‘Of course you can,’ Serena replied absently, her attention captured by a familiar face amongst the guests at a recent society wedding. Good heavens, she hadn’t seen Trudy Blenkarne for years and now here she was, complete with nose job, collagen-inflated lips and an ugly Texan husband to boot .. .

It absolutely wasn’t fair, thought Josh, shaking the Gameboy and willing the batteries to surge back to life. Just when there was nobody to stop him playing, they’d had to run out. And it was all Maxine’s fault, he decided crossly. She was the one who’d kept confiscating the game and playing it instead of doing the ironing. Now she’d used them up.

Feeling vaguely remorseful for having driven Ella away earlier, he went in search of her.

His sister’s bedroom was empty, however, and when he got downstairs he found Serena alone in the sitting room, drinking orange juice and watching television.

‘Oh,’ said Josh, surprised. ‘I thought Ella was down here with you.’

A girl was abseiling down the side of a tall building. Serena, evidently enthralled, waited until she’d reached the ground before turning to smile at Josh.

‘I’d probably be sick if I had to do that, wouldn’t you? No ... I haven’t seen Ella for a while.

Perhaps she’s upstairs.’

He frowned. ‘I’ve already looked in her room.’

‘Oh well.’ Serena shrugged, sipped her orange juice and glanced up at the grandfather clock. ‘She’s around somewhere. Go and find her, Josh, and ask her what she’d like for tea. It’s either fish cakes or poached eggs on toast.’

When Josh returned to the sitting room ten minutes later, Serena still hadn’t moved.

‘She isn’t anywhere,’ he said, his voice taut with worry. ‘I’ve looked all over the house and in the garden and she isn’t anywhere at all.’

Serena sighed. ‘Well when did you last see her? What time did she get back from the shop?’

‘What shop?’

‘The newsagent’s,’ said Serena patiently. ‘She went to buy sweets.’

Twitching with agitation, Josh stared at her. ‘On her own?’

She stared back. ‘Of course on her own. She said you wouldn’t go with her because you were playing with that silly Gameboy machine.’

‘But Ella isn’t allowed to go to the shop without someone with her.’ Abruptly, Josh’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Because of strange men. She’s only seven years old.’

Chapter 29

Having waved Paula off, Janey closed the shop at five o’clock and settled down to the fiddly business of constructing a fourteen-foot flower garland, commissioned by a local dignitary to festoon the buffet table at his wife’s sixtieth birthday celebrations. Linen bows, stiffened with flour-and-water paste and sprayed silver, were to be interspersed along the swagged length of the garland and the flowers – summer jasmine, champagne roses and stephanotis – needed to be wired painstakingly into place. It was a time-consuming but rewarding task and the end result, Janey hoped, would be spectacular. The party, too, sounded very much a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses affair and could bring plenty more business her way, so long as the dignitary’s wife didn’t try and pass off the flower garland as a little something she’d knocked up in her own spare time.

She was up to her elbows in damp sphagnum moss, packing it securely around the wire which formed the basis of the garland, when the phone rang.

‘Janey, is that you?’

It was a young voice and at first she didn’t recognize it. ‘Yes, it’s me. Who’s that?’

‘Josh. Josh Cassidy. Maxine gave me your number in case anything was ever wrong, and she’s not due back home until tonight ...’

He sounded very scared. Janey, her heart racing, wiped her wet hands on her sweater and said, ‘It’s OK, Josh. I’m here. What’s the matter?’

‘Dad’s away.’ His voice was high and strained, as if he was struggling to hold back tears.

‘Serena’s been looking after us today but Ella went down to the shop an hour and a half ago on her own and she hasn’t come back. I said we should phone 999 but Serena thinks I’m making a fuss about nothing. She says I mustn’t call them and that Ella will be back soon, but she isn’t even supposed to go out on her own and I’m worried about her. Janey, what do you think I should do?’

Janey’s blood ran cold. Was Serena out of her mind? ‘Darling, don’t worry,’ she said urgently, as memories of Alan’s disappearance flooded back. ‘I’m sure Ella will be just fine, but to be on the safe side I’ll phone the police myself.’

‘What about Serena? She’ll be cross with me.’

His voice began to break. Janey, trying to sound as reassuring as possible, said, ‘Don’t you worry about Serena. As soon as I’ve phoned the police I’ll come on over. You’ve done absolutely the right thing, Josh. Just hang on for a few minutes and I’ll be there with you. And you needn’t say anything to Serena if you don’t want to. I’ll speak to her myself.’

Abandoning the flower garland on the shop floor, Janey drove the van faster than it had ever been driven before in order to reach Trezale House before the police did. Thankfully, Tom Lacey had been on duty when she’d phoned and explained the situation, and he was on his way.

Serena opened the front door. From the expression on her face Josh had evidently spoken to her after all.

‘Have you really called the police?’ she said, frowning at the sight of Janey in her unflattering work clothes. ‘I must say you’re making an extraordinary fuss about this. Ella’s probably bumped into a friend.’

‘And maybe she’s bumped into a maniac with a penchant for attacking little girls,’ Janey retorted, only managing to keep her voice down because she’d spotted Josh hovering white-faced in the hallway behind her. ‘For God’s sake, Serena. How long were you planning to wait before you did anything ... a few days?’

‘But this is Cornwall.’ For the first time Serena began to look worried. ‘If we were in London ... well, OK, there are weirdos about ... but it’s different down here.’

‘That is the most pathetic excuse I’ve ever heard in my life,’ Janey replied icily, pushing past her and reaching for Josh. Flinging his arms around her waist, he buried his blond head in the folds of her sweater in order to hide his wet face.

‘You can’t let the police try and blame me for this,’ Serena protested. ‘No one told me Ella wasn’t supposed to go out alone. It isn’t my fault if something’s happened to her.’

Josh’s whole body was trembling. Having led him gently into the sitting room, Janey pulled him on to her lap whilst Serena remained outside. Nothing’s happened to Ella,’ she murmured, cradling him in her arms as he choked back tears. ‘I expect she’s just wandered off and forgotten the time.’

‘But I t-told her to leave me alone,’ Josh sobbed. ‘She said she hated me because I was playing with my Gameboy and I said I hated her back. What if she’s run away for ever?’

It was a fear with which Janey was only too painfully familiar. In the distance she heard the sound of a fast-approaching car. At the same moment the rain started up again, giant droplets splattering noisily against the windows.

‘Ella knows you don’t hate her,’ she said in soothing tones. ‘You might have said it, but you didn’t mean it any more than she did. Come on now, sweetheart, use this handkerchief and blow your nose. Tom’s here. What you have to do now is try and think where Ella may have gone, so we know where to start looking. What about schoolfriends living nearby ... ?’

Tom Lacey, himself the proud new father of six-weekold twin boys, questioned Josh with kindly understanding and attention to detail. When he’d finished, he put away his notebook and stood up.

‘Right then, all you have to do it wait here. I’ll check out the addresses of those names you’ve given me, and call in at the shop on my way. If young Ella turns up back here in the meantime, you can phone the station and they’ll contact me on the car radio.’

The thought of staying at the house and doing nothing, however, was too much for Josh.

‘Can’t we come with you?’ he pleaded, but Tom shook his head.

‘Best not,’ he said gently.

‘But I want to help look for her!’

Sensing his need to do something, Janey squeezed his hand.

‘If she’s gone to a friend’s house, Tom will find her.’

‘And if she’s run away, he won’t,’ said Josh. ‘Will you come out with me, Taney? I want to look for her too.’

The rain was torrential by the time the two of them set out on foot to investigate the wooded areas bordering the narrow lane which led away from the house. The woodland, dark and forbidding, separated the lane from the clifftop a quarter of a mile away. Janey, who had borrowed one of Maxine’s hopelessly impractical jackets, was soaked to the skin within minutes.

‘If we move too far away from the road we won’t be able to hear Tom sounding his siren,’

she warned. This was to be the signal that Ella had been found.

But Josh, already clambering over fallen branches and pushing his way through the woody undergrowth, didn’t stop. Turning, he glanced up at her from beneath his drooping yellow sou’wester. ‘If she was close to the road she would have come home.’

Janey wiped the rain from her face. The trees grew more densely here and there were no clear paths, yet Josh was moving purposefully on ahead. She almost said, Do you come here often? but caught herself in time. Instead, catching up with him, she turned him back round to face her once more. ‘josh, do you know where you’re going?’

For a second, the dark blue eyes flickered away. Josh drew a breath. ‘Well, we’ve been through here a few times. It’s a short cut to the top of the cliffs, but Dad told us we weren’t allowed to come through the wood, so ...’