Roz sank down into the seat beside Felix’s and turned to face him. ‘Just supposing you’re right, and the bash to my head caused me to have some sort of lapse in memory. Where are my parents now? They couldn’t have been run over, the woman would have said so, so why aren’t I on a train with them?’

Felix mulled this over, but try as he might he couldn’t think of a reasonable explanation. ‘You’re right, it doesn’t make sense.’ He frowned. ‘Only why would that woman say you’d been run over if you weren’t?’

‘I do remember lying in the snow. I’ve no idea how I got there, unless I managed to crawl out of the car.’

Felix leaned his elbow on the armrest between their seats. ‘If you had been thrown clear of the car perhaps she assumed you’d been run over?’

‘Made the whole thing up in her head?’ mused Roz. ‘That’s possible, especially if …’ She fell quiet as she thought things through, then looked up sharply as a solution presented itself. ‘Perhaps Dad swerved to avoid someone, which would explain why we crashed in the first place. If the woman saw that, she might have assumed Dad didn’t miss the person, and that I was the victim!’

Felix sat upright. ‘Now that makes sense! These things happen so quickly, it’s easy to get muddled, and she couldn’t possibly have seen how many people were in the car prior to the accident because you don’t take notice of that sort of thing until afterwards.’

Roz smoothed her pinafore down. ‘I’m no better off, though, am I? I still don’t know what happened to my parents, whether they’re alive or …’

Felix placed his hand over hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘They will be! Or at least as far as I know the dead don’t walk.’

She eyed him inquisitively. ‘Sorry?’

‘The car was empty, they said there was no one to be found, and that’s why they assumed the driver must have been on the run.’

Roz’s eyes filled with tears. ‘So they did leave me …’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Felix opened his mouth to object, but found it impossible to do so. Leaning forward so that the children around them might not overhear, he spoke in a quiet, reassuring manner. ‘If they did, it wasn’t because they wanted to, but because they had to.’

She gave him a wobbly smile. ‘Thanks, Felix.’

‘What for?’

‘For being here, sitting with me, trying to help me work out just what happened. It’s good to have someone with a different perspective, because it stops you from thinking the worst. I’d be a real mess if it weren’t for you,’ she said truthfully.