Harry, who was nearest and unenc.u.mbered, bent down to pick it up, turning it over as he did. A low whistle escaped his lips. 'Take a look at this.'

Sean came to stand beside him.

'Whose book is it?' asked Harry.

'Hers.'

'It's like p.o.r.n.'

'Definitely rated eighteen,' agreed Sean. 'But it's not really p.o.r.n, is it? It's torture three different ways of putting someone to death. I know who it is, too.'

'You mean, she's drawn a real person?'

'It's Melissa Timpson.' When Harry looked blank, he added, 'She's in the business, with Dad and Jo.'

'Do you think she's planning ways of killing this Melissa woman?'

'Well, that's what it looks like.'

'Should we tell someone?'

Sean thought for a moment. 'We'd have to take the book away and show it to them then she would know it was us. Better just put it back. Flatten that corner down, where it got creased against the floor. That's it now put it exactly where it was.'

Harry positioned the book carefully. 'I'm not sure which way up it was,' he said.

'She probably wouldn't remember herself. It's not like she's expecting us to look at it. No one ever does. It's her private stuff her secret sketch book, my dad calls it.'

'Doesn't he wonder why it's a secret?'

'I don't think so.'

'Shouldn't we look and see if there are pictures of anyone else in there?'

Sean hesitated. If she had gone to Booths, then she wouldn't be back for ages. 'You're right.' He relinquished the vacuum-cleaner hose and flicked through the pages, but although there were a few oddities among some of the drawings, apart from the page at which the book had fallen open, there was only one other which contained a troubling image; nor was this a scene of violence. It was the back view of a woman looking into a mirror. The figure itself and even the frame of the mirror had been drawn in great detail, but the face reflected in the mirror was blank.

'That's creepy,' said Harry. 'Do you think she hasn't finished it, or is it like that on purpose?'

'I don't know.' Sean stared at the drawing for a moment or two before he snapped the book shut and replaced it on the table. 'Come on. Let's go.'

'We could sneak up on Charlie,' Harry suggested, when they had gone a couple of yards down the drive. 'She'll wet herself after seeing that DVD.'

Although he knew it was childish, Sean was perfectly willing to enter into the spirit of the thing. The idea lightened their mood considerably, and they traversed the lane with a level of stealth that would have impressed an SAS recruiter, keeping low behind walls and sprinting across openings, finally arriving slightly breathless alongside the front door of The Hollies, where they flattened themselves against the wall while Harry slid the Yale into the lock and opened the door by inches. They crept into the small square hall, eased the front door closed behind them, then on a nod from Harry they crashed into the sitting room, where the blood-curdling screams intended to terrify Charlotte died on their lips. She was not there. The only sound or movement in the room came from the flat-screen TV, where the t.i.tles of the horror movie were scrolling steadily upwards against a background of grim orchestral music. For a moment they stood looking at one another, feeling somewhat foolish.

His sister could easily have gone up to her room or been playing a hiding-and-jumping-out game of her own, but something in the stillness of the house immediately troubled Harry. 'Charles,' he shouted. 'Charlie. Midget Features. Come out, wherever you are.' When this brought no response, he added, 'Don't p.i.s.s about with me, Charles, or you'll be sorry.'

Still nothing.

Unnerved by the silence, Harry marched systematically through the house yelling for his sister to reveal herself, while throwing open doors to cupboards scarcely big enough to conceal a well-fed cat, let alone a ten-year-old girl. Sean stood in the hall, watching and listening as the search progressed upstairs. It wasn't his sister, but he had been made partly responsible because in the general scheme of the arrangements it had been a.s.sumed that he the oldest of the trio would stay on the premises until Harry's parents came back.

Harry's face appeared at the top of the stairs. 'She's not here.'

'You're kidding. She has to be somewhere. Have you tried the garden?'

'There's nowhere to hide. You can see it all from here.'

It was true. The Hollies sat in a small, easily maintained plot. There was a patch of mossy lawn broken up with a few knee-high dwarf conifers and a bird table. There were no outbuildings, and the family parked their Subaru on a patch of gravel at the side.

'Has she ever pulled anything like this before?'

'Never. She's scared of her own shadow. She wouldn't go off on her own.'

'Well, she has.'

'Not by herself,' Harry repeated. 'Can't you see what's happened? She's taken her your stepmother. She's the only person who knew Charlotte was here on her own.'

Sean had never heard Harry use his sister's given name before. They stood staring at one another, each waiting for the other to say something. At that moment they caught the sound of a car pulling on to the gravel.

's.h.i.t,' said Harry. 's.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t.'

John and Suzanne Wheaton were no more or less intuitive than the next couple, but the moment they opened the front door and caught sight of the two boys' faces, they knew that something was very wrong. In the garbled moments which followed, with everyone talking across everyone else, two things became clear to John. First, that his daughter was missing, second, that the boys were not telling all they knew. His wife, words m.u.f.fled by a frozen mouth, said they should call the police. There was no landline at the cottage, and mobile reception was far from good; the best place to get a reliable signal was out on the parking area, but at the front door he hesitated. Although he was filled with the cold terror of a parent whose child is unaccounted for, John Wheaton did not want to make a fool of himself with the police.

'Let's go through this again,' he said, as calmly as he could. 'You two went down to Sean's house, leaving Charlotte here watching the television.' At this point he had to raise his hand to silence his wife before continuing. 'You were only gone about five minutes, but when you came back, Charlotte was missing. You've searched the house, but nowhere else.'

'Where else would she be?' interrupted his wife. 'She wouldn't go wandering off by herself. Charlotte doesn't do that sort of thing.'

'You didn't see anyone else about?' He focused his gaze squarely on Harry, who hesitated and glanced at Sean. 'You weren't playing some sort of game with your sister? Something that went wrong? You have to tell me the truth now, Harry. It's very important. Whatever has happened, you have to tell me before the police get here. Has something happened to Charlotte? I know there's something you're not telling me.'

'It's about Sean's stepmother,' Harry blurted out. 'We think she might have taken her.'

'What are you talking about?' his mother all but screamed. 'What do you mean?'

'She knew Charlotte was here on her own because she met us going into Sean's house. Then she went out, and when we got back here, Charlotte had gone.' Harry looked desperately from one parent to the other. 'She's done it before. She's killed people before.'

His father grabbed him by the shoulders and brought his face close to Harry's, squinting directly into his eyes and smelling his breath. 'Have you been drinking, or sniffing something?'

'No!' Harry wrenched himself away. 'Tell them, Sean.'

Sean felt their eyes burning into him. 'It's true,' he almost choked on the words. 'She killed a little girl years ago n.o.body knows.' He felt as if he was going to cry. Letting it all out brought a strange mixture of shame and relief.

'Oh my G.o.d! John, call the police.' Mrs Wheaton took a step backwards and leaned against the wall for support. She put her hand to her mouth, but her sobs escaped anyway. Harry stared at her, white-faced. Sean had to scrub the sleeve of his sweatshirt across his eyes.

At that moment there was a discreet tap on the door. John Wheaton was nearest, and flung it open to reveal Charlotte standing sheepishly on the step, next to a woman in a pilled body warmer and a shabby, dung-coloured skirt, the hem of which was coming down on one side. Her greying hair was escaping from where it was loosely tied at the back of her head.

'I saw your car go past, so I've brought Charlotte home. I didn't want you to be worried, but ' she looked from face to face. 'I fear I may have been a little tardy.'

As his wife grabbed Charlotte to her, John stared at the stranger in confusion. 'Who are you?' he asked.

'I'm sorry, I should have explained better. I'm Gilda Iceton.' She extended a hand, which he took automatically, finding it soft and cold in his momentary grasp. 'From The Old Forge. I happened to be looking out this afternoon when I saw your daughter pa.s.sing my house, looking rather distressed. Apparently she was nervous waiting here by herself, so she followed the boys up to The Hideaway, but when they didn't answer the doorbell she ran back here. Unfortunately, she had forgotten to put the door on the catch and found herself locked out. She was on her way back along the lane again, not knowing what to do next, when I saw her. I could see there was something wrong I have a little girl of my own so I went out to see if I could help, and we decided the best thing would be for Charlotte to come in and wait with me until we saw your car coming back. She said you had driven into Ulverston, so I knew you would have to pa.s.s my house on your way home. I hadn't realized that the boys were back here; I didn't see them go past.'

'Thank you.' John Wheaton was recovering fast. 'Of course you did exactly the right thing in not leaving Charlotte to wander up and down the lane on her own.'

'Although we were very frightened when we got back and couldn't find her,' Suzanne added with a hint of reproof, all the time holding Charlotte to her tightly, as if she thought someone might attempt to steal her away.

'I was going to pop a note through the door to let you know where she was, but I'm afraid you beat me to it because I stopped to give Charlotte a drink and a biscuit first.'

'She's got a funny stone cat called Timmy, who sits by the fire,' Charlotte piped up, somewhat rea.s.sured to find that she did not appear to be in any trouble. 'It's life-size, and it's got eyes made out of a different kind of stone, so it seems like it's really looking at you.'

John Wheaton was wondering whether they ought to ask their new neighbour inside. Although she had tried to do the right thing by Charlotte, there was something about her which didn't incline him to further their acquaintance.

'When her daughter, Becky, comes home, I'm going to be invited round to play,' Charlotte announced.

'My daughter is staying with relatives over in Yorkshire,' Gilda explained. 'She boards at St Aelfric's, but when she's next here I'm sure she would like to meet Charlotte.'

A daughter at boarding school. Well, that gave out a rather different signal to the jumble-sale wardrobe, Suzanne thought. People in the country were so funny, of course, and sometimes had quite different standards to people in town. Maybe they should invite this Gilda Iceton and her husband a.s.suming she had one over for a drink one evening. At the moment, however, there were pressing matters to be raised with Harry, so she was relieved when Gilda declined her half-hearted invitation to come in.

The front door was hardly closed before everyone's full attention returned to Sean and Harry, who were standing sheepishly at the foot of the stairs. 'You', said John Wheaton, glowering at his son, 'have got a lot of explaining to do. And as for you, Sean, you had better go home. You can a.s.sume that Harry is grounded, and not receiving visitors until you hear otherwise.'

CHAPTER TEN.

Jo felt vaguely uneasy as she made her way round Booths supermarket. She was convinced that Harry and Sean were up to something, and was still wondering whether she ought to have dealt more firmly with the issue of Harry's sister being left at home on her own. Distracted by these thoughts, she almost collided with Brian when she turned her trolley into the chiller aisle. He had a basket over his arm, into which he was just placing a tub of coleslaw. When he appeared to ignore her, she said, 'Good afternoon, Brian,' in a pointed way.

'Oh sorry. Didn't see it was you for a minute. I was miles away.' He would have walked away, but Jo had allowed her trolley to drift sideways as if by accident, so that he could not move on without walking right round it.

'How are you?' she asked, in a voice which was far too brittle.

'About the same as usual. Yourself?'

'I'm fine. How's the gallery?'

'Still standing. Busy, in fact, so I must crack on.'

'Of course.' She still did not move out of his way. He was a big man, intimidating face to face, and his irritation was palpable, but they were in the middle of a supermarket what could he possibly do to her? 'I want to get in touch with Sh.e.l.ley,' she said. 'Is there a phone number where I can contact her?'

'I really can't help you but if you're such mates, then I'm surprised she hasn't been in touch with you already, telling you the same sob-story she's been telling all her other friends.' Brian's sarcastic smile wilted her. 'And by the way, the Tunnocks don't like people trespa.s.sing up at High Gilpin, particularly when there isn't a tenant in res.' He gave the end of her trolley an impatient shove in order to extricate himself, then stalked away without another word.

Jo's face burned. She lingered in the dairy section for what she hoped was long enough to avoid b.u.mping into Brian at the checkouts. He must have seen her hiding behind the water b.u.t.t. Somewhere in the back of her mind a laughing policeman mocked her mercilessly.

Back at home, she discovered Sean watching TV in his bedroom, but there was no sign of Harry. She wondered if they had fallen out, but decided it was better not to enquire. When Marcus arrived home in time for them to eat together, Sean joined them at the table, taciturn as usual, but more subdued than surly. He withdrew upstairs again as soon as the meal was over, leaving herself and Marcus to spend the rest of the evening listening to the concert on Cla.s.sic FM.

Marcus seemed to have forgotten his previous annoyance with her, but they found little to say to one another, and when they made love that night, the act was accompanied by a curious air of detachment. She knew that some men fantasized about being with other women, and that this supposedly did not mean they loved their wives any less; but all the same, the thought that he might be imagining himself with Melissa was unbearable. Afterwards, as they lay side by side in bed, she asked: 'Do you think men find Melissa very attractive?'

'Do you actually mean, do I find Melissa attractive?'

'I meant men in general, but as you're the only man here, I suppose it's got to be your opinion on behalf of the rest.'

She had spoken lightly, and he answered in similar vein. 'Speaking for the entire, red-blooded, macho bunch of us, I'd guess the answer is yes although not half so attractive as we'd all find you, of course.'

'Be serious I wasn't fishing.'

'I am being serious. Why do you ask, anyway?'

'Oh, I was just thinking about the differences between what women might think men find attractive and what they actually do find attractive.'

'I see what you mean. Well, I would say that Melissa is glamorous in an obvious way, but you are beautiful. Glamour is carefully acquired, but beauty is the genuine article and can't be faked.'

'Sometimes you say the loveliest things.'

When he reached out and drew her closer, she nestled securely into the crook of his arm.

Down at The Hollies, Harry lay miserably awake long after everyone else's lights were out. From somewhere nearby a tawny owl was annoying him with its persistent ke-wick, ke-wick. He would like to wring the neck of that owl to say nothing of the neck of his little sister, whose fault everything was. The latter half of his day had been dominated by interrogation after interrogation, and telling-off after telling-off, but none of it was his fault, he thought bitterly. If Charlie had only done as she was told and waited in the house, then she would still have been here when he and Sean got back. They could have whipped that DVD out of the machine and replaced it with some childish Disney rubbish as soon as they heard the car; his parents would never have been any the wiser.

And that whole business about Sean's stepmother he had certainly been dragged over the coals for that! He half wished that Sean had never told him anything about his stepmother, although that was Charles's fault too, because if only she had arrived home a couple of minutes sooner, none of that stuff about the stepmother would ever have come out. Once Sean had been sent home, the parents had wanted to know all about it, so that bit by bit Harry had been forced to reveal what he knew and how he knew it.

Much to his surprise, he discovered that his parents already knew a lot about the case, although not that baby Lauren's mother was living just along the road. They remembered seeing it on the news, although their take on the situation was very different to most of the internet bloggers. According to his mother, saying that Joanne Handley had harmed her own child was 'an extremely cruel and very silly thing to say. And I don't suppose Sean really believes any of it,' she went on. 'I expect he was just feeling cross with her about something and said it to be spiteful, and to make the whole thing into an exciting game for you.'

'Except that this is something very serious and not a game at all.' His father took up the role of prosecutor-in-chief. 'It is very wrong to snoop about on the internet, downloading material about someone you know.'

'Imagine how that poor woman would feel, if she knew what you were saying about her. Don't you think she has suffered enough?' You could always count on his mother to play up the emotional angle.

His father majored on different aspects of the matter. 'You ought to know by now that you can't believe half of what you see on the internet. As for repeating allegations like that, well, perhaps you don't realize that this is a very serious matter. It's slander, Harry. Do you know what that means?'

Harry did know. He had to repeat for them, again and again, that he had never discussed anything about Sean's stepmother with anyone other than Sean. All manner of promises had been exacted from him regarding what kind of material he would and would not be accessing on the net, or for that matter watching on TV or via any other medium in the future. In the meantime, he was grounded for the rest of the holidays, and likely to be under far too close surveillance to get his own back on Charles for quite a while although he had already managed to shoot her a couple of looks on the sly, to let her know she had it coming.

In the end, his parents had gone on at him for so long he hardly knew what he did or didn't believe about Sean's stepmother, although on one point at least he was sure they were wrong. For some reason they were both adamant that Sean could not possibly believe her guilty of harming anyone. Well, they had not seen the intensity of Sean's expression when he talked about how dangerous she was, nor did they know about the weird stuff she had drawn in her book. Harry had not breathed a word about that his parents might think they knew everything, but they didn't a point from which he derived a curious satisfaction.

The wind had risen during the evening, so that long after Marcus had fallen asleep, Jo was aware of it buffeting through the trees, occasionally picking up small objects and tossing them against something more solid. Sometimes there would be a bigger gust, a sound like a giant intake of breath which rattled the plastic air vent on the bathroom wall, making the slats sc.r.a.pe one against another like fingernails against a window pane. A sensation that something was not right began to grow in Jo's mind. It was akin to the p.r.i.c.kly feeling of being watched, like knowing that there was someone standing just behind you, except that this seemed to encompa.s.s the whole house. It was as if someone was outside among the trees, watching the house as it slept.

Taking great care not to disturb Marcus, Jo slid sideways until she reached the edge of the bed and could twist herself into a sitting position while barely moving the duvet. The bedroom was dark, but three steps took her across to the door where she could reach out to locate her dressing gown on its hook and feel for the door handle. Out on the landing where a plug-in night light glowed, she paused to push her arms into the sleeves of her dressing gown and knot the cord around her. Without the night light, the stairs would have been inky black.

She crept downstairs to the kitchen. Just as she entered the room, the security light at that side of the house illuminated the garden like a prolonged lightning strike, revealing a world of startled pot plants, with the winter jasmine clinging panic-stricken to the wall, the whole picture criss-crossed by a black gyrating mesh of shadows formed by the wind-blown shrubs and trees. The security lights were not infrequently set off by the roe deer which regularly ambled through, but there was no sign of them or any other likely trigger.

She slipped across the hall to look through the sitting-room window. Here the curtains had been drawn, and she had to twitch one aside to look out. The front of their plot was partially illuminated by the security light at the side of the house. The line between light and dark ran along a perfect diagonal, starting at the right-hand corner of the house and extending towards the gate, here and there interrupted by shadows marking the position of the larger shrubs, huge shadowy shape-shifters which swayed uncertainly in the wind. Beyond this patch of light everything was blackness except for a single yellow bulb, which Jo identified at once with the one over the front door of The Old Forge. It appeared to be flickering, but she knew that was just an illusion caused by the constant movement of the intervening trees.

She wondered what Gilda Iceton was doing up at this hour. Then it occurred to her that since there appeared to be no other lights on, Gilda might have left it on by mistake; it was easily done when going out to fetch some logs for the fire. She knew that there was still an open fire at The Old Forge, because she had seen smoke rising from the chimney.

Although there had been no direct contact between herself and her new neighbour since the night of the concert, Jo was uneasily aware of her: the arrivals and departures of Gilda's old blue Volvo, the occasional presence of washing hung out to dry all served to remind her that Gilda was living just across the lane, and that although she might prefer never to set eyes on her again, another encounter was all but inevitable. She had pretty much succeeded in forgetting all about certain episodes in her adolescence, until confronted by the sight of Gilda at the Coronation Hall. Nor was her problem with Gilda confined to the awkwardness and embarra.s.sment of some long past foolishness catching up with her. Gilda almost certainly knew not just about her childhood, but probably about Lauren too. Easter Bridge had seemed the perfect place in which to escape the past, but it did not matter where she went it was never long before that echoing cry of 'Coming, ready or not' rang out.

The security light faded, leaving her staring into the darkness at that single point of flickering light at the far side of the lane. So far as she knew, Gilda had done no work on The Old Forge prior to moving in. It still looked dingy and depressing from the outside, and its windows continued to stare aggressively as pa.s.sers-by, with more than a suggestion that unseen watchers stood just out of sight, screened behind the grubby panes. With so much property available at the moment it was hard to fathom why anyone would choose that house, but presumably Gilda saw some sort of potential in it. Maisie's fears of a ma.s.sive building project might yet come to fruition because, now she came to think about it, Gilda's parents had been fairly well off enough money, anyway, to take their daughter out of a state school and pay for private education. And it looked as though Gilda must be pretty comfortable financially: it wasn't every widow approaching forty who could afford boarding school and a house in the Lakes, and yet had no obvious regular day job. It could be that Gilda had big ideas for The Old Forge, and the wherewithal to put them into effect.

Even so, the idea of living in The Old Forge made Jo shudder. She remembered Sean's story of the ghostly former occupant of Gilda's new abode. The blacksmith, who had perished there in an agony of fire some saying he had fallen drunk into the blaze, others that his bitter-tongued wife had pushed him from behind. Did violent death really leave an invisible footprint in the air? She became aware of a familiar set of wooden double doors taking shape in her mind. Shivering, she let the curtain fall back into place and turned smartly towards the kitchen, thinking that she might as well make herself a cup of tea, now that she was downstairs.

Without the security light, it was very dark in the kitchen. Her fingers found the switch by the door and a bar of spotlights sprang to life. The sensation of some watchful presence outside persisted, so she approached the window to pull down the blind. The interior lights were reflected back at her, rendering almost everything outside blacker than black, but as she reached for the blind cord Jo drew back with an audible gasp. Just visible on the other side of the pane, balanced on the sloping white window sill, was another seash.e.l.l.