‘Charlie?’ Mr Mayhood said now from the doorway. He came to sit beside him, wrapped one arm across his back and spied the mangy box that he was turning over in his hands. ‘What’s that you’ve got? It’s all right. You can tell us.’

‘I –’ He forced the words out. ‘I just found it. In her room. Her suitcase.’

‘Could I take it, please?’

He nodded and let go.

*

The caravan was pitched among the high grass on the brow of a small meadow. Mr Mayhood hadn’t wanted to delay until the light of morning, so they parked the wagon by the fence and wandered up the slope with their flood lanterns. It was colder than it had been in the fields, first thing, and everyone was tired. He could see it in the pinkness of the Mayhoods’ eyes when they passed through his lantern’s beam and felt it in the lag of his own body. Everything was sore in him. The sharpness of the night air spiked his lungs. He couldn’t smoke. It seemed insensitive and selfish. As they’d driven down the Ockham Road, he’d wondered if they should’ve left the house at all. ‘Don’t worry. If she’s coming back this late, she won’t be troubled on her own for half an hour,’ was Mr Mayhood’s view. ‘I’m not leaving Florence waiting there in case she does. Nor you.’ Half of him was hoping that he’d never see his sister’s face again. The other half was praying no harm came to her.

They hadn’t eaten supper – nobody could find their appetite – and, anyway, the sight of Mr Mayhood with that box of teeth had changed the pattern of their evening. It had made the thought of sitting down across a table with the man seem like a punishment. The tolerance he’d shown when he’d first seen them – not surprised or devastated, just cold-staring at the box, as though he’d recognized a basic failure in his sums. There wasn’t any coming back from that, and Charlie knew it.

Now he followed Mr Mayhood up the slope towards the caravan, the tall grass yielding as they walked. They brought their lanterns to the door. The padlock was unbroken and the leaded windowpanes were still intact. They peered inside, but it was hard to see with the net curtains drawn and the reflections on the glass. Below the undercarriage, there was nothing but a mound of mulch and dirt.

‘Charlie, shine your light around that end, please, would you?’ Mr Mayhood said. ‘You too, Flo.’

They did as they were asked. ‘Are you all right?’ she whispered to him on the way.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘You?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ She sighed so heavily that he could see the breath spuming in front of her. At any other time, he might’ve tried to catch it in his fist. They raised their lanterns to the window at the towbar end.

‘There’s nothing in there,’ Mr Mayhood called.