Midnight is a Lonely Place. Barbara Erskine

up by the wind and carried only a few yards before it was dissipated and dissolved. ‘Alison?’ She shouted louder. Scrambling up to the edge of the hollow she put her hand to her eyes against the glare and stared round. The beach was empty.

      She turned round. There could be no question of the girl being there, under the sand, but for a moment her imagination was playing the wildest of tricks. She could see where it was soft and loose, where it had fallen, and where, in the bottom of the hollow, a long mound lay compressed beneath the clay. A mound that had the shape of a human grave.