‘Hey, Leah. What’s up?’ Her voice is thick with tears. It’s been a hard day for us all at Marie’s flat. For a moment I hesitate, not wanting to make her feel any worse.
‘He’s out.’ It’s all I need to say.
She sharply draws a breath.
‘Who told you?’ she asks.
‘Graham.’
‘Not Mum?’
‘Of course not.’ Our relationship with our mother is complex. ‘Do you think she knows?’ Would the police be obliged to tell her?
‘Dunno. Should I call her?’
‘Do you want to?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Then don’t. Anyway, there’s nothing she can do and we need to tell Marie first. Speak to you later.’
I hang up, not waiting to hear her thoughts on his release. Her reaction will be the same as mine: outrage, sadness, fear.
Marie’s phone rings and rings. I will her to hurry up. Her answer service kicks in. I cut the call and try again with no luck.
She definitely said she didn’t have any plans that evening, that she was staying in.
In between bathing Archie and putting him to bed I try her again.
Still, she doesn’t answer.
My stomach churns with worry. When I was young I came down with tonsillitis unbeknown to Marie, who suddenly lost her voice, despite not feeling ill.
Twin instinct, Mum used to call it.
My thoughts cast back to that room – our prison – when I had thought she was going to die. I knew it then and I know it now.
Something is wrong.
Very wrong indeed.
Chapter Eleven
Carly
Then
Leah released another bloodcurdling scream and, before Carly could react, she tore over to the door, rattling the handle with both hands.
‘Come back! Let us out!’
Marie shouted, ‘Stop it, Leah. You’ll make them cross.’
Leah turned to Carly, her eyes wide and disbelieving. ‘They… they’ve left us here.’
‘It’s okay.’ Carly forced out the lie. ‘I’m going to get us out.’
‘How?’ Leah waited for an answer and when she didn’t get one she turned back to the door. Hammering on it with her small fists. ‘Help.’
‘Shh.’ Carly grabbed her wrists. ‘Stop that. Give me a second to think.’
Panic tightened in Carly’s chest, forcing her to draw in deeper breaths. The putrid smell was unbearable. Carly covered her nose with her sleeve while she stalked around the room.
It was small.
Oppressive.
Graffiti scrawled over the walls.
Ten frantic paces long and six paces wide.
One locked door.
One barred window. The tree outside tap-tap-tapping against the metal bars as pain tap-tap-tapped behind Carly’s eyes. She wondered if she had concussion from where she’d banged her head in the van. She’d seen that happen once on Casualty.
What would happen to the twins if she wasn’t here to protect them?
Carly pulled at the bars as hard as she could but they were concreted into place. Oddly they weren’t weatherworn or rusty, but shiny and new. It was a slow dawning. Carly realized with horror that they had been fitted recently, either for them or for someone who had been held here before.
This wasn’t random, it had been planned.
Why?
Had they been kidnapped for a ransom? Her stepdad was always featured in newspaper and magazines with his business. He and Mum were often out at work functions – ‘networking’, he called it. Drumming up business. She didn’t fully understand what he did, despite his patience in explaining it. His clients were all companies with money who paid him to build online campaigns to get the public to contribute to fund the manufacturing of new products. It seemed crazy.
‘Why can’t the companies just pay for their own stuff?’ Carly had asked.
‘Why risk your own money, if someone else is willing to pay? Besides, some of these big names genuinely can’t afford to pay for development in this economy but they can’t admit they’re in the red. If consumers knew there was any sort of risk of the company folding, they’d avoid them like the plague. Too worried about their guarantees being void or not being able to cash in gift vouchers.’
‘So it’s tricking them.’
‘Not tricking them, no. Creating a buzz is a win-win for everyone. The manufacturers get their product launched with minimal risk, and the consumers feel a real part of something. Everyone gets something out of it.’
It was confusing but it paid well. Their house was the nicest in their street. If the men demanded money Carly knew her parents would give it to them. That had to be it, didn’t it? But what if it wasn’t?
The girls had been brought here for a reason.
Carly just didn’t know what.
She closed her eyes.
She didn’t want to know.
Think.
Tap-tap-tap, said the tree.
Hurry-hurry-hurry.
Carly raced back to the door. Twisted the handle.
‘It’s still locked,’ Leah said.
‘I know that.’ What Carly didn’t know was what they – what she – was going to do. Panicked, she ran her fingers down the side of the door, feeling for the bump of the hinges. Could she unscrew them somehow and remove the door? There didn’t seem to be screws visible and Carly wondered if the door needed to be open in order to see them. She rattled the handle again.
Think.
Desperately, she scanned the room. The mattress took up much of the floor space. Broken glass littered the grubby grey floor; the fluorescent tubes had been wrenched from the ceiling and smashed. There was a heap of rubbish that looked like the bonfire her stepdad had mounded in the garden last year. Carly remembered the strike of the match, the flames that licked higher and higher until the guy the girls had made was alight. His legs, his torso. His face.
Was that what the men had planned for them?
She couldn’t breathe. The thought… The thought of being trapped in this room, toxic smoke filling the air, filling their lungs. The relentless heat.
They would burn.
Suffocate.
Die.
Carly stumbled over to the window as though smoke was already seeping into her lungs. She grasped hold of the metal bars, thankfully cool and not scorching hot. Lifted her feet from the ground.
Come on.
She wasn’t heavy enough to yank them from the window.
‘Girls. Come and help me.’
Leah slipped her arms around Carly’s waist, hanging from her like an infant monkey. Carly’s shoulder sockets screamed with pain, her clammy palms slipped, as the sisters tumbled onto the hard concrete ground, into a puddle of stagnant water that had pooled under the window. It stank.
‘I want to go home.’ Leah clung to Carly, the tips of her fingers digging into the already-bruised flesh of Carly’s arm.
‘We’re going to go home.’ Carly stood, and helped Leah up. Both of their skirts were sodden. ‘Why didn’t you help us, Marie?’
‘We can’t get out,’ Marie stated the simple truth.
Leah began to cry.
‘It’s okay, though.’ Marie stroked her twin’s hair, the way she had calmed Bruno the night fireworks lit up the sky behind their garden. ‘It’s a game. Isn’t it?’