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unreliable.
    The constable is kind and doesn’t look as though he’s about to turn her in. There’s a lame silence between them before Clara breaks away from PC Felton and comes running round theside of the moat. She buries her face in her mother’s skirt and Marion wishes she had the strength to pick her up. She crouches down instead and takes a good look at her.
    ‘Did you hurt yourself?’ Marion takes in the milky smell of Clara’s long mousy-brown hair and pulls her close to see if she’s been crying. Clara shakes her head. She’s a pretty, smiley child and looks remarkably unshaken. ‘Are you hungry?’
    Her daughter nods with a frown. Marion hands her a chewy raisin bar from her handbag and she takes it politely.
    Wafts of the rescuing officer’s floral perfume temporarily mask the stale dank air reaching her from another dungeon below. ‘There was a small gap under the stone stairwell – you can’t see it from here,’ Rose explains. ‘A few stones have toppled down from the floor above.’ She pats Clara on the head. ‘Once she got inside, more of the rubble must have come down and sealed off the opening.’ She brushes white dust from her sleeves. ‘She looks fine, but we’ll need to get Clara to the hospital for a check-up, just to be sure.’
    ‘Of course,’ Marion replies. ‘I have to go home first. In the panic, I didn’t bring my medication—’
    ‘And we need to feed the fish,’ chips in Clara, swinging on her mother’s hand.
    ‘No problem – we’ll take you.’
    PC Felton addresses the warden, who’s wearing a T-shirt bearing the castle logo, that looks two sizes too small. ‘You’ll need to cordon the area off and make it safe,’ she says. ‘It’s dangerous to the public as it is.’ He reaches for his phone with a sullen nod.
    Marion turns to thank the man with the cluster of keys and he nods, but is already speaking to someone on his mobile. The officers walk with the two of them towards the exit.
    ‘Will the car have blue lights on and make the whoop sound?’ Clara asks on the way.
    Rose answers with a smile. ‘I’m afraid not. We’ll take it nice and slow getting you back to Nettledon.’
    Clara looks disappointed and scrunches up her mouth so her top lip brushes her nose.
    Marion doesn’t want a lift; she’d rather walk for a while first, she needs the air, but the police insist. They can see she isn’t well and her daughter has had a nasty scare.
    As they reach the main road, Clara starts to skip.
    ‘Shall I tell you a secret, Mummy?’ she whispers, pulling on her arm.
    ‘Go on, then.’
    ‘Being down in that mangy pit was the bestest fun
ever
…’

Chapter 7
Harper
    31 July – First day missing
    I’m surprised to wake, because I didn’t think I’d been asleep. I’ve been waiting to hear your key in the front door, but it didn’t come. Frank jumps on the sofa dropping the squelchy tennis ball between my knees. I toss it away half-heartedly and he flings himself after it, skidding on the polished wooden floors that are everywhere.
    I’m at a loss. All my calls last night ended up getting nowhere. Tara suggested you might need space, Sally said you’d seemed distracted lately, other colleagues from school haven’t heard from you since the end of term. I dreaded calling your mother, adding another thing for her to worry about when she’s already preoccupied with your father, but it had to be done. She was an unlikely source of information, but I’m hanging onto the possibility of finding any clues as to your whereabouts.
    The conversation with your mother took an inevitable turn after about twenty seconds. It sounds like Lucinda has gone overboard with post-it notes everywhere, leaving instructions about where Ted should hang his coat, which rooms are upstairs, where to find the toilet. She has stuck notes saying
don’t drink this
on the Domestos and cleaning fluid under the sink, others saying
don’t use – cracked
(on a chipped milk jug)