My little sister had—I found out later—done a thing at Brownie camp called “Explore Your World,” which involved going to places near your home that you’d never been to before. I think you were meant to go to a new park or new shop or something.

Not go over the back fence and discover a boy hiding in a sleeping bag in an old workmen’s hut with a broken neon GARAGE sign over it.

But that was what Libby had done.

Now, for the second time in three days, the street was alive with people in uniforms—mainly police, but there was an ambulance with paramedics as well. The ambulance doors were open, and two paramedics were sitting on the back ledge, looking unconcerned.

Inside our house were more people, and whatever the atmosphere had been between me and Jasper and Dad disappeared. There was something much bigger going on.

Aunty Alice was making a pot of tea, the third, she said.

“Put a shirt on, Jasper, for goodness’ sake,” she grumbled. Jasper was still in his sleeveless undershirt, a tangle of chest hair spilling out like a burst cushion.

Two of the strangers were plainclothes police officers, a man and a woman. Another woman was something else, with the words “Child” and “Protection” in her title.

One of the police officers, the woman, was talking to Libby, who looked terrified.

“It’s all right, pet. You’ve done nothing wrong, really y’haven’t,” said the woman, but it didn’t look as though Libby believed her. “Now tell me again what you saw.”

She was making notes as Libby spoke. The doorbell went again; phones were pinging and buzzing all over the place; the kettle gave its electronic whistle to say it had boiled; a helicopter clattered above the woods. It was chaos.

Just then, a shout went up from outside our front door, which was open.

“They’ve found him!”

The news got passed around and repeated. Voices barked and crackled everywhere.

“They’ve found him…found him…found him…”

“Bring him up the back way…”

“Injured arm, not critical…”

“Not confirmed his name yet…”

“Presume traumatized, Sarge, treat with caution…”

I felt a dig in my back. Turning, I saw that it was Roxy. She murmured, “Big surprise that, eh?”

Roxy didn’t seem at all worried by the fact that she and I might be in big trouble for “aiding a fugitive” or whatever you call what we’d done. I couldn’t share her lack of concern, and my stomach—already a bit wobbly from the boat ride—turned over again.

A uniformed officer appeared through the gap in the fence and beckoned to the “Protection” lady, who stomped out purposefully.

Then everything went quiet for about twenty minutes. The male plainclothes officer chatted quietly to Mum and Dad and Aunty Alice, while the woman took out her notebook and went round us all, taking our names and addresses, that sort of thing. She stopped at Aunty Alice.

“Do you live here, madam?”

“Oh no, Officer,” and she gave her address in Warkworth, up the coast.

“And your full name?”

“Alice Hooke. Mrs. With an ‘e.’ ” The officer wrote it all down.

Just then, there was movement at the end of the garden. A policeman squeezed through the fence gap first, followed by a very dirty and bedraggled Alfie and another uniformed officer.

They paraded up the garden and into our kitchen. The people left in the kitchen parted, creating space for them to walk through.

Alfie’s whole being seemed to be weighed down by a cloak of unhappiness as heavy as iron.

And then he looked at us, me and Roxy, and the fury that burned from his eyes was alarming. He said nothing but I knew that he thought we’d betrayed him—told Libby about him, or something.

I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t say, “We didn’t tell on you, Alfie,” because that would have revealed our deception to the adults fussing around in our kitchen. Instead we stayed silent, and Alfie looked so angry.

There was a moment—maybe ten seconds—as he stood there, shirtless and filthy, when nobody said anything while they stared at Alfie.

There was plenty to stare at: his hair caked in mud, his jeans with the sparkly sequins, the strange, faded tattoo on his back, and the scars on his upper arm.

Libby looked him up and down but didn’t seem to recognize her jeans, thank goodness, probably because they were so muddy.

Then, through the throng of people in our kitchen, came Jasper, who did this weird thing. He bent down in front of Alfie and examined him like a specimen in a museum: lowering his tinted glasses, looking left, looking right, then turning Alfie round to gaze at the tattoo.

Alfie didn’t seem to mind everyone looking. I thought he was just dazed—like this examination was part of being caught.

Then I noticed Jasper blinking and gawping at Alfie, and he saw me looking at him, and turned away suddenly. Alfie’s eyes were cast down at the floor and he didn’t notice anything, but Jasper’s eyes went back again and again and I realized he was gazing at Alfie’s scars. Although he said nothing, his ruddy face had gone completely pale.

He was behaving oddly, to be sure, but then, nothing about this was normal.

The policewoman intervened.

“Excuse me, sir?”

Jasper looked at her as though he was coming out of a trance. He was pulling on a shirt, and it was only then that I noticed his upper arm had two horizontal scars in exactly the same place as Alfie’s.

A little equals sign.

Strange, I thought. But in the whole kitchen confusion, I didn’t dwell on it.

“Excuse me, sir?” the policewoman repeated.

“Yes?” said Jasper.

“We just need some details from you, please….” She took out her notebook.

I looked around for Alfie, to see if I could get him on his own and explain, but he had already been taken away to the waiting police car.