(Age) It was a truth universally acknowledged that all young women traveling from Britain to the Islamic State needed to go shopping first, and in that strange winter when girls started to go missing, Westfield Stratford City, a sprawling mall in east London, emerged as a favourite final destination before the journey.
It was almost dark as the four teenage girls got off the Jubilee Line. They had come straight from school, Bethnal Green Academy, where they excelled in their studies and were admired by teachers and fellow students alike as examples of fine young women: intelligent and well-spoken, joyful and vivacious.
They were all 15 or 16 and best friends, passionately close as only adolescent girls can be, and so protective of their group friendship that they often tweeted warnings about the danger of keeping secrets.
