Ella was in the chicken shed. And she was crying. This place had always been so full of noisy life, and now it was quiet and still and dead. When she got there, she’d found the door open. The padlock hanging from the clasp with the keys still in it. The sisters had been there. And when they’d left they hadn’t even bothered to lock the door. Which meant the dogs had got in. They’d gone crazy in there. Must have just run round and round killing the chickens, eating a few, but leaving most of them lying on the floor.

Dead.

Ella felt so sorry for Scarface. He’d tried to protect all this and in the end it had been the girls who’d messed everything up. Ella picked out a few birds that weren’t too badly mangled and put them in her carrying bag. At least they wouldn’t all go to waste.

She went back out and rescued Scarface’s keys from the padlock. Finding them had been the easiest thing she had to do. Going into the farmhouse was going to be the hardest.

The dogs had gone. There were no more living grown-ups on the farm. It was just her now. She walked up to the front of the farmhouse, key held out ready, and waited. Trying to get brave enough to open the front door. In all the time she’d been here Scarface had never let her go inside, although he’d sneak in there at the end of every day, and in her mind she’d built it up to be a big deal. There was something in there. Something bad. It wasn’t just the fire. It was worse than that. She just knew it. Although she was finding it hard to think of anything that could be worse than what she’d been through in the last few hours. How she was still walking around and doing things she had no idea. Except that when you were busy doing things you didn’t have time to think about other stuff. The quicker she got everything done, the quicker she could get away from this place. Already the stink from the dead bodies was foul, and it would only get worse as they started to rot.

‘The dogs will eat some of them, the flies will lay their eggs and their maggots will have the rest,’ Scarface had said. ‘And they’ll spread disease. If we stay here we’ll die from it.’

Ella was still trying to get used to him speaking. Not that he’d exactly said a lot. His voice sounded croaky and cracked and the words seemed to get stuck in his throat.

He’d only really said five things so far.

He’d told Ella that they couldn’t stay here.