On the weekend of October 17 1981, a party of girls who had set out on a sponsored walk from Beaminster became separated from their leader and disappeared into the worst fog ever recorded on the west coast of Dorset. For days search parties of anxious parents and police failed to trace the girls. Those that returned, finally, could give no coherent account of their strange exile from home.'Lord of the Flies was a book of this kind.' Observer'A compulsively readable work of the imagination.' Elaine Feinstein, Times'A delicate interweaving of Hansel and Gretel, Goldilocks, and 'Good Queen Bess'... its somber moods and haunting melodies give it a power beyond the range of mere intellect.' Literary Review