shrine that’s formed around Yin’s locker. Polaroids and origami cranes and silk flowers gathering dust, and even a handwritten Bible verse that has to have come from that happy-clapper Lisbeth.

Surely they’ll clear this up over the holidays, they can’t let it bleed into next term.