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stuck going away with this lot, as though separating me from my best friends would suddenly make me an angel. All the same, it turned out to be a punishment I don’t think I entirely deserved.”
    “Of course not,” I empathized. “How did you get here?”
    Helena sighed, “Marcus and I made arrangements early in the evening to meet up when everyone had gone to sleep. He was the only one who had a packet of cigarettes so the other two boys went with him and, well, Joan”—Helena looked at her friend on the other side of the campfire with fondness—“she was afraid to stay in the tent by herself so she came too. We moved away from the camp so our teachers wouldn’t see the cigarettes alight or smell the smoke. We didn’t walk that far at all, just a few minutes or so, but we found ourselves here.” She shrugged. “I can’t really explain it any other way.”
    “That must have been terrifying for you all.”
    “No more than it was for you.” She looked at me. “And at least we had each other, I couldn’t imagine going through it all alone.”
    She wanted me to talk but I wouldn’t. It wasn’t in my nature to open up. Not unless it was with Gregory.
    “You can’t even have been born when we went missing. How do you know so much?”
    “Let’s just say I was an inquisitive child.”
    “Inquisitive indeed.” She studied me again and I looked away, finding her glare intrusive. “Do you know what has happened to everybody’s family here?” She nodded at the rest of the group.
    “Yes.” I looked around them all, seeing their parents’ faces in each of them. “I made it my life’s work to know. I followed up on all of you every year, wanting to see if anyone came home.”
    “Well, thank you for helping me feel one step closer to it now.”
    A silence fell between us, Helena no doubt lost in her memories of home.
    Eventually she spoke again. “My grandmother was a proud woman, Sandy. She married my grandfather when she was eighteen years old and they had six children. Her younger sister, who they could never seem to marry off, embarked on a mysterious affair with a man she would never name and, to everybody’s shock, gave birth to a baby boy.” She chuckled. “That my grandfather’s face was written all over that child was not lost on my grandmother, nor were the shillings that disappeared from their savings just as the new clothes appeared on the child. Of course, those things are entirely coincidental,” she said in a singsong voice, stretching her legs out in front of her. “There are a great many brown-haired, blue-eyed men in the country, and the fact my grandfather had a fondness for drinking would explain the dents in their savings.” Her eyes twinkled at me.
    I looked at Helena in confusion. “I’m sorry, Helena, I’m not sure why you’re telling me this.”
    She laughed. “That you have ended up here with us could be one of life’s great coincidences.”
    I nodded.
    “But my grandmother didn’t believe in coincidences. And neither do I. You’re here for a reason, Sandy.”
    13
    H elena added another log to the dying fire and its weight sent a pile of adolescent ashes racing one another down the side of the burning tower. The flames were awakened from the embers and sleepily began to climb up the log, giving off heat to Helena and me.
    I had been talking to her for hours, filling her in on all the details of her family life that I knew of. An unusual feeling had stirred within me, as soon as I’d realized whose company I was keeping. It washed over me in waves, each wave relaxing me, making my eyes that little bit heavier, causing my mind to tick that little bit slower, and for the tension in my muscles to relax just a little bit more. It was just a little bit, mind you, but it was something.
    Throughout my life people had told me that my questions were irrelevant, my over-interest in cases of missing persons unnecessary, but right there in the woods every stupid,