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But they’d have reinforcements at the next station; we’d all be arrested and taken away. We’d face the same fate she will. Is that a good enough reason to say nothing?
    What if every person in the country said no , all at once, like Aiden thinks they will if they know what really goes on. They can’t arrest every single one of us.

CHAPTER SEVEN
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    I step out of the dim station lift into dazzling sunshine. Keswick sunshine. It is cold, crisp; the air is so chill that breathing it in almost makes me cough. No snow on the ground here today, but above? White-peaked fells. There is a prickle on the back of my neck, my spine, but not from the cold. It is a physical reaction to being in this place, to breathing this air. I stand stock still, gaping up at the mountains, until a whisper of sanity draws me back to here and now. Don’t draw attention . I force my eyes to drop and look around me.
    Only a few other passengers have come off here, and they are walking swiftly away. There is a Lorder van parked next to the station, blocking the view of one of the lifts: are they taking their new prisoners from the train? I walk away from any watchful eyes. Adjusting my bag on my shoulder, I find and follow the town centre sign Aiden’s notes said would be there. There is no recognition inside me now, of this station, or where to go. I glance back, and over the archway containing the lifts and ticket office is carved ‘2050’. This station didn’t exist when I lived here. It’s new.
    Ten minutes later I’ve reached the centre of town, and the prickling feeling of wonder, of both knowing and not knowing this place, comes back. There is a crowded pedestrianised area leading up to the ancient Moot Hall building with an information sign. Cobbled stones crumble under foot, with a vague sense they are smaller than they should be. Because I’m bigger now?
    I shake my head. Am I imagining things? There is no definite memory, only shadows that seem to mist away if I stare. Maybe it is just the longing to know this place.
    On arrival in Keswick I’m to go to Waterfall House. And my mother . I swallow; the word sounds all wrong. The house is along the shores of Derwentwater, on almost the opposite side of the lake from Keswick. I memorised maps how to get there: about three miles’ walk on footpaths. Or there is a launch across the water. Or a bus on the road.
    Walking takes longest. Walk it is. Roads then paths lead out of the town centre, past a ruined theatre and down to the lake; paths wander through woods with views over the lake, then drop to cut down to the water. There is ice silvering out from its deep blue edges; the ground underfoot is hard frozen. There are people, some with dogs, ambling on paths in all directions, breath puffing out white around their faces. They dwindle away the further I get from Keswick. Soon I’m alone.
    My feet move slower and slower, head full of a peculiar madness. I want to laugh and cry at the same time. I want to touch every tree, every rock, on the way. I want to know them, to take them into me so they cement out whispers of memory. My head feels full of fuzzy cotton confusion, of wanting to remember being here before, but nothing is definite. It could just be the wanting that makes me feel this way, that makes my feet long to walk back and forth over the same places to make me remember them, if not from before, from now.
    I shake my head. Aiden told me she knows I am coming: she’ll wonder what has happened to me…again. I start walking at a proper pace. What could it have been like for her? For my mother . I say the words over and over inside my head, tasting them, but they still don’t feel right, don’t sound right. I’m her daughter – that feels weird, too. I disappeared when I was ten years old. Seven years ago. How do you get through something like that? And then her husband died, a few years after I vanished, when he tried to rescue me. My fault. She might blame me.
    And so my