Back at the apartment I found my new roommate – Colette, who had moved in to replace Paige – sitting alone at the kitchen table.

"Hey Em –" she started, and then stopped instantly when she saw me. Her eye got very big and she looked me up and down. "Oh my God," she continued. "Are you OK? You look, uh –"

"I'm fine. I just need to have a shower and a nap. I went for a walk in the woods and, um, I got a little lost. No big –"

"Is that what happened? Well you better call your parents and your security guy, because both of them have called here asking why you've got your phone turned off. I told them you said you needed some time alone but I think –"

"Yeah," I cut Colette off, because the last thing I felt like doing was chit-chatting. "I lost my phone. I'll call them now."

Before calling anyone, though, I locked myself in the bathroom and undressed, catching my own eye in the mirror and barely able to maintain eye contact with myself.

What were you doing this afternoon? What was all that about?

In the shower, I stood under the hot water for almost half an hour, letting the heat and the pressure pummel my shoulders and the back of my neck. My knees still felt a little wobbly, too. I remembered that feeling from a trip to the seaside as a child with grandparents. They'd both fallen asleep in the sunshine and I'd wandered off, eventually clambering up a very steep bluff and only realizing I'd gone too far – and without planning a route back down – when I'd looked down and noticed how small and faraway the people on the beach looked. That feeling of crystal-clear realization that if I put a foot wrong there was a good chance I would die stayed with me for the rest of my life – a lesson learned. That's what I felt standing there in the shower, that jittery sensation from childhood of understanding just how close I'd just come to something very, very bad.

After wrapping a towel around my wet hair and emerging from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, I flopped onto my bed and used the landline to call my sister back in Norwich. Katie is two years older than me, the rebel to my good girl, and after an adolescence of at times quite vicious sibling rivalry we seemed to have settled into a more adult pattern of sisterly friendship. She knew me probably better than anyone on earth.

"Em?" She asked when she picked up. "Is that you? Where are you calling –"

"I lost my phone, I'm on the landline in my flat. I –" I broke off, unable to finish my sentence as everything that had happened over the past couple of days – and weeks, and months – suddenly seemed to come crashing down onto my head at that very moment.

Katie knew something was wrong. She also knew how much I hated getting emotional in front of other people – even my own sister – so she spoke up to spare me the humiliation. "I know, Em. I saw what happened online. How awful – mum and dad are furious with the security company –"

"What?" I asked, before realizing she was talking about the incident on campus – the one that was apparently, as I suspected it would be, splashed across the internet. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was no fun."

"That was no fun?" Katie repeated back me, surprised. "No fun, Emma? It looked fucking awful is what it looked like. All of those people standing about, not doing anything to help you. It made me so feel so helpless to see you like that. You're coming home for Christmas, right? Even if you can't make it by the 25th you could still come for New Year's Eve, couldn't you? Mum and Dad are so desperate to see you, Em. They're so worried. We're all so worried."

But I didn't want to talk about the campus assault or my Christmas plans. I thought I did – I thought that's why I called Katie in the first place – for a little taste of family and normality. It turned out what I really wanted to talk to her about was the fact that I was pretty sure I'd narrowly avoided being kidnapped by a – who had he been, exactly? Not a peasant, not on that fine horse and wearing that heavy cape, the sound of which flapping in the wind I could almost still hear. And not a Viking – nothing about him said 'Viking.' So who had he been? Some kind of higher-up? He'd mentioned an estate – is that where he –

"Emma!"

"Huh? What?" I asked, only then realizing that my sister had been talking the whole time.

"Are you even listening?" Katie scolded me affectionately. "I asked you where you lost your phone, you bloody scatterbrain."

"Well if I knew where I lost it, it wouldn't be lost," I joked, repeating something my mother used to say to us when we were kids because I couldn't actually tell my sister – as much as I wanted to – that I thought I'd lost my phone in the dark ages.

"You sound funny," she said a few minutes later, after we'd been talking about the new paint colors my mother was using in her most recent kitchen redecoration.

"Uh, do I?" I asked, perfectly aware that I did.

"Yeah. Are you OK, Em? I know you're not OK but it's something else. You sound like you're being evasive. Is something going on? Something you're not telling me about?"

I sighed heavily and rubbed my forehead and Katie jumped on it.

"Something is going on, isn't it? Why won't you tell me? I won't tell mum and dad – you know that, right?"

"I know. I just – Katie, I can't tell you. Maybe in the future, when things have settled down. But not right now. It's all too... strange."

I knew, just as I had reacted to Paige's evasions, that my sister would react the same way to mine. And she did, cajoling, promising she wouldn't tell anyone, all of the things I'd said to my friend before going right ahead and assuming she was mad when she told me the truth.

"I can't, Katie. I want to, but I can't."

"What does that mean? You want to but you can't? Why can't you? Has someone sworn you to secrecy?"

I laughed, but it wasn't a happy laugh. "I don't know what to say. I just can't tell you."

"OK," Katie didn't let up. "Then tell me why, at least. Why can't you tell me?"

"Because you'll think I'm bonkers, that's why. Seriously, Katie, it won't be good. Just stop pestering me about it will you? It's starting to fucking annoy me."

I didn't want to snap at my sister, and I regretted it immediately. But what else could I do? She wasn't going to stop. Desperate to make it up to her, I made a snap decision then and there to take the earliest possible flight back to the UK for the Christmas holiday. Social time during my senior year could wait until spring break. I'd pack a bag when I woke up, go find my phone on the Renner's property – and think about what to do if it wasn't there – and then head straight to the airport. It would be good for me to get away, Katie was right about that, and for more reasons than she knew.

Chastised by my harsh words, my sister cheered up right away when I said I would come home. When we hung up I actually felt a little hopeful, like maybe a simple change of location would be enough to take my mind off – well, off everything.