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under my cardigan. I wondered if she’d noticed, if she’d seen the skin around my hairline glisten and asked herself if I was nervous, if I knew something that I wasn’t telling her. After all, I’d noticed how pale she looked, how she was holding on to the strap of her satchel with both hands.
    Olivia has never been more than Scarlett’s sister to me, but I suddenly felt protective of her. She isn’t like her sisters. She isn’t as restless, as reckless. She doesn’t have Scarlett’s swagger or their older sister Edith’s charm. She’s named after her grandmother – a formidable woman who, when introduced to Winston Churchill at the age of seven, told him that she didn’t like him much – which isn’t as cool as Edith who’s named after Edith Piaf or Scarlett who’s named after that Scarlett and is just as stubborn as Miss O’Hara. So Olivia always describes herself as the boring one, even though she isn’t. She may be quieter than her sisters, more careful, but she’s the bravest one. She must be to come to me asking for help. Not that I was in any mood to give it to her.
    ‘She’s fine,’ I told her with a sour sigh. ‘It’s Scarlett. She’ll be back in a couple of days with another tattoo and an epic story about how she got it.’
    ‘She didn’t run away, Adamma.’
    I shook my head as I remembered last October, the rolling boil of panic from the moment Olivia called to ask if I’d seen Scarlett until I tracked her down to the Bowrey Hotel and she answered with a bored Hello?
    She’d laughed when she had realised it was me.
    Even Dominic was out of his mind with worry and got into a fight with Sam on the Green when Sam said that she’d run off with another guy. It’s kind of funny because I know what everyone thinks – that she and I fell out because of Dominic – but all we ever talked about was Scarlett, so if she hadn’t run away that day, I would never have gone to him for help and we might never have become friends.
    ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Olivia said, and when I saw the tears in her eyes, I had to look away. ‘But something’s happened to her. I know it has.’
    I crossed my arms and made myself look at her. ‘Why?’
    ‘She didn’t take her passport this time.’
    ‘So?’ I shrugged. ‘That just means she didn’t leave the country.’
    ‘She didn’t take anything, her bag –’ she counted off each thing on her fingers – ‘her purse, her keys, her mobile. She just left, Adamma.’
    That made me hesitate, but I tried not to show any concern. ‘Was she upset?’
    ‘She seemed fine. She just said that she’d be back for supper.’
    ‘Did she say where she was going?’
    ‘To see a friend.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘She didn’t say.’
    ‘Did she walk?’
    When Olivia crossed her arms and looked away, I realised that Scarlett had taken their Land Rover – a muddied, broken-down thing affectionately known in Ostley as The Old Dear because you heard it wheezing towards you ten minutes before you saw it – and I sighed. She always took The Old Dear, even though she knew her parents needed it for the farm.
    The brat.
    ‘See? She’s fine, Olivia.’
    ‘But she didn’t take any clothes.’
    ‘Like you’d know if she took anything,’ I said with a bitter laugh. ‘Her room is a disaster. You need a shovel to find the bed.’
    ‘I just know, OK!’ She threw her hands up, her cheeks suddenly flushed. ‘She’s my twin sister and I know that something’s happened to her, Adamma!’
    ‘What do you want from me, Olivia?’ I said, trying not to lose my temper too.
    ‘I want you to believe me, Adamma.’
    ‘I don’t.’ I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry. I did this the last time, remember? I cried my heart out, sure that she was dead in a ditch, and she was in New York.’
    She wouldn’t listen. ‘Why did she book theatre tickets then?’
    A tear rolled down her cheek and she wiped it away with her sleeve before she opened her satchel and pulled out a