Deliver Me

by Karen Cole

  ‘Hop in, then,’ he says.

  Abby sits slumped in the back of the car, hardly able to believe that she is safe. The baby wriggles against her chest and she closes her eyes. The last thing she hears is the old lady on the phone to the police before she passes out.

  Forty

  Abby wakes with a jolt, opening her eyes to see an unfamiliar white ceiling. Where the hell is she? There’s pain in her head and a strange tightness in her chest. She sits up and looks around, blinking at the light from the window in confusion. There’s another empty bed next to hers, a blue plastic curtain partially drawn. It’s a hospital curtain.

  She’s in hospital.

  Everything comes crashing back – the nightmare of the past twenty-four hours, Dr Rowe, and the terror of her ordeal. And she throws up all over the sheets.

  ‘No worries, these things happen.’ A nurse with an Australian accent appears by her bedside and serene, blue eyes smile down at her. ‘I’ll get you a pan.’

  Abby sits up. She clambers out of bed. Terror seizes her, adrenaline coursing through her body.

  ‘Where is he . . . ?’

  ‘It’s okay. Get back into bed. He’s gone. You’re safe here.’

  ‘I’m safe? You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But . . .’ Abby looks around, panic choking her. ‘He killed Ellie. He tried to kill me . . .’

  The nurse hesitates and looks around over her shoulder She lowers her voice. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but by the time the paramedics got there he was already dead. You don’t need to worry about him anymore. He can’t hurt you again.’

  I killed him, Abby thinks in horror, but there is no room for pity in her heart for the man who murdered her sister.

  ‘And the baby. Where’s my baby?’ she asks, as the nurse whips the top sheet off the bed, changing it swiftly and expertly.

  ‘She’s fine. She’s right here. Look.’

  The nurse wheels over a transparent cot. The baby is asleep inside, a tiny, red, raw thing wrapped in a blanket, with tiny white mittens on her hands. Abby gazes at her transfixed, and the baby opens her filmy blue eyes, and makes a tiny mewling noise.

  ‘Would you like to hold her?’ The nurse picks up the baby and holds her out to Abby, smiling.

  Abby is too dazed to refuse. She takes the baby in her arms and sits down on the bed, gazing at its tiny face. The baby moves its head and nuzzles her chest.

  The nurse laughs gently. ‘She wants to feed. Would you like to try?’

  ‘No.’ Abby shakes her head violently because she’s remembered Ellie. Her beloved sister is dead. This creature’s father killed her. She starts to cry, great heaving sobs that shake her whole body.

  ‘That’s it, let it all out,’ says the nurse, taking the baby from her. ‘You’ve been through a terrible ordeal.’

  ‘My sister,’ she says between sobs. The pain of her loss feels too big to contain in one small body. ‘He killed her.’

  The nurse sits next to her on the bed and puts her arm around her, saying nothing. It seems impossible that Ellie no longer exists, her beautiful, vibrant presence lost forever. Abby rests her face on the nurse’s shoulder and cries for a long time.

  It’s only later she remembers the woman who saved her.

  ‘There was someone else with me . . . she helped me . . .’

  ‘You mean Pamela? Yes, she’s fine. She had a few cuts, some bruising around her neck, and obviously she was shaken up, but otherwise unhurt, She’s a remarkable woman.’

  Abby can’t help but agree.

  *

  Abby stays in hospital for the next couple of days. The doctors and nurses insist that she needs time to rest and heal, and she’s too exhausted and broken to argue. She’s also too exhausted to argue when they gently but persistently push the baby on her. And the first time she feeds her, Abby knows she will have to keep her.

  As the baby clamps her tiny mouth around Abby’s nipple it’s surprisingly sharp, like the edge of a shellfish. But it doesn’t hurt. Not really. And it feels right, as if a part of her that had always been missing has been returned to her. They need each other now – her and the baby. She feels sorry for Joel and Maria, who she knows will be heartbroken, but it’s too late now.

  The next few days in hospital are a blur. Dad comes to visit with a book of crosswords. Grief is etched on his face. He’s aged about ten years since she last saw him. He sits and holds her hand, something he hasn’t done since she was about eight years old, tears rolling down his cheeks.

  ‘She was so like her mother,’ he says. ‘Always wanting to help, always standing up for what she believed in.’ He squeezes her hand, ‘At least I didn’t lose you too.’ It’s the closest he’s ever come to telling her he loves her.

  Rob comes too, bearing a large box of chocolates. ‘I didn’t think you’d appreciate flowers,’ he says, smiling weakly, even now trying to make a joke. Rob too looks older. His curly hair is threaded with grey and his face is drawn. At the sight of him, Abby feels a deep well of affection she hadn’t even known existed. She can’t believe she ever suspected him or doubted his love for Ellie. He stays with her for the whole visiting hour and they hardly talk. Rob, never usually lost for words, is unable to speak.

  Forty-One

  The crematorium is packed. Hundreds of people are crammed into the small room, spilling out into the hallway. Ellie’s friends, colleagues and patients all have turned up to pay their respects, and everyone seems to have some poignant memory to share. Ellie has touched so many people in her short life.

  Abby can’t take it all in. She feels numb, drained of emotion. It’s impossible to believe that Ellie has really gone. Impossible to conceive of a world without her big sister. She sits in the front row clutching Danny’s hand as Ellie’s coffin vanishes behind a velvet curtain. It seems like a conjuring trick – as if Ellie will suddenly appear, laughing and bowing. ‘Fooled you,’ she’ll say, laughing that deep belly laugh of hers. And she will be the irrepressible Ellie from before – before she lost her baby and some of her sparkle along with it.

  But Ellie won’t appear ever again. Abby knows that. She just can’t feel it yet.

  One of Ellie’s college friends relates an anecdote. It’s a story about when they were training together, how Ellie stood up for her to a bullying senior surgeon. ‘And that just sums Ellie up,’ concludes the friend, biting back tears, ‘She was truthful, brave, fair . . . and one of the kindest people I ever met.’

  Abby’s vision blurs. She’s dimly aware that Rob, sitting next to her, is sobbing, his head in his hands, and that Dad, sitting across the aisle, looks completely bewildered, his eyes darting from place to place, as though if he looks hard enough he’ll find Ellie in the crowd. Abby is dry-eyed. She doesn’t cry. She knows that if she cries now she’ll never stop.

  After the funeral they head back home with close friends and family. Sue greets them at the door, Abby’s baby screaming in her arms. She’s been so helpful the last few days, preparing a huge spread for all the guests and looking after the baby while Abby was preparing for the funeral. Abby’s beginning to think she might have misjudged her.

  ‘She was asleep most of the time, the little angel,’ Sue says to Abby, stroking the baby’s cheek and cooing. ‘You know I think she looks a little like your sister.’ She wipes away a tear. ‘I wish I could have known her better . . .’

  Sue is only trying to be kind, but Abby can’t face her, or the mountain of food that she’s prepared. As soon as she can, she slips outside into the garden, into the fresh air and the misty rain.

  She sits on the old, wooden bench and stares at a damp hole in the earth under the apple tree. Hector has been digging again and has dug up all the lavender Ellie planted in the spring. Ellie’s going to be furious, Abby thinks vaguely. Then, But Ellie’s not here. She’s not coming back. The
thought hits her like a tsunami.

  She’s crying so hard she doesn’t hear Rob approach until he’s right up to her.

  ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ he says, sitting next to her on the bench. Then he stays with her for a while in silence until she stops crying.

  ‘The police said that she wouldn’t have suffered much,’ he says. ‘A blow to the head like that. It would have been over very quickly.

  Abby hopes this is true. She can’t bear to think of Ellie afraid and hurt. She thinks of the man that did this. She thinks of him clutching his neck and the blood spurting through his fingers.

  ‘I killed him,’ she whispers. Still the horror of it is difficult to process.

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ says Rob grimly. There’s a new steel in his voice she’s never heard before. ‘If you hadn’t killed him I would have had to.’

  Abby nods. There’s something in his tone that makes her believe him.

  ‘They searched his house,’ Rob continues. ‘They found her body covered in leaves in the woods near where he took you. They think he meant to go back later and bury her.’ He stops for a minute, unable to carry on. Abby puts her hand over his and he takes a deep, shuddering breath. ‘They also found more pictures of patients on his hard drive. Pictures like the ones Ellie found of you . . . dating back years.’

  Abby shivers. ‘How did he get away with it for so long? That’s what I don’t understand.’

  ‘He was very good at pulling the wool over people’s eyes. He exploited people’s weaknesses too. Helen knew something. Or if she didn’t know, then she at least suspected, but turned a blind eye. He used what he knew about her drug habit to keep her quiet.’

  They sit side by side, oblivious to the rain that is pattering down, getting heavier now, dripping off the leaves of the apple tree.

  ‘What are your plans?’ Rob asks eventually.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You know you’re welcome to stay with me and Hector as long as you want.’

  It’s a tempting offer in many ways but Abby knows she can’t stay here, with all that has happened. She knows it will break her.

  ‘Thank you, I appreciate that, but I think it’s time I found my own place and started taking responsibility for my own life. Will you be okay by yourself though?’

  ‘What, without your wonderful culinary skills?’ Rob gives her a lopsided smile.

  And Abby gives a short hiccuping laugh and then starts crying again. Rob bursts into tears too and wraps her in his arms.

  They’ve been sitting like that for a while, just crying and holding on to each other as if they can stop one another from drowning, when Sue comes bustling down the path. From the open kitchen door there’s the sound of the baby bawling.

  ‘I think the wee one needs feeding,’ Sue says breathlessly to Abby. ‘She won’t stop crying.’

  Abby stands up and rubs her eyes. In a way it’s a blessing, this responsibility. She can’t just give up. She has to keep going for the baby.

  ‘Okay I’m coming,’ she says.

  Three Years Later

  Though it’s October already, the sun is still strong in Cyprus, and it glares out of a clear blue sky, glittering on the sea and burning Abby’s cheek as she drives along the highway towards the airport.

  ‘Where are we going, Mummy?’

  Abby glances over her shoulder at Beth who is sitting in her car seat, head turned away from the sun, chubby little legs flexing.

  ‘To pick up your Uncle Danny and Uncle Will from the airport.’

  ‘Why?’ Beth demands.

  ‘Because they’re coming to stay for a while.’

  ‘Why?’

  Abby sighs. Beth has recently learned the power of the word ‘Why?’ and she uses it all the time. ‘Why do I have to go to bed?’ ‘Why do you have boobies, Mummy?’ ‘Why did you turn off the sun?’ But, thank God, she still hasn’t asked the question Abby is dreading. ‘Why haven’t I got a daddy like all my friends?’

  *

  Danny and Will are already through baggage claim and sitting on their suitcases outside the airport when Abby pulls up in the car park.

  ‘How’s my little cherub?’ Danny says, crouching down by Beth’s pushchair and tickling her neck.

  ‘I’m not a cherub,’ Beth giggles, squirming in the chair. ‘I’m Beth.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not a cherub?’ Danny teases her. ‘You look like a cherub to me.’

  ‘I think someone’s getting broody,’ Will comments drily, kissing Abby on the cheek.

  Abby smiles. She likes Will. He’s quite a bit older than Danny, calm and quiet. He seems to be good for him. She doesn’t think she’s ever known Danny as happy as he’s been these past few years with Will.

  ‘Everyone at school sends their love,’ says Danny once they’ve squashed their suitcases into Abby’s tiny boot and are driving back along the highway to her house.

  ‘And Rob?’ Abby asks anxiously. She knows the past three years have been tough for Rob and they haven’t been in touch as much as she would like.

  ‘He’s doing okay,’ says Danny, staring out of the window at the dry, chalky hills and the sad-looking goats crammed into their pens.

  ‘You wouldn’t recognize him,’ adds Will. ‘He’s shaved his beard and he’s lost so much weight. He’s been training for this marathon. He’s collected quite a bit of money so far.’

  Abby nods. Rob has been doing fun runs and marathons for the past couple of years like he’s on some kind of mission, furiously raising money for charities he knows Ellie would approve of.

  ‘Is he seeing anyone?’ Abby asks. As far as she knows, Rob hasn’t been involved with another woman since Ellie died and she knows Ellie wouldn’t have wanted him to be on his own.

  Danny grins. ‘Well . . . you’ll never guess . . .’

  ‘Oh my God! What?’ Abby glances over at him in the passenger seat.

  ‘He probably wouldn’t want me to tell you this, but he’s been having this on-off thing with Gina.’

  ‘Gina!’ Abby exclaims, astonished.

  ‘I know. They’re the last two people you’d put together, aren’t they? Thea thinks he’s after a promotion.’

  Abby snorts with laughter. She can’t imagine Rob with Gina, but whatever makes him happy is a good thing in her view.

  *

  Later, when Danny and Will have unpacked, Abby takes them down to the seafront and they sit in Fini’s beach bar watching the huge, orange sun sink below the horizon.

  Beth is asleep in her pushchair, breathing softly. She looks so pure and innocent when she’s asleep. Looking down at her, Abby feels a pang. She can’t bear the thought of anything ever hurting her, but she knows it will be impossible to protect her forever.

  ‘She’s adorable,’ says Danny. ‘You know, she reminds me a lot of Ellie.’

  ‘Yes.’ Abby nods. There is a lot of Ellie in Beth – in her stubbornness, her quick laughter and her fearless blue eyes.

  ‘How are you, anyway?’ Danny sits back and gives her a searching look.

  Abby shrugs. ‘Me? Oh, I’m okay,’

  It’s true, she thinks. She’s okay. It’s been a struggle but she’s okay. She has a job she enjoys, teaching the children of army personnel at the British army base, and she’s even started dating again – a Cypriot dentist called Andreas. It’s early days, of course, but he seems to get on well with Beth, so that’s a good sign.

  Every day is a choice. A choice to get up. A choice to see the good in life. A choice to love. And mostly she makes the right choice, but it would be a lie to say she doesn’t have the occasional dark moment. Moments when she wakes up from nightmares, sweating with terror, and moments when she looks at Beth and wonders about things like nature versus nurture.

  In her darkest moments she thinks she catches a glimpse o
f him in Beth – in her flashes of anger or in a charming dimple. But then again, she sees a lot of different people in Beth – Ellie’s eyes and smile, her own nose, Dad’s chin.

  And mostly, when she looks at her daughter all she sees is Beth – that unique little girl, who brings so much joy to her life.

  Enjoyed Deliver Me? Order Deceive Me, the second thriller from Karen Cole now!

  Acknowledgements

  Firstly, I would like to thank the amazing team at Quercus, Emily Yau, Nick de Somogyi and, in particular, the brilliant and tactful Rachel Neely whose feedback has been invaluable.

  I’m grateful also to Catherine Johnson and the lovely, talented fellow members of my Curtis Brown course for helping me to develop as a writer, especially Jenny Ireland. Thomas Abraham, Pauline Dawes and Robert Easton, who took the time to read and comment on the first three chapters of Deliver Me.

  Next, I’d like to thank the friendly and helpful Sergeant Garrett Gloyn, who made me realise that the police are far more efficient than I would have liked!

  My thanks too, to Toby lodge and Caitlin John, my first and most encouraging readers and Max Lodge for inspirational conversation and for making me laugh.

  Finally, my love and gratitude go to the best man I know, Jim Lodge, for his insightful comments, patience and endless cups of tea!

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  Contents

  Deliver Me

  About the Author

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  Prologue

  MARCH One

  Two

  Three

  Four