‘I don’t think so. She wasn’t stupid. But it was pissing down that night, so maybe she did.’

‘Have you ever seen an old brown Cortina in town? It’s a real mess of a car, not the usual for these parts.’

‘Once or twice, I think, maybe,’ Allie said and her friends all nodded in agreement.

‘Has it ever approached any of you?’

‘Nah.’

‘Has anything else like this ever happened, did anyone else ever go missing?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘And Mandy wasn’t the kind of girl who would run away?’

‘She was kind of messed up, I guess, but I don’t think she would run away. She never ever talked about it or anything,’ Allie said.

‘Messed up how?’

‘Same as everyone else. Family stuff.’

‘Her mum works up the newsagent’s, right? What about her dad?’ I ask.

‘She never knew him. Died before she was born. Her stepdad is in prison for dealing.’

‘How did he die? Her real father.’

‘Killed himself. Threw himself off a cliff or something.’

I feel goosebumps and my skin runs cold. I ask the question even though I already know the answer.

‘Do you know what his name was?’

‘No, but he was a teacher up at the school. Got fired for sleeping with one of the girls then he killed himself.’

This changed everything. Mandy going missing was clearly connected to the past, to that summer, to everything that happened. So, the person who took Hannah all those years ago got away with it and now they were doing it again. Why? Sixteen years is a long time to go without hurting someone, if that was your thing. I wanted to believe that I was seeing things where nothing was there but it was hard to deny that the one factor all of these things had in common was me.

I pull a twenty-pound note out of my pocket and hand it to Allie. I can see her clothes are worn and she doesn’t really take care of herself. I wish someone had tried to make me value myself when I was her age, not that I would have listened.

‘Thanks,’ I reply, walking away. I hear them all swoop in on the girl who now has the money. At their age we would have found someone to buy some alcohol for us. I remember there was a guy who used to wait on the corner of the marketplace and he would buy alcohol for anyone who wanted, charging a two-pound fee for each purchase. He didn’t do badly out of that work at all.