Bridget is running. Through the main entrance of the hospital, the iron taste of blood in her mouth. She reaches reception.

‘Rosie,’ she pants, ‘Rosie Flint. Can you tell me which ward she’s in? Or she might still be in A&E.’

The receptionist taps on the keyboard. She does not meet Bridget’s eye, nor does she smile.

‘She’s in Jupiter. Level 4.’ The receptionist gives a contemplative hmm. ‘But it’s after seven, I’m afraid. Visiting time finishes at seven.’

‘This is an emergency.’

‘I’m sure it is. Is it the police you need? Hey! Excuse me? Hey!’

Bridget is running. She can’t stop, won’t stop. Up ahead, the lift doors are opening.

‘Hold the lift,’ she calls. ‘Hold the lift!’

She makes it and smiles at the nurse who has held the door for her.

‘Visiting time is over,’ the nurse says with an apologetic frown.

Bridget presses the number 4. ‘I know. I’m just dropping her… her inhaler – they said to bring it.’ She puts her hands behind her back. She has no inhaler, no bag, nothing in her hands. Only her keys in her jacket pocket, her cash card and phone in the back pocket of her jeans.

With a ping, the lift stops at the fourth floor. It seems to take ages for the doors to slide open.

‘Sorry.’ Bridget runs out of the lift first. She scans the ward names, trying not to let panic jumble the letters. A nurse pushing a trolley full of drugs passes her and frowns.

‘Slow down, madam,’ she calls after her. ‘No running.’

‘Sorry,’ Bridget calls breathlessly, but she does not slow down – she does not stop running.

At the entrance to the ward, she pauses. Her senses cloud. She half walks, half runs, scanning the rooms, the beds, their occupants. Sweat pours down her face, down the back of her neck. In perhaps the fourth or fifth room, there are four beds, two empty, one with a privacy curtain around it, one containing a teenager with a grey tinge to her skin. Bridget takes a step inside.

‘Who are you looking for?’ the grey girl asks, something aggressive in her manner. There are bandages on her wrists.

‘My niece. Rosie Flint. She’s fifteen.’

‘What’s she in for?’

‘She’s—’

There’s a voice coming from behind the curtain. Bridget can’t hear what it’s saying. But she recognises the tone, the pitch, the jaunty cadences. Emily.

She swipes at the thin fabric, pushes it back on its runners with a loud whoosh. Emily is bent over the bed. She is pressing a pillow to Rosie’s face. The back of her neck is stiff with the effort – her elbows are out, her knuckles white.

‘Oh my God!’ the girl in the bed opposite shouts. ‘Police! Help! That woman’s trying to kill that girl!’

Bridget throws herself forward, grabs Emily’s shoulders. Emily falls, they both fall to the floor, Emily on top, the two of them struggling like overturned crabs.

‘Oh my God!’ the girl shouts again. ‘She was trying to suffocate her! That lady! She’s fucking mental! Call the police!’

Bridget rolls Emily off her, then onto her back, sits on her belly and pins her arms to the floor.

‘Murderer,’ Emily hisses, her eyes huge glassy circles of pale blue. The same eyes as that man. Her brother, of course – why didn’t Bridget see?

There are voices, footsteps running. Emily wrenches one arm free but it is caught by a male porter, who seems to have skidded across the floor on his knees.

‘This woman is assaulting me,’ Emily shouts.

‘Stay calm, madam,’ he says.

‘She was trying to suffocate my niece,’ Bridget says, breathless. ‘With her pillow.’

‘That’s right, she was,’ the girl in the bed chimes in. ‘She fucking was!’

Please God someone shut that girl up.

Emily kicks, bucks, her ribcage solid, fraught between Bridget’s knees.

‘Get off me,’ she shouts. ‘Murderer! This woman is a murderer!’

The girl has begun to shriek. ‘She was trying to suffocate her! That old lady there with the glasses! She was trying to kill ’er. I don’t feel safe, I’m not safe, I’m not fucking safe here.’

A nurse bustles over to the girl, her hands two stop signs: calm down. Another follows, walks briskly to Rosie’s bed.

‘Bridge!’ Toni’s face looms above Bridget. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘Get this assassin off me,’ Emily hisses. ‘Assassin! Assassin!’

There are two men now, both dressed in hospital garb, though Bridget is not sure what their uniforms mean. Each has one of Emily’s arms.

Somewhere a walkie-talkie crackles. Somewhere a voice calls out: ‘Police, call 999.’

‘It’s over, Emily,’ Bridget says. ‘It’s over.’

Emily meets her eye. And like that, without a word, something in her appears to die. She stops thrashing. Her eyes hold Bridget’s for another second before she closes them, inhales deeply through her nose. Her chest sinks, she lies perfectly still. A smile spreads across her face, as if she has entered a state of karmic peace.

Unnerved, Bridget climbs off Emily’s stomach. The ward hushes; the men too become still. No one speaks. Even the shrieking girl in the bed is quiet.

Toni glances back and forth from Bridget to Emily, her eyes round, wild, her mouth open with shock and incomprehension.

‘What’s happening?’ she says after a moment. ‘What the hell is going on?’

The ward is suspended, slowed, the air thick. The porters or nurses, or whatever the two men are, have Emily locked down, but she is motionless, her face impassive, vacant, her eyes still closed as if in prayer.

‘She had the pillow to her face,’ Bridget says. ‘Emily. She was trying to kill Rosie. She had the pillow over her face, she…’

The men hoist Emily to her feet. Slowly they walk her out of the ward, their faces stern, bewildered. Somewhere another walkie-talkie sparks into life. The nurse is talking to the grey girl, quietly, quietly. The only word Bridget catches is police.

Toni looks at Bridget. Their eyes lock. After a second, Toni heads over to Rosie’s bed. Bridget follows, stands on the other side.

‘Is she all right?’ Toni asks the nurse.

‘She’s fine.’ The nurse puts the pillow back under Rosie’s head, straightens her covers before turning to Toni. ‘The police will be here shortly. They’ll need to talk to you both.’ She looks from Toni to Bridget. ‘Are you all right, madam? Are you both all right?’

‘We’re fine,’ Bridget says over the thump of her own heart. ‘Nasty shock, that’s all. As long as Rosie’s OK.’

‘She’s breathing normally,’ the nurse says. ‘Her heart rate is regular. Try not to worry. Stay here for now and I’ll give you a shout when the police arrive.’

‘Yeah. Cheers.’

The nurse walks away. Bridget stares after her a moment before returning her gaze to Toni.

‘What the hell…?’ Toni says.

‘Emily was Ollie’s accomplice,’ Bridget whispers. ‘Ollie, online Ollie, was Owen, Emily’s brother. They were working together.’

‘What? How?’ Toni’s brow furrows.

‘We need to keep our voices down. The guy at the house, the guy I… you know. That was Emily’s brother. I’m guessing it was Emily who picked Rosie up and took her there.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me…’

‘I didn’t know. Emily wasn’t at the house when I— I didn’t know, Tones.’

Bridget watches realisation dawn on Toni’s face.

‘You saved her again,’ Toni says quietly, and then, after a moment, ‘And now the police are coming. And Emily…’

Bridget nods. ‘Yes.’ She feels tired, in her bones. ‘The police.’

‘She called you an assassin.’

‘Yes.’

An eerie calm has descended on the ward. There are no raised voices, no hints of disruption in the corridor. Wherever they have taken Emily, they must have her behind closed doors. Bridget wonders what she will do now. Will she confess to everything? And then of course they’ll have to face the matter of the body. Emily knows it was her; the fingerprints on the gun will match. Arrest is inevitable now.

Slowly Bridget drags the privacy curtain back around its U-shaped runner. From the other side of her niece’s hospital bed she faces Toni once again: Tones, her mad, broken little sister, the sister she has spent her life trying to save, mostly from herself. With a heavy heart, she digs in the pocket of her leather jacket and pulls out the empty packets she found in the bathroom bin. From the other pocket the ones she found under Toni’s bed. She meets her sister’s eye, holds it, keeps her voice low.

‘We have minutes.’ She throws the blister packs onto the bed. ‘I found the diazepam in the bathroom bin, the rest under your bed. I only went under there to grab a sports bag. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’

Toni looks from the empty packs back to Bridget. Tears spring, overflow, run down her face, which she plunges into her hands.

‘Oh God.’

‘Tell me, Toni. Tell me quickly and very quietly. I can’t help you unless you tell me.’

‘I didn’t realise she’d been drugged.’ Her voice is no more than a whisper. ‘You never said. I just… I just wanted to give her something to help her sleep. I gave her too many.’

‘But diazepam? I thought you were going to give her a couple of paracetamol. How many?’

‘Bridge, please. Too many, yes, too many, but not enough to—’

‘What were you thinking? You must have known you’d knock her out even if she hadn’t had anything else. And what about all these? Movicol, Imodium… Why were they under the bed?’

Toni’s face crumples, reddens. ‘I was trying to keep her safe.’

‘You gave them to her? What, all at once?’

Toni nods, gives a loud sob.

‘What? Was she… When?’ And then it hits her. ‘Before the auditions? Is that why she was sick? The diarrhoea? The constipation? Tell me. You have to tell me.’

Toni stares down at her hands folded in her lap. She looks so small. After a moment, she gives another sob. ‘I just wanted… She’s only fifteen. Oh God.’

‘You could have burst her colon or… or seriously dehydrated her.’ Bridget makes her way around the bed, grabs the spare plastic chair to sit on. She takes her sister’s hands in her own.

‘I would never… I just wanted to keep her safe, Bridge.’ Toni’s voice is a low howl. ‘And she was so peaceful afterwards, all cuddled up with me on the sofa. She was my little girl… she was mine.’

‘We need to keep our voices right down. We need to whisper. Look at me, Tones. Look at me.’

Toni sniffs. Her eyes are red. They are scared.

‘You can’t ever do that again, Tones. Yeah? You can’t. I know you were trying to protect her, I know you’re finding it hard letting her go, but you can’t do that. They’ll take her away from you. You could go to prison. I’m going to prison for sure, so there’s only you now. I won’t be able to look after you or Rosie for a long time, hon. And you’ll lose her, Tones. They’ll take her off you. Do you get that? Tell me you get that.’

Toni’s mouth distorts. ‘I only did it a few times. It was all right before Emily came, but then… I didn’t trust her. Rosie loved her though. And then I did trust her, a bit, but I was jealous. I didn’t want her coming in and taking my daughter. But I could feel Rosie breaking away from me. She will break away. She’ll go off into the world and she’ll never come back. It will never be the same. I can’t lose her, Bridge. I can’t be on my own. What if she’d got that film part? What if she’d become famous?’

‘But there never were any auditions, hon.’

‘What?’ Confusion writes itself all over Toni’s face.

‘That’s what I’m telling you. Emily and her brother were working together. Kidnapping and God knows what, God knows how many girls. I’m guessing the auditions were a way of luring them in…’

Toni wipes her face with her hand. She exhales heavily, shakily. ‘I can’t take it in. I can’t believe it.’ She bites on the knuckle of her thumb, a tiny cry escaping her. ‘But why bother with the online thing? Why not just bundle her into a van?’

‘I don’t know. A game of trust or something. We’ll find out, I’m sure. Diversion? So that Emily stayed beyond suspicion? Although I can’t think how they thought the police wouldn’t trace the phone. I don’t know, Tones, I don’t know.’

Toni nods, bites her thumbnail, tears off a thin white strip with her teeth.

‘You won’t tell them, will you?’ she says. ‘The police? About what I’ve done?’

‘Of course I won’t. But this stops here, today – do you understand? You have to promise you’ll get help. Professional help. I need to know you can look after Rosie when I’m not here. You have to promise me.’

Toni meets her eye and nods, her face sorrow itself. ‘I promise.’

Voices outside, in the ward. Another walkie-talkie.

‘They’re here. This is it.’

Toni nods, sniffs. ‘What do we say?’

‘Nothing. We know her, she’s Rosie’s agent – we thought she was nice. But apart from that, we say nothing, yeah? Just leave Ollie out of it for now.’

Bridget stands. She feels the brush of Toni’s fingers across her palm as their hands slowly separate. She looks over at her niece. Rosie’s legs are straight and still as a soldier’s. Her tube of saline is undisturbed. It takes Bridget another second to see that her eyes are open.