No comment. No comment.

'Moving back to my original topic,' Emily said. 'What's the students' reaction to Paige's accident and do they know yet if she's likely to pull through? It was an accident, wasn't it?'

My stomach churned and I had to walk away fast, leaving Jack to Emily's tender mercies and heading back towards the lake so I didn't have to listen to any more of this. Only one of the reporters followed me a small guy in a grey knitted hat and a red North Face jacket.

'You're the kid in the car with Anna Earle,' he said.

I walked faster. He ran to head me off just as I came out of the wood.

'Do you have special links with the Earles? How was Anna?' he asked. 'Did you know they hospitalized her again the day after her visit here?'

'Again?' I echoed.

'Yeah, didn't you know? She was diagnosed with major depression back in 2003. Her only daughter dies and she goes into meltdown for a second time. Her husband sectioned her two days ago.'

I shook my head and tried deep breaths to deal with the panic battering at my rib cage.

'It's unofficial,' the guy in the red jacket said. 'Earle took out a super injunction for us not to report it not in the public interest, blah blah.'

'Which hospital?'

'Private clinic, top secret.'

'Thanks,' I muttered, side-stepping him and breaking into a sprint across the lawn.

The reporter didn't follow me. Instead he went to join the rest of the pack in the woods. When I reached the safety of the quad, Tom had snuck ahead and was already waiting for me.

'Finally!' Tom said.

I'd smuggled him up to my room where we could talk in private. Lily's empty bed was in one corner, stripped of its sheet and duvet, Paige's opposite. Her bed looked as if she'd just stepped out of it and had gone to take a shower.

My heart was still pounding and I was looking out of the window to check we hadn't been followed. 'OK, Tom what is it? What do you want?'

'The cops!' he said.

'Lily's bag!' I retorted.

'You told them.'

'Of course I told them. What did you expect?'

He paced up and down, tall, skinny and raw-boned. 'Without even telling me, sneaking behind my back.'

'What did you expect?' I repeated. 'Tom that was Lily's bag!'

'I didn't know that, did I? Not until the cops came knocking.'

'How could you not know?'

'Because I didn't look. It was just there.' He let out a long breath, like a balloon deflating and suddenly there was no anger, no energy left. 'Jesus, Alyssa.'

'Wait,' I said, pacing from the window to the door. 'You're saying the bag had been in your hallway for weeks and you had no idea it belonged to Lily? Didn't anybody else notice it your parents, for instance?'

Tom shook his head then changed his mind and nodded. 'My mum actually. She took a look and asked me how come a girl's bag was left lying around. I said I had absolutely no clue. I was busy at the time it went right over my head.'

'Tom, I don't know do I believe you?' How scatty and haphazard could the Walsingham family be?

'It happens.' He needed to sit down, and chose the edge of Lily's bed. 'A lot of people sleep over at my place when my parents are away for the weekend. They're forever leaving stuff.'

'But this isn't just any old bag, this is Lily's bag.'

'How many times I did not know that!'

'Did the police take it?' For fingerprints, DNA evidence and so on.

He nodded.

'You want to know what Jack and I did after we saw it in your house?'

'The night I saved your life,' he reminded me with a hollow laugh. 'Yeah, Alyssa, tell me why you didn't go straight to the cops.'

'We wanted to be sure. Jack came back to your place and snuck a look. He found Lily's phone.'

'Then you went to the cops!'

My turn to nod and feel the energy drain away. I sat on the chair beside my bed. 'Every single message on that phone was from Jayden,' I told him. '"Lily, please see me, please answer me, don't walk away." But she did.'

'How's Paige,' Tom asked suddenly, as if this could possibly be a more cheerful, less confusing topic.

'She's in a coma. She's probably got an aneurysm and definitely splinters of bone lodged in her brain.'

'Jesus.'

'I know. Listen, Tom, if you told the police what you just told me, you're probably in the clear.'

'Like you said yourself will they believe me?'

'Yes, if it's the truth.'

'Well, thanks for that touching belief in the British judiciary system.'

'How does sarcasm help?'

'It doesn't.'

'It has to be true because, when you think about it, if you'd been involved in Lily's disappearance you wouldn't have been stupid enough to leave her bag lying around. The cops will work that out eventually.'

He took a sharp breath and sat upright, waited to hear what else I had to say.

'So how did it get there? Think hard did anyone call at your place the day Lily vanished?'

'I have been thinking and, yeah, some kids came round after school.'

'Including Jayden?'

'Yes.'

'Micky, Alex?'

'Yeah. We were planning the usual end-of-term five-a-side tournament. Inter-school stuff Ainslee versus St Jude's.'

'So who else? Anyone from here?'

'Luke was there,' he said. 'And Jack.'

'And?'

'Harry,' he decided. 'Any one of those could have dumped the evidence on me, couldn't they?'

chapter eleven.

'What do you mean, you gave Emily Archer your number?' My voice rose a couple of octaves.

It was Sunday morning and Jack had received a text. He told me who it was from, on our way to visit Paige in hospital. 'She asked me for it and I gave it to her yesterday, while you were talking to Tom.'

We were cycling through the Bottoms when Jack and I had this, our first major fight. Christmas lights winked in the daytime gloom around the windows of the Bridge Inn. A snow scene had been badly painted on the steamed-up window of the Squinting Cat as I put on my brakes and squealed to a halt outside St Michael's and All Angels church.

'Christ, Jack, you gave her your number!'

'Calm down, Alyssa. It's not a crime.'

'D'Arblay and Saint Sam will kill you if they find out.'

'Well, they won't unless you tell them.'

'So why?' I asked him, raising it by another whole octave.

'Because she asked me.'

'You already said that. Really, Jack why?'

'Because it could be useful.'

'Who to? You or her?'

'Us,' he said sullenly. Jack in a bad mood is not something you often see. He gets a mono-brow from frowning, he stops looking at you and develops a forward slouch.

'It's not useful to me,' I argued. 'Why the hell would I want to be in contact with any of those low-life ambulance chasers?'

'Chill, Alyssa,' he sighed. ('Chill, my friend,' were Paige's last words to me before the attack. I hear them again, see her smile and wink.) 'It's only my phone number. Don't you even want to know what the message says?'

'No, not remotely interested.' I steered my bike up on to the pavement and leaned it against the churchyard wall, peeled off my hat and scarf, and told myself to stop acting like a four year old.

'I thought we were on our way to the hospital,' he muttered, staying astride his bike. 'Can't we deal with this some other time?'

'What else did you give Emily, besides your number?' It was no good, I was still snarled up in nursery-school stuff.

Jack was so disappointed in me that he cycled ten metres down the road then stopped and threw a comment over his shoulder. 'Just trust me, Alyssa OK?'

I wheeled my bike to join him. 'Not unless you explain to me why you wanted to keep in contact with Emily Archer.'

He spelled it out for me once more. 'She's a journalist they find out useful stuff it's their job.'

'Don't patronize me.'

'Don't make me patronize you. Are we going to see Paige or not?'

I swallowed hard then suddenly choked up. 'Sorry I don't know what we're doing or where we're going. I don't know anything.'

Jack observed my tears. He didn't rush to get off his bike and wrap his arms round me.

'I can't stand that woman,' I admitted.

He nodded and waited.

'I don't like her texting you behind my back.'

'It would only be behind your back if I didn't tell you about it, and I did.'

'True.' Slowly, reluctantly I came round from my preschool state and got my mind back in gear. 'OK, so what did she say?'

Jack blinked and looked relieved. 'She says the police checked the reg of the Toyota and identified the owner.'

I stared at him.

'It was registered with a guy in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. He reported it stolen ten days ago. The cops just found it abandoned in the Cineworld car park in Ainslee.'

Impressive investigative stuff. Emily Archer was good even I had to admit.

Jack and I made it to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital ICU just as visiting hours began not that the nurses were sticking to official hours in Paige's case because they'd let Mr and Mrs Kelly stay at her bedside twenty-four/seven.

'No change,' her mum reported wearily as they made way for me and Jack. 'We have to see that as a good thing, don't we?'