But was it a steam train that year? Hadn’t they stopped running by then? When did the diesels take over? Memory. Memory. She was sure it was a steam train, and they had a compartment to themselves, all six of them. She could remember seeing the smoke drift by the partially open window, could remember its acrid smell. She could see the dark engine ahead when the train turned a long curve, chugging and puffing along, carrying them toward . . .

Linda sat up and stubbed out her cigarette, startled by the power of her memory. She hadn’t let herself remember that holiday for many years, but talking about it to the detectives today, thinking about it after she had read the news item about the latest celebrity jailed for abusing girls years ago, then thinking about it again after her father’s death, had brought it back to the front of her mind from the dark box to which she had consigned it. Whether she wanted it to or not, the box was opening, and perhaps, just perhaps, she was strong enough now to face its contents. She thought about what Banks had said about writing things down. Writing was her business, after all. Perhaps it was time.

She had kept a diary back then, she remembered. Every year her Aunt Barbara bought her a Letts Schoolgirl Diary for Christmas. It had a thin pencil that slipped down the spine, a page for each week and all sorts of information about world capitals, flags, holidays, time zones and units of currency. There wasn’t a lot of room for writing, though it more than sufficed for most days, and she had made her carefully concise entries scrupulously every day, no matter whether or not she did anything interesting. The diaries were all gone now, of course, dumped in one of the many clearouts she had experienced over the years. What would she have written on the nineteenth of August, 1967? she wondered. “Got raped. Not very nice.” Oh, stop being such a wag, Linda, she told herself. Get on with it.