‘My name is Emma Parks,’ said the woman, her voice slightly shaky. ‘I received an email earlier today from an acquaintance of mine who said you were looking for someone who was at the sanatorium at the same time as my daughter Heather.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs Parks,’ Willow said feebly.

  ‘Thank you, dear. Time eases the pain but certainly doesn’t take it away. And I wouldn’t want it to. So, who is it you are looking for?’

  ‘Um, it’s my aunt, actually, my father’s sister. Her name is Nell. Nell James. She was there at the same time as your daughter, and I realise it’s a long shot, but—’

  ‘I remember Nell very well, she was in the next bed to Heather. She became quite good friends with my daughter during the months she was there. She had the most dazzling blue eyes – I’ll never forget them,’ Emma added.

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful to hear,’ said Nell, relieved that her trip to Portsmouth hadn’t been entirely wasted. ‘I don’t suppose you know what happened to her?’ She waited, holding her breath.

  ‘She was adopted, I believe. A woman came to collect her.’

  ‘I see. It is a long time ago, I know, but can you remember anything about this woman? What she looked like maybe, or a name?’

  Emma paused. ‘Yes, of course. She was very smartly dressed and spoke well, and Nell seemed to know her. I used to worry about Nell terribly. No one ever came to see her. We actually enquired about adopting her ourselves; she was such a sweet child.’

  As Willow waited for her to continue, she looked at Charlie, who was still absorbed by the newspaper cuttings.

  ‘What was her name? She gave us her address, so Heather could write to Nell. Let me see, I think I still have it.’

  Willow felt a huge rush of adrenaline flooding through her body as she waited for the name that could lead her to Nell.

  ‘Her name was Dorothy Novell, and I believe she lived in Yew Tree Cottage, in Kingston near Lewes.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Nell

  November 1970

  Nell’s alarm clock went off under her pillow, and she startled awake with a jump, turning it off quickly for fear it would wake Dorothy and Peter. She rubbed her eyes and stared at the digital display: 3.50 a.m., just as Leo had told her. She had ten minutes to pull her warm clothes and wellington boots on and let herself out of the back door.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and held her breath, trying not to make a sound for fear of being found out. She pulled her small rucksack out from under the bed. She had packed it carefully the night before: a torch, her ear muffs, gloves, the notebook, and the tin she had found buried under the willow tree just before she got sick. She looked at the notebook one last time, then picked up her pen and quickly wrote a note to slip inside the back cover, desperate to say something to her friend.

  TO MY BEST FRIEND ALICE,

  I’M SORRY I DIDN’T MEAN TO RUIN EVERYTHING. I MISS YOU SO MUCH.

  NELL X

  She stared for a long time at the key she had found inside the tin. If she had never found it, would Alice still be alive? Was it really all her fault, like Leo said? It had kept her awake night after night, and she decided that the only way to make sure no one discovered what she had done was to bury it again, with the notebook, in the tin. In the same place, just as she had found it.

  But something was stopping her.

  She didn’t want to part with the key. It was like it was alive, a passage from the past. It had brought her closer to her dad, finding the room that was his secret place. She looked at the clock again. In that split second, she decided she would keep it. She would hide it with the letter she had written to Alice. She would keep it under the loose floorboard in her bedroom, and nobody would ever find it. Maybe one day she would need it.

  She folded the letter around the key, secured it with the ribbon she had tied around Snowy’s collar, then popped up the floorboard under her bed and slid it in.

  She looked out of her window across to The Vicarage. She loved her little room in the eaves of the house. Peter had made it for her, with a hatch, and a ladder that dropped down. You would almost never know it was there from the landing. But it was torture being able to see the house where Alice lay every day.

  A few days after their grim discovery, Leo had come knocking for her and asked if she wanted to go for a walk in the woods. Dorothy hadn’t seemed very keen on her talking to him and had told her she’d prefer her not to go. ‘Why does he want to go for a walk with you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nell had said, plucking her coat from the hook and hurrying out before Dorothy could stop her. Dorothy had stood by the kitchen window watching them go, pulling the net curtains back until they disappeared out of sight.

  ‘I’d prefer it if you weren’t friends with him, Nell,’ she’d said later. ‘I want you to make friends your own age.’

  ‘I will, Dorothy, I just like hanging out with Leo sometimes.’

  But it wasn’t true, she didn’t really like hanging out with Leo. She had had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach since her greatest fear had come true: that Alice had used the key she gave her to open the hatch into the secret room and hadn’t been able to get out again.

  ‘You know they’ll blame you for not saying anything,’ Leo had said as they walked through the Hiltons’ fields. ‘I don’t blame you, but if they ever found out you’d given Alice the key, my mother would never be able to forgive you.’

  She had started to cry. ‘But shouldn’t we tell them where she is? Won’t it be better than them worrying that something awful happened to her?’

  ‘What’s more awful than being locked in a tiny space on your own and not being able to get out? And dying that way, all alone? She must have starved to death.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Dorothy said her head was bleeding when Bobby found her, so maybe she knew nothing about it.’

  ‘We’ll never know, will we? Nobody went back to that house after the night she went missing; she could have been calling out for days.’

  Nell hadn’t been able to sleep since seeing what was left of Alice’s hand, and when she did, she had nightmares about Alice hammering on the door, trying to get out, calling her name.

  ‘Luckily you’ve got me,’ Leo had said. ‘I won’t tell anyone, I promise.’ He looked down at the ground. ‘We need to stick together, Nell, do you understand? You can’t trust anyone else.’

  ‘I miss her so, so much. I bet your mother does too.’

  ‘Yes, Alice was their favourite. They wouldn’t want to see her like that, though. It’s better they don’t know any of this. They’d want to remember her how she was.’

  ‘Oh Leo, it’s so sad. I wish we could do something, have a little funeral for her. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘Well, we can. I mean, we can’t move her, but we can go to the willow tree where you found the key in the first place. We need to bury it again, Nell, you know that, don’t you? But it will have to be at night, while everyone is asleep, otherwise someone might see us, and we can’t risk that. This is our secret, Nell, nobody must ever find out. It’s very serious, you understand that, don’t you? If Dorothy or anyone discovered what you’d done, they’d send you away. Like they did Bobby.’

  ‘Okay,’ she had said. ‘Thank you, Leo. I think you’re right about Dorothy, I don’t think she would understand. She doesn’t seem to like me very much.’

  ‘She doesn’t really understand children because she hasn’t got any of her own. She loved Alice, like everyone did, but she didn’t like me. You mustn’t listen to anything she says about me, Nell. She makes things up. She’s a busybody.’

  Now Nell slid the loft ladder down and crept downstairs, just as the clock in the hall began to strike four. She was late, and Leo was going to be annoyed with her. Her heart thudded in her chest. He had told her to meet him under the willow tree, where they would bury the key and say goodbye to Alice together. She would have to lie and tell him the key was in the tin; she could do that, he wouldn’t check, he trusted her.

  Something about Leo made her do everything he said. He had a way of staring at her when he spoke, a long, lingering look. He had told her that she couldn’t have known Alice was going to die in the secret room, but that they could never tell anyone because other people might not feel the same way, might not forgive her as he had done.

  He didn’t like her making new friends. She had to be careful, he said: what if she slipped up and said something about Alice? He knew everyone at school and warned her off people he said weren’t good for her. She was lucky to have him, he told her. And she knew he was right.

  ‘Hello, Leo,’ she said, as she spotted him standing underneath the willow tree. He was kicking the ground; she could tell he was annoyed. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’

  He had already dug a hole; it was all waiting for her. She placed the tin inside, then picked up some soil and threw it in.

  ‘Now nobody ever needs to know about that room,’ Leo said. ‘It’s impossible to find if you don’t know it’s there.’

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Nell.

  ‘It’s just you and me now. You and me against the world.’ His eyes narrowed.

  ‘And Bobby, when he gets home,’ Nell added.

  ‘No, Nell, you need to keep Bobby away. We can’t risk him finding out about this; he could tell someone. It will always be just you and me now. We never need anybody else. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Leo,’ she said meekly. She didn’t want to make him angry.

  He began to replace the soil he had dug up, piling it into the hole.

  ‘Goodbye, Alice,’ Nell said as the tin disappeared from sight.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Alice

  New Year’s Eve 1969

  ‘Bobby, help!’

  Alice’s heart leapt at the sight of Bobby running towards her in the snow.

  ‘Alice, there you are. Everyone is looking for you. Where have you been?’ He smiled down at her. ‘We need to get you back to your mum, she’s really worried.’

  ‘I was looking for Snowy, she ran home to The Vicarage.’ He was so different to Leo, she thought immediately, always so kind to her. He would be so upset when he saw his dad’s accident. She didn’t know what to say, she didn’t know how to tell him; she felt dizzy, and something wet was dripping down her face.

  ‘Alice, my God, your head is bleeding. What happened? Here.’ He pulled his white handkerchief from his pocket and held it to the side of her head.

  Alice took it from him. It was already wet with blood, and her head was throbbing. She pulled it away to look at it and gasped. The sight of the bright red blood made her cry.

  ‘We need to get you home,’ Bobby said. ‘You’ve really hurt your head. You need a doctor.’ He put his arm around her and started to guide her back towards the house.

  ‘No, Bobby, your dad is trapped. You have to help him first,’ she said.

  His face fell. ‘What do you mean, he’s trapped?’

  ‘Over there, under the digger. I tried to help him but Leo pulled me away.’ Alice was starting to feel sick. She held the handkerchief to her temple, but it was so wet, blood was leaking through onto her hands.

  Bobby ran towards The Vicarage. Alice stayed where she was, her blood dripping onto the white snow at her feet. She was beginning to feel very strange, the world around her starting to spin.

  ‘Dad!’ She could hear Bobby, but she couldn’t bear to go round the corner and look. She had tried to help, but she wasn’t strong enough. Why hadn’t Leo helped, why had he just stood there watching as Nell’s dad struggled and pushed and fought? If he had helped sooner, they could have got him out.

  She had always stuck up for Leo, even though he was always so mean to her, calling her names and making her cry. She watched how Bobby was with Nell, carrying her on his shoulders, tickling her, letting her win races and playing marbles with her, and it made her green with envy. She had always made excuses for Leo. But Dad was right, he was a bad apple. How could he have just stood and watched Nell’s dad be crushed? She could still hear Alfie’s cries, hear the metal crunching. There was nothing she could do to save him.

  She felt dizzy, dizzy and sick. She had hit her head so hard the world was starting to go blurry, and she needed to lie down.

  Yap! Yap! She looked up to see Snowy standing in the doorway of The Vicarage. Maybe she could go into Nell’s bedroom and just lie on her bed for a little while.

  Her vision beginning to blur, she dropped the handkerchief in the snow where she stood and walked towards the house. She could hear Bobby shouting for help, but she knew there was nothing she could do. She needed to get to Snowy before the dog ran away again. Her face felt sticky with blood. She put her hands up to her head; it was all in her hair and, thick like treacle, dripping into her eyes.

  She walked through the front door and followed Snowy up the stairs. The dog had started scratching at the top step. She was looking at Alice, the key dangling from her neck. Nell’s secret room, of course. Alice had put Nell’s letter in her coat pocket; she carried it with her everywhere, so that no one could find it. She didn’t want Leo knowing about the room; he would tell Mum and Dad straight away – any opportunity to be cruel.

  She reached out and took off Snowy’s collar. She could hide in the secret room until she felt better. She needed to get away from the accident, from Bobby and Leo; she couldn’t bear to see it any more.

  She would come out when it had all gone away.

  She found the keyhole just where Nell had said it was, and slid the key in and turned it. Click. She lifted the step and peered inside. It was warm and dark in there, and she was longing to just lie down and sleep.

  She could still hear Bobby shouting outside and it was making her cry. When would somebody come and help him? She couldn’t bear to listen to it any longer.

  She climbed inside, and Snowy jumped in after her. She closed the lid and locked it, then tied the key back around Snowy’s collar so that it would be easy to find when she woke up. Then she lay down on the mattress, watching the moon through the blue window at the end of the small room. She pictured Nell in there with her, playing teddy picnics or snap. Hiding under the blankets and telling ghost stories. She missed her friend so much.

  Her head was bleeding onto the blankets now. She didn’t want to make a mess, so she looked for the handkerchief but couldn’t find it. She must have dropped it in the snow. Her head was throbbing and aching, and the room was spinning. She just needed to sleep, then she would feel better.

  Bobby’s cries for help were fainter now, she felt safe.

  She thought of her mother’s beautiful face, her hair in curlers, her nails painted blood red for the party. She loved to try her mother’s perfume, and she would choose her jewellery for her from her collection in the box that played a tune when you opened the lid. As she lay in the dark, her whole body started to shiver. She pulled the blanket around her and wished her mother was lying next to her, as she did every night when she tucked her into bed and read her a story.

  ‘Everyone is looking for you. We need to get you back to your mum.’ Bobby’s voice sounded echoey and far away in her head.

  ‘I’m coming, Mummy, I just need to rest for a little while,’ said Alice out loud, as she closed her eyes and dreamed of laying under the willow tree, with Nell and Snowy, on a perfect summer’s day.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sienna

  Friday, 22 December 2017

  Sienna Hilton sat on her bed in the eaves of Dorothy’s house and looked over at the big diggers and the crane, like a huge giraffe, standing next to The Vicarage. She knew nobody lived there any more, and her mummy had always forbidden her from going in there, but it always looked so pretty to her. Like it could be the prettiest house in the world if someone loved it.

  She let out a heavy sigh. It was the second night she had stayed here since Dorothy had walked up to her on the driveway while she was making a snowman and asked her if she’d like to come to her house for a little while to get warm and play with her mummy’s old toys. She had happily said yes, but now she was starting to get bored. She didn’t know why she couldn’t go out, why Dorothy kept bringing her food to her room, but she was really starting to miss her mummy. And her granny. It had been a long time since she had been to Dorothy’s house. She knew Daddy didn’t like her and Mummy going there any more, and it was hard not being able to come and play like she used to.

  She had tried to open the hatch last night to tell Dorothy she couldn’t sleep, but it was locked from the other side. She had been bursting for the toilet and had called out and knocked on the door, but nobody had come. In the end she had weed in a plant pot in the corner. In the morning Dorothy had said it didn’t matter, but she was very embarrassed.

  She reached out and opened the window onto the flat roof, but the window had a lock on it so it wouldn’t open very far. It was nice to get a little bit of air, though, as the room was starting to get very stuffy.

  Dorothy had given her her own television and an iPad and lots of sweets to eat, and at first she couldn’t believe how lucky she was, but after a while her eyes had got sore and she didn’t want to watch the screen any more. She had played with her doll’s house and made her mummy a card, but she was starting to feel like she wanted to leave. She knew Mummy would be missing her. If she went to stay at people’s houses ever for a sleepover, she always spoke to Mummy before bed. But Dorothy had said there was no need and that she would see her soon.

  She looked around the room for something to entertain herself. Dorothy had given her a box of marbles, and she opened it and looked at all the different colours. She laid them out and started to play with them, but they began rolling all over the floor in different directions. One rolled under the bed and into a hole in the floor, and she stuck her finger into it trying to reach it. As she pulled her finger out, the floorboard lifted up.