‘It’s okay, Laura. He’s safe,’ he replied, hoping to persuade her back to the house. He couldn’t lift her if she dropped to her knees. Had no idea how he would encourage her to climb the stairs. Leaving her out here in her skimpy nightclothes and with nothing on her feet wasn’t an option, though. He needed to get her inside. Get her warm. ‘Let’s go back inside, shall we? And then—’
‘He’s not safe,’ Laura said, her voice flat, her gaze faraway. ‘He’s crying. I can hear him. You have to tell Sarah.’
Sarah?Steve squinted at her, uncomprehending. ‘What do I need to tell Sarah?’ he asked her, his heart slowing to a dull thud as his mind ricocheted back to his dream.
‘Ollie.’ She looked at him, her eyes unfocused, filled with palpable fear. ‘Sarah can’t take him away from me. He’s in danger. I have tosssave him.’
Fifty-Three
Sarah
Attempting to get her life back in some sort of order the next morning, Sarah was stuffing clothes into the washing machine when Ollie padded past her, heading towards the back door, which she’d left open after hanging the last load out. ‘Don’t go outside, sweetheart.’ She stopped him short of stepping out into the garden. ‘You don’t have any shoes on.’
‘But I want to play in the sand with my friend,’ he whined, kneading his eyes with one hand and pointing to his sandpit with his other. His invisible friend, she presumed, burying her irritation as she was reminded of the nonsense Laura had fed him.
‘I think your friend might have to go in for his breakfast.’ Not wanting her own bleak mood to affect her little boy, she played along anyway. ‘He’s probably hungry.’
‘No she’s not,’ Ollie said. ‘She just waved to me. She’s waiting for me.’
She?Frowning, Sarah walked over to the door to peer out. The garden was empty. He’d obviously invented another little friend. She wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not, but she was glad he didn’t appear to be as fixated as he had been on the little boy who swam with the fish. ‘The sand’s still damp, darling. You can play later when it’s dried out and you’re dressed,’ she told him, closing the door.
‘But I want to play now,’ Ollie insisted, his bottom lip protruding petulantly. He was clearly fractious from too little sleep after waking several times in the night. Tossing and turning herself, worried about Steve, she’d eventually brought him into her bed. He’d had a nightmare, been crying out for his daddy. He knew something was wrong. He’d picked up on her mood. She needed to reassure him. She would have to take him to see Steve as soon as she’d spoken to him and established that he felt up to it.
‘You can’t play outside in bare feet, Ollie. Remember when you cut your foot? It was sore, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he conceded, blinking back the tears that were brimming.
‘Well then, you don’t want to do that again, do you?’ she said more firmly. Leaving the washing, she took hold of his hand to lead him back to the table. He was definitely overtired, having finally fallen asleep as dawn broke. Knowing the chances of her sleeping herself were nil, she’d got up and come downstairs. She’d already cleaned the house once, with Joe’s help, but her skin still crawled every time she imagined someone desecrating her space, and she’d ended up cleaning everything again like a woman possessed. The place still felt tainted, as if a bad omen hung over it. She’d been tempted to put it up for sale. But then she’d decided she wouldn’t let this hateful person ruin her life any more than she would let Laura endanger her son’s. She would fight. She had no other option. Laura should know that was what mothers did to protect their children, to the death if they had to.
‘How about you show me how to make scrambly as good as Becky does and then we snuggle up and watch a film together?’ she said, injecting some excitement into her voice. She’d made up her mind to spend time with him rather than take him into the nursery today. Her supervisor at the rescue centre had been understanding about her situation when she’d explained, thank goodness. She’d had too much time off lately.
‘Can we watchLand Before Time?’ Ollie asked hopefully.
‘Of course we can. We’ll have a special day together doing whatever we want to do. I think we deserve it, don’t you?’ Sarah smiled, immensely relieved that he’d chosen dinosaurs over fish. However cute they were, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to watch Nemo and Dory.
‘Can I crack the eggs, Mummy?’ he asked, looking a little more enthusiastic.
‘I think you’d better.’ She gave his hand a squeeze and helped him up onto his stool. ‘We’re bound to end up with bits of shell in it if I do it.’
‘Becky gets it out with her stensions,’ Ollie informed her with a knowledgeable little nod. ‘But she told me not to tell you.’
Collecting the eggs and milk from the fridge, Sarah smiled, imagining her friend doing just that. There were secrets and there were secrets, though. And that one was pretty harmless as secrets went.
They’d cracked the second egg into the bowl, Sarah praising Ollie’s expert egg-cracking skills, when there was a knock at the front door. The postman, she assumed, with something that didn’t fit through the letter box. ‘One second,’ she said to Ollie, grabbing the tea towel to wipe her hands as she went to answer it.
Pulling the door open, she was surprised to see a parcel sitting on the doorstep. Strange that the postman hadn’t waited, she thought, bending to retrieve it; a nondescript cardboard box that was relatively lightweight. She had no idea what it was – she hadn’t ordered anything – but it was definitely addressed to her, the name and address scrawled in capital letters on a plain white label. Furrowing her brow, she scanned the top and sides of the box, peered at the bottom of it. There didn’t appear to be any postmark. So who on earth had delivered it? There was a woman walking a dog a way off, but no one visible in the close vicinity, no courier vans disappearing into the distance. Had a neighbour received it by mistake and dropped it off? It seemed odd that someone would do that without stopping to speak to her. Assuming that was the explanation and that whoever it was must have been in a hurry, she carried it inside.
‘Won’t be long, Ollie,’ she called, placing the box on the hall table and grabbing her keys to score the brown parcel tape it was sealed with. She was momentarily startled when, pushing aside the tissue inside the box, she was confronted with a fluffy blue bunny. What on earth …? Laura had dropped it off, presumably, trying to make amends and probably apprehensive about hanging around – with good reason. Sarah hadn’t hidden the fact that she wasn’t very happy with her when they’d been at the hospital. Not sure what to make of the gesture, she lifted the bunny somewhat tentatively from its nest of shredded paper and her heart lurched violently.
It had an ear missing.
The opposite ear to the bunny sitting upstairs in her wardrobe.
Her mind faltering as she tried to make sense of it, she pulled out the folded sheet of paper that had been tucked underneath it, opening it with trembling hands.SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS,she read – and her heart stopped dead in her chest.
Cold terror and nausea churning inside her, she dropped the rabbit as if it might bite her and spun around towards the kitchen.
‘Ollie, we need to get you dressed, sweetheart. We—’ She stopped inside the door, her world careering off kilter as she realised he wasn’t there.
