She screamed.
It came from somewhere deep and primal, a raw sound that tore through her throat and echoed off the stone walls and rang back at her like an accusation. She screamed until her lungs were empty and then she drew breath and screamed again, and when the screaming wasn't enough she drove her fist into the wall. The impact shot up her arm like an electrical current. Her knuckles split and blood bloomed across the grey stone and the pain was bright and clean and real, and for one brief second it cut through the terror and gave her something solid to hold onto.
She hit the wall again. And again. The pain bloomed with each impact, sharp and clarifying.
When she stopped, her hand was throbbing and her knuckles were raw and she was breathing in short, ragged gasps that fogged the cool air. She pressed her forehead against the stone and closed her eyes. The wall was cold against her skin. She could hear birds singing somewhere above her, and the distant sound of a tractor in the neighbouring field, and the ordinary sounds of a world that was carrying on as if nothing had happened. The world didn't know that Florence was gone. The world was eating lunch and walking dogs and complaining about the weather while Erin's daughter was missing.
She thought of Florence's face last night, bright with excitement about Percy and the bridle path, her small hand shaking Erin's with that solemn, formal grip.Deal.She thought of the promise she'd made.I will always, always keep you safe.
She had failed.
Erin flexed her damaged hand, watching the blood seep between her fingers. The pain was already fading to a dull, manageable throb. She'd had worse. She'd had a knife slash in the stables incident, a bullet in her body on the day she'd proved she'd die for Alexandra without a second's hesitation. Physical pain was simple. It had edges you could measure and it healed on a timeline you could track.
This pain had no edges. It was vast and shapeless and it was going to live inside her until Florence was home.
She would find Florence. She would tear apart every road, every house, every shadow in this country until she found her daughter and brought her home. And when she did, whoever had taken her would answer for it. Not to the courts. Not to MI5. To Erin.
She wiped the blood on her jeans and went back inside.
5
The private living room was quiet in the way that rooms become quiet when something terrible has happened and no one knows what to say.
Alexandra sat on the sofa with Frank pressed against her left side and Matilda curled into her right, their small bodies warm and solid against hers. Audrey lay at her feet, the elderly great dane stretched across the carpet with her fawn-coloured head resting on her paws, her brown eyes half-closed. The dog had not moved since Alexandra had sat down. Animals knew. They always knew.
Hyzenthlay was cross-legged on the floor near the window, reading quietly. She'd chosen to stay without being asked, as though she understood that her presence mattered and that leaving would say something she didn't want to say. Vic was in the armchair opposite, still in her riding clothes and the pink knitted jumper, the scratch on her cheek cleaned and covered with a small plaster. She was gripping the armrests with both hands and staring at the floor and she hadn't spoken in twenty minutes.
Julia stood by the mantelpiece, her phone pressed to her ear, murmuring in the low, efficient voice she used when managing a crisis. She'd taken off her reading glasses and her dark hair was smoothed back into its usual neat updo, and despite everything she looked composed. She always looked composed. It was both a comfort and an impossibility. How could anyone be composed right now, when Florence was somewhere in the country with people they couldn't identify, in a car they couldn't find, protected by a bodyguard who had gone silent?
Alexandra was crying. Not the dramatic, heaving sobs of the first hour. Those had burned themselves out and left behind a quieter grief, steady tears that ran down her cheeks without stopping, her nose running, her eyes swollen and raw. She hadn't bothered to wipe them. There was no one here to perform composure for. Frank and Matilda had seen her cry before. They'd seen her cry when Audrey had been ill, when their goldfish died, when the news played footage of children in war zones and she'd had to leave the room. But they'd never seen her cry like this. The kind of crying that came from a place they couldn't reach, and both of them were holding onto her as though they were afraid she might disappear too.
"Mummy Alex?" Frank's voice was small against her arm. "Where's Flo?"
"She's... gone away at the moment, darling. Mummy Erin and the team are working very hard to bring her home."
"But where did she go away to? She was riding Percy."
"I know, sweetheart."
"Did she fall off? Is she at a hospital?"
Alexandra closed her eyes. The lie would have been easier. A riding accident. A hospital. Something concrete and fixable and not this. This vast, shapeless horror that she couldn't explain to herself, let alone to a child. "No, she didn't fall off. Somethinghappened and some people took Florence somewhere, and the police and our security team are finding her right now."
Frank went rigid against her side. "Took her? Who took her?"
"We don't know yet."
"But that's not — people can't justtakeour sister.” His voice was climbing, the outrage of an eight-year-old confronting a world that had suddenly stopped making sense. "That's kidnapping. We learned about it. That's a crime."
"I know it is."
Matilda said nothing. She pressed her face harder into Alexandra's ribs and her small hand found Alexandra's and held on. Her fingers were cold. Of the three children, Matilda was the one who absorbed the emotional atmosphere of a room the way a sponge absorbed water, silently, completely, without anyone noticing until it was too late. She wouldn't ask questions. She would simply feel everything that the adults around her were feeling, and she would carry it quietly, and Alexandra would need to watch her closely in the days ahead.
Julia ended her call and crossed the room. She sat on the arm of the sofa and placed a hand on Alexandra's shoulder. "Erin is with Helena and the MI5 team. They're tracking the vehicle through the national camera network. There are already hits on the A3 heading north-east." Her voice was calm and measured, each word chosen to inform without alarming the children. "They're doing everything possible."
"Is Mummy Erin OK?" Frank asked.
Julia met Alexandra's eyes briefly. A look that saidshe punched a wall and screamed in the service yard and she's barely holding together.What she said was: "Mummy Erin is being very brave and very strong and working with the team to bring Florence home."
