‘Okay, so I just left everything where it was, and I suppose I kind of rushed out through the front door and down the steps, and then there’s some hedges at the bottom closer to the road. I didn’t want anyone walking past and hearing, you know?’

‘I get it,’ Connie said softly.

‘My stomach was hurting a bit, and I sort of stood pretending to check my watch and look out at the road as if I was waiting for my mum. I didn’t want anyone asking me what I was doing, and I realised there’d been some noise in the car park, but even now I’m not sure what it was. Voices, I think, but I only decided that afterwards. I don’t remember any words. It’s just like there was definitely something going on. I came back out from behind the bushes, and I was kind of just wanting to get back inside. I felt a bit daft, to be honest, rushing out like that. There was this guy putting something in the boot of a car. I wasn’t really even looking at it, but there was something that made me keep on watching.’

‘So he didn’t pull the girl into the main bit of the car?’ Connie checked.

‘No. That was just what the librarian told the police on the phone. She wasn’t really listening to me. I think at first she thought I was making it up. I tried to tell her she was getting it wrong while she was on the phone, but she told me if I wasn’t quiet, I’d get a detention.’

‘Let’s go back,’ Connie said. ‘You’re coming back up the steps, you’re aware that something is going on but not concerned about it yet. Something to do with the man and the boot.’

‘I just can’t figure out what made me think it was a girl … I’m scared I just made it up in my head, and now there are parents here freaking out, and what if I was wrong?’

‘Melanie, none of that’s your problem, or your responsibility. That’s what the police are for. You have a picture inside your head, and I need to see it. No rush, no pressure. Like I said, don’t try to fill in the blanks. Relax again.’

The girl breathed in, out, depositing her shaking hands back in her lap.

‘Is this a co-ed school?’ Connie asked.

‘It is,’ DC Champion confirmed, taking a break from his note-taking.

‘So there are boys here too, but you got the impression that it was a girl in trouble?’

Melanie’s head flicked up.

‘That was ’cos of the voices. They’d been arguing, and I knew there was a deep voice and a girl’s voice.’ She gave Connie a firmer smile.

‘When you think back to what you heard, can you hear any of the words at all, maybe a name or a phrase? Any specific accents?’