I open my mouth to tell him I lied, but the words won’t come out. “Max and Lena made it up. Bella was mistaken, she saw something she misinterpreted and Max and Lena used it to try and make people believe I did it.”

I’m still lying. Is that why Bella hasn’t disappeared?

I do sleep. Not right away, but I do sleep.

When I open my eyes, I’m walking through the lane with Bella. It’s night and she’s talking, mid-conversation.

“You never would listen when I told you,” she’s saying.

“Am I awake or is this a dream?” I say.

“What do you think?”

I look down. I’m wearing the jersey pajama trousers and T-shirt I went to bed in, I’m barefoot like her. I can feel the sharp stones under my feet and the cold breeze on my arms. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m awake. I don’t know if this is real.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“You know where we’re going. You’ve always known where we were going.”

Time drifts and we keep walking in silence, broken every now and then by Bella speaking. “I tried to tell you, tried to explain.”

“What?”

“What happened. Why we did it. Why you…”

“Are you talking about Greg? I know what you all did. I know…”

She shakes her head. “Not Greg.”

“Then…”

“You need to remember, Tess,” she says. She stops walking and I see we’re outside Dean House and I’m shaking my head, because I don’t want to. I don’t have to.

“Yes, you do,” she says with a smile and then we’re inside, we’re upstairs on the landing and I can see the woods out of the window, I can see the trees looming up and the moon is shining through the window and lighting the stairs and there’s shouting and there’s a…there’s a…

Oh.

Once upon a time, two girls went into the woods…

“I remember,” I whisper, and Bella steps back, fading a little.

“I remember what I did.”

Chapter 41

Chapter 41

Once upon a time, two girls went into the woods and only one came out…

That’s how the fairy tale starts but I couldn’t remember how it ended or what happened to the two little girls in the woods. It’s been so long since my mum read it to us. It always scared me, even then, so Mum started skipping it, reading the happier stories instead.

I remember the little girls—they were silly, sneaking out of their safe, warm homes to run into the woods. And I remember there was some sort of monster, some macabre lesson for the two naughty girls who sneaked out at night.

Am I remembering right, though?

“I tried to tell you before that night,” Bella says.

“I didn’t want to hear it.”