She shut her mouth with a snap. Then she wheeled round, as stiffly as a soldier on parade, and marched from the kitchen.

"Come on, Maudie," Angus said. "Let's leave her for now."

I think that was when we started losing hope. Before there had been shock and confusion, and, on her parents side, a roiling, bubbling anger. But the thought of Jessica gone forever had been too big to grasp.

              The search parties went out again, as soon as the sun came up. Again, I sat in my window seat, watching the blue uniforms of the police, and the holiday clothes of the tourists and the sunlight reflecting off of the cameras of the journalists that had gathered to report on the search. Sometimes they rang the doorbell of the cottage and I cringed back against the curtains, hoping they wouldn't spot my anxious face peering from my bedroom window. I stayed there for most of the day, biting my nails, watching and waiting. I kept imagining Jessica coming up the lane, a miracle, her blonde hair tossed about by the sea breeze, smiling and shouting up to me bet you can’t guess where I've been, Maudie....

After that dreadful scene in the kitchen, Mrs. McGaskill never spoke to me again. If I came into the room, she would walk out of it, keeping her face turned away, as if I exuded a stench too disgusting for her to bear. Every time, I would feel my stomach drop and twist, as if a heavy weight were falling through me. I stopped crying, though. If I felt tears prick my eyes, I would hear her voice saying cry, that's right cry, and that somehow stopped me. At night, I would pinch myself under the covers, just to have a different focus of pain. Somehow, physical pain was easier to deal with.

After two weeks, the search parties stopped. The tourists drifted away, the journalists dwindled to one or two from the local papers, desperate for news. The national dailies all had other stories to occupy their front pages. The photograph of Jessica that had smiled at us from every front page gradually disappeared. She dissolved before our eyes.

I watched her parents set out every morning to roam the fields and hills and comb the beaches, endlessly searching, refusing to give up. The original police search had found only one thing; one of Jessica's hair clips, on the path to the Men-an-Tol.

               Before Jessica vanished, we'd all lived in one another's cottages, having breakfast in one kitchen one day and in the other the next, sharing the sunshine in the one big garden, running in and out of front doors without stopping to think whether it was one house or the other. Once Jessica was gone, and her mother had turned against me, that all stopped. It was two houses standing separate; two families living apart. One wasn't even a family anymore, they were just two people who happened to be married. The four of us left were now firmly split into two groups. We ate separately. The doors to the cottages remained firmly closed.

After two more weeks, Angus and I returned home.

Mr. McGaskill came to the doorway of the cottage to wave us off. Mrs. McGaskill didn't. I caught a glimpse of the pale oval of her face at one of the downstairs windows and then she was gone. We drove away, bumping slowly over the pitted surface of the lane, past the stony track that led up to the stones. I stared desperately up at the hillside, looking in vain for Jessica once more. In our fairy stories she would have been there, a little figure on the hillside, suddenly restored to us whole and sound and healthy. But of course, there was nothing there, nothing except the blue arc of sky and the mass of green that made up the hills. We drove on, out of the village, out of the county, out of Cornwall.

Chapter Nineteen

It was in the village shop that I first noticed the glances. Little fluttering sideways glances, from the two girls standing near me with their mothers. Their mothers were looking too, less obviously. I looked back over my shoulder, wondering what was drawing their attention. There was nothing more interesting there than a shelf full of sweets and chocolate bars and newspapers. Then I realised they were looking at me.

I heard the word 'Jessica' and then I knew for certain. The air in the shop seemed to darken and grow thick. I could feel my face burning and this made it worse because I was sure that they would see and think I was ashamed. I forgot why I'd come into the shop, what I'd planned to buy. My only thought was to get out of there. I managed to get my legs to move, to walk me across the endless acres of floor and out the shop door, all of the time feeling their gazes boring into my back, shearing through the flimsy protection of my cotton t-shirt and burning into the vulnerable flesh of my spine.

I dried my eyes before I reached home. I didn’t want Angus asking me what was the matter. What had happened was my fault, I knew that, but I didn't want him to think that everyone thought it was his fault, too. I walked slowly towards the driveway. I didn't feel safe here anymore; I felt watched. The wind carried an undertone of whispers.

I stopped going into the village after that. I knew that, after the holidays ended, I would still have to go to school, but it would be big school, a senior school. Not junior school, where everyone would whisper about me and stare, and refuse to play with me. In so much as I was capable of looking forward to anything, I was looking forward to senior school - I'd assumed it would be the one in the nearest town. I was wrong. Angus sat me down one day in the study, and asked me whether I'd thought about going to boarding school.

I stared at him. Although it was the end of August, it was a cold, white-skied day; I looked at the empty fireplace and felt the goosebumps rise up on my arms.

"Why?" was the only thing I could think to say.

"Well," he said, "I just thought you might like to consider it. Perhaps you might feel happier amongst some new friends?"

Jessica's name hung in the silence between us. I blinked and looked again at the blackened space of the fireplace.

"I don't mind," I said, in a small voice. In a blinding flash it had occurred to me; my father wanted me to go, because he was ashamed of me. He didn't want to be around me anymore.

"If you don't like it, you can always come home again," said Angus. He smiled one of his rare smiles. "I'm sure you'll have a great time. Better than being here."

I nodded, unable to speak.

After that, things moved quickly. Perhaps Angus pulled some strings to get me into the new school in time for the start of term. I drifted through my few remaining days at Caernaven in a daze, staring out of windows at the distant mountains, watching the clouds blow in over the fields, listening to the distant, mournful cries of the sheep. I thought of all the people in the village and at my old school who would be talking about me and about Jessica. Her parents were still in Cornwall, still searching, still hoping. I wondered whether they would ever come back.

The morning of my departure came. I ate breakfast silently, sitting by Angus’s side in the dining room. My toast was cold by the time I reached for the last piece; it felt as if I were swallowing cardboard. I said goodbye to Mrs. Green and then we walked out to the Land Rover, Angus carrying my suitcases in both hands. Mrs. Green had packed away my clothes but she hadn’t seen Jessica slipping in beside them, wisp thin, visible only to me. Angus didn’t know he carried her in my suitcase, which rode in the back, sliding from one side of the car to the other as we drove around corners. Only I knew she was there. I carried her away with me as I stood waving goodbye to my father on the steps on my new school. I carried her up the steps with me to the room that would be my bedroom for the next eight years. Only I saw her accompanying me that night to the dining room, to the study hall, squeezing in beside me as I lay in that strange bed. I carried her with me from then on.