‘Here,’ she said. ‘We just have to get a big enough section of the carpet up, then we’ll see if there are any loose boards we can get to.’

They began pulling. It was slow work. Fingernails snapped, and their skin rubbed down to raw. Inch by inch it came. Some of the carpet tacks popped out with the carpet, or they stayed in the boards and the carpet gave way around them. Every few minutes they would look up, become still and direct their ears towards the door. The lights hadn’t flickered. No noise had come from the staircase. Not a sound passed beyond the outer walls to disturb them in their prison.

‘What’s the time?’ Meggy asked.

Elspeth checked her watch. ‘Ten.’

‘Has he normally come by now?’

‘He normally comes in the evening, then again briefly in the morning. Last night was weird, but then he’d just dropped you off, so maybe he was letting you settle in.’ Elspeth stopped pulling the carpet a moment and reached a hand out to take Meggy’s. ‘The police will be looking for you. For me, too. By now, they’ll be combing the city. Someone will have seen something. You can’t just take two people from their lives without anyone noticing anything at all. I kicked my shoe into the bush so the police would know I hadn’t just decided to leave, or had some sort of breakdown. Your parents will be frantic. It’ll be all over the TV, I bet. We just have to hang on in there.’

She smiled and gave a strong tug on the carpet. A strip of it pulled back, exposing a large section of floorboard. Meggy sneezed and covered her eyes as the dust flew up. Elspeth covered her mouth and nose with the loose end of her shirt.

‘There,’ Elspeth said. ‘This is what we were looking for.’

She began knocking along the board. A hollow sound echoed back.

‘What do we do now?’

‘We keep pulling the carpet back until we find the right board. Somewhere there’ll be one with a gap big enough to put our fingers in, or the saucepan handle or something. We’ll either knock the board in from this side or pull it up if we can.’

‘Can you tell me about your children?’ Meggy asked.

Elspeth closed her eyes, her brows darting upwards momentarily. She gritted her teeth and puffed out hard.

‘Yes, of course. It’s hard to think about what they’re going through right now, that’s all. They don’t even know if I’m alive or—’

‘Don’t say it,’ Meggy said. ‘Let’s not say it. We’re not … so we don’t need to think about that. Do they go to a really nice school? I bet they do.’