Forgive Me

by Susan Lewis

  Claudia followed the traffic and contemplated the truth of those words—we’re pulling it off—although they were hardly ten minutes from what used to be their home, so such optimism was perhaps a little premature. However, everything was going to plan so far. The BMW they were in had been delivered on time late last night; they’d picked up their new phones from a “dealer” a week ago; and, most crucially of all, the money from the sale of her business had been successfully transferred from an escrow account into the one she’d opened just after her new passport had come through. Dealing with the bank had been the trickiest part of the operation—did she really look like a money launderer?—but it was done now, thank God, and she’d already managed to draw cash using one of her new cards.

  “So,” she said, as they finally approached the M4, “shall I call you Jas or Jasmine from now on?”

  A tilt of a platinum-blond head, followed by “mm,” preceded “Either’s fine. It’s a cool name, don’t you think?”

  They’d had this conversation before, several times, so Claudia dutifully said, “I do, and it suits you. I wish I’d thought of it when you were born.”

  Jasmine glanced over at her mother, her big blue eyes sparkling with mischief. God, she was like her father. “Are you OK with Claud?” she asked cheekily.

  Claudia wrinkled her nose. “Mum’s better, coming from you.”

  Jasmine laughed and pointed to the red light they were approaching too fast.

  As they came to a stop, Claudia’s breath caught on another rush of nerves as the reality of their flight descended over her again. To those traveling in the cars around them they must look so ordinary, so unremarkable in their blue station wagon with nothing on its roof, or sides, or anywhere else to alert anyone to what this two-year-old 3 Series was actually involved in.

  “How come you’re so relaxed?” she asked as Jasmine continued downloading apps to her new phone.

  Jasmine frowned as she considered the question. “Well, I thought one of us ought to be, and as you’re the responsible adult in the car I decided to leave all the negative stuff to you.”

  “So kind.”

  They both started as someone blasted a horn behind, urging them on, and at the same instant Jasmine’s new phone rang. Only one person had the number and to their relief they saw it was her.

  “Hey, Nana,” Jasmine sang out as she clicked on, “we’re on our way. Hang on, I’m going to put you on speaker so Mum can hear.”

  “Have you left London yet?” Marcy, her grandmother, asked.

  “We’re just about to join the M4. How’s everything on your end?”

  “So far, so good. I’m at the flat and it’s even lovelier than the first time we saw it, probably because the sun’s shining and the shutters are open. Actually, we had some mail delivered this morning. A letter from the energy company confirming our new account, and another from the local authority about the council tax.”

  “I’m guessing both were in your name?” Claudia asked.

  “They were.”

  Her mother didn’t have a new identity as such, she’d simply reverted to her maiden name—Kavanagh—which had been a straightforward enough process to arrange, enabling her to rent the flat with references provided by a nonexistent ex-employer. Luckily the new landlord hadn’t checked—why would he, when Marcy presented as the world’s most trustworthy individual—so all had gone through quite smoothly.

  “Is our stuff there yet?” Jasmine wanted to know.

  “It is, and the new furniture is due in about an hour, so the delivery chaps should have been and gone by the time you arrive. I don’t know how we’re going to put it all together, I’m sure, but I suppose we’ll work it out somehow. Oh, and before you ask, yes, I remembered to bring a tool kit.”

  “Super-nan,” Jasmine cheered.

  Surprised again by her daughter’s high spirits, and relieved, Claudia said to her mother, “Shall we pick up some groceries on the way?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll do it, and if I run out of time we can always get pizza delivered.”

  And here was another concern, how matter-of-fact her mother was sounding when there was absolutely nothing matter-of-fact about what they were doing.

  Was she the only one who was scared out of her mind?

  She needed to do as Jasmine said and stop stressing.

  “Have you checked if you’re being followed?” her mother asked, setting Claudia’s nerves off again.

  “She’s doing it every thirty seconds,” Jasmine chimed in, “but I scoped the whole neighborhood before we left and I promise you no one was there, so no one watched us leave.”

  “Good girl,” her grandmother praised. “What have you done with your old phones?”

  “We left them at the house,” Claudia replied, “along with our laptops, tablets, and keys. Obviously we made sure there was nothing left on them to give anything away. Do you think it was the right thing to do? Should we have brought them with us?”

  “We discussed it,” her mother reminded her, “and we decided they needed to stay there.”

  This was true, but now Claudia wasn’t so sure it had been such a good idea. Great escape planners they were, but since they’d never done anything remotely like it before they’d had no experience to draw on, only Internet advice, which didn’t seem to have let them down yet.

  “I have the replacement iPads and computers here,” her mother was saying, “so we can set them up later.”

  “Did you abandon your old stuff too?” Jasmine asked.

  “Of course. Actually, I tossed them in the lake—and very freeing it was too.”

  Claudia didn’t know whether to be shocked or impressed. The image of her respectable mother, owner of a contacts book to rival a royal’s, driving up to the lake near her home—or rather, old home since she’d left it yesterday—and ending her previous life with a random fling of Apple devices into a wildlife reservoir was hard to get her head around.

  Suddenly it was making her laugh. It was hysteria, of course, for there was nothing funny about it, but now that she’d started she was finding it difficult to stop.

  “OK, she’s losing it,” Jasmine declared. “I’ll calm her down and we’ll call when we’re about an hour away.”

  As the connection ended so did Claudia’s mirth, although the outburst did seem to have soothed her slightly.

  “Are you all right?” Jasmine asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “No one behind?”

  Claudia’s heart clenched.

  “Sorry, bad joke. No, don’t check.”

  “I’m driving, I have to.”

  Accepting that, Jasmine opened her phone again, and as she began setting up her new social media accounts, Claudia said, “No photos.”

  “I know that, but I can look at other people’s, right?”

  “You mean your old friends?”

  Jasmine shrugged. “I didn’t have so many, and I’m not much interested in what they’re doing. I’m trying to find some students who’re at my new school.”

  Since the information about that had been on her old laptop before they’d deleted it, Claudia wondered how much she minded searching for it all over again. Their Internet escape planner had warned against forwarding anything: if they did it wouldn’t take long to trace it to their replacement devices, and in no time at all their new lives would be over.

  They should have done the same as her mother and thrown everything into a lake, but it was too late now.

  Had her mother remembered to turn off the tracking feature?

  She was bound to have done so. They’d discussed it enough times, and Marcy was anything but stupid. In fact, she was the joint mastermind of this operation, had even come up with the original plan, having no idea at that time how complicated it would be to pull off. But step by step they were getting through it and now, here they were, five months on with some of the most difficult chal
lenges already behind them.

  At a service station Jasmine ran in for coffee while Claudia locked herself in the car and checked her own new phone to make sure there were no messages. Fortunately, there were none—and why would there be when she hadn’t set up any accounts yet? No one apart from Vodafone, Jasmine, and her mother had the number. Using Bluetooth, she connected to the car’s hands-free system so that she and Jasmine could listen to one of the audiobooks or podcasts they’d downloaded in preparation for this journey. Chances were, they’d be unable to focus, but the option was there if they wanted it, and setting it up was giving her something to do as she waited.

  She didn’t look around to check if she was being watched, she simply told herself that she had no chilling sense of it, which could mean either that she was in denial or that her instincts were working.

  No one knocked on the window or parked too close.

  At last Jasmine returned with two skinny lattes and a granola bar to share. As soon as the passenger door was closed Claudia hit the locks again and after taking a sip of her coffee she started back to the motorway.

  It was shortly before eleven o’clock, when they were passing the turnoff for Cirencester and Chippenham, that Jasmine said, “Should we try the radio now?”

  Experiencing yet another sickening jolt of nerves, Claudia simply nodded.

  As they listened to the headlines she was aware of how tightly she was gripping the wheel. Not that she was expecting to hear anything about their disappearance—it was still far too early for that—or about her failure to appear in court this morning—that might not have been noticed either. It was his name she was listening for, and when it came with the information that a verdict was expected at any minute, she felt the blood pounding too fast in her heart.

  Jasmine turned the radio off and said, “We’ll try again at midday.”

  They were both subdued now—simply hearing his name was enough to do that to them. Jasmine seemed to revert to the withdrawn and anxious teenager she’d been before her mother and grandmother had plotted the escape. Claudia was internalizing her fears, doing all sorts of bargains with God and the universe if they would just make sure the jury did the right thing.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have brought the attaché case.

  “AND SO WE reach the end of the line,” Jasmine murmured, coming awake as Claudia finally brought the car to a stop outside the freshly whitewashed Victorian villa that was to be their home for the next few months—possibly longer. It was at the end of a seafront terrace on the busy Promenade, and the apartment they’d leased comprised the entire first floor with three good-sized bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a spacious sitting-cum-dining area with an open-plan kitchen. Its tall sash windows at the front overlooked the windy bay of Kesterly-on-Sea, where a mile-long stretch of sandy beach was hugged by two grassy headlands, and the restless waves provided a playground for surfers, sailors, and skiers.

  Jasmine was right about it being the end of the line, for the train could go no farther than the station at the far end of the Promenade—and access from the motorway was as arduous in parts as it was spectacular in others, as it passed through ever-changing countryside. They’d chosen to come here quite randomly, for their Internet search had thrown up many remote towns and hidden villages that could have provided equally good cover, if not better. However, when Marcy had mentioned that she’d come here on holiday a few times as a child, Claudia had allowed that to be the decider. It was the only link they had to the place, which was no link at all really, but Claudia had seen right away how pleased her mother was to agree.

  Since their first visit just over six weeks ago, when the three of them had come to check it out, they’d found that it really did have everything they were looking for. They’d wasted no time in contacting an estate agent and by the following day they’d not only managed to secure this flat, they’d also registered with the local authority, and even enrolled Jasmine in the local school to sit her GCSE exams. No references from her previous school had been asked for yet, but Claudia already had a plan for how to handle that when it came up. (Honesty was usually the best policy—and the story she’d concocted was a fair version of it.)

  It was as they’d driven back to her mother’s house in the Chew Valley, south of Bristol, that they’d received a call informing them that a completion date for the sale of Claudia’s childhood home had now been set. As requested, it would happen during the week of their planned departure.

  Claudia felt more guilt over the loss of that house than she did over anything else, for it was the first and only home her parents had lived in until her father died.

  “If he were here,” her mother had argued when Claudia had protested at the suggestion the house should be sold, “he’d be doing the exact same thing as I am. You were what mattered to him, and your daughter, and if he knew that selling this place would make you safe he’d have it on the market quicker than you could choose an estate agent.”

  Now most of Marcy’s eclectic assortment of furniture, along with much else that had been collected over the years, had been sold with the house, and like Claudia and Jasmine she’d brought only her most precious possessions to Kesterly. However, she had almost three million pounds in her new bank account after cashing in all her other investments, so she could consider herself a wealthy woman by anyone’s standards. And if her small fortune was combined with the profits from the sale of Claudia’s business and the cash in the attaché case in the back of the car—presuming it wasn’t counterfeit—it was fair to say that right now money was the least of their problems.

  As Claudia climbed out of the BMW and stretched her too-thin limbs after the long drive, her eyes closed as she found herself assailed by the warm, pungent scent of salty sea air mixing with the sweetness of cotton candy and the metallic taste of traffic fumes. She could hear the hum of the tide surging along with the sound of engines, a musical merry-go-round somewhere close by, and the laughter of holidaymakers enjoying the beach. It reminded her of how calming and welcoming she’d found this place the last time they were here—and it was working its magic again.

  It was her mother’s voice that broke the spell and, turning to see her coming down the front steps of the villa, Claudia’s heart swelled with love and relief. When had she ever needed her mother more? And when had her mother ever let her down?

  “Nana,” Jasmine cried and ran straight into her grandmother’s outstretched arms. Marcy was a picture of sixty-four-year-old elegance with short fair hair, warm brown eyes, and a smile that was so like Claudia’s there could never be any doubting their relationship. And dressed as she was now in blue-striped Capri pants and a baggy white T-shirt, she looked almost as young and sprightly as her teenage self must have been.

  “Are you OK?” she asked, coming to embrace Claudia. “You look tired.”

  “A bit,” Claudia admitted, hugging her hard.

  “It’s stressful,” Jasmine put in, “when you’re afraid you’ve got someone after you.”

  Through a smile Marcy reminded her to keep her voice down, and following Claudia to the boot of the car, she reached for the brown leather attaché case. “I presume this is it?” she said quietly.

  Claudia nodded. She should have left it behind.

  “OK, I’ll take it in,” Marcy said, and winced as she discovered how heavy it was. “You two bring the rest of your things.”

  “Did my new music stand arrive yet?” Jasmine asked, shouldering a holdall and picking up another.

  “DHL tried to deliver while I was at the supermarket, but we can pick it up tomorrow.” Marcy’s eyes sparkled again as she said, “Come and see the furniture. Some of it’s already assembled, thanks to Rog, the very handyman the delivery chaps put me in touch with. He’s coming back to finish off in the morning.”

  As she started to turn away Claudia asked, because she had to, “How did you feel leaving the house yesterday?”

  “It was OK,” her mother assured her, although the light in h
er eyes dimmed, “but we can talk about it later.”

  Claudia’s mouth was dry. If that wasn’t bad enough, she knew what else she needed to ask, so forcing herself, she said, “Have you seen the news?”

  Marcy’s expression turned to dismay. “You didn’t listen to the radio?”

  Claudia hadn’t heard the latest bulletin because Jasmine had been sleeping—and because she was hiding behind a wall of dread.

  “We can get it on my laptop,” Marcy told her, and led the way inside.

  ONCE PAST THE large blue front door with its sculpted boxtrees on either side and bold brass numbers, they had only one flight of stairs to climb to their flat, where the hall was an obstacle course of unopened boxes, and the sitting room, equally chaotic, was flooded with sunlight. A gentle sea breeze was wafting about the place, adding its scent to the earthiness of cardboard and newness of three mint-green sofas that were half in and half out of their protective covers. A wooden dining table with six upholstered chairs was already assembled and positioned in front of the kitchen, where a kettle looked, for the moment, to be the only appliance on duty.

  Marcy carried the attaché case through to the far en suite bedroom that they’d already agreed would be hers, and after sliding it inside a closet she returned to the sitting room to turn on her laptop. When she’d found the news item she was looking for, she hit pause and rested the computer on the boxes stacked against one wall before hitting play.

  As she listened and watched, Claudia was aware of bile rising in her throat and Jasmine’s hand searching for hers. She linked their fingers and held on tightly.

  Guilty.

  She wanted to sob with relief, leap for joy, bury herself away so he could never find her again.

  “He hasn’t been sentenced yet,” her mother told her, “but they’re keeping him in custody; he’s still deemed a flight risk.”

  Oh yes, he was certainly that. With all those contacts, all that missing money, give him half a chance and he’d never be seen again.