We were all up before first light. Maggie hadn’t said another word about what we’d heard in the night, either because she didn’t want to look scared in front of the others or because she couldn’t be sure she’d heard anything out of the ordinary. Nights in the countryside were full of odd noises and creatures crawling around that didn’t do so in the daytime.
I’d slept for about two hours in the end. Everything was now coloured a sick grey by my new certainty that my brother was either dying or dead. Getting the news was a mere formality. I had to stop hoping.
When I was showered and dressed, I put on the greeny-blue Howlite necklace Charlie had bought for me up the Gorge, tucking it beneath my collar so it couldn’t be seen and feeling the cold stones against my neck. I padded downstairs to the payphone and checked to see if a dialling tone had magically returned to us in the night. It hadn’t. The world outside the windows was white and silent in every single direction. None of us knew how deep the snow was, but we all knew roughly where the ponds and lakes were so we could steer clear of them. I cleaned the massive kitchen oven while I waited for the others to come downstairs. It had congealed red and yellow drips of lasagne sauce on the metal shelves inside, and I needed to keep my hands busy. It kept the thoughts at arm’s length.
Leaving the two long oven shelves in the big sink to soak, I joined the others in the main hall to formulate a search plan. Bundled up in tights, jumpers, coats, boots and anything else to keep the cold air out, we gathered at the foot of the main stairs.
‘Dianna, why don’t you take this one?’ I suggested, sitting on the bottom stair and leaning against the warmth of Brody’s deep soft fur.
Her eyes swivelled from me to Maggie to Clarice, and then back to me. ‘Take what?’
‘The lead. Decide who’s going to do what, where we’re going to search first.’ I felt sleep tug at my heavy eyelids.
‘No, I can’t, Nash. I don’t know where to start.’
I looked at Clarice. She had so much make-up on I was surprised she could hold her head up. No help there.
‘Okay,’ I said sleepily, getting off the stairs. ‘Someone needs to stay with Tabby.’
Dianna and Clarice both shot their hands up.
‘Dianna, you stay. Keep Brody with you. See if you can find Mrs Saul-Hudson’s spare set of keys in case we can’t find Matron’s.’
‘Aye aye, Cap’n,’ said Dianna, doing a weird salute thing, and seemingly delighted with her new role as Tabby’s nanny. Removing her coat and boots, she took Tabby’s hand and led her and the dog off in search of DVDs and colouring books.
‘What do you need me to do, Nash?’ said Maggie, and a little burst of warmth flooded into my chest. I knew I could rely on her. ‘How about weapons?’
‘Weapons?’ cried Clarice. ‘Why weapons? We’re a search party, aren’t we?’
‘Will you keep your voice down!’ whispered Maggie. ‘I think we need weapons because there’s an escaped murderer out there.’ She looked at Regan who was rubbing the tooth on her yarn necklace. ‘And who knows what else. We should be prepared.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said. ‘We probably won’t need them, but it would be good to have them on us all the same.’
‘What did you have in mind?’ said Clarice, more quietly this time.
I shrugged. I didn’t really know what I meant. My mind was too fogged up with flashing images of us finding a body in the snow. Frozen blood on the ground. Gnashing teeth. ‘Knives?’ I suggested.
‘I couldn’t stab anyone,’ said Regan. ‘I just couldn’t. I’m not strong enough.’
‘Ooh, I don’t think I could either,’ said Clarice.
I looked at Maggie. ‘I probably could,’ she said. ‘If I had to.’
‘What if your life was at risk? Or someone else’s life was at risk?’ I said, turning to the two naysayers. Neither of them said anything.
‘All right, fair enough then,’ said Maggie. ‘How about if one of them goes with each one of us? We’ll take a kitchen knife each and one of these two pussies and we’ll go off in two directions, yeah? Bagsy not going with Clarice.’
Maggie and I found two small, sheathed fruit knives in the kitchen. She tied one loosely to the belt loop of her coat while I shoved mine in the top of my drawstring tote bag and carried it on my back. I didn’t think I’d be able to use mine. I’d been attacked by a little dog once when I was younger, and I’d just stood there, frozen to the spot, without the courage to bat it away. We also grabbed three javelins from the PE cupboard for poking the snow.
‘It’s too heavy. I can’t lift it,’ Clarice moaned, so she had to make to with a rounders post, sans base. Outside, the air was bitterly cold and the snow was still flurrying down in light drifts. The place was white and crisp as a new duvet and the landscape was completely snuggled up for winter. White had enveloped the trees, the flint steps—even the school minibus was just a large rectangular white lump. It hid everything that had been green, brown or grey. And anything that could have been covered in blood. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
‘There’s no footprints anywhere,’ I said. ‘No one’s been wandering around in the night, which is good. Maybe Leon hasn’t left from the Tree House, just like Dianna said.’
A red blush quickly developed over Clarice’s face, even on her eyelids.
‘It might not mean that,’ said Maggie, pulling her scarf away from her mouth and nose for a second to sniff the air. ‘He might have gone the back way round, past the stable block. He could be … What’s that smell?’
‘Smells like burnt toast,’ said Clarice.
‘Yeah, it does,’ said Regan, snapping her head round to look for a source. ‘It stinks.’
‘Never mind that,’ I said. We’d reached the large white expanse that used to be Edward’s Pond, the gateway to the Landscape Gardens. ‘We need to start looking for Matron. Clarice and I will check the top path by the Chapel, cos that’s where I last saw her.’
‘The Tree House—’ Regan muttered.
‘Yes. Maggie, you and Regan take the bottom path that runs parallel to ours and check the bank in case she’s fallen somewhere. And we’ll meet up by the Tree House.’
‘The Tree House—’ said Regan again.
‘Yes, we’ll go there once we’ve checked the paths, in case she’s still alive.’
‘No, the Tree House!’ said Regan, for a third time.
‘What?’ I looked behind me, fearing the worst, but seeing something I didn’t expect. It was the burning shack from my dream.
‘Yeezus wept,’ said Maggie.
‘Oh my God,’ said Clarice.
Except I wasn’t dreaming. There was a fire burning, up in the trees. A ferocious orange bonfire, vomiting huge grey plumes of smoke up into the sky on the far left side of the valley. It was where the Tree House used to be.