Simone holds the flip phone in her palm and stares again at the message. What was amorphous crystallizes in the air, a slow drip of water that becomes an icicle, hard and taut in its forming. She doesn’t think she agrees with Damien, the thought a shard of ice like a dagger. She thinks she might really want to obey the text. The only thing that frightens her more than this thought is the notion that she might be in that lay-by tonight, alone.
‘I think we should tell the police. Now. And that way they will go.’ That diplomaticweagain.
Simone closes her eyes. ‘They said they will kill her,’ she whispers.
Damien is silent.
She doesn’t say anything further. How could she take the risk of defying them? Sometimes, aren’t the stakes just too high?
‘Simone?’ Damien says.
‘Get here,’ she tells him, a non-answer. ‘Let me know when your flight is.’ He tells her he will. They say nothing further about what she will do next.I don’t know what they will do to me if you don’t.Lucy’s words echo in her mind.
Simone hangs up then dials and deletes the numbers again. 911. She stares at the swirling shape of the nine, the stick ones. If she were to press Call, she knows what would happen. She’d sit right here, on the bathroom floor, while a team of people whose nine-to-five is police work would step in. People who’d try and fail, would go home after their shift and tell their partners they’d had a bad day, but it wouldn’t compare to hers. Simone doesn’t trust people who are at work. She trusts people who are all-in.
Maybe it comes from childhood. The second a kindly teacher phoned in her parents’ behaviour, the wheels of the authorities had begun to turn, and Simone had become a social services case number. She remembers vividly a meeting, once she was placed into care, where a case worker said to her, ‘Child of drug addicts, right?’ then ticked a box, just like that.
She’s only been asked to do one thing, and that’s not to contact the police. How could she? Simone stares at her shaking thumb and thinks she is incapable of pressing Call. No one pokes a hornet’s nest when their child is nearby. At least, not her. She knows her childhood has impacted her parenting of Lucy, but she’s only ever wanted to protect her daughter from pain.
The numbers 911 are deleted once more.
CHAPTER 6
Sometimes, fleetingly, there have been moments for Simone where the responsibility and love of motherhood has felt just too much. Times when she expected more of herself. Small things, things women berate themselves for: when she thought Lucy might fall from a climbing frame at the park and Simone was too far away to help, when she had a fever of over forty. Both times, Simone simply wanted to turn away, to run. She’s never told anyone this, thought they might judge her, which is exactly – she knows rationally – how these thoughts continue to hold power.
She can’t absent herself, now, and instead chooses panicked fervour. If she can find Lucy, she won’t have to make a decision about the text. She crosses to the traitorous screen door – if only, if only – and looks at it.
How did a kidnapper know only their lodge was occupied, and nobody else’s? Was it so obvious the door was open? Or was the door deliberately …? How did her hair …? Did they drag her …? Simone cannot complete the thoughts. She stands there, frozen in the hallway, Damien’s words echoing in her mind.
Were they targeted? Have these people researched her and Lucy – followed them? She traces a hand down the wall, shivering, not wanting to know the answers.
A noise just down the street distracts her. A vehicle, maybetwo. Simone sprints to the front window in the living area, her fingertips on the windowsill like a child’s.
It’s the police.
Or, rather, it is one cop, now standing by the side of the road, flashing a warrant badge to a man he’s pulled over. He’s in uniform that, despite everything, Simone finds herself thinking he’s spent too much time ironing: two perfect creases down the front of each blue leg.
‘I think not,’ the officer says acerbically to the person he’s pulled over. He has a broad Southern accent, tanned skin. A bald spot at the back of his head that shines with sweat.
‘It was,’ the other man says, his hands up in protest. ‘Must have just changed.’
‘It’s been a fifty for five years,’ the police officer replies flatly.
He perhaps senses Simone watching, because he looks over and catches her eye through the window. She immediately takes two steps backwards, but he maintains his gaze. A smile: straight white teeth. He holds a finger up to the driver he’s just pulled over, touches his shoulder, then begins to walk towards Simone’s lodge. Simone feels fear draining out of her, like somebody has sucked her blood.
Three knocks.
She is a stone statue in the hallway.Do not tell the police.
If you go to the police, we will kill her.
‘You OK there?’ he calls out to her, clearly having radar for people in distress.
And this is the moment. She is eye to eye with a cop. A handful of words and everything would change. Authorities, resources, instructions,help. Simone opens her mouth to answer him.
‘Yes, yes,’ she says, the lies tumbling easily out of hermouth. She’s too frightened to tell the truth. That’s simply how it is. There is too much on the line. ‘Just … here with my daughter.’
She wonders if she will look back on this moment in a hallway with the concertina door that had her daughter’s pulled hair around it and regret it.
