‘No?’ he shouts, his head snapping round. He leans closer, his voice barely more than a pained whisper. ‘He’s hiding something. He knows a lot more than he’s letting on, but you’re too blind to see it. Maybe it’s because you’ve allowed yourself to become too close to your subject, or maybe it’s because, despite all your intuition, you are nothing more than a writer. You’re not a detective, Emma, and your desperation to see the good in people all the time stops you seeing what is right in front of your face.’
I’m not prepared to become the next target of his frustration. Grabbing my satchel, I scrape my chair from the table, causing more people to look over. I can’t bring myself to look at Jack, let alone speak to him. I make my way over to the table, move around it, and grab an apron from behind the door. Standing next to Freddie, I begin to ladle from the second tall pot of soup, faking a smile as I hand the bowls over to expectant hands.
I see Jack shrink away in my periphery, but I keep my gaze firmly fixed on those I’m serving.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ I whisper gently to Freddie when the queue has died down.
He doesn’t respond, and I can’t help thinking our friendship will never be the same again. Freddie trusted me with his story, and now I’m the one who invited the wolf into our little cave of trust. Jack is wrong about me though. Wanting to find the good in people isn’t a flaw, it’s a strength.
Chapter Seven Then
Piddlehinton, Dorset
Rattling of the caravan door had Joanna pulling up her knees and tucking them beneath her chin. It had to have been nearly an hour since she’d overheard the men threatening to kill her, and so she’d remained quiet as a mouse, sitting on the small bench, crying to herself and praying fervently for a solution to her problem.
It was much darker outside now, and she couldn’t stop thinking about how frantic her mum would be. She’d never stayed out this late alone before, but the one bright spark she was focusing on was that her not returning home today was so out of character. Her mum and dad would know she hadn’t run away and that meant they’d know there had to be another reason she wasn’t home; they were probably thinking she’d been in an accident, or that the worst had happened and she’d been taken. Mum would be phoning her friends, hospitals, and probably the police, which in turn meant there were people looking for her.
Whether they’d know she’d been brought to this tiny campsite in the middle of nowhere was a question she was refusing to ask. They would find her; bad things didn’t happen to people like them. Aside from the burglary, the family had never had need of the support of the police; they didn’t know anyone who’d been beaten, mugged, or murdered. They were a good family who went to church most Sundays, and didn’t welcome trouble into their lives.
The door rattled again and she held her breath, willing the men to go away. She’d been good; she hadn’t made a fuss. Whatever they had planned, surely they wouldn’t kill her as they’d threatened.
The door cracked open a moment later but the figure who stepped through wasn’t the man in grey who’d brought her here, nor the man he’d been speaking to. Instead, a younger man – possibly fifteen or sixteen with tight red curls on top of his head – bounded up the steps.
‘Oh, bloody hell, it’s dark in here. Why are the friggin’ lights not on?’
The tone of his voice was pitched much higher than she’d been anticipating. She instantly recognised the dulcet tones of his Irish upbringing, as his voice sounded similar to that of Sinead O’Donovan in her class at school. The accent wasn’t as harsh as her teacher Mr Allen, who was from Belfast.
The young man bounded back out of the caravan, leaving the door swinging open, as he moved about and fiddled with something clunky outside. To have left the door so open like that meant he either hadn’t seen her, or he had no idea she was in here. Was this the chance she’d been praying so ardently for?
Lowering her legs off the chair, she kept her breath held, conscious that her footsteps would echo around the cabin if she didn’t place them carefully. The young man hadn’t returned, and she could still hear him bashing away at something outside. She crept forwards slowly, beginning to feel lightheaded at the lack of fresh oxygen, but she swallowed down the anxiety until she found herself at the doorway, staring out into the darkness. A small security light just outside the door showed the wet mud beyond the steps, and as she peered ever further out, she could see that each of the three caravans had a similar spotlight projecting down from a pole on the roof.
There was no other sign of life outside, which meant if she could get down the steps without the younger man hearing and seeing her, she could get across the mud and back onto the track before anyone knew she was gone. What she would do when she got there, she hadn’t thought through yet, but it had to be worth the chance.
‘Oh, hi, there you are,’ the young man’s voice said, as he suddenly materialised in the doorway, the caravan rocking as he once more took the steps two at a time, making no effort to tread lightly.
Joanna scuttled back to the seat, fearing that his intentions were anything but friendly, but he made no lunge towards her.
