It was less than half a mile to our house from that junction, but I could imagine the terror she had felt at being stalked, pursued, with the threat of being cornered and plucked off the street at any moment. Although I didn’t have to imagine it—I had seen it on her face when she burst through the door. The fact that this car had been waiting for her on a side road in The Park meant the driver knew the area well, knew there was little passing traffic because access to the estate was limited.
That was one of the upsides of living here—but it also meant the streets were rarely busy. On a quiet Thursday afternoon, there would probably be few pedestrians around.
The perfect place, in fact, to snatch someone without being seen. To bundle them into the back of a car and drive away.
The conclusion is clear, but it still hits me like a kick to the chest: whoever this was, they knew Leah’s routine already. They knew her school, they knew which bus she took, they knew her route home from the bus stop to the house. But then why had they pulled over and waited on my street, when Leah had already fled into the house and shut the door behind her? Why had they still been there when I came out to look?
I already know the answer: because they wanted to send me another message.
We know where you live. We can get to your family. Unless you give us what we want.
33
As I’m sitting there at the kitchen table the rage is still burning, a bubble of acid at the base of my throat. But overwhelming the anger there is fear as well, a parent’s darkest fear about how vulnerable a sixteen-year-old girl could be, alone on the streets of the city. The raw, undiluted fear of harm coming to those I loved most in the world—and the sense that I might be indirectly responsible.
I squeeze her hand across the kitchen table. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, Dad.” She takes a sip of orange squash. “You can stop asking me that now.”
“What happened to your keys?” I say.
“Don’t know,” she says. “Thought they were in my bag but I couldn’t look while I was running. Probably up in my room somewhere.”
“Have you still got that alarm in your schoolbag too?”
She nods. Leah had carried an attack alarm in her school backpack—the same type Jess had in her handbag—for the last few years.
The picture I took out on the street is next to useless. There had been no time to zoom in and the Volvo is a blurry gray smudge turning away on the edge of the shot. Nothing discernible of the driver or any markings on the car, let alone any part of the number plate.
Callum has sat close to his big sister the whole time, holding her hand.
“Why was there a man in his car, Leah?” His voice is uncharacteristically quiet. “What was he doing?”
“Don’t know, Cal,” she says, putting an arm around his small shoulders. “But it’s all OK now, isn’t it? Dad’s here, and we’re all fine.”
“Was he trying to… get you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“But you ran.”
“I was just a bit spooked because I kept on seeing the same car, that’s all. But there’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“I would run,” my son says gravely. “I would runsofast.”
She gives him a squeeze. “You’re a good runner, little man.”
“Will he come back?”
“No chance. Dad will put him on the naughty step if he does.” She gives me a meaningful look. “Isn’t that right, Dad?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “And then a policeman will take him away and put him in jail.”
I call 101 and give a description of the incident, a call handler taking down the fragment of the number plate I thought I could make out and advising me to call 999 if the car returns. He says they’ll try to route some more patrols through the area for the next few days.
Despite Leah’s protests, I call her school’s main office next to let them know what happened and give them a description of the car.
She’s been absorbed in her iPhone for the last fifteen minutes and it’s now pinging with new messages from concerned friends every few seconds. I make her toast with Nutella and she picksat it in between rapid two-thumb typing on her mobile, some of her customary teenage nonchalance starting to return.
