Chapter Four

I haven’t the heart to correct her spelling. She looks so hopeful and shy.

‘Yes. It’s our new den. And it’ll be the best den anyone has ever had. Come on.’

The shivering feeling has gone. I’ve decided to be benevolent now that I’m thirteen. I will win prizes for my saintly patience. ‘Let’s investigate.’

It doesn’t look like the best den ever, but I feel heroic as I begin planning how to keep the others out when they arrive. We’ll use that Witch Woods claptrap to keep the little kids away. We’ll have to think of something a bit more effective for the older ones. ‘This way.’

We go closer, magnificent explorers crossing uncharted territory. The bricks are completely strangled in green and it takes a good while to find the doorway.

‘We should bring a knife and cut the worst of it down.’ There’s nothing I like better than hacking things. ‘Be careful when you come through here.’

I yank at a jungle of bindweed and am extraordinarily satisfied when lots of it comes down. Holding the worst of the brambles back, I squeeze my way in and Snow follows me into what must have, at one time, been a really small cottage and is now four crumbling walls with a tangled emerald roof.

I become a historian. ‘That’s where the chimney would have been. You see here, it connects to a fireplace. And the stairs would have been here.’

I run my hand along the jutted bricks, half expecting to be blasted into the past like in one of those dreadful Sunday afternoon films. ‘This would have been the main living area because they wouldn’t have had any heating anywhere else.’

I’m even putting on one of those voices that TV presenters use in those house programmes I love. It’s lucky only Snow is here to see. The other kids would rip me to shreds. Turn to camera. ‘The toilet would probably have been outdoors. Quite possibly at the end of the garden.’

Snow loses interest and goes over to the other corner. I’m a bit relieved as I was running out of vaguely historical guesses. I wander about examining the place properly. There’s no evidence of anyone else having been here, which is good but also unusual. I know we are in a lonely spot, but most places, however wild, have been invaded by crisp packets and dog-poo bags and other signs of laziness, litter and life.

A burning cold shiver runs the length of my body again and I fold my goose-pimpled arms against it as a wave of sadness washes over me. I have never felt lonelier than at this very second. Something dark flickers at the corner of my eye, but when I focus it’s gone.

All that travelling must have made me feel peculiar. I’ve had very little sleep.

Something brushes the nape of my neck and I spin round. There’s nothing there. The wind, of course, or a falling leaf. Get a grip on yourself, Lark, you enormous weirdo. There’s nothing to be afraid of in a few crumbling bricks.

‘Snow. What are you doing?’

She’s crouched down in the corner, scrabbling at something. I hope it’s an owl pellet. Then we can pull it apart and see what it’s been eating from the bones.

‘Snow? What is it?’ I feel uneasy, looking at her hunched down there. When I say her name, she looks over her shoulder furtively as if she wants me to go away. ‘I said, what is it? Show me.’

Grabbing hold of her shoulder, I pull her back. She’s been gouging at the earth with her fingernails. It’s a doll. Its head stares up out of the mud. Its painted eyes have rubbed off and it has tiny hairline cracks running through its china face.

‘Ew. That’s macabre.’

Snow pushes me away and kneels forward to dig it out.

‘Do you really want that? Seriously?’

She excavates it and gently rubs some of the mud from its face. The body must have been made of a sack or something, but it still has tiny china hands at the ends of its worm-eaten cloth arms. Utterly, totally gross. Snow stares into its cold, dead, empty eyes as if she is in love with it.

‘Snow, it’s horrible. It looks like it will kill you in your sleep. Honestly. I can get you a better doll.’

She bites her teeth together in that way she has and holds it even tighter.

A crow cwarak-cwaraks loudly and flies right next to my head, too close, clipping the edge of my hair. I’m shivering hot again and seriously dizzy. Snow’s face goes blurry and the wind picks up and banshees through the cracks in the walls. I don’t want to make this our den.

‘OK. Keep the doll. See if I care. Do whatever you like.’ I push my way through the thorns out into the bristling woods. When I can see our caravan, I calm down enough to check Snow is following. She is, which is a relief. She is carrying the doll, which isn’t.

I don’t know what it is about that thing, but it really creeps me out.