We’re almost home. The engine thrums as we wait at the traffic lights by the newsagent’s. There’s a man in dark clothing and it isn’t until he lights a cigarette that I see his face.

‘Stop!’ I shout just as the light has turned amber and George has accelerated. He slams the brakes on. I rock forwards, the seat belt slicing into my chest.

‘What’s wrong?’ George asks.

I twist my head around. There is nobody there but I know what I saw.

I know what I think I saw.

‘Did you really see him?’ Francesca would ask but it’s feasible I have, isn’t it? He’s out there somewhere. It isn’t the Fregoli, I know it. But I’ve been certain before and I was wrong then.

I am the boy who cried wolf. Nobody will believe me until it’s too late.

‘Nothing,’ I mutter. George tuts.

The second we step through the front door, I am taking the stairs, two at a time, desperate to know that Archie is here. That he is safe. He’s sleeping. Hair sticking up at angles, arm draped over his cuddly lion. I kiss my index finger and press it against his forehead.

By the time I come downstairs, Tash has gone.

‘She didn’t say goodbye? Did she seem all right?’

‘Yes, just tired. We didn’t know how long you’d be upstairs. I’m going to catch up on some work.’

I have showered and scrubbed my skin until it is raw and bundled the clothes I’d worn this evening into the machine and put them on a hot wash. In the black bin outside I stuff my shoes. I’m making coffee when my phone beeps an unknown number. I warily open the text.

You look nice in that red skirt.

It’s as though I have been punched. I double over the sink, phone clutched in my hand.

He is watching me. Was he loitering outside the nursery, watching my reaction through the window as I pulled open Archie’s drawer?

Immediately I think I must call the police. They can’t dispute this new evidence, here in black and white, but then I read the text again.

You look nice.

A compliment, they will say.

Nothing threatening. No crime has been committed.

But I can feel in my gut there’s only a matter of time until one is.

He is clever, this I know from before.

I have to be smarter.

Chapter Thirty

Carly

Then

The second Carly heard Moustache arrive she dragged the twins across to the pile of rubbish in the centre of the room.

‘We have to outsmart them. We have to hide.’

The girls burrowed into the centre of the pile. Pallets and boxes began to slide. Carly caught them before they could make a sound. Arranging the debris over the twins until there were no visible limbs or red hair or tell-tale pieces of clothing on show, Carly tried to carefully slither on her belly after the girls but instantly a crate dislodged with a clatter.