‘In what way?’ Rhona said, thinking she already knew the answer.

‘He trusts his guts and, until proved otherwise, he suspects my part in this case is a publicity stunt.’

‘And is it?’ Rhona asked.

‘It won’t do the sale of my books any harm, that’s for sure,’ McCreadie said. ‘But I would also like the ghost of Mary McIntyre to be finally laid to rest.’

30

Marge had accepted the job of looking after the diary, while playing down Karen’s feelings towards it.

‘Have the police been to see you yet?’ she’d asked when Karen was buttering the scones in the wee kitchen that led off the room they all met in.

‘No,’ Karen had said.

‘Have you contacted them?’

‘They’re not even sure it is Mary. This might all be for nothing. Anyway, I was just her pal. It’s her family they should be talking to.’

Part of Karen wanted it not to be Mary. They were already talking on TV about other wee girls who’d gone missing around the same time in England.

Marge had looked at her kindly at that point. ‘We don’t need to talk about it, you know?’

‘I know,’ Karen had told her. ‘But the others are keen and it gives them something to think about other than their own worries.’

‘That’s true,’ Marge nodded. ‘So you don’t mind the questions?’

‘No,’ Karen had assured her.

In fact it was going better than Karen had expected. The women, excited by what they thought of as a mystery, had begun by getting Marge to draw a map of the street under Karen’s instructions, with the two schools and the open ground between them. Karen was surprised to find she could remember who lived where and could match the names she’d talked of in the earlier meeting to their appropriate houses.

‘And it was against the lamp post there,’ Karen pointed to a spot next to her own house, ‘that we used to play kick the can.’ Even as she said it, she could remember the excitement of hiding in the rough ground opposite only to run out as fast as possible to kick the can before the pursuer could reach you.

‘And what came after the open ground between the schools?’ Marge was saying. ‘More houses?’

‘No,’ Karen said slowly. ‘There was a wood.’ Even as she said this, she could see the wood in her mind’s eye and the path they’d forged through the long grass to enter it. For kids who’d come from tenement flats with only the street and back courts to play in, the open ground and surrounding woods had been a revelation. ‘It was in there that me and Mary built our den.’

It was while watching Marge add the stick-like trees to the map that something broke in Karen. She could almost hear the splintering of the door inside her mind, beyond which, she knew, were the feelings and memories she’d worked so hard to lock up.

‘Are you okay?’ Marge said, shushing the women’s excited chatter.