Dear Amy

8

LUISA MARTINEZ’S FACEBOOK FEED

Luisa Martinez

Crying all morning – really missing my bae Katie now whose been missing for nearly 5 weeks! I hope the angels in heaven are watching over you, my beautiful bae and wherever you are hope you’re OK.

Charlotte Finley

Sorry to hear you’re upset, I keep crying too! Hopefully there will be news soon.:(

Amber McGowan

You’re such a spaz Lu you hardly knew her and anyway everyone knows she’s obvs gone off with her gyppo boyfriend. You’re so thirsty for attention and its pathetic.

Sorcha Malone

Katie finished with Nathan before she went missing and he’s still around. Check yourself Amber cos her Mum can see this page.

Amber McGowan

It’s not me upsetting Katie’s mum but Katie the selfish bitch, and IDK what you’re so righteous about Sorcha cos you never liked her anyway.

Sorcha Malone

You lying cow! I NEVER said that! And Luisa is allowed to like her and miss her if she wants. What’s it to you anyway? Stop being such a bitch for once in your life.

Luisa Martinez

I can’t beleive how horrible your being to me. I was just being worried about my bae! I have been crying for weeks!!!

Sorcha Malone

Stop it Luisa you’re just embarrassing yourself. Amber is right you hardly knew her tbf.

Amber McGowan

It’s always about YOU isn’t it La-La Lulu, and you can stop being 2-faced Sorcha. We all know Katie Browne’s probably gone off to have an abortion or because that stepdad of hers has buried her under the patio, or whatever these social housing types do LOL!

Brian Morris

is that what they teach you to be like at that posh school you stuckup little madam how dare you talk like that about our katie where my wife can see it you heartless little sod!!! see you in school amber mcgowan i have took a pic of this scren bfore you dletee it and that posh school is goin to be hearing all abot you!!!!!!!

And Brian, being as good as his virtual word, had done precisely that, and so here we all were.

‘My account was hacked,’ Amber said, tossing her blonde head, though the two burning patches of red on her cheeks betrayed her as a liar.

Ben, our headmaster, had Luisa Martinez’s Facebook page open on the laptop on his desk. Though he’s quite content to bully Lily, Estella and me in meetings, the girls at the school, particularly the pretty ones, tend to reduce him to pusillanimous mumbling.

Today he had a problem, however. Brian, Katie’s stepfather, had been in the office for over an hour, and Estella, who taught in the class below, had been hard pressed to stop her students from muttering and giggling at the low boom and roar of Mr Morris’s voice as he, in the parlance of the day, ‘Tore Ben a new one’.

Accordingly, Ben solved this problem by calling me in. I must have appeared a suitable enforcer to him.

‘Clearly that’s you,’ I said coldly to Amber. I haven’t taught for years without picking up a few social media tricks. ‘I can tell it’s you. Once you’ve finished libelling Katie and her stepfather, you then go on to “like” Tabitha’s party photos and post the stats for your latest game of Bejewelled.’ That rage, that Stygian rage that bubbled up from within me on Arabella’s doorstep, was roaring at the gates of my ears. That man. That poor man, having to read that about Katie. And her mother. The thought of it smote me.

It was all I could do to stay calm. ‘It was absolutely you.’

Something of all this must have shown in my face, as within moments Amber paled and her defiant jaw unclenched.

She took a step backwards.

‘ISN’T IT?’

Ben stirred, as though I was frightening him too.

But she nodded, once, and her eyes flicked to the ground.

‘I just…’ She swallowed and blinked her eyes hard, trying to conjure tears. ‘I was just so angry at Luisa, because… because Luisa didn’t know Katie at all and yet there she was, trying to get attention, trying to get everyone to feel sorry for her, and I just had a go and then Sorcha, who is supposed to be my friend, was pulling me up in front of this idiot, trying to make me look bad, and I just… I don’t know, I just wanted to show them both up.’ She blushed hotly. ‘I mean, I’m not stupid. I know it looks bad.’

‘Her father could read that.’ I folded my arms. ‘Did you not even consider that?’

‘Her stepfather…’

‘Her father to all intents and purposes. Don’t try to excuse your behaviour on those grounds.’

She glanced up, her eyes red but dry, despite her best attempts, and I have to confess I did, in a warped way, understand her, even if it was an unforgivable way to behave. In the same way that Luisa was a slave to attention, Amber was a slave to her status. Sorcha had challenged her while she’d been in the process of putting Luisa down, and Amber had had to prove that she feared nothing and no one and could not be ruled by mere beta females, which meant not appearing to care what she said.

Neither she nor Luisa cared about Katie. Katie was a cypher, an alibi, something they could hang their interpersonal politics upon.

The girl herself remained missing, a footnote in their lives, just as she would become a footnote in a dreadful book like Snatched in Plain Sight.

Like Bethan Avery had.

I felt very tired suddenly.

‘We’ll need to discuss what we’re going to do with you, Miss McGowan.’ Ben stood up. ‘And contact your parents.’

For the first time Amber’s eyes grew round, and then pooled with genuine tears.

‘No! You can’t tell my parents… you don’t understand. They’re very… stressed right now…’

A flicker of sympathy shot through me. Amber got all of this from somewhere, after all.

‘Come on, you,’ I said, guiding her towards the door. ‘It’s no good crying now. What do we tell you in pastoral care? About the Internet?’

She screwed her lips tightly together. ‘Don’t post anything anywhere that you wouldn’t be happy to repeat on television.’

‘Hmm. So you do listen to me sometimes.’

After school that day I decided to follow Martin’s advice. I took the second letter with me, and half an hour later I was parked outside Narrowbourne Hospital.

The hospital made me cringe like no other place could. I had spent two weeks in an institution like this during my breakdown after university. I could still remember what it felt like to be totally dehumanized – mashed down to my lowest common denominator – with very little effort. I could taste the never-ending rising panic of those wretched days on the tip of my tongue.

Maybe, if someone here recognized the letters, something good might come out of it, and with this in mind I climbed out of the car.

I had come to this particular hospital again as an outpatient three years ago, after a series of misunderstandings that would have been comedic in other circumstances. I accidentally overdosed on my medication – it’s one thing to take too much aspirin, quite another to take too much Zoriclorone. No one at the school ever found out about that – about me being a Narrowbourne patient, that is.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Is Staff Nurse Marriott on duty?’

The receptionist looked up. I remembered her. ‘What’s it in connection with?’

I pulled out the ID card Iain had provided me with shortly after I started work at the Examiner. ‘I just need to ask her advice on something for the paper.’

‘Do you know which ward she works on, love?’

‘Chamberlain,’ I said, and waited as she dialled through. I was wasting my time and I knew it. There was no way Lisa would instantly recognize the writer of these letters, even if it was one of her patients. But what else was there? Even if the letters were genuine, finding Bethan was going to be a huge, huge task. And, anyway, I had to be able to tell Martin that I had completed this errand.

For some reason his good opinion mattered.

I was trying to think of a fresh approach to the problem when Lisa appeared.

‘Margot, how are you? I haven’t seen you for ages! How’re you keeping?’

‘I’m fine,’ I replied, perfectly truthfully. I’d never felt better. ‘I’m actually here on business. You knew I did some work for the local paper, didn’t you?’

Lisa nodded. ‘I gathered there was some reason for all those secretive phone calls requesting leaflets and so on. What were you up to?’

I laughed. ‘I must have surprised you a few times – sterilization one week, alcoholism another.’

‘The one that got me was Sickle Cell Anaemia,’ remarked Lisa drily.

I smiled. ‘The thing is, I was wondering whether you knew if someone in here had written this,’ I said, producing a photocopy of the first letter. ‘We’ve been getting a few of these at the paper.’

She scanned it, tiny lines crinkling the corners of her eyes. ‘I’ve not the faintest,’ she said after a long moment. ‘Spooky, isn’t it?’

I took the letter back.

‘You could ask around,’ she suggested. ‘If these things are a real nuisance. But I don’t think it’s from here, to be honest.’

‘I thought as much,’ I said.

‘I’m on my break now,’ she said. ‘Coming for a cup of tea?’

The place made my skin crawl and even Lisa’s pleasant face brought back unpleasant memories.

‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ I said, smiling right through the heart of my fear.

Perversely enough, I went to the Examiner before I went home. I turned my office key in the lock and was surprised to find Wendy there, even though it was Tuesday and seven o’clock at that. She was bent over a piece of paper.

‘God, Margot, you’re efficient. This has been every day this week.’

‘I was passing,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Thought I’d call by for my post.’

She eyed me curiously. She reached behind her into the cubbyhole. It occurred to me that she never let me check the cubbyhole myself if she was in the office. ‘Here you go.’

I glanced through the letters. I was wasting my time, I told myself. Then the familiar shaky, childish handwriting leapt out at me.

I was on the brink of asking Wendy when it had arrived and only just stopped myself. I shoved the bundle of letters into my bag. I could feel her staring at my back. I daresay she thought me very strange. But then, what the hell was she doing here?

As I straightened she looked away.

‘Working overtime?’ I asked, hefting my bag over my shoulder.

She nodded ruefully.

‘Well, I’ll probably see you tomorrow, then.’

‘Bye.’

Her eyes bored into me through the office window as I walked down the steps of the building. Perhaps she’d realized that something interesting was happening in my correspondence.

Dear Amy,

I hope you’re getting these letters. I can’t let myself think about what it would be like if you weren’t. I think I would just lay down and die.

There isn’t much time left. I’m sure he’s going to kill me soon. He gets angrier and angrier all the time.

I realized that I’ve never described him – well, not what he looks like. He has blond hair and blue eyes. I don’t know his age, but he might be something old, like over thirty.

He told my nanna and me when he came to visit us that his name was Alex Penycote and he was my social worker, but I think he was lying. He says he is part of a gang. I’ve never seen anybody else but I believe him, because he knows things about me, and about my mum and my nanna. When I was at the hospital visiting my nanna after her accident, he said I had to come with him. Now he says that he is very rich and powerful and anywhere I go in the world he will be able to find me, because he can pay people to kill me and they will.

Yesterday I tried to run away again. I got as far as the steps but he caught me. I was sure he would kill me, he just kept kicking me and kicking me and now I can barely move for the pain.

He keeps saying that I must be grateful for all he does for me, but I will only be grateful to see him burning in Hell.

Please look harder. It’s not that I’m not thankful for all you do but I have to be rescued soon.

Love,

Bethan Avery

P. S. Be careful because he’s very sly and I don’t think he’d have a problem hurting people other than me. Don’t let anyone in your house you don’t know.

P. S. again – I’m being very serious.

The next day, my enquiries were getting me frankly nowhere. I’d gone through my back files and, as expected, there’d been no other letters comparable to Bethan’s. The other psychiatric units in the district were no more help than Narrowbourne.

In the days that followed, there had been no more letters.

Perhaps there’d be nothing else now… Maybe we’d had our lot.

I was thinking about this possibility, funnily enough, when the doorbell rang.

I was cutting up vegetables for a wickedly spiced peanut stir fry, and musing to myself that even the deepest emotional wounds can have an upside – Eddy had never been able to stand the stuff.

‘Hello, Mrs Lewis?’

Two people were on my doorstep, a man and a woman, lit only by the lamp on my hall porch, so it took a second or so to make them out. The man wore a casual suit and raincoat and was youngish, with thick, gelled hair and a petulant, rosebud mouth; the woman had on a dark dress and dogtooth jacket. Her hair was short and white-blonde, to set off her aggressive permatan, and she had soft cheeks and large grey eyes.

I had a sudden flashback to the scrawled postscript on Bethan’s letter – ‘Don’t let anyone in your house you don’t know.’

‘We’re so sorry to bother you – I’m Detective Inspector Hayers and this is Detective Constable Watson. Would it be possible to have a word?’

‘I…’ I was stymied by the warrant card he held up before my face.

He’d glanced down at the knife in my hand, and my own gaze followed his.

‘We can see that you’re in the middle of making your tea, and I promise it won’t take long.’

The knife. In my distracted state, I’d carried it to the door. I blushed hotly. ‘Oh, God, sorry! Yes, I was cooking. Come in.’

I hurried into the living room as they followed me, remembering to put the knife down on the kitchen counter. I turned the fire under the pan down. (‘Something smells nice,’ said the woman. She had a broad Essex accent. ‘I love a bit of Thai myself.’)

They took a seat on the squashy leather sofa while I perched on the edge of the armchair, and tried not to look a) guilty or b) nervous, my default settings when confronted by the police.

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ said the man, whose name I had already forgotten, it being lost in the alarming prefix of his job title. ‘But we understand that you’ve received some letters that have since been entered as evidence in a crime.’

I blinked. Had they? ‘I spoke to a man, an academic, who took them away to be analysed…’

‘Yes, Dr Forrester, we know,’ he said, and smiled, a brisk professional expression, designed solely to reassure the fretful. ‘We don’t want to alarm you, but this is now quite a serious matter. We know there’s a limit to how much you can help us and that you’ve already spoken to our colleagues at the station a couple of times now, but we just need to get a statement from you about these letters.’

The woman nodded, watching me, ‘And there are things we’d like you to do if you receive any more of them.’

‘What? Oh, yes, of course, whatever you need. What do you want to know?’

The man, the detective inspector, did the talking, asking me once again to tell the story of how I’d received the letters, what my job at the paper was, who I had spoken to about them, whether I had any idea where they had come from or why they were addressed to me. As he’d predicted, it was all material I’d covered before, but I didn’t have the same undivided attention focused on me then as I seemed to merit now. The man’s pen scratched quickly over the pad, while both of them kept nodding encouragement at me.

‘So,’ I said, once they seemed to finally be satisfied. ‘I suppose the letters must have turned out to be real?’

They exchanged swift looks. ‘I’m afraid I really can’t tell you anything about that, Mrs Lewis,’ he said.

‘Are they going to reopen the cold case on Bethan Avery?’

‘I’m sorry…’ he said. ‘I just can’t…’ He paused, as though reconsidering. ‘The investigation you’re referring to was never closed, because of the serious nature of the crime.’

I frowned. ‘But if Bethan Avery is alive, how is it…’

‘But Peggy Avery isn’t,’ interjected the woman gently. ‘And we suspect this crime might be linked to others.’

The man nodded, as though in agreement.

Of course. Of course. There were other girls.

Possibly even Katie Browne. Katie who had been missing for nearly five weeks now.

‘Mrs Lewis, are you all right? You look a little pale,’ asked the man. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’

The woman was peering at me with concern, as though I might faint.

‘Me? No, no, I’m fine. I’m just – I’m just a little shocked at how everything has accelerated.’ I was shaking, I realized. ‘So what do I do if I receive any more of them?’

The man put his pen back in his jacket, secreted the notebook into his coat. ‘If you get another letter like this, we’d like you to let us know and we’ll come down to get it. Even if you’re not sure, but think it might be from the same person, still tell us. We’d rather a wasted trip than see evidence be impaired. If you see one in your post, try not to touch it, and just let us know.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’

Wendy will be beside herself with all of this drama, I thought. I’ll never live it down.

‘Thanks for your time,’ he said, rising.

‘Enjoy your dinner,’ added the woman with a quick grin. ‘God, the smell alone is making me starving.’

I closed the door after them and returned to the kitchen.

I considered switching the heat back on under the pan for a long minute, the knife clutched in my hand once more.

Instead, I picked up the phone.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Hullo, Margot,’ Martin Forrester sounded a little breathless, as though he’d just come in. ‘I was about to call you.’

‘The police were here.’

‘Were they now? Who came?’

‘Oh, I can’t remember their names, I was stunned that they showed up at all. I wasn’t expecting that.’

‘Well, this is a bit of an emergency,’ said Forrester. He sounded brusque, distracted, as though he were talking to me but paying attention to something else. ‘Are you free this weekend?’

I blinked. For a ridiculous moment I thought he was trying to proposition me. I pulled up one of the pine chairs and lowered myself into it.

‘What?’

‘Listen to this, it’s what Mo Khan sent back: “It is my opinion that Bethan Avery’s journals and the letters submitted to me by Margot Lewis were written by one and the same person.”’

‘One and the same? Are you sure? There’s no mistake?’

‘Oh, there might be a mistake… at the end of the day it’s just his opinion. None of this stuff is cut and dried. But it’s an opinion that carries more weight than mine does.’

‘Jesus,’ I said. I was lighter than air. ‘Where are we going?’

‘If you can get away there’s a DS who worked on the Avery case when it happened. He lives in London. He was running the review of the cold case.’

‘The what?’

‘The cold case – well, not so cold any more – I told you this. He can tell you about the other girls. He might be able to offer us some help in tracking down our mystery correspondent.’

At these words a cold thrill shot through me, numbing my hand as it curled loosely around the telephone receiver.

‘Can you make it this weekend?’ he repeated.

‘I… I don’t know. I think so. I’m involved in rehearsals for a school play but I’m pretty sure I can wrangle something.’ I trapped the phone under my chin. ‘Listen. I’m thinking of putting an appeal to whoever is writing the letters in the Examiner tomorrow.’

‘An appeal? What sort of an appeal?’ he asked sharply. I could almost see his dark brows drawing together.

‘Nothing very exciting. Just a line inviting Bethan to get in touch.’

‘A line?’ he asked. ‘Just that?’

‘Yeah, along the bottom of the column. In caps, usually. I do it when I think someone is in danger – the last time, someone wrote to me in the midst of planning their suicide and we got him to speak to the Samaritans. Runaways get in touch sometimes, wanting to pass on messages to their family…’ I tailed off, uneasy with this line of questioning. ‘When we can’t contact someone directly we use it. We never get specific about their issues, though, to preserve their confidentiality. Nine times out of ten, the reaction of the people around them to their problem is ten times more worrying to them than the problem itself.’

‘You couldn’t make this appeal bigger?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘Bigger how?’

‘I… look, I think this is a great idea, but I need to check in with a few people. Let me call you back.’

‘OK, take care.’

‘I will. You too.’

He hung up.

The next day at school, when I came out into the corridor, buried beneath a massive stack of grammar textbooks I was trying to hold steady with my chin, someone was waiting for me.

Sorcha Malone was standing in the corridor, her freckled face pale and her wiry red hair twisted up untidily at the back. Her nails were in her mouth, her white teeth worrying at their tips. Nail polish is forbidden at St Hilda’s but the girls get around this by having meticulously buffed and shaped nails.

If Sorcha was chewing hers there must have been a serious problem.

She straightened up quickly when she saw me and dropped her hand, as though she’d read my thoughts.

‘Sorcha – what can I do for you?’ I peered at her around my bulky burden.

She darted a quick glance at me, before turning her face to the floor. ‘Can I talk to you, Miss?’

‘Yeah, sure, of course.’ I had a sinking feeling. This must be about her own role in the debacle with Amber and her Facebook meltdown. To be truthful, I had been expecting Sorcha to turn up at some point. ‘Let’s go to my office. Take some of these.’

I handed her half of my enormous pile of books, in case any of her friends, or others, should see her. This way she would appear to have been drafted in to help me, rather than seeking my advice. She received them gratefully. Appearances are of vital importance when you’re that age – my personal conviction is that this is something we are all supposed to grow out of, and yet so few of us do.

We joined the general melee in the corridor, all in genial chaos now that it was lunchtime. I led, aware of her shuffling behind me, taking her up the stairs and towards the Classics office, a tiny room little better than a converted broom cupboard, with a single small circular window, like a porthole. The office makes me claustrophobic so I try to spend as little time as possible here, but it’s the one place I can be guaranteed a degree of privacy when I chat to the students.

‘Just set them here on the desk,’ I said, and her pile of books joined my own. Silently, I closed the door behind her.

Sorcha actually has an assigned pastoral care teacher, but for some reason they all come to me. I would love to tell you that there is some deep-seated reason for this, that it’s to do with the fact that I am so cool and approachable and down with the kids and all, but to be honest, while I have no idea why it is, I am pretty sure it is none of the above.

‘Sit,’ I said.

She did so, almost hesitantly. She was in two minds about being here, I could tell.

‘Is this about Amber and the others?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah.’

I waited, letting her collect her thoughts.

‘I’m not speaking to Amber right now,’ she said.

‘I see.’

‘You knew?’

‘Well,’ I said, shrugging – Amber’s carpeting in Ben’s office was not really any of Sorcha’s business – ‘it was pretty obvious that there was trouble in paradise in my English lesson last week.’

Her face was heating up, becoming redder, and she wiped at her wet pink eyes with her sleeve. I offered her a tissue from the box I keep on the desk for this purpose.

‘We fell out over Katie Browne,’ she said, and as she said it, she let out a little sob.

‘Yes. Amber got into a little trouble over that,’ I concede.

‘I mean, she’s really nice sometimes – I mean Amber – and to be honest, I didn’t have that much to do with Katie, she was kind of on her own a lot, you know? I mean, other than the swimming, she didn’t really hang out with the rest of us.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘But me and Amber,’ she said, and her loneliness was so poignant I wanted to hug her, ‘we… we’re best friends, and we have a great laugh, and everything would be fine if it weren’t for Laura egging her on all the time.’

I sighed and crossed my legs. Laura had not been in evidence during Amber’s Facebook fiasco – she’d managed that all on her own. Girls like Amber play the Lauras and Sorchas of this world off against each other, to bring out their worst selves.

What I really wanted to say was this: ‘Sorcha, you may not believe this now, but as much as Amber feels like your best friend and you can’t imagine life without her, I promise you faithfully that the minute you leave for university you will not exchange more than a hundred words with her for the rest of your life. And what’s more, this will be a source of enormous relief to you.’

But of course I can’t say that. One of the more glorious aspects of the column is that I can be a little more forthright.

‘I know Amber said those terrible things,’ said Sorcha, her hair twisting in her hand, ‘but she didn’t mean them.’

‘Why would she say them, then?’ I asked.

Sorcha twitched out a little distressed shrug. ‘It’s just showing off that she’s not scared – but it is scary, you know?’

Her gaze sought my own.

‘Yes. It’s scary.’

‘I mean, everyone’s been saying Katie ran away, but what if… what if she didn’t? What if something has happened to her and nobody is looking for her?’

‘Who told you no one’s looking for her?’ I asked, trying to sound calm, but my spine chilled with a frisson of alarm. Only Ben and I had been in the office when the policeman had arrived to say that they were investigating the possibility that Katie had left willingly due to trouble at home and that we could scale down the security measures the governors had put into place.

Sorcha shrugged. ‘Isn’t it obvious? They stopped coming around asking questions. She’s not in the news any more.’ She swiped at her face. ‘It just… terrifies me that she could be out there and nobody is looking for her.’ She glanced up at me, her eyes filled with the heartbreaking seriousness that only children can possess.

‘Yes,’ I said, and with real feeling. ‘It terrifies me, too.’

I was writing a reply to an email from a girl who was convinced she was pregnant as a consequence of wearing her boyfriend’s underwear. It was quite amazing, the number of letters I received in this vein. It’s like the Internet never happened, though it may be that my correspondents are clever enough in their own way: Internet searches can be traced. Can I get pregnant from a toilet seat, a dirty towel, if I don’t have an orgasm, if it’s my first time? Am I safe if I drink a bottle of gin and sit in a scalding hot bath afterwards? If I take a contraceptive pill beforehand?

Am I safe?

These letters depress me immeasurably for all the obvious reasons.

All of these prepubescents and their endless terror of pregnancy. But I suppose I can see it. Social stigma, tearful parents, fleeing boyfriends, finally being shunted into a council rat trap with a screaming incomprehensible little monster, their frustration aggravated as opposed to palliated by the odd benefit payment.

Maybe if we all, men too, looked after everyone’s kids then I wouldn’t feel like I do, and they wouldn’t feel like they do – an idealistic thought, I acknowledge, but it keeps recurring.

‘The whole reason you want kids,’ I said out loud to myself, in the mistaken belief that this will make me take what I am saying more seriously, ‘is so you can make it up to yourself for having such a lousy childhood. And that’s selfish.’ Maybe so. Maybe. Well, no maybe about it, really. It’s not some deep-seated instinct. Just a psychological gratification, sharpened by the fact that I can’t have children.

I looked at the clock. It was already 3 a.m. I hit Send on the email, CCing in my private work account. Then I encrypted the work file, turned the light off and headed upstairs to bed.

I fell asleep straight away.

I dreamed of Bethan Avery.

In my dream I was lost in a maze, a dread-haunted Demeter searching for her Persephone.

There were corridors everywhere – a hospital that looked exactly like Addenbrooke’s – vast, sprawling, a lino-floored labyrinth. There is a monster in the centre, I understand in my own dream logic, a minotaur that is always searching for me.

The place was full of bustling faceless figures. None of them seemed to pay me the slightest attention as I drifted along, my quest offering no real impetus, instead just a woolly sense of foreboding. If I glanced from side to side I could see strange things through the windows to the wards – doctors and nurses slithered in and out of their uniforms as though shedding skins, and open doors breathed, slow and deep, as if nameless things slept behind them.

‘I don’t know where we are,’ I told a young woman who confronted me in the corridor, arms folded.

‘I know.’

‘I’m looking for Bethan Avery.’

She glared back at me, dark eyes bright in their surrounding thicket of clumpy mascara, her peroxide blonde hair a messy halo around her head, and for a nightmare instant I thought she would hiss at me like a serpent.

‘The world passeth away and the lust thereof,’ she answered. And then she let out a single mirthless bark of a laugh, and there was something familiar about it.

There was something familiar about her.

‘Please,’ I said.

She frowned. ‘I don’t know where she is,’ she said, tapping her sharp teeth with her pen. I thought this terribly unhygienic, even by dream standards, but held my peace, tantalized by the possibility of a forthcoming clue. ‘Why are you asking me about Bethan Avery anyway?’ she snapped, her mood changing, brittle with malice, with fear. ‘Who are you?’

And though I had been offered no violence, when I awoke I was shaking, like a leaf in a storm.

I lay there on my back in my lonely bed for a long time, meaninglessly following the twitching shadows of the tree branches that the streetlights cast on to my ceiling.

Now I was awake I understood that I had indeed known that girl, but had not thought of her for years and years.

Angelique.

After that, sleep was a lost cause.