The atmosphere in the car was...tense, to say the least.

Getting away from the facility had been the easy part. I think it had something to do with the sudden, frantic departure of two of Molly's inner circle, which had successfully worked everyone into a panic. Amid the chaos, slipping out of the grounds and back to the Land Rover (which thankfully remained undiscovered) had been unusually simple. This worked particularly well in our favour considering one of us was nearly in the buff.

With me flooring it and further destroying the Land Rover's suspension, it only took around ten minutes to re-join the winding B roads back to civilisation. This was a blessed relief as it meant no one had to say anything. Not a single word of spoken English was uttered by anyone during this time. Not by me, not by Sheria, and most certainly not by the guy who was picking slivers of cooled metal out of his flesh with a pair of forceps he'd dug out the boot. Shadow barely winced as skin and muscle was rasped away and were healed instantly by whatever not-so-secret power he had.

I glanced momentarily over to Sheira in the passenger seat. Her furrowed eyes were fixed on Shadow, her mouth was bent into a slight frown, and she was tapping a random rhythm onto the armrest, lost in thought. I could practically see her mind ticking away to come up with an answer to the obvious question.

The obvious question and the obvious answer that now seemed so startlingly obvious, I was kicking myself as to how I hadn't seen it before. Now I fully admit that I don't know much about guns, but I know for a fact that you're not supposed to survive a shot to the face at point-blank range. But there Shadow was. Alive. And breathing.

The man had just spat in the face of death, and yet it didn't seem to faze him. To me, at least, he was acting like surviving something like that was, well...normal. Perhaps to him, it was. Maybe, and now this seemed very likely, he'd done it before.

It was the impossible man himself who broke the silence. "Pull over," he said as we trundled into a small village on the outskirts of Edinburgh. He made me jump with the sudden sound, but I did what I was told and turned into a side street that led to a small railway station.

It wasn't anything special. Just a single line of tracks and a lone plastic shelter with a hole punched in the roof. Empty take away boxes and aluminium cans rolled across the concrete, carried along by the gentle breeze. There were two cars parked a little further down the way, and, huddled together like sleeping robots, stood four of those giant steel bins; one for glass, one for metal, one for paper and one for clothes for charity.

The back door popped open, Shadow hopped out and made straight for the clothes bin. I was just turning the ignition off as the rusted, graffitied wall melted into shadows and our friend walked right into the container. I considered the legality of this for a moment. Was it stealing? Technically yes. But it was for the needy, so maybe that bent the rules a little.

Yeah, that'll hold up great in court.

He wasn't in there for long, just long enough for Sheira and I to disembark, share a funny look about our companion, and look back to the container. His torn jeans had been replaced by a dark blue pair, and his t-shirt was now a faded red one. His jacket and boots had been undamaged by the whole affair of the dunking, which was probably down to some hidden repair sigil stitched onto the label. I could probably do with some of those on my better jeans, but I digress.

With a new set of threads and only a few suspicious stains leaked into the fabric, Shadow leant casually against the container but couldn't manage to look us in the eye. His shoulders were tense, and his arms crossed protectively in front of his chest, head down to study the patterns his shoes were carving into the loose gravel. Dad had done something similar when he was nervous and feeling vulnerable, like when he had been waiting for Mum to get out of the hospital after the twins. He knew she was safe, even after the cesarian and complications, but he'd been like a live wire for a week.

After a few moments of uneasy silence from Sheira and me, Shadow was the first to break empty noise. "So? Who's going to point it out first?" At the very edge of his voice was a tinge of desperation. Say it, say it, say something so I don't have to hide anymore.

Sheira took a deep, unsteady breath and, like she didn't quite believe it, whispered, "you're immortal."

The tension didn't disappear from Shadows hunched shoulders, but it certainly seemed to lose some weight. Hell, even a slight smile flashed, however briefly, across his face. "Well, that's good. I once had someone say I was a witch when I asked him that question. Bit awkward considering I was in Salem at the time."

He chuckled at his own joke while I momentarily wondered how Shadow was only thought to be a witch. The man has red eyes, for god's sake. I mean, my first thought was just a tad more demonic when we first met. But then again, if you had a cat in those times, people thought you were the devil incarnate, so to each their own, I suppose.

Still, when I didn't say anything, Shadow took his cue to continue. "When did you work it out, huh? I mean, I've known people their entire lives, and they didn't figure it out, but you two...You two..." He cocked his head to one side with a pensive expression. "Barely even a week, and you know my true nature."

"We just saw you pull a reverse Terminator!" I exclaimed.

"Some people have seen my head removed and still remain none the wiser," he said like being decapitated was just your average Tuesday. "So go on. Humour me."

"Since Ashwood Dale," Sheira said boldly. "I know natural healers, I know the speed they can perform at, and yes, it's very impressive, but that burn Nick gave you should have been permanent. But it didn't even leave a scar. You don't see something like that every day," she mater of factly stated.

For some reason, when Shadow's prying gaze fixed on me, I felt searing heat rush to my ears and cheeks. She'd know that long? Of course, she did, she's Sheira, she's brilliant like that. Definitely more intelligent than me by a longshot. Did I say longshot? I meant the length of the entire country.

"Um...In your vault? Look, I don't know much about Elementals, or judging by what I've learnt in the past couple of weeks, not much about the world in general. Still, even I know that you've got way too much money."

That triggered a smirk. Good.

"No person on planet Earth could accumulate that much stuff in one lifetime," I went on, gesturing wildly like I was trying to conjure the vault out of thin air to prove my point. "Hell, even a hundred lifetimes wouldn't get close to scratching the surface of that place! How much would that all be valued for? A billion? Trillion? Squintillion?"

"That's not a number, Nick," Sheira said.

"I get your point." Shadow shrugged, "I'm not sure. I don't make a habit of letting people in there, and it's not like I can just rock up on Antiques Roadshow, can I? But to answer your question? I'm afraid the answer is I don't know. I stopped counting a long time ago. But I'll say this for nothing; Jeff Bezos has nothing on me."

There was another outbreak of chuckling, more out of nervousness than anything, when Sheira, who had been counting on her fingers, jerked her head upwards suddenly. "Wait a second! You said you were at the Salem Witch Trials. That would make you, at least, four hundred years old!"

This time Shadow's short, barking laugh wasn't nervous at all. "Ha! And the rest! Double it and add three hundred, and you'll be about there."

My jaw dropped. No way...no way! He'd been alive for an entire millennia! No more than that! The things he'd seen, the people he could have met! I had to steady myself against the bonnet of the Land Rover so I didn't fall over.

Then I shot up again, suddenly remembering what I'd seen in the vault.

"That tapestry! The one you were using to hide Incaendium? That had you on it, right? It looked like the Battle of Bosworth to me."

"It was," he said simply. "I don't make a habit of having my image taken. It gets a bit complicated coming up with new excuses after all these years, but one slips through the cracks every now and again. It was hanging in the Conqueror's dining hall for ten years before a segment of it 'went missing' rather conveniently."

"That's lucky for you," Sheria said.

"Indeed, it was. I'm just glad they didn't decide to make a new one. It wasn't exactly easy to carry."

Shadow drummed against his chin. "I was already over a hundred when King Harold popped his clogs. Now let me think, when did I turn a thousand? 1889 I believe it was. No, wait, 1890, that was it! Jesus, that was a while ago. Wasn't even in this millennium..." Centuries gone by without him even realising it. He seemed lost for a moment, his mind wandering back to a lost past, and then he snapped back to the present. "I'm getting old."

"Twelve hundred's a bit more accurate then," said Sheira.

"I knew someone who used to say it like that. Give or take a few decades, he'd say. Didn't mention you had to round down."

The mention of this other individual triggered a similar response to our conversation outside the trainyard. He closed his eyes like he was trying to forcefully shove a painful memory away into a box. Still, it was fighting back like a struggling cat and wasn't going down without a fight. It made him sad to merely remember.

"Are there more of you?" I asked gently at the mention of this other individual.

He shrugged. "You tell him, Sheira."

She adjusted her footing in surprise. "Well, yes, there are other people who fall under the line of immortality, but there's only one kind of 'true immortal'. Some people, usually Time's just age slower. Teagan's like that when you finally meet her, she ages one year for every two."

"A false immortal. You can age one year a century, but you're still going to die," Shadow muttered bitterly. "They think that just because they're protected by law, they're never going to bite the big one. Yet they always seem surprised when they do.

At this point, Shadow admitting that he'd murdered someone was hardly a revelation but judging by the wide-eyed, pale-faced expression Sheira was radiating, that was a big deal.. You need your head checking, mate, my sanity muttered from whatever dark hole it had been hiding in.

"Other than that, there are two more classes. The first can theoretically live forever; they get to a certain point and stop ageing. Still, they can be killed off by injury or sickness."

"And then there's him," I jabbed a finger in Shadow's direction. "Mr I Can Take A Bath In Lava And Walk Out Without A Scratch."

"Yes, but here's the thing I never thought that someone with that kind of power could exist!" She looked at Shadow with a mix of awe and fear. "I just thought they were stories my mum used to tell me to scare me. The way she described them, they were creatures that could level a city with a wave of a hand! After all, when you've had eternity...after a while, you could become a god."

We both looked to Shadow. He was good, yes, no doubting that, but I'd never seen anything on that level from him unless he was very, very careful. And maybe he was. Back in Ashwood, Dale Sheira had been stunned by the fact that he wasn't a Taken, an Elemental possessed by its dark, twisted soul. They broke out when their physical forms lost control when they pushed themselves too far.

Was losing yourself worth that power?

Shadow didn't seem to think so. "Sheira, I'm a Dark. People fear me enough already just for what I am." He considered something for a moment, "did you know that Dark's used to be hunted down and murdered? If your family realised what you were, they'd throw you out to the local lord and have you hunted down by dogs. The first time I went through that, I was only sixteen. I was a child! A child who'd just done a few magic tricks for the local kids! I was feared for something I could possibly understand. A kid who didn't know why the world hated him."

"But you wouldn't die," I pointed out.

That was the wrong thing to say.

Shadow's eyes flared as he rounded on me. "No, I didn't. I was just torn apart for three hours before someone rescued me. I may not be able to die, but I can still experience pain. Can you imagine what that was like? Pieces of my flesh were ripped away to heal instantly, limbs dislocated and torn, at one point, one of those mangy mutts managed to pull some of my intestines out, but still, I didn't die. And that made me think, what else can I do? How far can I push this? At first, it was just burns and cuts, and when that failed, I was satisfied and decided to enjoy not being able to die for a bit."

"That lasted about two centuries. You see, after a while of collecting wealth and shiny trinkets, fighting for glory and gorging yourself on the best and worst that the world has to offer, you realise something. Money doesn't matter. No amount of honour and glory will be remembered once everyone else is dead. The hunger never truly goes away, no matter how hard you try to fill the emptiness. So what do you do then?"

He waited for an answer that never came.

"You do everything you can to kill yourself. I have been stabbed, shot, burned, frozen, boiled, buried, drowned, hung, beheaded, one of which was by guillotine, I may add, mutilated, ripped limb from limb, I've even had a nuclear bomb dropped on my head for Christ's sake! I've been formally executed by the British monarchy three times only to walk away the moment they axe was lifted after cutting through my spine! I once asked a man to remove my heart and brain simultaneously to see if that would work, and I'll give you a hint to what happened!"

The more he spoke, the angrier he became. I don't know if he'd just needed to get this off his chest or he was just in a bad mood, but either way, that loathing and resentment weren't targeted at anyone else but himself. He hated himself for simply daring to stay alive.

"I have done everything. Everything! But I'm still here! I'm still being dragged kicking and screaming into whatever pathetic existence that is my future! I don't even know if the sun exploding will finish me off because the void most certainly won't! Which means I'm going to be stuck on this useless lump of rock for the rest of my God! Damn! LIFE!"

With every manic word, Shadow slammed his foot into the rusted container, each blow forcing the rusted metal to buckle until with the final rage-fuelled word, it caved in like it was made of cardboard. Fragments of rusty steel and clouds of dust billowed out from the great yawning cavern as Shadow fell back, breathing heavily. From the safe distance Sheira and I had retreated to (Behind the still-open door of the Land Rover), I watched the bones in his feet uncurl and reset to something that resembled a foot and not a boot of splinters. I know, lovely image for you right there.

Slowly I leant out from behind our shield and inched over to him. He was sat on the floor now, which was good considering he couldn't kick anything else. "Feel better?" I asked.

He exhaled loudly, "yes, actually. I've been...uh, carrying that around for a while."

"I think we figured that out," Sheira gestured to the hole. "One does not simply kick through an inch of steel, rusty or not."

He snorted, "but you're not running in fear, so I'm doing better than usual."

Sheira and I planted ourselves on either side of our immortal friend. It was a nice night. The sun was long gone, but there were still a few orange and pink traces streaking across the sky. A cool breeze occasionally meandered past, kicking up fallen leaves and empty crisp packets as it went.

I looked up at the stars and strangely felt quite poetic. It was weird to think that Shadow had sat under this exact sky a thousand years ago and would still be under it in another thousand years. I wondered if he remembered it. Did he even have a human memory, or was it supercharged, so he didn't forget a thing? So many questions to be asked, but they were to be directed at a man famous for his tight lip-edness (that's not a word, but you get my point).

Oh well, may as well start somewhere.

"So..." I began carefully considering how to phrase this without getting smacked. "Nuclear bomb, eh? How'd that come about?"

Shadow chuckled nervously. "Oh, that. Yeah, maybe nuclear meltdown would be a better explanation."

Sheria suddenly gasped and wildly threw out her arm. A little too wild, perhaps because she just happened to clobber Shadow on the chin. "Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!" she apologised profusely. "But- but- but- Were you at Chernobyl?" Sheira asked with a shocked voice.

"Yes, but we had nothing to do with it before you ask," Shadow said firmly. "We were trying to stop it from overloading, but quite clearly, it didn't work."

Sheira frowned. "We?"

For about a minute, Shadow didn't respond. Sheira and I didn't pressure him. We sure as hell weren't expecting him to talk but then-

"I have been alive for a very long time, too long it feels like, and while I am most certainly not the oldest creature wandering around on this planet, I wasn't always alone. There was another. Another Elemental like me who truly couldn't die. We grew up together, fought side by side, kept each other safe through the good and the bad. We walked the Earth together for over a millennium, and we thought nothing could stop that. And then we received a tip that someone was going to try and sabotage the Chernobyl reactors. If all of them went into meltdown, it would've wiped out entire civilisations. We had to help."

"So on the twenty-sixth of April 1986, we tried to save Chernobyl, but history remembers that we failed. Reactor four still went into meltdown. In the explosion, I was catapulted out of the site and rotted in the woods for two days while my body tried to put itself back together. Big injuries take longer to heal, you see. Anyways, I crawled my way back to the rendezvous point and waited, and waited, and waited, but my friend never made it."

"But..." I said quietly, "but wasn't he immortal like you? You were at the same place; surely, you both would have survived, right."

Shadow shook his head, black hair curtaining his eyes from view but not enough for me to miss the single tear falling down his face. "I was outside when the explosion went off; he was in the reactor. And I don't mean standing next to it; I mean physically inside of it. He was trying to pull the rods out. I can only presume it destroyed every cell in his body at once, which might just do the trick."

"But if he's not," Sheria pointed out. "You can't be one hundred per cent sure that he actually died. You said it took you two days to heal from your injuries; maybe he just took a bit longer."

"Don't get me wrong, there's a part of me that really want to believe that. Hell, I'd go as far as saying I'm desperate for that to be true. But I waited for over a year, but he never showed up. He wouldn't have just left me behind, but what choice did I have? You can't really stick around when the Soviet Union comes sniffing at your door. Even if he's still alive by some miracle, I wouldn't be able to locate him if I tried; we have the same tattoo after all." Shadow tapped his left shoulder where the intricate sigil had been carved into his skin. "I can't track him with my compass, and I've gone through every underground network in the world, but it always comes up empty. If he is still alive, I don't know where he is, and that's the worst part because I promised him that I'd never leave him behind, and I have to live with that." He hung his head lower. "I have to live with all my mistakes."

Sheira shuffled over a bit more. Gently she placed a hand on Shadow's shoulder. "Look, maybe didn't stop the disaster entirely, but you saved hundreds, maybe even thousands of people! That has to mean something!"

"Maybe, but then something like Truespear Hollow happens," Shadow replied stiffly. "I presume you two have at least heard what happened."

Sheria and I exchanged a worried look and nodded.

"That's happened the year after I left Ukraine and came back to England. I figured that I may as well check a few old waypoints and caches we used to use. One of those was in Anglesey. When I arrived, I found the Elemental communities in chaos. There was a creature, a Llamhigyn Y Dwr, which was punishing the locals after someone dumped a barrel of oil into its pond. All the fish were dead, so it couldn't eat, and when the locals refused to give it food, it got revenge by taking the kids. By the time I arrived, all the Truespear Hollow children under the age of twelve were being held captive. The monster had already torn apart a couple of people who tried to get them back, so I figured that I'd try and help since I can't be killed. But I messed up. I insisted I could take it alone, but I couldn't. It was stronger than I thought it was and a damn sight more clever. In the end, I managed to kill it, but only after it had slaughtered every child it had imprisoned, and there was no one else to blame but me. I admit, my actions have killed so many people throughout my life, but when its children, tiny lives, well, they're the heaviest burden of all. And that's where you were right, kid."

"Who, me?" I said in surprise. "What have I done?"

"You said it as it was. You shoved the truth in my face and made it impossible for me to run from. You called me a coward, which I was because do you know what I did? Do you know what I did instead of going back to that town and admitting to what I'd done?"

It was Sheira who answered. In the quietest whisper, she said, "you left."

"Yes. I ran. I ran like the godamn coward that I am. That's why I didn't want to go near Truespear Hollow, that's why I didn't want to get involved, that's why I couldn't look Lillian in the eye because all I could see when I looked at her was her little brother as he was torn to shreds in front of me."

The image of a lake of children's blood plonked itself square in my thoughts and stubbornly refused to leave. If it was bad for me for Shadow, who had actually lived through it, I couldn't possibly imagine what it was like. It perfectly explained why he had wanted to put as much distance between Truespear Hollow and him.

"But you came back," I pointed out. "You didn't just leave again. You came back and helped us! Come on, man, that's got to account for something."

Shadow pulled at a loose thread in his jeans. "Crash...convinced me. He told me that it would be no different from what I did thirty years ago if I left you guys to die. I dunno," he shrugged, "maybe I thought that if I went back, I could go some way to make up for that fatal mistake. Maybe I'll sleep a bit better tonight, maybe I won't, but either way, it's the only thing I can do to make amends. I can never escape what I've done in my past; that's the curse of immortality, but considering my only alternative to living is blowing myself and half a country up with a nuclear reactor, trying to make the world a bit better isn't the worst thing I could be doing with my time."

"And here I was thinking you came back because somewhere, deep down in that heart of yours, you actually like us." I put on my best heartbroken expression, complete with pouted lip. "I can safely say I'm devastated."

Shadow snorted and rolled his eyes, rather magnificently, I may add. "Keep dreaming, kid. I still stand by what I said. We made a deal, and I'm not letting you two off that easy."

And he's back. The same old stubborn Shadow we'd all come to know and love. I very much got the feeling that he wasn't about to go into his extensive in any further detail, and I was okay with that. I'd seen enough bloodshed in the last week or so, thank you very much, and if my friend really was trying to amend the past, it would probably be best for me to keep my mouth shut.

"Speaking of our deal," Sheira said carefully. "Since we're being open with each other now, how about you tell us what you actually need us for?"

"Yeah, let's be honest, mate, you're kind of immortal, so why do you need us?"

"Ah, that." And now we're back to being awkward again. Shadow rubbed a spot on the back of his neck, paused, pulled a lump of metal from it and flicked it away. "Well, as far as I'm aware, you guys at eth London Stronghold have the second largest collection of history in the Elemental world, and since I'm banned from Rome, which I'm not going to tell you about," he added the moment I opened my mouth. Whatever, that just left my imagination to wander around, trying to conjure up how you get banned from a library. "I need access to your archives because..." he sighed. "You know how I served Molly, right?"

"Yeah," Sheira replied.

"Regrettably yes," I added, which earned a dark look from Shadow and a jab in the ribs from Sheira. Not an easy task considering I was nowhere near her, but she managed it with an icicle and sheer determination.

"Well, the reason I left was that they stole something from me. Something precious. The only thing an immortal has to lose."

"What did they take?"

"My memory."

"Your memory?" I repeated.

"Fame fades, items lose their value, and at the end of the day, all you truly have to lose is the memories of times gone by." Shadow thought for a moment. "I don't think Mr Wilde ever published that line, but it always stuck with me, especially after..." His voice trailed off.

"But how?" I asked when I realised he wasn't about to finish his sentence. "How can someone take your memory?"

Sheira grimaced. "It's easier than you think. All it takes is one Elemental who can get into your head with the right training, and bam! You can have your whole life rewritten just like that," she snapped her fingers to emphasize the point.

A sick feeling pooled in my stomach. It felt like the time I ate a scotch bonnet chilli pepper and a pack of extra strong mints to see if they would cancel each other out. Fun fact it doesn't work, and I now know what Hellfire tastes like. Another fine PSA from yours truly.

Shadow nodded curtly. "I suppose I got lucky; I only lost two years. The downside was that they were the two most important years of my life."

"What happened?" I asked.

"I lost something. Something very important. I know what it was, I had the sense to make notes thank god, but I can't remember how or where I lost it. And it's important to Molly. I mean, the fact that she went to the trouble of finding an expert Mind Elemental, paid her to get close to me for five years and then had two very specific years removed from my memories proves that without a doubt. But she made a mistake, a mistake that whipped right around and bit her on the arse. You see, she only took those two years but left all mentions of this thing from the years afterwards. She just wanted that initial knowledge. I suppose I have to be thankful that the removal woke me up, but it means I've been trying to work out what was so important ever since."

"Which I presume has something to do with that necklace you're always wearing," I gestured to the slight lump under Shadow's t-shirt.

The corner of Shadow's mouth twitched. "Something like that." He sighed and pushed himself back to his fully healed feet. "Anything important to her is dangerous for the rest of the world. Which means I need to get to it first."

"With no memory in the first place?" Sheira said.

"Bingo." He sighed again, more deeply this time. "I've done more impossible things in my time."

"Like dragging an automaton into Mount Helena?" I asked, an eyebrow raised.

He chuckled. "yeah. Just like that."

Oddly enough, even with Shadow's frankly mind-blowing confession, it didn't really change anything. Yeah, he was still Shadow. Moody, miserable and stubborn as hell, but now we had at least part of a reason. If I had to put up with the world for that long, I'd be miserable too. It also explained why he hated Molly so much and why he'd served them for so long.

You see, Molly probably knew that the extraction of Shadow's memories was going to break his spell, so she'd probably tried to extract the dates from him by just talking, but all things considered, that hadn't gone so well. But at the end of the day, she'd succeeded, and Shadow had gone without two years of his life. And suppose he, an eleven-hundred-year-old (Give or take, maths was never my most vital subject. God help that GCSE) immortal was desperate to get them back at any cost. In that case, I'd be scared of him too.

Why else would she be hiding in a castle in the middle of nowhere? How else would you keep a monster out?

Somewhere over the hills, a clock tower struck twelve. I looked down at my watch just in time to catch the date rollover to the 18th. Three days. Our time was up. In a couple of hours, Sophie, Chip and Leela would spill everything they knew to the Harpy and then? Well, look at it this way; either way, we're dead meat.

Sheira must have seen my forlorn expression. "Hey, cheer up, dude. We've been all over since we last saw the Harpy. It'll take her hours, maybe even a day or two, to find us again."

"And I have another piece of good news for you," Shadow said with a sly grin. In one hand, he held his weird misty compass again and was pointing over a large hill with the other. A soft artificial glow was seeping over the crest, blocking out the pinprick stars.

With my heart hammering away in my chest, I glanced from the horizon to the compass, which had an arrow and a single word scrawled in neat, tidy handwriting, and then to the other two with a smile slowing spreading across my face.

"Edinburgh," I said triumphantly.

"Which means we're only a few hours away from Dunloch Castle," added Sheira.

A few hours away... my mind wandered around the words happily. So close yet so far. The finish line was in sight, but it was like there was an assault course between us and it, only this time it was using actual barbed wire and live mines, unlike the one brought to Skinners Park a few years back. To be fair, it didn't go too badly; there were only a few broken bones, and only one teacher cried, so it wasn't that bad.

The third day meant backup, willing or not, was on its way. We had a chance! A real chance to get in there and get my family out! God, I hope they're okay. Mum would stay strong for the sake of the kids. Still, Maxie was prone to snuffles but always soldiered on like real-life Maximus, even if the damp placed havoc with his chest and gave him this horrible rattling cough.

And little Lilah? Sweet little Lilah, who wasn't scared of anything, whether it be creaky lifts, barking dogs or dead fish in the fishmonger's van. The little girl who could hold a spider without flinching while I, her 'brave big brother', trembled in the corner brandishing a broomstick and a massive saucepan. These were real monsters; I just hoped she'd be as brave as ever.

And as for Mum? A mother who had kept her three children safe while they were being dragged through Hell. A woman who had worked three jobs to pay the bills and keep her family fed. A warrior who had kept her pride and her head held high no matter what the world dared to throw at her. She'd murder Molly with her bare hands before she got to the kids.

They're going to be alright, I told myself firmly. Mum, Maxie, Lilah, guess what? I'm coming to get you. And nothing in the universe is going to stop me.