by Rosie Harris
‘I’m not too sure. Soon, I promise you. Don’t desert me now, Becky, because I really do need your help.’
Before Rebecca could say any more, Cindy was running over the rocks towards the road. She was tempted to follow but thought that perhaps it was better not to do so. Someone, somewhere, was frightening Cindy, there was no doubt about that. She suspected it was Bruno, but couldn’t understand how he had such a hold over Cindy that she was scared of what might happen if she disobeyed.
‘Cindy, meet me here again tomorrow at the same time,’ she called after the fleeing figure.
Cindy hesitated. ‘Very well, but not here. I’ll see you in the High Street,’ she called back over her shoulder.
Thirty
Rebecca felt more confused than ever after Cindy had gone. She reproached herself for not following her instincts earlier, from the first time she saw her she had been sure it was Cindy.
It certainly seemed that she was some sort of prisoner. As she made her way to the station to catch a train back to Liverpool, she wondered once again if she ought to tell Danny Flowers and ask him what she ought to do. But some inner sense warned her that this could be dangerous for Cindy. She must wait until she had seen Cindy again and heard more of her story.
Thank heavens it would be Saturday tomorrow and there were no lectures, so there would be no problem about meeting Cindy at half past ten. She had to get to the bottom of this. Cindy was obviously in deep trouble.
She must help her, but until she found out why Bruno was treating Cindy this way and who else was involved it was best to do nothing.
It was a hot, sticky night and Rebecca slept badly. She tossed and turned for hours, then towards morning fell into a deep sleep.
She was sleeping so soundly she didn’t even hear the alarm clock, and when she finally woke with a start it was to find that it was after nine o’clock. It meant she was going to have to skip breakfast if she was to get to Hoylake in time for her assignment with Cindy.
Although it was a tremendous rush, she found time to pick out a pretty pale-blue cotton dress and a bright-red lipstick and pop them into a carrier bag to take along with her.
As she hurried down the main street, she spotted Cindy waiting near the supermarket. She had intended to see if she could persuade Cindy to change her mind about going to Red Rocks because it would be so lovely and cool there, but she was so hungry she decided it would be best if they went into one of the many small cafés in the High Street.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said a little breathlessly.
‘I was worried,’ Cindy told her. ‘I was afraid someone might see me hanging about here.’
‘I know,’ Rebecca gave her an understanding look.
‘I mustn’t be out too long. I have some shopping to do.’
‘I thought we could go to one of the cafés for a coffee,’ Rebecca suggested.
Cindy smiled with delight, then her eyes clouded and she shook her head. ‘I would like to do that, but I am so afraid someone will see me.’
‘I’ve thought of that.’ Rebecca held out the bag. ‘I’ve brought you a dress. There are some public toilets a few yards down the road. Go in there and get changed, and put the one you’re wearing now into the carrier bag out of sight. Meet me at the Bluebell Café. It’s just a couple of yards further down the road.’
For a moment Cindy stared at her in silence. Then her hand shot out and she almost snatched the carrier bag from Rebecca’s hand.
Rebecca gave her a couple of minutes start, then walked leisurely towards the Bluebell Café.
She went inside and ordered coffee and toasted teacakes for both of them, then found a table near the window where she could watch out for Cindy.
The slim young girl in a cool pale-blue cotton dress, her dark hair flowing loosely on her shoulders, looked so different from the girl in the jazzy red dress with her hair scraped back in a ponytail that even Rebecca was surprised by the transformation. It was as if she had her old friend back at last.
‘This feels wonderful,’ Cindy murmured as she slipped into the chair opposite Rebecca. She smiled as she looked across at her. ‘I feel like I’m in a dream. Remember how we used to swap clothes when we were both living in Shelston?’
‘Of course I do. Now, relax. I want to know what has been happening to you. The whole story, Cindy,’ she added severely.
The arrival of the waitress with their order gave Cindy a moment’s reprieve, but as soon as the waitress moved away Rebecca demanded, ‘Come on!’
Cindy picked up her cup of coffee and although it was very hot took a mouthful as if gasping for a drink.
‘You said you were being kept prisoner. What did you mean?’ Rebecca persisted.
‘I am.’ Cindy’s voice was bitter and unhappy. ‘I am their slave. I have to be up at six each morning to make all the breakfasts, then I have to clean the house, cook the midday meal, do the shopping and prepare a meal again in the evening, then clear up and wash up before I go to bed. All the time the old woman grumbles. She hates me. She accuses me of slovenliness, of not doing things her way.’
Tears were now trickling down Cindy’s cheeks, but she brushed them away with the back of her hand.
Rebecca opened her handbag and brought out a pack of tissues, took one out and passed it over to her. Cindy took it and dabbed her wet cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ she snuffled. ‘I have never spoken of this to anyone and now it’s too much for me.’
‘Why do you stay there, then?’ Rebecca asked in a bewildered voice.
Questions were tumbling from Rebecca’s lips like leaves off a tree in autumn, she was so anxious to get to the bottom of the mystery concerning Cindy’s disappearance.
‘Because of the baby!’
‘What baby?’ Rebecca looked at her in bewilderment, then she gasped, ‘Oh Cindy, not yours?’
‘Of course it’s mine. I told you that was why I was so anxious to find Bruno. I was pregnant. I didn’t know what to do, Becky. I didn’t dare tell my mother and you weren’t around, so I had no one to confide in, no one to ask for advice.’
‘You knew where I was, you could have phoned me.’
‘No, as far as I was concerned you were in another world leading a different life. You wouldn’t have understood.’
‘You never gave me the chance.’
‘I was going to. I was going to tell you all about it when we met in Cardiff.’
‘But you never came to Cardiff! You simply vanished. You ran away with Bruno,’ Rebecca said accusingly.
‘In a way I did, but not the way you’re thinking it happened.’
‘Go on then, tell me what did happen.’
Cindy hesitated, took a long drink of her coffee. ‘All right,’ she said in a flat voice, ‘but hear me out.’
Rebecca nodded. ‘I’ll order two more coffees first and then I want to hear your story. All of it.’
Thirty-One
‘Come on, Cindy, you promised!’ Rebecca said the minute the waitress had placed fresh coffees in front of them.
‘I didn’t run away that Friday when I was supposed to be coming to see you in Cardiff. I was accosted on the station then bundled into a car and brought up here to Merseyside.’
‘By complete strangers?’ Rebecca knew she sounded horrified. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
‘Couldn’t you have screamed or fought them off? Or called out for help?’
Cindy gave a sigh that was almost a cry of anguish.
‘It all happened so quickly. As I went up on to the platform a man came up to me and said that Bruno was outside and wanted to speak to me.’
‘The man who’d been manager at the supermarket in Shelston, the chap you were trying so hard to contact?’
‘That’s right. I was mystified but I went with him. We went down some steps to a back entrance and at the bottom this man suddenly grabbed me by the arm and shoved me into the back of a car. The car engine was already running and we roared off before
I could do or say anything.’
‘Was the driver Bruno?’
‘No, of course he wasn’t. He was involved, though. His real name is something quite different. They drove non-stop up here to Merseyside, to a house in Liverpool where he was waiting for me. He seemed so different. He wasn’t the man I had fallen in love with, the man who was the father of the baby I was expecting.’
Cindy paused and wiped her eyes. ‘I asked him to let me go but he simply laughed at me. He said he’d decided that I would be his when he first saw me in Shelston, that day when we both went to the supermarket and I asked him for a job. Now that he had me in his home I would never go free again and I could forget all about Shelston and my family and friends.’
Rebecca stared at her in dismay. She was about to say something when Cindy started to speak again, so she remained silent.
‘I was so scared, Rebecca, and so shocked that I didn’t speak to any of them for almost a week. I tried every ruse I could to get free and each time they punished me, beating me until I couldn’t stand up for days afterwards.
‘Then one night Bruno came into the small room where I slept, which was little more than a store cupboard. It was so small there was no way I could escape from him and he forced me to make love.
‘It was then that he told me Bruno Lopez wasn’t his real name but simply one he had used when he was in Shelston.’
‘So he isn’t Spanish at all, as we had been led to believe?’ Rebecca murmured in astonishment.
‘No, and I’ve no idea what nationality he is. That’s why there would be no point in my going to the police even if I did manage to escape, because he is an illegal immigrant and they have no record of him in this country. He forged his details to get the job in the supermarket.’
For a moment Rebecca stared at Cindy in shocked silence. ‘Even so, you can’t let them treat you like they’re doing, you can’t stay there,’ she protested lamely.
‘What else can I do?’ Cindy asked with a hopeless gesture of her hands.
‘Well, for a start, why don’t you run away?’
‘Not without my baby. Not without little Poppy,’ Cindy gulped. ‘I care too much about her and they get angry with me for paying too much attention to her. If I answer back or argue or do something wrong, they take her away from me. I can hear her crying but I can do nothing about it.’
‘Oh, Cindy, this is terrible,’ Rebecca exclaimed and reached out to take Cindy’s hand and hold it in hers.
‘They know that I care about her so much that I will never leave her, so whenever they send me out to do the shopping they insist that she stays at home with them.’ Her voice caught in a stifled sob and Rebecca could see the unhappiness and fear in her eyes.
‘They allow you out, though, so why don’t you go to the police and ask for help? Tell them what you’ve told me and they will help you.’
Cindy gave a hopeless little shrug. ‘You don’t understand, it’s not that easy. I must go now,’ she said, looking round anxiously. ‘If they see me talking to you, they will punish me.’
‘How? What will they do?’
‘They won’t let me see the baby. I won’t even be allowed to feed her or nurse her for several days, perhaps for as long as a week.’
‘That’s blackmail!’ Rebecca exclaimed. ‘Oh Cindy, whatever has happened to you? Who are they? Who is this old woman who has such a hold over you?’
‘Bruno’s mother. She speaks no English but she understands every word that is said. His brother also lives in the house, he was the driver of the car that brought me here from the West Country. There’s also another man, but I’m not sure who he is.’
‘Was he the man who spoke to you at Frome station?’
‘Yes, I think he’s some sort of bodyguard. He’s always very respectful to the old woman.’
Rebecca remained thoughtful for a moment, her brows drawn together in a frown as she tried to work things out.
‘You said that when they first brought you here it was to a house in Liverpool. Why did they all move to Hoylake?’
‘It was a safety precaution. They thought that you or my parents would report me missing to the police, and that someone might have seen what happened at the station and noted the car’s number plates or a description of the driver and manage to trace them. Because they’ve no right to be in this country, they’re very careful about their movements.’
‘So how do they live? Has Bruno got a job of some kind, or do the other men work?’
Cindy shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes one or the other of them will disappear for days at a time, but mostly all three of them are in the house. Since I’ve been here I’ve always been the one sent out to do the shopping, so no one ever sees anything of the others.’
‘Do they never have any visitors?’ Rebecca asked in a puzzled voice.
Cindy shook her head. ‘No one. They wouldn’t even send for a doctor when I went into labour.’
‘Oh Cindy! What happened?’
‘The old woman acted as midwife and delivered the baby,’ Cindy said in a low voice, shuddering at the memory.
‘After that I couldn’t leave, could I? I was so afraid of what they would do to the baby. They never allowed me to be alone with her for one minute and I couldn’t run away and leave her with them, they are so evil. Oh, Becky, little Poppy is so lovely and so helpless that I can’t leave her with these terrible people.’
‘I do understand that, but it’s hideous!’ she said with a shudder. ‘I’ve been thinking of you ever since I saw you in that jazzy old dress I gave you years and years ago. I certainly don’t intend on leaving you here like this.’
‘Oh heavens! Is that the time?’ Cindy gasped in horror as she looked at the clock on the café wall. ‘I must go!’
Cindy drained her coffee cup. The teacake lay on her plate, limp and unpalatable.
‘I must go,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll go and change back into my own dress and meet you outside the supermarket.’ She ran a hand over the cotton dress Rebecca had brought for her to wear. ‘This has been like a wonderful dream,’ she murmured gratefully.
Rebecca remained sitting at the table for several minutes. When they met up outside the supermarket, Cindy had changed back into the jazzy dress and scraped her hair back into a ponytail. She looked utterly different from the girl who had been sitting opposite Rebecca in the café only a few minutes earlier
Yes, Cindy was right, she reflected, it was like a dream. A very disturbing one.
Thirty-Two
In the train on the way home, Rebecca went over in her mind all the things that Cindy had told her.
The revelation that Cindy had been ill-treated by Bruno was horrifying. When she met him at the supermarket in Shelston he had appeared to be the perfect gentleman, and she could understand Cindy falling for him. But to be dragged away and kept prisoner and to cause so much distress to both their families was beyond belief!
She was quite sure everything Cindy had told her was true. She looked cowed, she was frightened, and her concern over her baby was very understandable.
What she couldn’t comprehend was why Cindy stayed there. Why didn’t she run away? Why didn’t she take the opportunity to go to the police when they sent her out to do the shopping?
Of course, there was her fear that they would harm the baby. But surely they only said they would do that to keep her there?
Or perhaps it wasn’t merely a threat? Rebecca remembered a terrible report she had read in the newspapers about how a foreign family retaliated when their sister refused to marry the man they had chosen for her. They seemed to regard death as being something of no consequence. Yet to kill a baby, that really was beyond belief.
She recalled how Cindy had shuddered as she described how Bruno ill-treated her and his threats of what the consequences would be if she disobeyed him.
Rebecca knew she must do something to help Cindy, to get her away from Bruno and make sure Cindy and her baby were safe. But she had
no idea of how to go about it.
She thought of telling her own parents and seeing if they could help. Or telling the Masons. At least it would mean that they knew that Cindy was still alive. But would the details horrify and distress them even more?
And if they went the wrong way about trying to rescue Cindy, then they might do more harm than good. Bruno had already proved he could be both cruel and violent and that Cindy was powerless when he turned on her.
The only person she could think of who might know how to deal with the situation was Danny Flowers. The trouble was that he was a policeman and Cindy had been so adamant that Bruno would harm both her and the baby if the police ever became involved.
She was still wondering what was the best way to handle the situation when she arrived home. Grace was waiting for her, a scowl on her pretty face.
‘Where have you been?’ she demanded crossly as Rebecca walked in. ‘You promised we would spend today revising for tomorrow’s exams. We were going to test each other, remember?’
‘Oh, Grace, I’m so sorry. It went right out of my mind.’
‘So it seems,’ Grace retorted ungraciously, flouncing back into the kitchen.
‘We’ll get started right away, if you like,’ Rebecca volunteered in an attempt to placate her.
‘Can’t you see I’m cooking? I’m starving and I can’t study on an empty stomach.’
‘So am I,’ Rebecca admitted. ‘Shall we eat first, then? It certainly smells appetizing. Afterwards we can settle down for a concentrated session.’
Grace didn’t answer, but busied herself taking plates out of the cupboard and banging them down on the worktop then rattling knives and forks loudly as she took them out of the drawer.
‘I’ll lay the table,’ Rebecca offered, taking the cutlery from Grace’s hands.
‘You’ll wash up as well since I’ve done all the shopping and cooking. Where have you been anyway? What was so important that you didn’t even take the trouble to let me know you were going out?’
