The string unravelled easily. The shammy flopped apart. There was a jeweller’s box inside, the sort a bracelet comes in or a lady’s watch. It was banded round the middle with brown tape – not so much she couldn’t slice it open, but she’d have to use the nail scissors in her room to make a proper job of it. She bundled it all up again and shoved it in her pocket, filled the hole in, put the rock back where she’d found it. Off she went, through all the leaves and briar, until she found the driveway.

Her mother’s song escaped her now – she’d lost the next few verses. All that she could think about, as she came down the track towards the house, was how to keep her worries out of sight. The Mayhoods didn’t know her well enough to notice when she took an extra breath before she spoke or when she failed to blink, but all these things were signals that her brother had tuned into down the years. It didn’t help that Charlie was so curious about the world – every passing cloud, each crawling bug was fascinating to him in a way she couldn’t fathom – and it was getting harder to distract him from the truth. When he was little, she could call him names, pick fights with him about all kinds of nonsense; and, if that didn’t work, she’d pinch him underneath the ribs until he squealed and ran off, crying to their aunty. But he was a man now, full of questions all the time. Some day soon, he’d wise up to the lies that he’d been fed: No, mouse, I’m telling you, I haven’t seen him. Just how stupid do you think I am? I haven’t heard a thing. I only hope to God he’s fallen off a cliff somewhere and no one ever finds him. And I hope that it was long and painful at the end. Is that all right with you?

*

She’d written back to Mal because she was afraid of what he’d do if she ignored him. In his mind, there was no difference between silence and a snub. So she’d begged a sheet of paper from a prefect and begun exchanging letters. Once a month, at first, reporting things that happened in her days, small wonderings she’d had about the future. Then every fortnight, with her vague apologies for disappointing him and making his life difficult with her mistakes. He’d written back with: You can make it up to me when you get out. And: You can square it with me soon. Those days of zoos and ice-cream cones were long gone, but she’d carried on believing that they meant something. In borstal, she’d returned to the idea that what she had with Mal was special, a relationship too individual for anyone but them to understand.

Over time, he’d put the squeeze on her, determined where she went, and what she did, and who she was allowed to have a conversation with. It had started with that night he came to beep his horn outside her window. Two minutes after seven, as he’d promised. In a blue Ford Anglia, from which he’d given a salute as she’d walked up the path. His hair had been combed flat. He’d worn a shirt and tie, a nice grey pullover. ‘Here,’ he’d said, once they’d begun to drive. ‘You’ll need to put this on.’ He’d reached to the back seat and handed her a blazer – it was tweed with elbow patches, just the sort her aunty would’ve gone to church in. When she’d slipped it on, she’d found two little bags of lavender inside the pockets.