And now Mum and Dad were gone too, and it was just her and Casey left. Two sisters against the whole world.

‘I’m going to keep you safe,’ she whispered in the heavy silence of the room, resisting the urge to reach out and touch the soft skin of her sister’s face, even though she desperately wanted to. Jess knew this was no time for sentimentality. For the next few hours she had to remain strong. If they stayed here, help would come eventually. She was sure of that. Amanda seemed like the kind of person who could get herself out of most situations – she had the kind of confidence about her that good teachers had, or politicians on the TV. She’d be back with help.

She had to be.

Turning away from the bed, she headed back into the kitchen. She was hungry and thirsty, and although there was no food in the fridge, she could at least grab some water. She found a glass and went over to the kitchen tap, staring out of the huge hole in the window where they’d broken in earlier as she poured herself a drink.

Which was when she heard the barking.

Jess froze. Amanda had told her there weren’t any other houses around, so who could be out here in the middle of a forest at this time of night with their dogs? Because there was more than one of them and they were making a hell of a noise.

Fighting down a rising sense of panic, Jess searched the kitchen drawers, her movements frantic, until she found a large kitchen knife. She picked it up gingerly, immediately feeling sick. Holding a weapon like this brought the darkest moments in her life rushing back, and for a second she thought she was going to faint. She let the moment pass, telling herself she needed to be brave, for Casey’s sake as well as her own. Her grip on the handle tightened and she lightly touched the blade. It wasn’t sharp but it would do. She thought about trying to find a weapon for Casey but knew that she would never be able to use it. Casey couldn’t hurt a fly. Their best bet was to hide and hope for the best.

But, as she hurried back through the hallway towards the room where Casey was asleep, Jess was startled by a loud knocking on the front door. Four quick raps, a pause. Then another single rap.

Wondering if this was some kind of trick, she crept over to the door.

‘It’s me, Amanda,’ hissed a voice on the other side. ‘Let me in, for Christ’s sake.’ She sounded breathless and scared.

Jess unlocked the door and Amanda came barging through. ‘They’re coming,’ she explained frantically as Jess relocked the door. ‘And it sounds like they’ve got dogs.’ They faced each other and Amanda’s gaze fell on the knife in Jess’s hand.

‘I know. I’ve just heard them.’

‘They’ve got guns and there are at least three of them. We can’t stay here. We’ve got to go.’

‘Where? If they’ve got dogs, they’ll catch us.’

‘We need to distract them.’ Amanda looked as if she was thinking hard, and Jess was glad that she was here again. ‘There was meat in the freezer, wasn’t there?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’

‘Go and check. Now. I’m going to see if they’ve got a microwave.’

At that moment, Casey appeared in the doorway, rubbing her eyes, dressed only in the Buzz Lightyear dressing gown that was far too small for her. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, looking nervous as she saw the urgency in Jess and Amanda’s expressions.

‘We have to leave,’ Amanda told her. ‘And you need to be very quiet.’

‘But I can’t go out like this. I’ll be cold.’

‘Your clothes are probably dry by now, babe,’ said Jess. ‘They’re on the radiators down here. Why don’t you go and put them on as quickly as possible, okay?’

Casey nodded and ran off to find her clothes. ‘Don’t turn any lights on, whatever you do,’ Amanda called after her, then grabbed Jess roughly by the arm. ‘Go and get the meat. We’ve hardly got any time.’

Jess remembered seeing the freezer in a utility room off the kitchen, and she went to it now, conscious that the dogs’ barking seemed to be getting closer.

The freezer was about half full, with ready meals on one side and packaged meat on the other. Jess grabbed a couple of packs of frozen sausages and ran back into the kitchen.

‘Right, I’ve found the microwave,’ said Amanda. ‘Give that here.’ She grabbed the sausages and flung them inside, switching the microwave onto full power to heat them up. ‘Now, make sure Casey’s ready, for God’s sake. We haven’t got much time.’

Trying hard to ignore the pounding of her heart, Jess ran back into the hallway where Casey sat in a T-shirt and pants, trying to pull on a still-damp sock. ‘I can’t find my shoes,’ she said, her voice breaking with fear. ‘And I can hear dogs. Are they coming here?’

Casey was scared of dogs. She had been ever since the age of six when, while out with Jess at the local park, she’d leaned down to pet a terrier tied to a fence and it had bitten her hand and refused to let go. Jess had had to prise the dog’s jaws open with her bare hands to make him release his grip, and finally he had, although he’d also bitten Jess in the process. When the owner, a huge woman with a sour face and a whole brood of kids, had come over, she’d tried to blame Casey for the dog’s behaviour, even though Casey was standing there crying her eyes out. But Jess had stood up to the woman, taking photos of her and her scraggy hound and threatening to report them both. The woman had tried to grab the camera but Jess had cut her down with a glare that said that if she tried anything, it would be worse for her, and the woman had backed off.

‘It’s okay,’ Jess told her sister soothingly now, trying to keep the ice-cold fear out of her voice as she helped Casey to get one sock on, then the other. ‘We’re going to be leaving in a moment, and Amanda’s getting some food ready for the dogs, so they won’t be interested in us. And your shoes are over here.’ She retrieved Casey’s brand-new Van pumps from a radiator in the single bedroom on the ground floor. They were still wet, as was every other item of Casey’s clothing, but there was nothing that could be done about that now.

‘Where are my jeans?’

Jess looked round frantically, conscious that every second they wasted brought the men hunting them closer. ‘We’ll get them in a moment.’ It was taking every ounce of mental strength to stop the fear weighing her down. She didn’t want to die. God, she didn’t want to die. Not here, in this cold, dark place, hundreds of miles from the home where she’d been raised. And, more than anything else, she couldn’t bear the thought of them hurting Casey.

‘Keep strong,’ she told herself, as she helped Casey on with her shoes, noticing that her hands were shaking. ‘Keep strong. Keep strong. Keep strong.’

The microwave bleeped, and through the open door of the kitchen, Jess saw Amanda pull out the steaming packs of sausages, juggling them between her hands before chucking them on the kitchen floor and wrapping them up inside the wet clothes that Amanda and she had been wearing when they’d first arrived. ‘Right,’ said Amanda, catching her eye. ‘We’ve got to go. Right now.’ She jumped up and ran past them to the front door.

Jess didn’t need telling twice. Pulling Casey to her feet and ignoring her complaint that she hadn’t got her jeans on yet, she clutched her sister’s hand and followed Amanda out through the front door and into the cold night air.

Even as they sprinted across the empty driveway and towards the thick laurel hedge that bordered the front of the property, they heard the sound of the dogs arriving at the back of the house, and barking wildly as they stopped near the back door. Worse, Jess could hear the sound of footsteps coming from round the side of the house as someone approached the front.

Amanda must have heard the footsteps too because, motioning them to follow, she forced her way into the laurel hedge, immediately disappearing from view. Holding Casey in front of her, Jess threw the knife she was still holding into the hedge, then swung round and threw herself and Casey backwards into the thick greenery, ignoring the pain as the branches tore her skin, before landing on her back, her shoulder blade pressed painfully into a knobbly root sticking out of the dirt.