‘Did she sleepwalk?’
He evaded the question, looking apprehensively away again.
‘Steve!’ she yelled, causing him to jolt. ‘Did she sleepwalk?’ Shehadto find her. Ollie hadnotdisappeared from the face of the earth. He hadnot!She’dtaken him. She was the only one who would take him, her fevered mind compelling her to.Wherehad she taken him?
‘Yes.’ He sucked in a breath. It appeared to stop short of his chest. ‘I found her in the garden.’ He moved away from her, his face etched with pain as he turned to sink heavily to the stairs.
Sarah wanted to go to him. Wanted to tell him everything would be all right. Wanted someone to tellherit would.Please God… where was her baby? ‘Did she say anything?’ she asked past the excruciating lump in her throat.
Steve ran his hands over his face, then nodded slowly and closed his eyes. ‘She usually searches for Jacob when she goes out there. She wasn’t this time,’ he said, his voice hollow. ‘She was looking for Ollie.’ He stopped, his eyes haunted. ‘She thought you were going to take him away from her. She said he was in danger.’
She knew it. She justknewit!
‘Sarah, wait!’ Steve called after her, struggling to his feet as she raced back to the front door. ‘Where are you going? Have you called the police?’
‘Yes,’ she shouted back. ‘They’ll most likely call here.’ Halfway to her car, she didn’t stop. She was acting on instinct, drawn to what she knew Laura was drawn to. She’d been reliving her life with Jacob through Ollie, that much was clear. Sarah’s heart beat like a terrified bird in her chest as she wondered: would she relive his last moments? Moments she was sure had something to do with water. Why else her morbid fear of swimming pools?
Fifty-Six
Joe
Hearing someone quietly talking, Joe kept still, trying to make out what was being said above the pounding in his head. ‘Wake up, M-M-Mother. It’s time to face the music.’ He heard that clearly. Laura, unmistakably.
Pain searing through his neck, he tried to shift his position, to see what the hell was going on, and then groaned inwardly. She had to be joking. He was secured to the leg of a table with his own bloody handcuffs. A weighty farmhouse table that stood in the middle of a large kitchen.
Guessing she would know he’d come round soon enough anyway, he shuffled across the flagstones, manoeuvred the cuffs up the leg and managed to pull himself to a half-sitting, half-lying position. Her back towards him, Laura was kneeling on the floor three or four yards away from him, Sherry Caldwell’s body half obscured behind her. His heart rate ratcheting up, he scanned the room. No sign of Grant Caldwell. How long had he been out of it?
‘Laura,’ he said carefully, ‘what’s happened? Is your mother all right?’
Jerking, as if she might have forgotten he was there, Laura didn’t answer immediately. Then, ‘She’s just sleeping,’ she said with an apathetic shrug. ‘She accidentally swallowed some of my tablets. It was a bit of a struggle to get her to take them, but she’s so much easier to t-t-talk to when she’s quiet.’ She leaned further over her. ‘Aren’t you, Sherry?’
Shit.Joe tugged uselessly on the cuffs. He knew he had no chance of getting out of them. His only hope would be to lift the table. It was possible, but only if he could get his weight under it. His gaze went back to Laura. ‘Is she breathing?’ he asked her, cold foreboding twisting his stomach as he considered what she might do next.
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ she answered with an elongated sigh.
He felt his heart clunk back into its mooring as he saw Sherry stir, attempting to raise her head.
‘Shush, shush, Sherry.’ Laura pushed her back down. ‘You’re in my care now. We really should get you out of this dressing gown, though. White doesn’t flatter your p-p-pale skin tone, darling. You could be mistaken for a corpse.’
Craning his neck, Joe watched in morbid fascination as she reached into a make-up bag on the floor beside her and withdrew a lipstick. She removed the cap to test it against the back of her hand, and then applied it to her mother’s lips. Her movements were calm, methodical and unhurried. Trepidation prickled the length of his spine. If she hadn’t been out of her mind before, she seemed to be now. Driven there, probably, by the events in her life; thereafter by the woman who was supposed to care for her and who actually appeared not to care at all.
He took a breath. She wouldn’t do it, but it was worth a try. ‘Do you think you could undo the handcuffs, Laura?’ he asked her. ‘I can’t feel my—’
‘She ran Steve over.’ Laura glanced at him over her shoulder. ‘She hurt you too. She could have killed both of you. You shouldn’t waste any sympathy on her, Joe.’
‘I’m not,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s you I’m concerned about. You could end up in prison. If you let me go now, I can help you.’ Sweat trickling down his spine, he tried to keep her talking, attempting to get at least one shoulder under the tabletop as he did.
‘But you’re a policeman. You’ll feel obliged to helpher.’ She turned her attention back to her mother. ‘There,’ she said, tipping her head to one side as she surveyed her handiwork. ‘You look younger now. You never know, Grant might even stay with you because he wants to; your p-p-perfect man, the man you ruined mylifefor, loved more than me.’
Sherry moved, attempting again to lift her head. ‘That’s not true, Laura,’ she rasped. ‘I’ve never—’
‘Whose love you valued above mylife.’ Clutching her mother’s shoulders, Laura pushed her down. ‘Yourgrandchild’slife! You callous bitch!’
Her grandchild? Joe squinted at her, confused. There were no other siblings as far as he was aware. Sherry and Grant had had two children: Laura and Jacob. Unless … Was she talking aboutJacob?
‘She stole him from me,’ Laura went on unsteadily. ‘Convinced me that he would have a better future with her and Grant as his parents, that Grant would marry her if he thought she was pregnant. It would secure his future, she said. He would be financially secure for life. We all would – meaningshefucking well would.’
‘Laura, stop this!’ Sherry struggled yet again to raise herself.
