46

EVIE

As Jack led Casey out of the barn, Evie’s heart was thudding. She reached the door in the makeshift wall, turned the handle, expecting to find the door locked, gasping when it came open and she saw what was behind it. This couldn’t be right. She was hallucinating. Angel’s things were piled up against the far wall. Her little bed with the pink duvet. Her wall hanging, crumpled on the floor. All her clothes, in shades of pink, piled messily in a corner. Evie cried out, and her hands went to her mouth. Even one-eared Pony was here on the floor in front of her. Her mind was playing the ultimate, cruelest trick.

Suddenly she was light-headed, the room was spinning round, and her legs were feeling as though they couldn’t take her weight. Jack was right. She needed to go home.

But before they left, she wanted him to see this. She called out to him. “Jack . . .” A plaintive, desperate cry for help.

A voice answered. It was a voice she’d know anywhere, a husky voice, from a little girl with tangled hair and chameleon eyes, who she knew from the depths of her soul, emerging, terrified, from the shadows.

“Mommy . . .”