The tack room door flew open. A figure in a grey hoodie burst out, holding a Stanley knife. Grey hoodie and black scarf. A man, tall. Grey eyes with heavy lashes. A hoodie with an Adidas logo and three white stripes down the arms.

He took hold of the handle on a tall green wheelie bin and rammed it straight into Mistral's flank. He raised the knife. Mistral squealed and reared. The rope came loose.

'What was the guy doing in there in the first place?' Jack asked.

One of the medics came back out of the ICU and avoided eye contact as she hurried away.

'Hiding.' He must have been otherwise Paige would have seen him when she carried Mistral's saddle in.

'And where did he go afterwards?'

'Up over the wall, across the fields.'

'You didn't recognize him?'

I shook my head. 'He had grey eyes with long, dark lashes. He was wearing an Adidas top.'

We waited until two in the morning, when Paige's mum and dad showed up and the hospital sent us home.

'Go and get some sleep,' a nurse advised. 'We'll keep in touch via the school.'

Jack and I used a taxi, sat in silence through the sleazy Friday night streets guys reeling out of clubs and across the road, girls vomiting under the town's giant Christmas tree. We held hands along familiar country lanes until we reached St Jude's.

I didn't sleep. I stared at the ceiling remembering Paige's grey horse screaming, rearing up and plummeting down, the sound of hoofs thudding into bone and flesh, the silence afterwards.

I took my mind back to five minutes earlier.

'You don't think you're being a teeny bit par-a-noid?' Paige asked with a wink. 'Chill, my friend.'

Saturday morning brought no fresh news. Paige's parents were still at her bedside, the doctors were carrying out more tests. We were in limbo, with too much time on our hands.

'It's definitely linked,' I told Zara at breakfast, which none of us ate. 'My so-called accident with the motorbike and what happened to Paige.'

She shook her head and I didn't blame her. Who wants to believe a conspiracy theory when coincidence or cock-up falls within the same frame? 'We have to be logical about this,' she insisted. 'We can't let our imaginations run away with us.'

Jack, Zara and I walked out of the dining hall towards the new library. 'But what if I'm right? What if Lily's killer was after me and now he's targeting Paige?'

Zara shook her head angrily and veered off towards the library.

I ran after her. 'At least think about it.'

'No. I don't want to.'

Specifically, she didn't want to consider what might have been Paige falling into a permanent vegetative state, me mangled under the front wheel of a powerful motorbike.

'It was a lime-green Toyota,' I told Jack quietly as we watched Zara go and my eidetic memory clicked in. 'Registration number KD58PDO.'

At least the attack on Paige meant that I finally got to meet Inspector Cole. He came hotfoot to the school that Saturday morning.

'Use the bursar's office,' Saint Sam suggested after the inspector and I had been introduced. 'Nobody will disturb you there.'

I sat on the edge of my hard seat, facing the inspector across Terence D'Arblay's wide desk. Behind him was a glass-fronted cabinet containing shelves of red ring-binders and curios such as conch shells, a bronze statuette of a horse, a carved silver box, military medals and old black-and-white photos dating back to the founding of the school.

'You're worried about your friend?' was Cole's first question.

'Yes. Has she come round yet?'

He shook his head. 'The doctors have decided to keep her in an induced coma until some of the swelling around her brain is reduced. That's normal procedure with an injury like this. It gives the patient a better chance of making a full recovery.'

'There wasn't any blood,' I told him, as if this made a difference. 'At least I couldn't see any.'

Mistral had trapped Paige against the wall, she'd lost her footing and gone down. A thousand-plus pounds of horseflesh had landed on her skull. But no blood.

'Tell me about Paige's attacker,' Inspector Cole invited.

'He was about five eleven, six foot, skinny.'

'How old?'

'Young maybe eighteen, nineteen.'

'What colour was his hair?'

'He was wearing a hoodie so I couldn't see. And there was a black scarf covering his mouth and nose. He had grey eyes with dark eyelashes.'

'Good.' The inspector wasn't taking notes, but he looked as if he was taking in the details. He was an older guy late forties maybe a little out of shape, with a fleshy face and double chin. He wore his thinning grey hair short and had a bristly moustache that was darker than his hair. 'Anything else?'

'The hoodie was grey with a white Adidas logo. He was carrying a type of Stanley knife with a grey metal handle in his left hand.'

'Very good. Trousers?'

'Tracksuit bottoms. They matched the top.'

'OK, so describe exactly what he did.'

This was no problem for someone with a brain like mine so I gave the inspector the action replay.

'Who did he plan to use the knife on the horse or Paige?'

'The horse. He slashed at Mistral's neck, but he missed. Paige got in the way when she tried to stop him. Listen, inspector, you should look at the CCTV footage to see for yourself. They have a camera on the wall in the stable yard.'

He sucked his teeth. 'We would like to, but apparently it's out of action. Technical fault.'

'Oh.'

'They're fixing it as we speak.'

'Too late,' I said.

After this Inspector Cole took a short coffee break with Saint Sam. I'm sure they discussed Paige and probably me too, but I was also pretty certain at this point that no one except me and Jack was making firm links between yesterday's attack and the guy on the green Toyota, and how both things might be connected to Lily's death.

We resumed at eleven.

'Alyssa, the principal informs me you may have been involved in a hit-and-run incident in Lower Chartsey. When was this?'

'Last Monday.'

'You didn't report it?'

'There wasn't anything to report. The guy didn't hit me and he drove off.'

'But you think it could have been deliberate?'

I shrugged. 'There's no way I can be sure.'

'What were you doing in the village?'

'Talking to a friend.'

The inspector was good at his job and he winkled Jayden's name out of me. 'Did you see anyone else?'

More winkling then I gave him the names of Micky, Alex and Ursula and a little about the bullying that took place in the JD workshop.

Cole's moustache twitched as he wrinkled his nose, sniffled then reached for a pen. For the first time he scribbled a few things down. 'Clear something up for me, Alyssa what was so important that you had to battle through a snowstorm to talk to these village kids?'

This hit a nerve with me and I rushed to answer. 'I wanted to find out about Jayden and Lily how he'd reacted when he'd found out she was pregnant.'

'You thought he was the baby's father?' The moustache twitched again as if he was a furry-whiskered terrier picking up a fresh scent.

'No, I already knew he wasn't,' I replied. 'Or at least I'd figured it out.'

Inspector Cole nodded. 'You're a bright girl, but then you wouldn't be at St Jude's if you weren't.' The flattery suggested that he was bringing the interview to a close. 'Anything else you want to say?'

'I remembered the bike's registration number the one that almost ran me down it's KD58PDO.'

He wrote it eagerly on a sheet of St Jude's headed notepaper then looked up with pen poised. 'That's everything?'

'No there is one other thing.'

'In connection with which incident the motorbike or the horse?'

'Neither. This is in connection with Lily. On the day she disappeared, I saw her get the text from her brother and watched her pack her bag to catch the London train, only we know she never made it and now the bag's turned up at Tom Walsingham's house.' And I gave the inspector Tom's address The Old Vicarage, Main Street, Lower Chartsey.

'Any idea how the bag got there?' Inspector Cole asked without showing any reaction. I'd have expected a twitch of the terrier moustache or raised eyebrows at the very least.

'No. I haven't worked that one out yet, but I will.'

He smiled as he shook my hand and said goodbye.

'Thanks, Alyssa. Be sure to let me know when you do.'

When the police move, they move fast. At midday on Saturday I received a text from Tom.

Cops came to my house! What the f . . . ! Am in woods by lake. Meet me.

I showed the text to Jack.

'I'll come with you,' he said, quick as a flash. It wasn't that he didn't trust me, it was that he wanted to protect me. Or at least that's what he said and what I preferred to think. OK, maybe there was a whiff of jealousy in there too.

Anyway, I was glad I wasn't alone as Jack and I headed out through freezing fog, skirting the lake and heading for the trees.

'Let's see if Tom can worm his way out of this one,' Jack muttered.

'He's got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, for sure.'

Jack held my hand and we walked on for a bit. When I tripped over a tree root and stumbled, he was there to break my fall. 'It's OK,' he breathed as he held me close and pressed his lips against the top of my head.

We stood for a long time, blanketed in cold fog, warm in our embrace.

Then Tom appeared out of the mist and called my name. 'Alyssa, over here!'

Jack and I rushed to meet him, saw him suddenly duck out of sight behind a tree and were too late to stop ourselves from being spotted by a small posse of journalists who had broken free from the main gang at the school gates.

'Hey, Jack!' In spite of the fog swirling around, Emily Archer recognized him straight away and I recognized her. Action Girl in leather jacket and zippy boots, blonde hair upswept.

He frowned. We waited for Emily to arrive.

I jumped in with the first question. 'How did you get in?' The reporters would have needed to make a long loop across country, over the stream and then around the back of the woods to infiltrate the school grounds without being seen.

'What is this Colditz?' she wanted to know, smiling exclusively at Jack, ignoring me for the moment.

Back off he's way too young for you! Jealousy pounces and grabs you by the throat when you least expect it.

'Good to see you,' Emily told Jack as three fellow journos huddled behind her. 'We need a quote about what happened to Paige Kelly yesterday the ambulance, the police cars. Something short to keep us in the loop.'

Jack shook his head and did his best to make it look as though we were here for some fresh air. 'We can't talk to you,' he said.

'Can't or won't? Oh, come on, this really isn't a prison camp,' she wheedled. 'You have freedom of speech the same as anyone else.'

Freedom of speech for you to misquote. My guard was up, as you can imagine.

'OK, forget yesterday. How much does the school keep you informed about the investigation into Lily's death or do they leave you completely in the dark?' One of the reporters lurking in the background rushed a question at us both.

No comment.

'What prompted the request for a second pathologist's report?'

'When are they going to hold Lily's funeral?'