Dad’s voice. And Steve? It must be Steve Wallace, Nicole’s dad. Nicole—Bella’s missing friend. God, it’s been awful the last couple of days. The police even spoke to Bella. I don’t like Nicole, I never have. She’s been stepping up the bitchy, snide comments, even in front of Bella, always covering herself by laughing after and saying only kidding. Like saying only kidding does anything to lessen the cruel comments. It’s like stabbing someone and then trying to cover it up with a bandage. I know it was her that started the Tessie the Elephant nickname, now picked up by half the school.

When the Wallaces turned up saying she was missing, though, I never thought something might have actually happened to her. I thought she’d run off to see Jack, or some other boyfriend, run off to piss off her parents.

But she hasn’t come back.

I risk a peek around the door. Mr. Wallace has his head in his hands. There’s a bottle of whisky between him and Dad on the table, two half-full glasses.

“I shouldn’t have shouted at her,” Mr. Wallace says. “But those texts on her phone…She got so mad at me, screaming about how she was seeing a real man, who was going to take her away. Jesus Christ, Nicole is only seventeen and the things in those texts—they were sick, Leo, perverted.”

I hear the scrape of a chair, the chink of glass against glass and tuck myself back into the shadows, holding my breath.

“Who do you think it is?” my dad says.

“She was seeing Jack Lewis—I told the police that. But Greg bloody covered for him, said he was away working and it couldn’t be him. Oh yeah, he had alibis for the whole lot of them when Nic went missing.”

I let my breath out in a whoosh. I did honestly think Nicole had sneaked off to visit Jack.

“That bastard. I know he’s lying, covering for his boys. There’s something about that family. Nicole was always over there. You need to watch your girls, Leo. You need to protect them.”

I feel sick. God, all the time Bella’s been spending over there—with Jack and Sean, with Greg, even. Dad doesn’t know any of that. No, I’m being stupid—Jack and Sean, they’re not much older than me, they wouldn’t have done anything awful to Nicole. And Greg. Well, he’s nice. He’s kind.

“Did you tell the police about the texts?”

My stomach flips as I hear Mr. Wallace start to cry. Grown-ups shouldn’t cry. Dad did after Mum died, but I only ever saw it at the funeral. I wanted to close my eyes and cover my ears then. It frightened me seeing my dad cry.