She runs back the way she came; perhaps Nan has gone looking for her. But the path is empty. Her heart thudding now, she runs back, all the way to Stella’s grave, as if by some miracle Nan is small enough to be hiding behind it. Of course not. But that’s when she notices it, a copse at the back of the cemetery, an opening just large enough for Nan to squeeze through, yet the trees are knitted together too tightly to get a look in from here. She runs over to it, hesitating at the entrance. Surely Nan wouldn’t have gone inside. But now she’s had that thought she can’t leave it unattended. She takes a first step in, dry leaves crunching underfoot; a twig from underneath her own step causes Chloe to start.

‘Nan, please,’ she cries.

Silence answers her.

She goes further into the undergrowth. There is no path in here and so she kicks at bushes, hearing the sound of berries and leaves dropping within each footprint she leaves behind. The deeper she goes, the denser it becomes. A mossy, damp, earthy smell fills her nose.

‘Nan?’

She looks back. She can’t see the cemetery now. What if Nan has reappeared? What if she’s looking in the wrong place? She can’t think when she panics. Instead she goes deeper, dipping and ducking under branches; she snaps several in two to pass, scanning the undergrowth for a swatch of Nan’s white hair. Perhaps she’s slipped. Perhaps she’ll find her hurt. The thought flashes more panic through her veins. She walks, she calls. Sometimes, where tendrils have stitched themselves together, she almost has to crawl to make a path through, bending and folding herself under low-slung branches, pushing on through the bramble.

‘Nan?’ she calls, and stops. Was that her voice? She scrambles to turn around, to listen, and a thorny bush nips her skin, tearing the flesh in a neat, straight line. She’s tangled now, in brambly twine, nature’s own barbed wire. She fights to free herself, pushes back through the bush until she sees the light and she hopes – no, she prays – that Nan will be waiting where she left her.

She emerges to the stillness of the cemetery, bleached grey headstones and the odd tumbled-earth grave. But no Nan. She sinks to the ground. She’s gone.

FOUR

The hard plastic chairs at the police station are pinching the back of Chloe’s thighs. Finally, an officer opens the door into reception and calls her name.

‘I hear you’d like to report a missing person?’

‘Yes . . . yes,’ she says.

He leads her down a long corridor to a small room. They sit each side of the table, upon which there is a recording device – not that he switches it on. But Chloe’s eyes quickly dart around the room and she slides her hands underneath her legs.