Where could they be?

As I turn to leave the room, to search all our other rooms and each of our many carpeted steps for the note Nick had bloody well better have left, I see a flash of colour at the edge of my vision. The work-surface on both sides of the sink is covered in pools of bright red, some small, some bigger. There are red smears all over the kitchen wall. Blood. Oh, no. No, please…

On the floor, light reflects off small pieces of something on the lino. Broken glass.

I leap up the stairs three at a time to get to the lounge. I grab the phone and am about to ring the police when I notice a scrap of paper on top of the television: ‘Gone to Mum and Dad’s for tea,’ Nick has written on it. ‘Back eight-ish. Was going to make spag puttanesca for kids’ tea, but smashed passata jar-will clear up later!’ I’ve pressed the nine button twice before the significance of Nick’s words reaches my brain. I throw the phone on to the sofa and run back to the kitchen, where I start to laugh like a maniac. Passata. Of course. All over the room. The police had a lucky escape; I would have been their most hysterical caller of the day.

I sit down at the table and cry for what seems like a long time, but I don’t care. I’ll cry for as long as I damn well want. In between sobs, I shout at myself for being a self-indulgent fool.

After a while I calm down and pour myself a glass of wine. I haven’t got the energy to clear up the mess. The soul-shaking terror has gone, but I can still feel the hole it blasted through me. Mark Bretherick must have felt the same, except for him the nightmare didn’t end. Instead, it became his life. Panic can’t last indefinitely. It must eventually have stopped, leaving only the horror-cold, without the distraction of frenzy, stretching on and on.

I shudder. The idea is unbearable. Thank God I don’t know what it feels like. Thank God nothing worse has happened to Zoe and Jake than Nick’s mum’s atrocious cooking.

I retrieve my handbag from the hall, pull out the two framed photographs and take them up to the lounge, stopping off at the kitchen to collect my wine on the way. Now that I know Nick and the children are safe, I’m relieved to be alone. I sit on the sofa and lay the photos out beside me. That low red brick wall, the cherry blossom tree, the stunted blue building with the white blinds… I know I’ve seen these things before, but where? A spark flares in my memory: I hear myself saying, ‘It’s a bit odd that they’ve painted the outside blue, isn’t it? It’s not exactly in keeping with the surroundings.’ Who was I speaking to? My mind cranks slowly into action, blunt and fuzzy after two days with no respite and almost no food, two days of fielding one shock after another.

‘It’s owned by BT. I think it’s a telephone exchange. I don’t mind the blue. At least it’s not grey.’ Nick. Nick said that. Suddenly, full knowledge floods in: it’s the owl sanctuary at Silsford Castle. The blue BT building is behind it, across a small field. We’ve been to the sanctuary twice with the children, once when Jake was a tiny baby and then again about three months ago. Our second visit was more controversial. Zoe wanted to adopt an owl and so did Jake, and they both cried for ten minutes when I said they would have to share. They demanded one each. Eventually Nick had a brainwave and explained solemnly that owls, like children, were better off with two parents. Zoe and Jake saw the logic of this: they had a mum and a dad, so it was only proper that Oscar the Tawny should too.

I pick up the photograph of Lucy Bretherick. The wall she’s sitting on is about twenty metres from Oscar’s cage. If that. I wrap my arms tightly round my body, trying to squeeze out the fear that’s starting to gnaw at me. I don’t know what any of this means. All I know is that the Brethericks seem to be coming closer all the time.

I run down the six steps to Nick’s and my bedroom, throw open the doors of my wardrobe and pull things off the top shelf until I see the black, unironed lump I’m looking for-a T-shirt with a doodle of an owl printed on it, in white. And underneath, in white cursive-style letters, ‘The Owl Sanctuary at Silsford Castle ’. Nothing ambiguous about that. Anyone who saw me wearing this T-shirt would know I’d been there.

This is what I was wearing when I caught the train to York on my way to Seddon Hall. It’s what I always wear if it’s summer and I’m travelling; it’s the only T-shirt I’ve got that’s not too smart to waste on a journey or too scruffy to leave the house.

I need to find out if the photographs of Geraldine and Lucy were taken before I went to Seddon Hall or after.

Brilliant, Sally. How are you going to do that, exactly? Ring Mark Bretherick and ask for more details about the pictures you stole from his house?

I run back to the lounge, pick up one of the wooden frames and start to dismantle it. Some people write dates on the back of their photos-that’s my only hope. Even as I’m prising open the little metal clasps, injuring my fingertips, I’m wondering why it matters. So what if these pictures were taken before the second of June last year? My brain is jammed; I can’t explain to myself why it’s important.

Finally, the back of the frame comes loose. I throw it on the floor, and find myself looking at a blank white rectangle. There’s no date on the back of the picture. Of course there isn’t. Geraldine Bretherick was a mother. I don’t have time to put my photographs in frames or albums any more, let alone label them with dates for posterity-they live in a box in my wardrobe. Sorting out that box has been one of my New Year’s resolutions two years running. Maybe it’ll be a case of third time lucky.

I’m about to reassemble the frame when I notice something at the bottom of the picture’s white flip-side: a very faint line going all the way across. I work the long nail of my middle finger-the only nail I haven’t yet lost on the household-chore battlefield-into the corner of the frame to dislodge the photograph.

Two pictures fall out on to the carpet. My muscles tense when I see the second one. It was tucked behind the photograph of Geraldine and is almost an exact replica. A woman is standing by the red brick wall, in front of the cherry tree and the telephone exchange. She’s dressed in faded blue jeans and a cream shirt. Unlike Geraldine, she isn’t smiling. There’s a lot that’s different. This woman has a square face with small, blunt features that make me think of twists in flesh-coloured Plasticine. She’s less attractive than Geraldine. Her hair is dark but short, unevenly cut in a deliberate way, longer on one side than the other-a fashion statement. She’s wearing high-heeled leather boots, a brown leather jacket and deep red lipstick. Her arms hang at her sides; she looks as if she’s been posed.

I stare and stare. Then I pick up the framed picture of Lucy and very slowly start to undo the clasps on the back. Crazy. Of course there won’t be.

There is.

Another replica: a young girl, about Lucy’s age, also sitting on the wall. Like Lucy, she’s waving. A girl with thin, mousy brown hair, the sort of brown that is indistinguishable from a dull grey. She’s so skinny that her knee joints look like painful swellings in her stick-like legs. And her clothes… no, they can’t be…

I gasp when I hear someone in the flat, feet running up stairs, a stampede. More than one person, definitely. I’m panicking, wondering where I’m going to hide the pictures, the open frames, and how I’m going to explain myself, when I realise it can’t be Nick and the children; I didn’t hear the front door and there are no eager voices. I rub the back of my neck, trying to smooth out the knots of tense muscle that feel like ganglia at the top of my spine. Get a grip, Sally. This happens at least twice a day, and I should know better than to let it freak me out. The sound is coming from our unique feature, our blockage. It must be somebody who lives above us going up the main stairs, the ones that both are and aren’t in the middle of our flat.