'Yeah, but we did learn something new from the whole bag situation,' he argued. 'About Tom and Lily and the fact that she didn't pack her bag, run out of here and throw herself straight in the lake.'

'Doh we already knew that she didn't throw herself in!' When Paige runs down a blind alley, she gets irritable. Today she took it out on her boiled egg, which she quickly and cleanly decapitated.

I pushed my own plate to one side. 'You're missing Jack's point. He's saying that Lily and Tom met up we don't know where.'

'Or why,' Jack added.

'But they must have done because Tom now has Lily's bag with the belongings she packed for her supposed trip home, which means she gave it to him for some reason.'

'Or he took it,' Jack said. 'From Lily or from someone else.'

'And he hasn't brought it back to the school or taken it to the police.' This led to the one thing I really couldn't explain. 'Or said a word to anyone about being involved in Lily's disappearance.'

I ran into D'Arblay in the corridor as I went into my French class.

'Alyssa.' He acknowledged me with a stiff little nod then went ahead of me into the classroom to speak with Justine Renoir.

Inside the room, Hooper smiled and moved his bag to make room for me on the chair next to his.

I was glad of the smile. Hooper isn't someone you notice in a crowd he's self-effacing and it takes a while to get to know him. Still, there was something about him that I instinctively warmed to.

'ca va?' he asked.

'Hi, Hooper. Yeah, I'm good thanks.' I'd only just got settled when D'Arblay left and Justine called my name.

Justine is unbelievably chic and uses Chanel Coco Mademoiselle. She has a sexy gap between her two top front teeth and plump, cushioned lips. Anyway, she told me that D'Arblay had asked permission for me to leave the class early and go to Dr Webb's study all in French, of course. In ten minutes, she said. Dix minutes.

'What does Saint Sam want?' Hooper asked, keeping to the spirit of the lesson. Qu'est-ce qu'il veut, Saint Samuel?

'He's probably changed his mind about sending me home,' I groaned.

'En francais,' he whispered as Justine began the lesson. Ten minutes later he murmured bonne chance when I got up to go.

I decided there and then that I love Hooper his deadpan expression, his way of trying to keep dark situations light.

To get to Dr Webb's office I had to pass through the main entrance hall and I glanced out at fresh activity at the far end of the drive. I guess we'd got used to a dozen or so reporters, photographers and a couple of satellite vans hanging around, even in this weather, and no one had tried to sneak in since Emily Archer's undercover entry into the sports centre, so I'd pretty much stopped noticing them. Today was different though.

'Whoa!' Harry remarked as he noticed the scrum at the gates. He happened to be exiting the bursar's office as I headed for my appointment with Saint Sam. A limo had just driven into the grounds. 'Guess who!'

'Who?'

'Anna Earle. According to D'Arblay's secretary, she's due any time.'

And Anna it was still in black, still pale and fragile as the car pulled up at the main door and she stepped out. She recognized me and gave me the ghost of a smile before Saint Sam opened his door and invited us both into his office.

The principal offered Anna a seat and left me standing by the door. He waited for her to begin.

'I'm so sorry to take up more of your time, Dr Webb.'

'Not at all. We're happy to help in whatever way we can.'

The word 'help' had a grating effect too impersonal, too polite for the occasion of losing your daughter in potentially violent circumstances. Anna Earle's eyes closed briefly and she sighed.

Saint Sam quickly tried to up his game. 'Of course, we're very disappointed that the request for a new pathologist's report is holding up the funeral arrangements. We can only imagine how terrible it must be for the family.'

Let me out! In fact, what am I doing here in the first place?

'It's the waiting,' Anna said. The voice was as ghostly as the smile. 'The not knowing.'

'We understand.'

She shook her head. 'I realize I have to accept that Lily has gone and I'll never get her back, but there are so many unanswered questions.'

Dr Webb did the steeple thing with his hands, tapping his fingertips together. I guess at this point he'd run out of platitudes and was trying to think of something meaningful to say.

'I only want to know what happened.' Anna's voice quavered and quivered to a halt. 'I have to do something. I can't sit at home.'

I totally get that. Paige and I we feel the same way.

'No. Honestly, Mrs Earle, I do understand. Many of us at St Jude's wish we could do more.'

I sure do. Wanting to do something is the reason I chased after Jayden and almost got myself mown down in the process.

'What exactly are the police doing? Have they involved the school?'

'Of course. I gave them a statement yesterday, as did Guy Simons, our head of physical education, who was the last teacher to see Lily on the day she disappeared, as indeed did our bursar, Terence D'Arblay, who gave his permission for Lily to leave school and travel to London.'

'What about you, Alyssa?' Turning with sudden eagerness, Anna drew me into the conversation. 'Have you spoken to the police?'

'Not yet,' Dr Webb answered for me. 'Inspector Cole understands the need to tread carefully as far as Lily's fellow students are concerned. He plans to interview Alyssa and Paige at a later date. Meanwhile, there are many other demands on police time.'

You're being much too bland again, Saint Sam. And how come you're answering for me?

'I see.' Anna left a long pause before she spoke again. 'You'll let me speak to Alyssa? I can take her out of school?'

Ah that's what I'm doing here!

'We'll do anything that can be of comfort to Lily's family,' he assured her. 'We've taken Alyssa out of lessons especially to be here, though whether or not she can provide any answers . . .'

Anna Earle stood up with more determination than I would have expected. 'That's beside the point, Dr Webb. Alyssa was one of Lily's closest friends.'

'I understand,' he said again as he stood and made his way across the room to open the door for us. 'Take all the time you need, but with one proviso that you don't leave Alyssa to find her own way home. You'll send her back to school with your driver?'

'Oh my good God!' Anna sank back on to the white leather seat as her driver coasted down wintry back lanes. The press feeding frenzy at the school gate was over faces and lenses pressed against the car windows, reporters yelling heartless questions. 'How are you feeling, Anna?' 'Where's your husband?' 'Have they decided that Lily was murdered?'

I sat beside her in silence, seeing myself in the driver's overhead mirror as Anna leaned forward and closed the privacy screen.

'That man!' she sighed. 'Did they cut out his heart before they made him principal of St Jude's?'

I was expecting her to shrivel at the onslaught of the piranha press, not launch this attack on the sainted Sam.

'Sorry,' she sighed. Her hand trembled as she flicked her hair back in a gesture that reminded me so much of Lily that it took my breath away. 'What else could I expect Dr Webb has to keep things on a professional level, doesn't he?'

'It's the way he is,' I agreed.

'He can't get personally involved I realize that. In any case, over the years I've learned to deal with men like Dr Webb.'

We cruised on along the lanes, the hedges and fields still laden with snow.

'Lily went to many different schools before she settled at St Jude's,' Anna explained. 'Each one had a principal who was no doubt good at his or her job, but who never showed a scrap of genuine emotion, even when they were excluding her.'

I said I knew what she meant.

She looked hard at me. 'There's something about you, Alyssa.'

I blushed then stared out of the window.

'No, I noticed it the moment I saw you.'

'What exactly?'

'I realized that you and Lily are similar you don't follow the rules.'

'Only if they make sense to me.'

'Yes, I can definitely spot that in you. That's why I wanted to have this time with you. You know, Lily is a free spirit. Her father doesn't see it, but I do.'

I let Anna do the talking, but each time she spoke of Lily in the present tense it gave me a small shock, like static electricity.

'Robert tries to rein her in. I tell him you can't tame Lily's creative spirit, she has to be free. We've had this battle for as long as I can remember, ever since Lily began to show signs of what they termed bizarre behaviour and I saw as the beginnings of her creativity.'

'You could say that about a lot of kids,' I said, meaning myself. I remembered being afraid of turning the light off because I was sure that witches would burst through my bedroom wall when I was asleep.

'Lily had an imaginary friend called Peter with a magic pebble that allowed him to make wishes come true.' Anna smiled at the memory. 'It didn't matter to her that she had no real friends because we moved around the world so much when she was young. She always had Peter. But it worried Robert because as a newspaperman he deals in facts and doesn't pander to the world of the imagination he's very old school. And then of course eventually the doctors were involved. They put Lily through test after test until they came up with a diagnosis.'

After the unexpected torrent of words, Anna lapsed into silence.

'How old was Lily when that happened?' I asked.

'Eight, nine, ten it went on for years. First they said she was hyperactive, then she had attention deficit disorder, then borderline autism. And all the time I was desperate for them to leave her alone because they were all so negative and only seemed to make things worse. I pleaded with Robert.'

'Too much pressure on Lily,' I said quietly.

'On both of us.'

There were high, snow-laden hedges to either side of the road and a heavy grey sky overhead. I heard the swish of tyres, the purr of the powerful engine.

'I'll always regret that I wasn't strong enough to protect my daughter,' Anna sighed. 'I should have said no no more tests, no more labels.'

'But you can't afford to think that way.' Guilt nailed her to a cross, adding to her grief.

'Thank you, Alyssa.' She gave me that smile with nothing behind it and when she took my hand her fingers were ice cold. 'Talking to you like this is the only thing that brings me closer to Lily. And, even though it's painful and you have every right to choose not to give me an answer, still I have to ask you . . .' She ground to a halt, swallowed hard then shook her head. 'I'm sorry.'

'You're asking me what really happened that day?'

Adam's email was branded on my brain 'Family crisis. Come home.'

Bee-stung Lily had packed her bag, the one that was now lying among the sandals and dirty sportswear at the Old Vicarage.

'Did you get permission from Saint Samuel?' Paige asked.

'Yep.'

'What's the crisis? Did somebody die?' I wanted to know.

'Not yet.' Lily said.

'Did your family business go belly-up?'

'No.'

'Does your dad want to make you the youngest ever MD of the digital-media section of his multi-national news corporation?'

'Give me a break, Alyssa.' Lily stuffed her jeans and favourite top into the bag.

'Sorry, but we're only trying to find out what's wrong.'

She went on with her breakneck packing then stopped to text Adam.

The answer's still no.

I'd seen the message on Lily's phone. I saw it again, clear as day.

I relayed to Anna this final conversation with Lily. Verbatim.

'So at that point, having told me about the pregnancy some weeks earlier, she's now refusing to talk the thing through with us,' Anna whispered. 'That was because of the pressure Robert was putting on her to have an abortion.'

'An abortion?' I felt another small shock when I heard the word. 'Was that the plan?'

'Yes. It was one of the reasons I didn't want to involve Lily's father when she first told me about the pregnancy, but he has a way of extracting information. The minute he found out, he decided abortion was the best solution. Obviously.'

Personally I didn't see what was so obvious. 'Lily didn't agree?'

'No, that was why I was desperate for her to come home to work it out face to face.'

And probably the reason why she never got on the London train. Instead she'd written the goodbye email to Jack, bought a different ticket and got shunted off down her own fatal siding.

'So I have something huge to tell you and you can pass this on too if you like. I'm pregnant, Jack. Big breath. Read again: I'm pregnant. This is not a lie I did the test twice and both times it came up positive. Careless, huh? You'd have expected better of a smart St Jude's girl like me.'