by Darren Young
She glanced in the mirror again. The other car’s reverse lights came on.
She pushed the stick down into second gear and they jolted forward, slipping one way and then the other but moving. Laura put her foot down as far as it would go and the tyres finally found some grip and the VW shot off on to the gloom. She ignored the conditions and poor visibility and raced back along the cliff road.
Danni’s eyes were open now. She clung to her seat as they raced around bends and flew down the straights as if Laura knew they were on a track and couldn’t come off. She didn’t and they weren’t but Laura could not have cared less. She just focused on putting as much distance between them and the other car as possible.
‘Is it still behind us?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Laura replied, checking her mirror again, but she couldn’t be totally sure in the dark. She wasn’t even confident, with the damage they must have sustained, that her car wouldn’t fall apart at any moment.
They turned on to the wider road and she went faster still until she reached a dual carriageway and finally a stretch of road that was lit, and then she eased her foot off the pedal and relaxed her shoulders.
The voice from the SatNav was telling them to take a U-turn, but Laura kept going.
‘How do we get to Sandra now?’ said Danni.
Laura shook her head.
‘We don’t.’
70 | Laura
‘What?’
Laura checked her mirrors again and decreased her speed to eighty miles per hour, although they were still in the outside lane and overtaking anyone else that was on the dual carriageway.
‘They were waiting for us.’
Danni looked at her in disbelief. Laura kept her eyes on the road. It was a little lighter now; the grey clouds still filled the sky, but somewhere behind them the sun must have come up.
‘They had to be. They knew we were going to High Cliffs.’
‘Shit.’
Laura drove in silence for another five minutes, allowing the car to slow down a little.
‘Where are we going?’ Danni asked.
‘We’re getting out of here.’
‘What about the police?’
It was the obvious answer and Laura knew it, but she didn’t reply straight away. She kept looking in the mirror, expecting the other car to come hurtling up behind them at any moment, although with every mile that became less and less likely.
‘They would rather kill us than let you meet Sandra,’ she said, glancing at Danni.
‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘Then you know what it means?’
Danni looked ahead. Laura glanced at her again.
She knew.
Laura could also see that the story of a lifetime was slipping from her grasp. If they went to the police now, they’d be questioned for hours, and in that time the incredible news was bound to leak out. She’d put her life on the line, literally, for this story, and it didn’t seem fair. She needed to get the article to press, and she couldn’t think of anyone better than David Weatherall to help her with that. And she’d earned the right to see this through to the end.
The motorway junction was ahead. They passed a sign that said they had a mile and a half before they reached it.
‘Whoever that was isn’t going to stop,’ she said, ‘and we’re lucky to be alive.’
The slip road loomed on their left. Laura indicated, and they pulled on to it and approached a roundabout, from which they exited on to the M5 and Laura headed north.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting as far away as possible. I don’t trust anyone around here. And that’s the second car that’s chased you.’
‘You think that was him?’
Laura had been thinking it since the attack started. ‘I couldn’t see. It was too dark,’ she told Danni truthfully instead. She settled into a comfortable speed in the left-hand lane. ‘But we can’t rule anything out. You said yourself that your mum wouldn’t have lost control.’
Danni didn’t answer. Laura could see that she had been thinking exactly the same thing, and when she did speak she was holding back tears.
‘They’re not my mum and dad.’
They drove in silence for the next fifteen miles until they reached the next services. Laura took the exit and found a quiet corner of the car park with no one around them; the drivers of the few cars there had parked as close to the building as possible to avoid getting soaked in the downpour.
‘Good God.’
Danni had got out first and stood looking at the damage on her side of the car. Laura was shocked when she joined her. In near daylight, the VW looked as if it had been all but written off. The whole left side was filled with dents, and so much of the paintwork had been taken off that it was hard to tell what colour it originally was. The lights, front and back, were smashed, and on both wheels there were deep, shiny fresh gashes in the alloy. It was incredible that the passenger door had opened at all, and Laura worried that it might not close now.
‘We were more than lucky,’ she said.
They ran through rain that was beginning to thicken into sleet, to the main building, and Laura bought some sandwiches and several chocolate bars. They stood in the entrance to the services building and Laura checked the time. It wasn’t quite half-past nine.
She took her phone from her pocket.
‘I need to call Sandra and my boss.’ She pressed the button on the phone to wake it from its sleep mode. ‘Shit.’
‘What?’
‘My battery is at one per cent. I meant to charge it, but with everything … can I use yours?’
Danni shook her head. ‘Totally dead.’
Laura grimaced and looked back her phone screen. ‘I can’t risk it. If I call and it dies on me, she’ll not know what’s going on.’
‘Charge it in here,’ Danni suggested.
Laura looked behind them. There were a café and a fast-food counter with a seated area. If she found a socket, she could charge the phone and send an email with the article to David. She looked out at the car park and it was now snowing, thick flakes driving horizontally across the fields and already sticking to the car roofs and grass verges.
‘I think we should get to my house.’
Danni frowned. ‘That’s miles away.’
‘If we go now, before this gets any worse, we can do it in less than two and a half hours, three at most,’ said Laura. ‘And at least we will have shelter, food, and my parents to help us.’ She decided not to mention that they could also go to the Gazette and get David to break the story.
Danni looked unconvinced. ‘I don’t know.’
‘If this snow carries on, we’ll be trapped. And then what will we do?’
‘Go to the police.’
‘We can go to the police from mine. And call Sandra.’ Laura knew if they went now and were lucky, they could be at her house by the early afternoon.
Danni shrugged. She had no phone, no clothes, no money, and she was pretty sure the person she’d always thought was her father now wanted to kill her. ‘Whatever you think.’
‘I think that, right now,’ said Laura, ‘we need to be with people I trust.’
71 | Laura
‘Listen carefully, Mum, because my battery is about to die.’
There was a ‘low battery’ warning beep. Laura knew that she had to be quick; if she only managed to tell her mother half of what had happened and then got cut off, she would leave her out of her mind with worry.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Helen, her voice full of concern.
Laura gave her enough details that she understood the gravity of their situation without wasting any seconds as the phone beeped another warning. She heard her mother gasp when she finished.
‘We’re not hurt. The car is in a bad way, but I think I can make it back.’
‘Then get here as quickly as you can.’
‘I will.’
Her mother told her that the weather fore
cast was for heavy snow in the afternoon. Laura looked up at the sky: a thick light grey blanket had replaced the rainclouds, and the snowflakes were beginning to settle in any empty spaces on the car park.
‘It’s snowing here too.’
‘Be careful. We can sort it all out when you get here.’
‘Is Dad there?’ said Laura.
‘I’m going to call him at work right now so he’ll be back before you get here.’
‘OK.’
‘We have to go the police.’
‘I know. I’m sorry for all the trouble, Mum.’
‘Just get home.’
There was another beep in her ear: a final warning that the battery had run out.
‘I’ll see you … ’
Silence. Laura looked at her phone but the screen had gone black. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Danni, and they ran to the car, their hair and shoulders covered in snow in the few seconds it took to get inside.
The engine started at the second attempt. The temperature was falling sharply, down by three degrees on the car’s display compared to when they had set off that morning. Laura checked the fuel gauge: she had half a tank, probably enough to get back but she’d stop for more if she needed it.
‘What happens with Sandra now?’
‘I’ll call her from home and I guess the police will take care of things after that.’
‘Will I still get to see her?’
Laura nodded, but she had no idea what would really happen. That part was out of her hands now.
Danni put her head back and closed her eyes, allowing Laura to concentrate on the road, which was getting busier with other traffic, and, although the snow wasn’t settling yet on the motorway, the fields either side were already white all over. Danni was drifting in and out of sleep, fidgeting and lightly snoring, and for the next fifty miles they travelled in silence until Laura switched the radio on to listen for weather reports.
‘Your mum sounds nice.’
‘Huh?’
Danni had woken up and stretched her arms in front of her. ‘Nice. Your mum.’
‘She is,’ said Laura. ‘She’s great.’
‘That’s good.’
Laura didn’t answer. There was a bitterness in Danni’s tone.
‘I feel like I’ve been lied to all my life.’
The snow was swirling outside, getting much thicker the further north they went, and Laura began to worry that this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. The traffic was building up too, and she hadn’t been able to go faster than forty miles per hour for quite a while.
‘I can’t imagine what that feels like.’
Laura had tried to imagine, but it was hard. How did you cope with suddenly finding out that everything and everyone you believed in was not what and who you’d thought they were?
Danni closed her eyes again and Laura had to slow down as the brake lights of the vehicles in front of her came on. There was snow on the roads now, on the hard shoulder and where the white lines were. When she checked the SatNav, they only had another seventy miles to go, but those miles weren’t going to be covered quickly.
Danni managed to get some more sleep for a while, mumbling incoherently and flinching occasionally, and Laura felt for her. She knew she had done the right thing, especially after what had happened that morning, and Danni deserved to know the truth about her past, but now, watching the obvious torture she was going through, it didn’t make Laura feel better.
The orange fuel warning light came on. Laura checked the SatNav. Forty miles to go, but they were down to a slow crawl now and the only parts of the road without snow were the wet black tracks the vehicles had cut through it. When they reached the exit for the next services, she pulled off and into the petrol station and put twenty pounds’ worth of fuel in the tank, using the money David had given her. When she opened the car door, Danni was woken by the chilled air that was sucked in.
‘I got you more chocolate,’ said Laura, and handed her a bar. They had eaten the sandwiches and other bars already.
‘Thanks. How far to go?’
The SatNav was plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter, and was jolted from its sleep mode when Laura turned the key into the ignition.
‘Twenty-five miles. Forty minutes, maybe a bit more in this.’
She pulled back on to the motorway to make the final leg of the journey. The snow was swirling around in an energetic flurry now, and the wind had picked up. The whole scene was completely white. There was a line of cars moving at little more than twenty miles an hour when Laura joined them in the left-hand lane, and they slowly trundled along as the wiper blades worked overtime to keep the windscreen clear.
‘I’ll be glad to get out of this,’ said Laura.
Danni bit into her chocolate bar and opened Laura’s can of Coke and handed it to her.
Neither of them had any reason to notice that a dark-coloured car had left the services a few seconds after they did and carefully slipped into the nearside lane between a lorry and a van about a dozen vehicles behind them.
It was covered in snow, which hid some of the damage to its left-hand side, and it slowly followed Laura’s VW as it made its way up the northbound carriageway.
Part Eight
The present day…
Do you know, there was a time when I thought I could avoid this?
It seems inevitable now, but at one point I thought I might be able to stop it – stop them digging, so that the truth could remain hidden.
The email. I admit that was a mistake; amateurish and counterproductive. No journalist with anything about them will drop an investigation that easily.
Getting someone to scare her: I thought that might work, especially by including her family in the threat, but they just kept going; even hurting her mother didn’t stop her, and the more I tried to scare them, the more determined they became.
But wasn’t this exactly the way it was always going to turn out?
When that little girl came into the house that day, holding my wife’s hand with her cute smile and blonde curly hair – that’s when I should have put a stop to this. But I panicked instead, allowed myself to think about what my wife wanted – needed – and not what had to be done. We should have got rid of her that day. However we decided to do it, we should have ended it then and there and faced the consequences.
But I was too hasty; too soft. I allowed my heart to rule my head.
That day is still so clear, even now. I have a crystal-clear image in my mind of them standing there in the doorway. The hot sun shining outside; my wife’s face looking at me, you’ll-go-mad-when-you-know-what-I’ve-done written all over it.
But I knew exactly what she’d done.
And why she’d done it.
It’s obvious now, in hindsight, that I should have screamed at her, made her pack that child straight back into the car and take her back to the beach, or take her anywhere; somewhere where they’d never trace it back to us.
We should have done it while we still could.
But hindsight’s fantastic, isn’t it?
My wife was broken, and this child seemed to instantly begin to mend her. If we’d done what we should have done, she’d have been even more broken than ever but we’d have got past it, found a way to blot out the pain in other ways and emerge from the other side.
Maybe the experience would have made us into better people.
Maybe she’d have healed eventually anyway, even without the child.
And we could have avoided all this.
You see, now I’m out of options. Out of choices.
They already know far too much. Both of them.
Pushing them over that cliff felt like a last resort. They were about to uncover everything I have worked so hard to keep hidden for all those years. If they’d gone off the edge, they’d never have survived. And the secret might have died with them.
Sandra Preston would never have got to see her daughter again. And even if she said anything, the
y’d think it was just a crazy old woman in a psychiatric unit rambling on, unable to let go.
Either way, it would buy me time.
Because I can’t go to prison.
I’m not going to prison for someone else’s child. That’s the thing, you know – that’s the advantage I have, in her not being my flesh and blood.
It makes what I am going to do easier.
It’s unthinkable, sure, but it won’t be the first time I’ve done the unthinkable.
Not taking that child straight back to her parents or to the police, that day. That was unthinkable.
Taking her summer hat to that beach and leaving it to be found washed up on the shore so they’d be convinced she drowned. That was unthinkable.
Raising her as our own; that was pretty unthinkable too.
As was paying to keep her real mother in that mental health unit all these years.
Thinking that we could keep it all a secret for ever. Not just unthinkable, but also unrealistic.
So, you see, that’s why I can do the unthinkable one more time.
And finally get rid of that child once and for all.
It’s going to be her.
It’s strange, because, when I looked at the photograph the journalist showed me, I didn’t see Jessica; not the Jessica I had in my head, anyway. But I’ve spent so long imagining, picturing in my head, how my little girl has turned out, it’s hardly surprising is it?
But something inside me knows. It knows; I’m not sure how, or why, but my gut is telling me that the day, the one I didn’t dare to believe in, is finally going to happen.
When she vanished that day, from that beach, I knew she was alive, even though all the other people said she must have drowned. It’s that same feeling now: a voice deep inside telling me, guiding me. It’s the same voice that told me on the day that she’d gone in the other direction, away from the water.
