Prologue

August 1992



Alice Madison, twelve years of age, listened out for sounds beyond

the hammering of her heart. All was quiet. The rain tapped over the

trees outside and the road that led to Friday Harbor was blessedly

empty this time of day. Mrs Quint from next door would get up any

minute now and feed her chickens and Alice had to decide quickly

whether to rush and be out of the house before that blabbermouth

was in her yard or delay until she had gone back into her kitchen

and out of sight. It was hardly a choice: Alice wanted – needed – to

get out of there as fast as her feet would carry her.

She took stock of her bedroom: everything wrecked, broken,

smashed . Alice took a deep breath and grabbed her rucksack. She

crammed in a few essentials and one book she couldn’t bear to

leave behind – Treasure Island, which her mother used to read to

her – and managed to tie her sleeping bag in a tight bundle at the

bottom of the bag.

Her eyes moved over the familiar surfaces, the familiar objects.

She couldn’t stay and, one way or the other, she wouldn’t come

back : all her life up to that point would be held in that rucksack,

and Alice had to travel light.

She stood on tiptoe and took down from a shelf a pink wooden

box that had survived the onslaught. She emptied the beaded

bracelets and the WWF badges with the mournful panda onto her

unmade bed and lifted the fake bottom: three tight rolls of banknotes

had been flattened, held together by elastic hairbands. She

shoved them into her jeans back pocket and placed the box on her

bedside table. Her Mickey Mouse clock told her it was 7.03 a.m. She

picked up her baseball bat and her mitt – the ball went into a pocket

of the rucksack – and surveyed her room. Time to go.

Alice tiptoed down the hall, stopping only to listen to her father’s

breathing and snoring lightly in his room. She closed the front

door behind her and started down the side of the house, long steps,

almost but not quite running. She was pleased she didn’t have to

push the creaking garage door open: her red bicycle was leaning

as usual against the work table. She walked it up to the road, got