He climbed in behind the wheel and slammed the door shut. It echoed into the cold night. He had only run a few metres but he was soaked to the skin. He stalled the car in panic. His hands were shaking; he was cold and wet, and he couldn’t seem to control himself at all. Eventually, the car started and began to reverse out of his parking space. As he looked up at Starling House he saw Sian in the window of the staffroom talking on her mobile phone.
John slammed his foot down on the accelerator, kicking up gravel from the driveway. He headed for the open security gates. There was no reason for them to be locked with no inmates to keep from escaping.
He didn’t slow down as he turned right out of the drive. Accelerating to forty miles per hour, he took the tight corner, and scraped the side of his Vauxhall on the wall. He just needed to get to the motorway. Once he was on an open road he could go anywhere.
At the first bend he tried to turn the steering wheel but his sticky bloody hands lost their grip and he moved over into the next lane of oncoming traffic. He leaned forward to try and see through the blur of rain on the windscreen and the battering of the wipers. Coming in the opposite direction he saw a speeding silver car heading towards him. It beeped for him to get out of the way.
But there was nothing he could do.
The silver Vauxhall and the silver Ford Focus made contact. One left the road and slammed into a tree, the other flipped and rolled twice before crashing into a drystone wall.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Matilda wasn’t sure which hurt most – the actual crash or the impact of an airbag to her face. It took her a while to find her bearings. She could see the ugly image of Starling House just ahead. Her head felt fuzzy; she was dazed and confused. She tore off her seatbelt and stumbled out of the car.
Ahead, two shapes came running towards her. She recognized the small woman with the red hair as Sian; the man alongside her was a mystery to her blurred vision.
‘Matilda, are you all right? Can you hear me?’ It sounded like Christian Brady but his shape seemed all wrong.
Matilda placed a hand to her forehead, and it came away wet with blood. She felt as if she was falling yet there was ground beneath her feet.
‘Sian, call for an ambulance.’
‘I already have. It’s on its way. She should lie down; she looks unsteady.’
‘I think she’s in shock.’
‘I’ll stay with her. Maybe you should check on Oliver, I mean, John.’
‘Good idea. Try to keep her awake.’
Matilda heard the words spoken by her colleagues but they made no sense to her. Were they even talking about her?
Sian’s blurred form came back into view. ‘Mat, I want you to sit down, OK? You’re looking a bit wobbly.’ Her voice was slow and controlled. ‘Mat, how many fingers am I holding up?’
Matilda tried to focus. She couldn’t see any fingers, never mind count them. She felt sick. She could feel bile rising up her throat. She opened her mouth and out came a torrent of vomit. Her legs gave way and she fell to the ground.
‘Christian, what’s happening?’ Sian screamed, the panic in her voice was evident.
Sian held Matilda in her arms as her boss began to convulse. Her entire body tensed and shook violently.
Christian turned around at the sound of Sian calling out to him. He was standing by the mangled Vauxhall trying to find a way in to check on John’s condition, but it was impossible. The driver’s side of the car was tight against the damaged stone wall. Smoke was rising from the engine. Fierce heat radiated from the car.
He crouched down to look through the shattered windscreen. Was John alive? It was difficult to tell. His face was covered with blood. He couldn’t see his nostrils flaring with breath, and his eyes were tightly closed.
‘Christian, I need your help,’ Sian again, screaming at him this time.
He turned from the car. There was nothing he could do here. This situation needed a fire engine to cut through the quagmire of mangled metal.
He headed back to Matilda and Sian. The look of horror on her face was disturbing to see. Sian was the unflappable one; the one who remained calm in a crisis. To see her looking so distraught was worrying.
‘What’s happ—?’ The explosion from the Vauxhall lifted Christian off his feet and threw him to the ground. He heard a scream coming from Sian and then nothing as he lost consciousness.
EPILOGUE
Matilda required a two-day stay in hospital, mostly for observation. The head injury caused by the crash wasn’t serious and at the scene she was suffering from a mixture of shock and concussion. The only way for her body to make sense of what was happening was to simply shut down. All the scans and tests had come back clear and she was discharged into Adele’s care.
Christian suffered concussion and minor burns. He stayed in hospital for slightly longer than Matilda until his wounds started to heel. She visited him before she was discharged.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said from the foot of his bed.
‘What for?’
‘For not being there. I should have been. Sian told me everything that happened in Starling House; the stand-off with Oliver … John. I’m sorry. You should never have been put in that position.’
‘It’s part of the job, though,
