Two nights later, Harper found herself standing in the middle of her room. She saw the green numbers of the bedside clock: 3:03. But she couldn’t place herself in time. Were they still in lockdown? Were Liz and Larry still thousands of kilometres away?

She turned on the light and saw the two badges on top of the photograph of Molly and Mae. Now she remembered that the most important thing in her life at that moment was that Hector was still missing.

Sticking out from under her bedroom door there was something that made her heart catch. A long, yellow leaf. She picked it up and went out, peering around her nervously.

For the last two nights, she’d heard her grandmother crying in her bedroom, but now Lolly was snoring. When she peeked inside the room, Annie and Murph were both on the bed with her, which was usually against the rules.

Will was in the living room.

‘What’s going on?’ Harper whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ he whispered back. ‘I got the urge to leave the library and walk here. It was strange, as if the thought was coming from outside of me.’

They’d left the sliding doors open with the flyscreen pulled across to let in the night breeze. The treetops were dancing out there.

‘What’s that noise?’ said Will.

‘Just the trees.’

‘No, it’s…like crying.’ He went into the kitchen and faced the back door. ‘It’s out there.’

Harper opened the back door but still couldn’t hear the sound. Will walked past her across the landing and stood outside the other front door.

‘That’s where Angus lives,’ whispered Harper.

Will was quiet, listening. There was a warmish breeze on her bare arms and all she could hear was the occasional rush of a car on the far-off freeway.

‘I think it’s coming from inside,’ said Will.

He went closer to the door, hesitated for a moment and pushed one hand into it. Harper remembered what he’d told her about moving through solid objects: how it felt like drowning.

‘Will, what are you doing?’ she said.

‘It’s not crying,’ he said. ‘It’s howling.’

Harper’s heart began to thump. ‘My dog’s missing!’

Will forced himself further through the red door until Harper could see only one boot and the tips of the fingers of his other hand. And then nothing but solid door.

Annie and Murph were in the kitchen, looking out. The cats came from behind them and Harper thought she should pull the door closed in case the cats escaped, but one sat and licked her paw while the other curled around Harper’s bare leg. She picked it up and it purred in her arms.

The red front door looked as if it had a burnt line down the middle. But it was Will coming through again—backwards. When he was all the way out he turned.

‘Yes it’s him. I think he recognised me.’ He smiled, but Harper was frantic. ‘I can’t carry him through the door and there’s no one else in there,’ said Will.

Hector had been missing for two days. ‘I have to wake my grandmother,’ said Harper.

‘Yes, go, I think he needs water,’ said Will. ‘He’s in a small cupboard.’

The cupboard! The two flats mirrored each other. Harper let the cat jump down and she was about to run down the hallway to get Lolly when something made her stop and look at Will.

He was turned away from her, and his head was tilted to the stars. He looked calm.

Harper had to be quick.

Lolly stumbled to get into her dressing-gown and, still half-asleep, she held onto the walls to steady herself as she hurried down the hallway, too confused to question how Harper could know that the little dog was trapped inside the flat next door, and too desperate for it to be true.

From inside a teacup in one of the kitchen cupboards, Lolly retrieved a key. Angus had gone away for a few days, she told Harper.

Will wasn’t out there any more and there was no time to look for him. It was so quiet when Harper and Lolly went into Angus’s flat that Harper worried they were too late. She turned the handle of the hallway cupboard door. Hector was lying on his side. He didn’t even lift his head when he saw it was them.

Lolly held him. ‘Get some water, love.’

They dipped their fingers in a bowl of water and wet Hector’s mouth. After a few goes, he licked Harper’s hand.

‘Keep giving it to him slowly,’ said Lolly. ‘We have to get him to the emergency vet. See if there’s some ice in the freezer. He can lick that while we find somewhere to take him.’

‘Is he going to be okay, Lolly?’

‘I think we’ve got him just in time,’ she said, and she kissed him on top of his head. ‘Good boy.’

They piled into the ute and reached the vet when it was still dark. Hector was admitted for treatment but the vet was confident that he’d recover. He needed fluids and rest and they wanted to keep an eye on him.

Lolly cried as soon as they stepped outside again. Harper put her arm around her.

‘Oh. It’s just the relief,’ Lolly said. ‘I feel so lucky. Thank you.’

On the way home they talked about how Hector could have slipped into Angus’s flat and got into his cupboard, which had a perfectly good door that didn’t seem to slip open all the time like the one in Lolly’s place.

Harper had another theory. When they were back at home, she emptied out the linen cupboard, which she’d always had a funny feeling about.

Hector had made a tunnel all the way through, but the hole looked tiny. Lolly said he must have just squeezed in and found he couldn’t get back.

‘This must have taken him years,’ said Lolly. ‘I always thought I could hear scratching but I put it down to possums. Dear little ratter.’

‘We never heard him bark,’ said Harper. But Lolly always had the television on loud, and radios in all the other rooms. Maybe Hector had given up barking. They’d never have found him if it hadn’t been for Will.

Something had made Will come. He hadn’t been able to explain it. Harper thought of his face in the last moment she’d seen him. That smile.

Lolly said Harper could stay home from school as she’d been up half the night. There was a big part of Harper that wanted to go to Riverlark even though her eyes were scratchy and she felt like an old rag. There was so much she wanted to do in the library with Misha, and she had to thank Will and tell him that she owed him a million dollars for saving Hector. But it seemed like Lolly wanted her to stick around. They didn’t have many days left together.

‘I had an idea about the cats,’ Harper said when she brought Lolly her fifth cup of tea on the balcony. ‘We could call them Molly and Mae.’

Lolly took a sip of tea. ‘That’s perfect,’ she said.

‘The tea or the names?’

‘Both, Harper. Thank you.’ Lolly took her hand and squeezed it.

In the evening, there was a knock on the back door. Lolly grumbled as usual but she got up to open it.

It was Angus. Harper tried to listen from the balcony to what he and Lolly were saying. Angus muttered something like too soon and old fool, and maybe marry and definitely sorry. Maybe he’d proposed! Harper could imagine Lolly getting very annoyed about that.

But when Lolly returned to the living room, Angus was behind her holding a huge pot with cloths on the handles.

‘Angus has very kindly brought chicken soup for our dinner. It was his mother’s recipe and apparently it cures everything. So I think we’ll have some.’ She still had a kind of grumpy look about her, but Harper could tell that she was secretly pleased to have made up with Angus.

The three of them ate chicken soup at the table. After Lolly and Harper had told Angus about Hector being in his cupboard—which horrified him—he and Lolly chatted about all kinds of other things, and, instead of asking Harper lots of annoying questions the way adults sometimes did at dinner time, they just let her be.