Panic rose inside Shabana in the same way it did when she heard Vihaan slamming the front door after a night out. If he was drunk, he was angry. And if he was angry, he was going to release his aggression upon his wife by doing what he wanted to her while she laid still, eyes closed and fists balled, dreaming of a better life.
Other voices began to fill her car, more words and languages that she didn’t understand, along with haunting cries, shouting and people in distress.
‘What is happening?’ she pleaded aloud. ‘I don’t like this, please, can you make the car stop? I would like to get out.’
She pushed a button on the door hoping it would open, but nothing happened. She looked at the phone Reyansh had given her and pressed the green button, holding it to her ear. ‘Reyansh?’ she asked. ‘Reyansh, son, can you hear me? Are you there? Please?’
But there was no reply. Shabana had a feeling the new life she dared to dream of was already slipping from her grasp.
PART TWO
Chapter 6
Libby Dixon didn’t need to check her reflection in the bathroom mirror to know she was still scowling.
It was already fixed in place by the time her alarm clock sounded at 6.45 a.m. and she remembered where she would be spending her day. Her neck ached from sleeping at an awkward angle so she pressed her fingertips into muscles either side to try and loosen it up. Her scowl remained as she trudged across the landing, showered and then put minimal effort into applying her make-up. She scowled as she covered a spot on her chin, tied her naturally wavy brown hair into a ponytail and sifted through her wardrobe. She settled on a conservative outfit incorporating a simple cream blouse, navy A-line skirt and matching jacket. She had no one to impress.
And now, as she stood in the kitchen, even her house rabbits, Michael and Jackson, couldn’t bring a smile to her face as they chased each other around her feet. She poured herself a second cup of coffee in the hope an extra caffeine hit might lift her spirits. It didn’t, so still she scowled.
A sulky, grumpy mindset wasn’t a natural fit for Libby. She invariably found a positive in the bleakest of moments. But today was an exception. And if the next twelve hours were anything like yesterday, she wasn’t going to smile again until the end of the week when it was all over. And that meant four more days of scowling.
She fed the rabbits fresh hay and pellets, slipped on an old pair of scuffed mules, threw her handbag over her shoulder and made her way towards the front door. She paused to remove a mobile phone from her pocket and checked her emails, texts and social media. She let out a silent sigh when once again, there were no updates in her search for him.
Maybe it’s time to give up on you?she asked herself and dropped the phone into her bag.
Libby’s mood was at rock bottom and a stark contrast to twenty-four hours earlier when she’d awoken with nervous excitement. She had set her alarm for earlier than usual to allow time for a run along Birmingham’s canal towpaths that looped around regenerated factories before returning home for a breakfast of organic fruit and a low-fat yoghurt. Then once she’d washed and conditioned her hair, she had used her most expensive brand-name cosmetics and removed the plastic cover from one of five freshly dry-cleaned suits, one for each day of the week.
Libby had been keen to make a good first impression on the strangers she was to spend a week in close confines with. However, her fervour had sunk like a lead balloon within minutes of her arrival. By their unwelcoming looks, her presence was a formality they’d had no say in. Their disdain had quickly become mutual.
The front door locked behind her and, once outside, she felt the glow of the early morning sun on her face. At least the warm April morning was something to be thankful for, she thought, and she rolled up the sleeves of her jacket and began her journey.
She walked through the shared gardens of the gated community in which she lived, out through the towering black wrought iron gates, along the towpath and towards Birmingham’s city centre, which loomed in the distance. The skyscrapers that peppered the horizon hadn’t been there when she had first moved to the city from Northampton nine years earlier. Her adopted home was changing with the times and at such a rapid pace that she often felt the modern world was leaving her behind.
It was the same with relationships. Many of her friends were now cohabiting or married and starting families. Libby had lost count of the amount of baby showers she’d attended, or the number of times friendsasked if she’d found someone to replace her ex-fiancé William yet. She hadn’t.
At the time, she had forgiven him for a drunken kiss with an attractive intern at work, until seven months later when the teenager had turned up on their doorstep, clearly pregnant. Libby had kicked William out of their house and had refused to engage with him in any way since. But hating him hadn’t prevented her from spending a whole weekend in tears when mutual friends informed her he was now engaged and father to a baby girl.
He was the love of her life and no one could understand why, after splitting up almost two and a half years earlier, Libby remained single. But she had made a vow to herself that rather than worrying about finding Mister Right or comparing her life to that of her peers, she would embrace being a single, independent woman. But on the nights with just her pets and a bottle of Pinot Grigio for company, she’d log on to dating websites to see who else had been left on the shelf. Sometimes she’d just look at their photographs; other times she’d hover over their profiles finding reasons not to talk to them. She might make polite conversation with those that made the first move, but once they became too persistent or interested, she would either ghost or block them.
Thenhecame into her world. But within the blink of an eye, he’d vanished as quickly as he’d appeared. Even now, after six months, he crossed her mind on a daily basis. She wondered if he’d given her as much thought as she had given him.
Libby passed a handful of council workmen on a trawler barge lowering dredges into the water, scraping them along the bottom of the canal to collect submerged objects. More often than not, they were the ride-and-go dockless bikes that blighted the city like a plague of large, metal rats. They were supposed to be the solution forthose in lower wage brackets who could not afford escalating insurance costs for regular vehicles or to replace their soon-to-be outdated cars with the next generation of electric driverless cars.
However, little regulation meant manufacturers were undercutting one another and the bikes had flooded the market. And as some went out of business, they became free to use and abuse. Libby shook her head as the steel-rimmed net rose above the water’s surface and she counted six more brightly coloured cycles. The environment was fast becoming another casualty of the race for driverless cars that Libby had grown to hate.
She left the quiet of the canals and made her way up a set of steep brick steps to street level. She passed one of the Birmingham City University campuses where, after casting aside a less than rewarding career as a bank’s mortgage advisor, she’d spent most of three years retraining to become a mental health nurse. Her new career was a good fit and she longed to return to it once this week was out of the way.
As Libby passed Monroe Street, a long, curved road surrounded either side by cafés, bistros, independent retailers and boutiques, she refused to allow her eyes to rest on it. Once, it was a neighbourhood she’d regularly frequented. But two years had passed since she’d last ventured along it. She remembered every second of the sequence of events like it was yesterday.
There were three moments in Libby’s life that she had no desire to revisit. And that was one of them.
Chapter 7
Come rain or shine, Libby chose to complete her twenty-five-minute walk to work on foot. Only rarely, such as when forecasters predicted a particularly nasty weather front, might she book a taxi. And even then, she only chose a firm that provided a driver. But as cheaper, fully autonomous vehicles became the norm, manned cabs were proving costly to operate and were becoming few and far between.
Much to her annoyance, the driverless car propaganda was at an all-time high. Tax breaks, free battery charging and drastically reduced insurance rates encouraged eighty per cent of drivers to switch to autonomous vehicles within the first year, a target reached more rapidly than predicted. Libby couldn’t be persuaded. She would not put her life in the hands of a robot because she knew the damage they were capable of. She cursed under her breath as a fleet of empty autonomous cars emblazoned with garish, illuminated advertising passed her. The sooner robot car spam was regulated, the better, she thought.
She maintained a steady pace towards Birmingham city centre when she heard a woman’s voice cut through the air.
