My mouth was dry. I felt as if I'd been eating lumps of dry bread, a whole loaf of bread with no butter or jam or anything.

"I don't know," I said. My voice sounded like a mouse's voice - thin and wispy and edging on a squeak.

"You're not in trouble, Maudie. It's just that, well, we're trying to find Jessica. You can see her mum and dad are terribly worried. You want to try and find your friend, don't you?"

"Yes," I said. My hands were shaking and I clutched hold of my dressing gown belt.

"So can you tell us where you think she might be? Was she upset about anything?"

I shook my head and then, because some other response seemed called for, said 'I don't know."

"You've no idea? You girls didn't have some secret hiding place she might have gone to? No little hidey-hole?"

I shook my head again. I didn't want to; I knew I should have been telling them the truth, about the stones and our plans to go there last night, but something was making me say and do all the wrong things.

"Well," said the policeman, disappointed. My stomach rumbled, loud enough for us all to hear and I blushed.

Mrs. McGaskill got up from the table and walked over to me. She stalked across the room, her body held upright and rigid. I shrank back against the wall but she took no notice. She crouched down and held me by the shoulders, almost shaking me. I could feel her fingers digging into me and the tension that made the bones of her hands judder against me.

"Jane..." said Angus.

She took no notice. Her burning eyes were fixed upon my face. I was afraid.

"Maudie-" Her voice clogged and she cleared her throat and started again. "Maudie, if you know where she is, you must tell us. You know that, don't you? You must tell us."

Her nails were digging into my skin. I tried to say something, tried to speak. There was a lump in my throat too big to force words around. Instead I burst into tears.

"I don't know, I don't know," was all that I could say. "I don't know where she is."

I must have convinced them. It was, I suppose, literally the truth - I didn't know where she was. Mrs. McGaskill released me and stepped back, clenching her fists. Angus patted me as I sobbed into my hands. His palm kept connecting with my shoulder over and over again, as if he were doing it without thinking, without meaning to give comfort, more as if he’d forgotten what he was doing. It began to feel so strange that I managed to stop crying and moved away from him, my sobs tapering off into hiccups.

All of the sudden, the house seemed full of people in blue uniforms. I was sent up to my room and sat on the windowsill, biting my nails and watching people mill about in the front garden. I tried not to look at the window of Jessica's room, right next to mine, but it loomed there in my peripheral vision, black and empty.

There was a concerted movement in the small crowd below in the garden and they all began to walk out into the lane, spreading out until they were walking abreast of one another, in a straggling line. I saw Mrs. MacGaskill, her face rigid, walking slowly, her husband five steps behind her. I couldn’t see Angus.

The door creaked and made me jump. I swung round but there was no one in the open doorway. I was suddenly scared of being left on my own in the house. I looked fearfully again at the door to my bedroom. It didn't have a lock. Supposing - supposing someone had stolen Jessica from her room and now... now they were coming for me? Suddenly, my whole body felt cold. I looked for Angus in the disappearing search party and couldn't see him.

I'd never been frightened of being on my own before now. I'd spent hours and hours roaming the Lakeland countryside on my own. Now, quite suddenly, I was terrified.

It was then I heard the creak of a floorboard on the stairs. I froze. I tried to tell myself it was nothing, that I was imagining things. The creak came again - there were footsteps coming up the stairs. A dark figure loomed in the open doorway and I began to scream.

Angus rushed in. "Maudie, what's the matter?"

I managed to stop screaming by bringing my hands up to my mouth, pressing inwards so hard I could feel the sharp edges of my teeth against my palms.

"Maudie, what's wrong?"

I felt tears rushing up towards my eyes. A sob came out of me and I put my face in my hands, not wanting to see my father's tight face, still grey with shock from all that had happened over the past twenty four hours.

"Maudie..." He sat beside me, hesitated, and pulled me close. For a second, the fear rose to a peak that was almost unbearable; I thought I was going to choke. I put my face against the wall, the plaster cool against my cheek. I must have made a noise or flinched or something, because I felt Angus move back from me and the fear receded a little.

"Angus-" My voice came slowly and thickened so I couldn't say more for a moment. I tried again. "Dad-"

He didn't say anything. He sat unmoving and silent. I told him everything.

Chapter Eighteen

That was the first night I had the dream. In the nightmare, I saw the stones and the black figure and Jessica disappearing into darkness. I lay there in the dark with the blankets tangled about my legs and stared upwards. The nights here were so dark, lit only by the moon and the stars. When Jessica had been next door, I hadn't been able to hear her breathing or moving around - the walls were too thick, the distance between our rooms too great. But the silence in my room now seemed somehow deeper and more awful.

Today had been the worst day of my life. I thought that quite dispassionately, staring into darkness. I thought back, unwillingly, to the scene in the kitchen; to Mrs. McGaskill’s furious anger.

Her face was a dull red, her eyes glittered and her teeth were bared. For one terrifying second, I had thought she was going to bite me. "You wicked, wicked girl! You little cow! How dare you tell us you didn't know where she was!"

Flecks of saliva from her mouth landed on my face. I was too frozen with horror to move. I saw her raise a hand to slap me and flinched.

Angus was there immediately, pulling her back. She whipped round and her outstretched hand caught him on the cheek. I heard him give an ‘oof’ of protest and watched his eyes squeeze shut as her rigid fingers slapped against his face. For a moment, the whole room seemed to rock. Mrs. McGaskill and Angus were frozen in a tableau of upraised arms and flying hair. My vision shimmered.

After a moment of stillness, sound and movement came rushing back. She was shrieking, Angus was shouting, Mr. McGaskill was hurrying forward, his face creased. I put my hands up to cover my ears but I couldn't stop my mouth from opening and the screams emerging. I shut my eyes to block out the chaos going on before me and screamed and screamed.

It worked, for a moment. I couldn't hear the shouts of the adults, or see them and their twisted up faces. For a moment, all I could hear was myself screaming, wordlessly at first and then repeating 'stop it, stop it, stop it!' over and over again. Eventually I ran out of breath and opened my eyes, gasping.

Angus had moved to put his hand on my shoulder - I hadn't even noticed. I was barely aware of Mr. McGaskill. It was Jessica’s mother who drew my eye. She was standing rigid, in the middle of the kitchen floor, her arms held stiffly by her sides. On her face was an expression of such loathing, I flinched at the sight of it.

"That's right, cry," she said, her voice vibrating. "You go ahead and cry. If we've lost her, because of what you've done, if she's gone because of you, I'll-"