‘You can take your card.’ The sharp tone of the cashier’s voice tells me this is not the first time he’s asked me. I mumble a ‘thank you’ to him, an apology to the van driver standing behind me, whose eyes I do not meet. I hurry outside.
I’m just passing the van when I hear a thud coming from inside. I hesitate, ears straining. There’s nothing to be heard except the steady thrum of traffic coming from the main road but still I cup my hands and peer through the driver’s window.
‘Oi!’
I jump at the noise and try not to cower as the driver jogs over to me. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ His manner as spiky as his hair.
‘Do you have anyone else in the van?’ I ask.
‘What’s it gotta do wiv you?’
I keep my gaze steady, waiting him out.
‘No. Just me.’ He jabs his key into the lock but before he can climb inside, we both hear it. The shuffling coming from inside his vehicle.
‘I’m DC Ross,’ I lie. ‘Do you mind if I take a look, sir?’ I stride to the back of the van with a confidence I don’t feel.
‘I’ve told you there’s no—’
‘Then you won’t mind showing me, will you?’
Tutting, he unlocks the back doors. My heart races as he yanks them open. I make sure I’m not standing too close. There’s a delighted yelp as a white Staffie with a dark circle around one eye launches himself at his owner.
It’s just a dog.
I back away, feeling his glare on me. Flustered, I get in my car and start the engine, gears crunching as I pull back out onto the road, breathing heavily. I’m edging forward at the T-junction, waiting to turn left when I catch a flash of the profile of the driver who slides past me in a black car, indicating right.
It’s him.
The man who nearly broke me.
I’m frozen to my seat, neck rigid, willing my eyes to take a second look.
I catch him again as his car turns into the traffic. I’m not as certain as I was a few seconds ago that it is him. The jawline is wrong. A horn blasts behind me and in my rush to move forward I stall my car. I’m trembling as I twist the key to fire the engine to life once more.
It can’t have been him.
It’s impossible.
As I pull forward, I imagine him in his cell. The thick iron bars that contain him.
It’s the anniversary that’s made me so skittish, I know. Twenty years. It’s been almost twenty years.
I’m in a state by the time I pull up outside Marie’s flat. Noticing Carly’s car is already there doesn’t calm me.
Soon we’ll all be in one room.
Three sisters.
Nothing good happens when we’re all together.
I can just say no.
Above me the grey clouds break apart and rain lashes against my windscreen.
It feels like an omen. A sense of impending doom.
Chapter Three
Carly
Then
It felt like fate that something terrible would happen because she’d behaved like such a bitch. Acid coated the back of Carly’s throat. She swallowed her sickness back down. She had to be strong for the sake of the twins. They would be terrified.
She was terrified.
It had all happened so quickly. She could still feel the arm around her throat, another around her waist as she was manhandled into the van, struggling to get free. The catch on the door scratching against her cheek, tearing her skin. The scream that ripped from her throat as she saw the second man following, dragging the girls.
‘Run!’ Carly had shouted as she kicked out again, but she knew that even if one of the twins could wriggle free, they wouldn’t leave the other.
The arms restraining Carly hefted her from her feet, shoving her roughly into the back of the van.
‘Help!’ Carly’s voice growing hoarse.
That was when she saw a glint of silver. A sharp point pressed against her neck. Instantly the bottom fell out of her world, her body slackened. She had to stay alive for her sisters. Carly forced herself to be passive as her hands were wrenched behind her back. She was shaking so violently that the rope being twisted around her wrists chafed against her skin. Tape was smoothed over the lips she had thought an hour ago Dean Malden would be kissing. She was placid as her ankles were bound. A blindfold snatched away her last glimpse of the sun. She was astonished that something like this could happen in broad daylight. She felt a jarring against her arm. Heard the thud of the twins being shoved next to her and listened helplessly to Leah crying and Marie pleading,
‘This is a game, isn’t it? Please. This isn’t real.’ Marie’s small voice a squeak.
But the real games were being played in the park just metres away, the cheering of a goal drifting through the hedgerow, and Carly knew that whatever this was, it was deadly, deadly serious.
Still, she thought someone would have heard them, would swoop in and save them at the last minute. All her storybooks ended well and it had never really occurred to her that sometimes there might not be a happily ever after. That was until the door slammed shut, the engine roared and she crashed onto her side as the van pulled away.
The stench of petrol in such a confined space was overpowering, along with the stink of body odour. At first Carly thought it must be coming from the men until she felt her shirt sticking to her back with sweat and she realized it was emanating from her. The smell of her own fear.
It was hot. Bumpy. She swayed, unable to use her tethered hands to steady herself. She tried to breathe deeply to calm down but each time she inhaled the tape across her lips prevented air from entering her lungs. Her chest burned painfully. Her nostrils flared as she drew in short, sharp bursts of air until she felt dizzy. The knot from the back of her blindfold dug into her skull.
One of the twins was whimpering, the other frighteningly silent and it was the silence that scared Carly the most. The girls had been nothing but noise since they’d been born. Laughing. Crying. Playing. Chattering away in their twin language that no one else understood. Carly planted her heels on the floor, her ankle bones rubbing uncomfortably together, and dragged her bottom, weaving forwards, slow and uneven – a spider missing legs – until her feet reached something that could have been a body. She shuffled herself around, her hands groping until she connected with another hand. A frightened cry and then long fingers gripping hers. Piano-playing fingers. She thought it must be Leah.
Carly moved again, fumbling around until she located Marie. She was still. Too still. Afraid, Carly pressed against her wrist, willing a pulse to jump beneath her fingers. She blinked back tears of gratitude as she located the slow and steady thump. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry.
She had taken the twins out of the garden and got them into this.
She had to get them out.
Thoughts jostled for attention as Carly tried to process what had happened. Who had taken them and why, but nothing made any sense. Part of her clung desperately to the vague hope that it was a prank. The programme her parents liked to watch where unsuspecting members of the public were fooled – but the blood streaming from a gash in her cheek told her it wasn’t a joke. On TV, the tricks were unexpected, funny. Never cruel.
She rubbed her face against the wall of the van, trying to dislodge her blindfold. Each time they drove over a bump her head smashed painfully into the hard metal but still she persisted until at last she felt the material begin to slide.