Even before she saw the house, Jazz knew that something was very wrong. She could smell it in the air, see it in the shifting shadows of the trees lining the street, hear it in the expectant silence. She could feel it in her bones.

Dread gave her pause, and for a moment she stood and listened to the stillness. She wanted to run, but she told herself not to be hasty, that her mother had long since hardwired her for paranoia and so her instincts should be trusted.

She hurried along a narrow, overgrown alleyway that emerged into a lane behind the row of terraced townhouses. Not many people came this way, out beyond the gardens, and she was confident that she could move closer to home without being seen.

But seen by whom?

Her mother's voice rang through her head: Always assume there's someone after you until you prove there isn't. Maybe everyone had that cautionary voice in the back of their mind; their conscience, their Jiminy Cricket. For Jazz, it always sounded like her mother.

She walked along the path, carefully and slowly, avoiding piles of dog shit and the glistening shards of used needles. Every thirty seconds she paused and listened. The dreadful silence had passed and the sounds of normalcy seemed to possess the air again. Mothers shouted at misbehaving children, babies hollered, doors slammed, dogs barked, and TVs blared inanely into the spaces between. She let out a breath she hadn't been aware of holding. Maybe the heat and grime of the city had gotten to her more than usual today.

Trust your instincts, her mother would say.

"Yeah, right." Jazz crept along until she reached her home's back gate, then paused to take stock once more. The normal sounds and smells were still there but, beyond the gate, the weighted silence remained. The windows were dark and the air felt thick, the way it did before a storm. It was as if her house was surrounded by a bubble of stillness, and that in itself was disquieting. Perhaps she's just asleep, Jazz thought. But more unnerved than ever, she knew she should take no chances.

She backed along the alley for a dozen steps and waited outside her neighbor's gate. She peered through a knot hole in the wood, scoping the garden. The house seemed to be silent and abandoned, but not in the same, ominous fashion as her own. Birds still sang in this garden. She knew that Mr. Barker lived alone, that he went to work early and returned late every day. So unless his cleaners were in, his house would be deserted.

"Good," Jazz whispered. "It'll turn out to be nothing, but ." But at least it'll relieve the boredom. To and from school, day in day out, few real friends, and her mother constantly on edge even though the Uncles made sure they never had any financial worries. No worries at all, the Uncles always said .

Yeah, it'd turn out to be nothing, but better to be careful. If she ever told her mother she'd had some kind of dreadful intuition, even in the slightest, and had ignored it, the woman would be furious. Her mother trusted no one, and even though Jazz couldn't help but follow her in those beliefs, still she sometimes hated it. She wanted a life. She wanted friends.

She opened Mr. Barker's gate. The wall between their gardens was too high to see over, and from the back of his garden she could see only two upstairs windows in her house-her own bedroom window, and the bathroom next to it. She looked up for a few seconds, then brashly walked the length of the garden to Barker's back door.

Nobody shouted, nobody came after her. The neighborhood noise continued. But to her left, over the wall, that deathly silence persisted.

Something is wrong, she thought.

Mr. Barker's back door was sensibly locked. Jazz closed her eyes and turned the handle a couple of times, gauging the pressure and resistance. She nodded in satisfaction; she should be able to pick it.

Taking a small pocket knife from her jeans she opened the finest blade, slipped it into the lock, and felt around.

A bird called close by, startling her. She glanced up at the wall and saw a robin sitting on its top, barely ten feet away. Its head jerked this way and that, and it sang again.

Above the robin, past the wall, a shape was leaning from Jazz's bedroom window.

She froze. Silhouetted against the sky, it was difficult to make out any details, but when the shape turned, she saw the outline of a ponytail, the sharp corner of a shirt collar.

It was the Uncle who told her to call him Mort.

She never bothered with their names. To her they were just the Uncles, the name her mother had been using ever since Jazz could remember. They came to visit regularly, sometimes in pairs or threes, sometimes on their own. They would ask her mother how things were, whether she needed anything or if she'd "had any thoughts." They never accepted a drink or the offer of food, but they always left behind an envelope containing a sheaf of used ten and twenty pound notes.

They told Jazz that she never had to worry about anything, which only worried her more. When they left, her mother would slide the envelope into a drawer as though it was dirty.

But what was this one doing in her bedroom? Whatever his purpose, Jazz didn't like it. They had never, ever come into her room when she was at home, and her mother assured her that they did not snoop around when she was out. They were perfect gentlemen. Like gangsters, Jazz had said once, and we're their molls. Her mother had smiled but did not respond.

The Uncle turned his head, scanning the gardens and alleyway.

He'll see me. If the robin calls again and he looks down to locate it, he'll see me pressed here against Mr. Barker's back door.

The bird hopped along the head of the wall, pausing to peck at an insect or two. Jazz worked at the lock without looking, waiting for the feel of the tumblers snicking into place. One . two . three . two to go, and the last two were always the hardest.

The Uncle moved to withdraw back in to the room, and Jazz let go of her breath in a sigh of relief.

The robin chirped, singing along with the chaotic London buzz of traffic and shouts.

The Uncle leaned from the window again just as Jazz felt the lock disengage. She turned the handle and pushed her way in behind the opening door, never looking away from the shadow of the man at her bedroom window.

He didn't see me, she thought. She left the door open; he'd be more likely to see the movement of it closing than notice it was open.

The robin fluttered away.

Jazz did not wait to question what was happening, or why. She hurried through Mr. Barker's house, careful not to knock into any furniture, cautious as she opened or closed doors. She didn't want to make the slightest sound.

In his living room, she moved to the front window. The wooden Venetian blinds were closed but pressing her face to the wall, she could see past their edge. Out in the street, she saw just what she had feared.

Two large black cars were parked outside her house. Beamers.

Jazz's heart was thumping, her skin tingling. Something's happened. Rarely had more than three Uncles visited at once, and now there were two cars here, parked prominently in the street with windows still open and engines running, as if daring anyone to approach. They're a law unto themselves, her mother sometimes said.

Her mum had rarely said anything outright against the Uncles, but she never needed to. Her unease was there on her face for her daughter to see. But Jazz could not just sit here and spy on her own house, wondering what had gone wrong.

She and her mum had talked many times about fleeing the house if trouble ever came to the door. They'd made plans, created a virtual map in their minds, and once or twice they'd pursued the escape route, just to make sure it could really work.

All Jazz had to do now was reverse it.

She found Mr. Barker's attic hatch in one of his back bedrooms. This was a cold, sterile room with white walls, bare timber floors and only an old rattan chair as furniture. She lifted the chair instead of dragging it, positioning it beneath the hatch, then stood carefully on its arms and pushed the hatch open. It tipped to the side and thumped onto the timber joists.

Jazz cringed and held her breath. It had been a soft impact, muffled in the attic. Unlikely it would travel through to her house; these places were solid.

Got to be more careful than that.

Fingers gripping the edge of the square hole in the ceiling, she pushed off the chair, trying to get her elbows over the lip of the hatch. The chair rocked, tipping onto two legs and then back again with another soft thud. She let her torso and legs dangle there for a while, preparing to haul herself up and in. Jazz was fitter than most girls her age-others were more interested in boys, drinking and sex than keeping themselves fit and healthy-but she also knew that she could easily hurt herself. One torn muscle and .

And what? I won't be able to run? She couldn't shake the sense of foreboding. The sun shone outside, a beautiful summer afternoon. But grey winter seemed to be closing in.

She lifted herself up into the darkness, sitting on the hatch's edge and resting for a moment. Listening. Looking for light from elsewhere. She still had no idea what had happened. If the Uncles were waiting for her to come home, perhaps they'd also be checking her house. And that could mean the attic, too.

When her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness she set off on hands and knees. Mr. Barker's attic had floorboards, so the going was relatively easy. The old bachelor didn't have much stuff to store, it seemed; there were a couple of taped-up boxes tucked into one corner, and an open box of books slowly swelling with damp. Mustiness permeated the attic, and she wondered why he'd shoved the box up here. She hadn't seen a bookcase anywhere downstairs. There were rumors that Mr. Barker's wife had left him ten years ago, so perhaps these books might hold too many ghosts for him to live with.

At the wall dividing Barker's property from hers, Jazz crawled into the narrowing gap between floor and sloping roof. Right at the eaves, just where her mother said it would be, was a gap where a dozen blocks had been removed. Lazy builders, she'd said when Jazz had asked. But Jazz found it easy to imagine her mother up here with a chisel and hammer, while she was in school and Mr. Barker was at work.

She wriggled through the hole into her own attic. There were no floorboards here, and she had to move carefully from joist to joist. One slip and her foot or knee would break through the plasterboard ceiling into the house below. She guessed she was right above her bedroom.

A wooden beam creaked beneath her and she froze, cursing her clumsiness. She should have listened first, tried to figure out whether the Uncle was still in there. Too late now. She lowered her head, turned so that her ear pressed against the itching fiber-wool insulation, and held her breath.

Voices. Two men were talking, but she could barely hear their mumbled tones. She was pretty sure their voices did not come from directly below. Her room, she thought, was empty . for now.

There were two hatches that led down from the attic into the townhouse. One was above the landing, visible to anyone in the upstairs corridor or anyone looking up the stairs from below. And then there was the second, just to her right, which her mother had installed in Jazz's bedroom. Emergency escape, she'd said, smiling, when Jazz had asked what she was doing.

Everything you told me was right, Jazz thought. She felt tears threatening but couldn't go to that place yet. Not here, and not now.

She crawled to the hatch, feeling her way through the darkness. When she touched its bare wood and felt the handle, she paused for a minute, listening. She could still hear muffled voices, but they seemed to come from farther away than her bedroom.

Jazz closed her eyes and concentrated. Sometimes, she could sense whether someone else was close. Most people called it a sixth sense, though usually it was a combination of the other five. With her, sometimes, it was different.

She frowned, opened her eyes, and grasped the handle.

Maybe there was an Uncle standing directly below her. Maybe not. There was only one way to find out.

Jazz lifted the hatch quickly and squinted against the sudden light. She leaned over the hole and found her room empty.

Good start, she thought. Everything her mother had said to her, everything she had been taught, shouted at her to flee. But there was something going on here that she had to understand before she could bring herself to run.

Jazz lowered herself from the hatch into her room, landing lightly on the tips of her toes, knees bending to absorb the impact. She remained in that pose, looking around her room and listening for movement from outside.

Her drawers had been opened, book case upset, and clothes were strewn across the floor. The cover of her journal lay loose and torn on her bed like a gutted bird.

Mum! she thought. And for the first time the fear came in hard. The Uncles had always protected and helped them, even if her mother had little respect for them. But now they seemed dangerous. It was as if their surface veneer had been stripped away and her perception of them was becoming clear at last.

She glanced back up at the ceiling hatch, close enough to her desk that it would be easy to jump up and disappear again.

The voices startled her. There were two of them, seemingly coming from directly outside her door. She slid beside her bed and lay there listening, expecting Mort to enter her room at any second. He would not see her straight away, but he would see the open hatch. And then they'd have her.

"We could be waiting here forever," one voice said. Mort.

"We won't. She'll be home soon." This other voice was female. The only time a woman had ever accompanied the Uncles was the day after Jazz's father had died, twelve years ago. Jazz had been young, but she could still remember some details about that day. The woman had tried to soothe and comfort her mother, while all around them the Uncles had been busy packing their belongings. By early evening they were in a brand new house: this one. And the woman-whose voice was cold and uncaring, even then-had called herself Josephine Blackwood.

"What if she isn't? What do we do then?"

"We stay calm and proceed," the woman said. The same voice; the same coldness. "She's just one girl."

"She's more than that," Mort said.

"Shush! Never in public! Never outside!"

The Uncle sighed. "So, is she definitely ." He trailed off, as though there was something he did not want to say.

"Of course," the woman said. "I saw to it myself."

The two fell silent again, their presence suddenly filling the house. Jazz lay there, turning over what they had said. I saw to it myself, the woman had said. Saw to what?

"I'm going downstairs," the man said at last. "No need to guard this door anymore, at least."

The woman sighed, and then let out what sounded like a sob. "Please, help me down."

Jazz listened to the man and woman slowly descending the stairs, the sounds awkward and shuffling.

No need to guard this door anymore .

There were more voices from down there, subdued and indistinguishable.

Is she definitely .?

"Mum," Jazz whispered, and the world seemed to sway.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply several times, then stood and crept from her room. She moved fluidly, drifting rather than walking, feeling the air part around her and guide her along. She knew where every creaking floorboard was, and she didn't make a sound.

Her mother's bedroom door was closed, and there was a smear of blood on the handle.

It was small-half the size of the nail on her little finger-but she saw it instantly. Her heart thumped harder as she turned and glanced downstairs. There was no one at the bottom of the staircase looking up, but she could still hear their voices elsewhere in the house.

What have you done to my mother? she thought, touching the handle, opening the door, stepping inside and seeing what they had done. And also smelling and tasting it, because so much blood could not be avoided.

Her legs began to give way. She grasped the handle and locked her elbow so that she did not fall. Then she closed her eyes.

But some things can never be unseen.

Her mother lay half on the bed, her upper body hanging down so that her head rested on the floor. A line had been slit across her throat, a dark grin gaping.

I saw to it myself, the woman had said.

Jazz felt strangely numb. Her heart hammered in her chest but her mind was quiet, logical, already plotting out the next few minutes. Back to her room, the phone, the police, up into the attic to await their arrival, listen to the Uncles and that Blackwood woman panicking as the sirens approached .

And then she saw the writing on the floor. At first she thought it was a spray of blood, but now she could see the words there, and she imagined the determination her mother must have had to write them while blood spewed from her throat.

Jazz hide forever.

She bit back a cry, steeled herself against the tears.

Her mother stared at her with glazed eyes.

Jazz looked at the words again, then glanced at the staircase to her left, and started backing away.

As she reached her own door, she realized that she'd left her mother's bedroom door open. They'd notice, know she'd been here.

She darted back across the landing and closed the door. Her last sight of her mother was bloodied and smudged with tears.

The words on the floor shouted at her even when the door was closed.

Jazz hide forever.

She had always listened to her mother.

Lifting herself back through the ceiling hatch in her bedroom, Jazz wondered what kind of life those words had doomed her to.

They were sitting together in the park, watching as ducks drifted back and forth on the pond, squabbling over thrown bread and scolding the moorhens.

"Pity there aren't any swans," her mother said.

"I love swans," Jazz said. "So graceful and beautiful."

"They may look gentle, but they're hard as nails." Her mother shuffled closer to her on their picnic blanket. The remains of their lunch lay beside them on paper plates, already attracting unwanted attention from wasps and flies. "If there were swans here, we'd have a full hierarchy represented. Swans would be the rulers of the pond, ducks below them, moorhens below them. Then there'd be the scroungers; the little birds, like that wren over there." She pointed to a tiny bird hopping from branch to branch in a bush that grew out over the water.

"So what are we?" Jazz asked. Even then she was a perceptive girl, and she knew that this conversation was edging toward something.

"We're the little birds," her mother said. She smiled, but it was sad.

"I think you're a swan," Jazz said, flooded by a sudden feeling of complete love.

Her mother shrugged. "Maybe you," she said. "One day, maybe you."

The wren dropped to the grass and hopped across to the edge of the pond. It started worrying at a lump of bread that the other birds seemed to have missed, but the movement brought it to the attention of the mallards. A duck splashed from the water and came at the wren, wings raised and head down, bill snapping. The wren turned and hopped away slowly, almost as though it was trying to maintain its dignity. The duck took the bread.

"Wise thing," her mother said. "If you're on the run, you never run unless you know they're right behind you."

"Why?"

"You never call attention to yourself." Her mother leaned back in her chair, looking around the park as though waiting for someone.

Never run unless you know they're right behind you.

Jazz was afraid that if she did start running, she'd brain herself on a lamp post. She was doing her best not to cry-that would draw attention-but the pressure and heat behind her face was immense.

For a minute or two, she had considered calling the police from Mr. Barker's house and waiting until they arrived. But she had known that if she paused any longer, she would never move again. So she had left the way she arrived, walking the length of Barker's garden, hurrying along the alleyway, emerging out onto the street and putting more distance between her and her mother with every step she took.

She hated blinking, because whenever her eyes closed she saw the blood, and that twisted, splayed body that had once been her mother.

That woman slit her throat. Cut her and left her to bleed to death! And they had been waiting for Jazz to come home.

To do the same to her?

She walked past a coffee shop and glanced in the window. A man and woman sat turned to face the street. The woman was sipping from a cup, but the man stared straight out at Jazz. He wore a smart dark suit and sunglasses, and his lips twitched into what might have been a smile.

Jazz hurried on, turning into the next side road she came to, rushing through a lane between gardens and emerging onto another street. She passed an old woman walking her dog. The dog watched her go by.

It took Jazz ten minutes to realize she had no idea where she was going. Where could she hide? And how could she just leave her mother?

She emerged onto a busy shopping street. It was noisy and bustling, and smelled of exhaust fumes and fast food. A cab pulled up just along the street and a tall, elegant woman stepped out. She brushed an errant strand of hair from her eyes, paid the cabbie and walked away with her mobile phone glued to her ear .

And Jazz's mother was dead.

She was dead, murdered, and now Jazz was more alone than she had ever been before.

They'll be on the streets, she thought, and the idea bore her mother's voice. Once they know you're not coming home, they'll be on the streets looking for you.

She stepped into the doorway of a music shop and scanned the sidewalk and the road. No big black Beamers, but that meant nothing. Maybe they'd be on foot. Maybe, like her mother had been telling her for the last couple of years, they had so many fingers in so many pies that none of them knew the true extent of their reach.

She wiped her eyes and looked both ways. A dozen people turned their heads away just as she looked at them. A dozen more looked up. In a crowd such as this, there was always someone watching her.

"Oh shit, oh fuck. What the hell am I going to do?" she whispered.

A black BMW cruised around the corner. Jazz pressed back into the door but it was locked, the damn shop was shut, and then the BMW passed and continued along the street.

She hurried back out onto the pavement, resisting the temptation to keep her head down. She had to watch, had to know what was going on.

A tall man emerged from a fast food joint carrying something that looked like steaming road kill in a napkin. He was dressed in a sharp black suit, and as she paused six steps from him, he adjusted a lump beneath his jacket.

Gun, Jazz thought.

He looked up, glanced around at her and smiled. "Too hot to eat," he said, raising the food toward her.

She ran. The man called after her, and even though he sounded friendly and alarmed, she could not afford to stop, not now that she'd started running, because she was drawing attention to herself. And if and when she did stop, she'd collapse into a heap, and the white-hot grief would start tearing her up.

The grief, and the loneliness.

She ducked into a tube station, grateful for the shadows closing around her. The smell of the underground seemed to welcome her in.