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soaked through. He hoped they wouldn’t have to wait too long for a train.

    The bedraggled figures of Johnny, Bentley and MissHarutunian trudged across the bleak carpark between Castle Dudbury railway station and the children’s home, only to find the rear entrance locked. Fed up, they walked round the building and turned the corner into Barnard Way just in time to see the last of the other children being ushered through the main doors to Halader House by Mrs. Irvine. “Come along, you two,” she shouted, holding a door open for them. “You’re both soaked.” Gratefully, they all went inside, where they were greeted by a blast of warm air from the heaters in the entrance hall. “Jonathan—go and get yourself cleaned up. Dinner’s at seven tonight. Miss Harutunian—I want to hear all about your visit. We’ll go to my office.”
    Johnny took Bentley straight up the stairs before anyone could tell him not to and followed the corridor round till he reached the spiral staircase to his room. He climbed the stairs and collapsed on top of his bed. He couldn’t believe he’d resisted looking at the pendant for the entire train journey home, but for some reason he hadn’t wanted to show it to Miss Harutunian. Now he took it out of his pocket and turned it over in his hand. It was heavy—he guessed it might even be gold. He couldn’t work out where it had come from. He was bound to have noticed something in his mum’s hand before. Maybe a nurse had left it in the room by accident. An inscription reading simply “
for love
” had been engraved on the back. A line of five crystals ran down the front with a further one on either side, all surrounded by blue diamond-shaped markings. He ran his finger over one of the crystals and the pendant suddenly sprang open. Something fell out. Panicking he searched the duvet before finding a lock of black hair, even including the roots, all held together by a very fine blue ribbon on which the name “Nicholas” was written in beautiful, minute handwriting. It was a locket, not a pendant, and inside were two more locks of hair, both blond, one bound with a golden ribbon with the name “Jonathan” written on it and theother, in a lilac ribbon, that read “Clara.”
    The inside of the locket held two photos, one in each half. There was a dark-haired man, a blond woman and an Old English sheepdog in one side. He looked closer—the picture was small but it did look like Bentley. He’d seen photos of his father, Michael Mackintosh, once before in some old newspapers, and he recognized his mum. The couple were beaming huge smiles at the camera. Johnny’s heart was beating off the scale—he didn’t have any pictures of his parents. But what was even stranger were the three faces in the other half of the locket. The image made no sense. Johnny was sure he’d seen a magnifying glass somewhere. He rummaged around in the box underneath his bed until he found it—it must have belonged to his dad at some point. He picked up the locket and held it underneath the lampshade in the middle of the room, peering through the lens. There was no question. The middle face was him, Johnny, but it wasn’t a picture of him as a baby. It was him now. He could clearly see the lapels of his suit jacket that he’d thrown onto the bed when he came in. But how? And was that his brother Nicky on one side of him? If it was, he was wearing weird clothes and looking as though he was nearly twenty when in fact he’d died eleven years earlier. It was hard to say as half the person’s face was in shadow. And on the other side was a blond girl who looked two or three years younger than Johnny. Was this Clara?
Who
was Clara?
    He changed out of his wet clothes, said goodbye to Bentley who was drying out underneath the bed by the radiator, and opened the trapdoor. Down two sets of stairs and back on