She kneels by their bed and reaches under for the small box she has kept all this time. Inside is Clover’s toy giraffe, Gianni. There are some photographs, too, the ones she has scanned with her phone and added to the Facebook pages. She tucks them into her bag, noticing that her hands are shaking.
V
“So how old will she be?” Ethan asks once they hit the road. “She was seven when she went missing, right?”
“She’s twenty-nine now,” Luna says.
So many people told her to accept that Clover was dead. Accept that both she and Saffy were swept away by the sea, drowned. Or murdered, their bodies dumped in a shallow grave in a forest. The theory that Saffy had run away had merit, but it was unlikely that a child as young as Clover could have survived the wilds on her own. Most likely, she had fallen off the cliffs and drowned, or she’d been kidnapped.
That’s what they’d said.
The social worker calls from the hospital. Eilidh, she’s called. Ay-lee. The line is frustratingly bad, and when she tries to tell Luna what ward Clover’s in, Luna can’t make her out.
“I’m wearing a teal-blue jumper and a black skirt,” Eilidh says. “I’ll meet you outside the main entrance.”
Just before she ends the call, Eilidh refers to Clover as “a wee girl.” She must be very thin, Luna thinks. What has happened to her? She can barely bring herself to think.
They stop off at a town with a name she can’t pronounce, buy coffee that tastes like dishwater. A Highland cow snorts at her from a field nearby, its jaw working a mouthful of grass. Emerald mountains disappear into wispy clouds, the valley cradles a turquoise lake. She feels sick with nerves and excitement, she can’t decide which.
It’s just after six p.m. when Ethan pulls into the hospital car park. At the entrance she sees a woman in a teal-blue jumper, searching the car park as though she’s waiting for someone.
She must be Eilidh.
“Lovely to meet you, Luna,” she says when they approach her. “Now, are you ready to see your sister?”
VI
“This way,” Eilidh says, leading Luna and Ethan through the hospital doors and along the corridor.
Luna is aware that Eilidh is talking but can’t make out what she says. Her mind is turned to the carbolic smell of the corridor, the photographs of puffins on the hospital walls, an elderly man in a wheelchair with bloodied dressings across both eyes. She clutches the toy giraffe to her chest, her mouth running dry.
“It says on the form that you’re next of kin,” Eilidh says, flipping through a paper file.
“Yes,” Luna says. “She’s my sister.”
“Clover mentioned that she was living with your mother when she went missing, is that right?”
“Our mother?” Luna says. “My . . . she went missing many years ago.” It’s clear to everyone that the words are difficult to say, even all these years later. Ethan squeezes her hand. This could be the moment, she thinks. The riddle of her childhood solved.
She follows Eilidh into a ward with walls covered in cartoon figures. A sign reads “Children’s Ward.”
“Are you sure it’s this way?” she hears Ethan ask.
In a moment she’s in a side room, and she sees the figure on the bed, the chestnut shades in her hair lit up by a side lamp, hands folded in her lap, the lines of her face strikingly familiar. The delicate mouth, denim-blue, deep-set eyes, that wide, wise brow. Luna raises a hand to her mouth. She must sway a little in shock, for quickly Ethan is beside her, his arm around her waist.
“Hello, Clover,” Eilidh says brightly. “Your sister Luna is here.”