“Oh. Aoife Brubeck. She’s six. Only six!”

“Okay, okay. And what’s Aoife wearing?”

“T-shirt with a zebra on it. Leggings. Sandals.”

“Okay, rapid response is the name of the game, so I’ll call pier security, and ask for the duty guys to watch out for your daughter. You write your number here.” She hands me a pen and a name-card and I scribble my number down. “Dwight, you take Ed back down the pier, combing the crowds. I’ll stay here. If you don’t find her on the pier, go back to the Maritime Hotel and we’ll have another confab. Ed, if Aoife shows up here, I’ll call you. Now go. Go go go go!”

Back outside, my phone goes: Holly, asking, “Is she there?”

My unwillingness to answer gives it away: “No.”

“All right. Sharon’s texting all the wedding guests to search the hotel. Head back here. I’ll be in the lobby with Brendan.”

“Okay: I’ll be right ba—” But she’s ended the call.

Fairground music strobes from the funfair. Might Aoife be there? “They don’t let kids under ten past the turnstyles without an adult’s with them.” Dwight Silverwind’s still wearing his gem-encrusted waistcoat. “C’mon, let’s sweep the pier. Miss Nichols in there”—he nods at his sanctum—“she’ll hold the fort. She’s a traffic warden.”

“What about your”—I gesture at the booth—“you’re working.”

“Your daughter sought me out for a reason this morning, and I believe this is it.” We walk back down the pier, checking every face, even in the arcade. No good. Where the pier ends, or begins, I manage to thank Dwight Silverwind for his help, but he says, “No, no; I sense I’m scripted to stay with you until the end.”

I ask him, “What script?” but now we’re crossing the road and entering the coolness of the Maritime Hotel, where all I have to show for my mad rush down the pier is this wizened druid in fancy dress, who doesn’t even look that weird in this fantasy crowd. Behind the concierge’s desk an operations center’s been set up. A hassled manager, with a phone in the crook of his shoulder, is surrounded by Sykeses and Webbers who all look up at the shite father who caused this unraveling nightmare: Sharon and Peter, Ruth and Brendan, Dave and Kath, even Pauline and Austin. “She’s not on the pier,” I report, redundantly.

Ruth tells me, “Amanda’s up in your room, in case she makes her way back there.”

Pauline says, “Don’t worry now, she’ll show up any minute,” and Austin nods at her side, telling me that Lee’s taken his friends to the beach in case she took it into her head to go for a paddle. Dave and Kath look like they’ve gone through an age-accelerator and Holly scarcely notices I’m back.

The manager tells her, “Would you speak with the officer, Mrs. Brubeck?”

Holly takes the phone. “Hello … Yes. My daughter … Yes—yes, I knowit’s been less than an hour, but she’s only six, and I want an all-service emergency call to go out now … Then makean exception, Officer!… No, youlisten: My partner’s a journalist at a national newspaper, and if Aoife’s notfound safe and sound, you are going to regret very, very, very badly if you don’t put that 108 out now …  Thankyou. Six years old … Dark hair, shoulder length … A zebra T-shirt … No, not stripes, a T-shirt with a zebra on it … Pink trousers. Sandals … I don’t know, wait a moment.” Holly looks at me, her face ashen. “Was her scrunchie gone from the room?”

I look dumbly. Her what?

“The silver spangly thing she ties her hair back with?”

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. But before Holly can respond, her head lolls back at a weird angle and her face begins to shut down. What’s happening now? Once I saw a diabetic colleague go into what he called a hypo and this looks a lot like that. Sharon says, “Grab her!” and I lurch forwards, but Brendan and Kath have Holly and stop her falling.

The manager’s saying, “Through here, bring her through here,” and Holly is half dragged, half supported into a back office.

Her breathing is now ferocious in-out-in-out and Kath, who took a nursing course in Cork years ago, tells everyone, “Space! Back back back!” as she and Brendan lower her onto a hastily cleared sofa. “Slow your breathing, darling,” Kath tells her daughter. “Nice, slow breaths for me now …” I ought to be next to her but there are too many Sykeses in the way and the office is tiny, and, anyway, whose fault is all of this? I’m close enough to see Holly’s eyes, though, and the pupils shrinking away to almost nothing. Pauline Webber says, “Why’re her eyes doing that?”—and Peter’s shoulder gets in the way—and Holly’s face spasms—and Dave says, “Kath, shouldn’t we call for a doctor?”—and Holly’s face shuts down like she’s lost consciousness altogether—and Brendan asks, “Is it some sort of attack, Mam?”—and Kath says, “Her pulse is going fierce fast now”—and the manager says, “I’m calling an ambulance”—but then Holly’s lips and jaws begin to flex and she speaks the word “Ten …”blurrily, like a person profoundly deaf from birth, but huskier and tortuously slow, like a recording at the wrong speed, enunciating the syllable in drawn-out slow motion.

Kath looks at Dave and Dave shrugs: “Ten what, Holly?”

“She’s saying something else, Kath,” says Ruth.

Holly forms a second: “Fiffffff …”

Peter Webber whispers, “Is that English?”

“Holly darling,” says Dave, “what’re you telling us?”

Holly’s shaking slightly, so her voice does too: “Tee-ee-ee-een …”

I feel I ought to take charge, somehow. I mean, I am her partner, but I’ve never seen her—or anyone—like this.

Peter puts it together: “Ten-fifteen?”

Dave asks his daughter, “Love, what’s happening at ten-fifteen?”

“It won’t mean anything,” says Brendan. “She’s having an attack of some sort.” The pendant with Jacko’s last labyrinth on it slides off the edge of the sofa and swings there. Then Holly touches her head and winces with pain but her eyes are back to normal, and she blinks up at the array of faces frowning down. “Oh, f’Chrissakes. Don’t tell me I fainted?”

Nobody’s quite sure what to say at first.

“Sort of,” says Sharon. “Don’t sit up.”

“Do you remember what you said?” asks Kath.

“No, and who cares, when Aoife—Yeah. Numbers.”

“A time, Hol,” says Sharon. “You said, ‘Ten-fifteen.’ ”

“I’m feeling better. What happens at ten-fifteen?”

“If you don’t know,” says Brendan, “how can we?”

“None of this is helping Aoife. Did anyone finish my call with the police?”

“For all we knew,” says Kath, “you were having a cardiac arrest.”

“Well, I wasn’t, Mam, thanks. Where’s the manager?”

“Here,” says the unfortunate guy.

“Get me the police station, please. They’ll drag their heels on the 108 if I don’t fire a rocket up them.” Holly stands and steps towards the door and the rest of us shuffle back out. I reverse around behind the reception desk to make space—and a voice speaks: “Edmund.”

I find Dwight Silverwind, whom I’d forgotten about. “It’s Ed.”

“That was a message. From the Script.”

“A what?”

“A message.”

“What was?”

“Ten-fifteen. It’s a sign, a glimpse. It wasn’t from Holly.”

“Well, it certainly looked as if she said it.”

“Ed, is Holly at all psychic?”

I can’t hide my irritation. “No, she—” The Radio People. “Well, when she was younger, stuff happened, and she … A bit, yeah.”

Even more lines appear on Dwight Silverwind’s oak-grained, drooping face. “I won’t deny that I’m as much a ‘fortune discusser’ as a ‘fortune-teller.’ People need to voice their fears and hopes in confidence, and I provide that service. But occasionally I domeet the real thing—and when I do, I know it. Holly’s ‘ten-fifteen.’ It means something.”

His Gandalfy face, my headache, the spinning pier, Eilнsh … Any car could blow up at any time … The thought of Aoife being lost and scared and her mouth taped up —stop it stop it stop it …