‘Let’s play a game while we wait to go home.’ She led her sisters over to the mattress and they settled down. Carly wiped her eyes with her sleeve. ‘We each have to name something in the room alphabetically. You start, Leah.’
‘Animal.’
‘There isn’t an animal!’ Marie said.
‘There’s a bear.’ Leah was cuddling the soft toy from the box.
‘If you can have that, I’ll have A teddy for my A,’ Marie said. ‘Carly? Your turn.’
‘Annoying sisters,’ Carly said but they all knew she didn’t mean it.
‘Now. B. Umm… bed! Kind of.’ Marie patted the mattress.
‘Broken glass,’ Carly offered.
‘Bars,’ Leah said flatly and Carly clapped her hands, drawing her sister’s gaze away from the window.
‘My turn to go first, C.’ Carly looked around the room. ‘This is harder.’
‘Not for me!’ Marie shouted. ‘Carly!’
Carly rolled her eyes. ‘Okay, I’m going for carpet.’
‘There isn’t a carpet!’ Marie shoved Carly.
‘There’s a dust carpet!’
‘That would be D then, silly. Pick something else.’ Marie’s eight-year-old logic was often skewed. How she rationalized things was often a source of amusement at home.
‘Okay then… crisps. Your turn, Leah.’
‘Clown.’ Leah began to cry. ‘I don’t like that clown, Carly. He’s watching us.’
They all stared at the graffiti on the back of the door. The clown’s eyes did seem to be fixed on them, his stretched mouth laughing.
‘I don’t want to play any more.’ The brief moment of lightness was gone.
‘Do you want some crisps?’ Carly remembered she hadn’t given the girls their tea. She rubbed her fingers together, still feeling the paper of the £10 note smooth against her skin, almost tasting chips drenched with salt and vinegar.
‘I’m not hungry.’ Leah lay on her side and began to suck her thumb. She hadn’t done that since she was three.
Time dragged. It felt like days since Carly had sat on her back step after school and felt the heat of the sun on her skin. The room was chilly with its bare walls and floors. Outside the last burst of sun streaked the sky orange as it began to dip, and Carly knew they’d grow even colder. One blanket wasn’t enough for them all.
Leah hugged her knees to her chest. Carly could see the goosebumps on her arms.
Marie sat cross-legged, spine rigid, staring at the door that never opened. Carly shuddered. That clown gave her the creeps too.
‘Come on.’ She stood and stretched out a hand to each sister. ‘Let’s warm up.’
‘How?’ Marie asked but she was already standing.
Carly raised her arm above her head and mimed spinning a lasso – ‘5, 6, 7, 8’ – the way she should have done in the kitchen earlier that day.
Tentative at first, the girls’ singing grew louder, stronger, as their feet shuffled across the concrete, hands on their hips. Momentarily it seemed to Carly they could have been somewhere else. Back at home with Bruno barking and jumping up, doing his own dog dance. Carly’s voice faltered as she swallowed down a hard lump that rose in her throat as she wondered what might have happened if she hadn’t been such a bitch earlier and had danced with the twins when the song had come on the radio. That four-minute delay might have made all the difference. The men might have given up searching for someone to take. Or it could be different girls trapped here right now. Instantly, Carly felt like a cow for wishing this on somebody else and she pushed away the part of her that whispered better anyone else than you.
She sank onto the mattress, too emotional to carry on. ‘I’m out of breath. You girls take over.’
Marie and Leah exchanged a look before breaking out their best Madonna. Carly had heard them sing ‘True Blue’ a million times before, sometimes with lips coated in Mum’s red lipstick, a beauty spot drawn below their left nostril with an eyebrow pencil, and usually it irritated her but here it sounded sweet and pure, the twins placing their hands dramatically over their hearts as they declared true love. Would they live through this to find their soulmates one day? Carly thought of Dean, she might never see him again. The twins slipped seamlessly between the songs they’d choreographed in their bedroom. Marie’s fingers sought out the cross around her neck, lifting it as she sang ‘Like a Prayer’. Leah’s hand felt around her own throat. ‘My cross! It’s gone!’
‘It must be here somewhere.’ Carly remembered the gold glinting in the light as Leah was carried in.
‘We’ll find it,’ Marie dropped to her knees.
‘Be careful of the broken glass,’ Carly joined in the search but it was fruitless. ‘I’m sorry, Leah. We’ll get you another one.’
Leah nodded. Carly could see she was upset but she didn’t complain. ‘Do you want to sing something else?’
Leah shook her head. ‘I’m hungry now.’
Carly was surprised to find that she was too.
‘Let’s have some Snaps while we wait for Doc and Moustache to bring us some proper dinner.’ There wasn’t nearly enough food in the box to keep all three of them going for more than a few hours and this gave Carly hope that the men would be back soon.
The sisters licked spicy tomato crumbs from their fingers and fizzed open cans of cherry Coke.
And waited.
They waited for dinner. They waited for a light.
But nobody came.
They all felt it, the creeping claustrophobia that built as dusk fell. Gloom casting shadows into the corners of the room, across the ceiling.
‘I want to go home, I want to go home.’ Leah’s voice dripped with hysteria. ‘I want to go home!’
She raced over to the door and began beating against it, screaming, ‘Let us out. Help us.’
Carly and Marie rushed over to Leah’s side but rather than trying to calm her they too began thumping the door.
‘Let us out. Please. Somebody help us.’
The clown laughed and laughed at their panic. The whites of his eyes, his teeth, the last visible thing as darkness swallowed the girls, feeding on their fear.
It was pitch black.
Still they screamed.
Still nobody came.
Chapter Fourteen
Leah
Now
There is somebody in our garden.
I peer anxiously out of the window into the gloom, my fingertips resting on the glass, eyes searching for shadows. Blood whooshes through my ears and rising above that, the steady thump of George’s footfall on the stairs.
‘Archie fell asleep halfway through The Stick Man. I put on my best voices too. I think… Leah? Are you okay?’
‘I thought I heard something,’ my voice wobbles. ‘And when I looked outside there was…’
Movement.
Him.
‘I can’t see anything now, though.’
George stands by my side. ‘Just because they’ve released him doesn’t mean you need to feel—’
‘I know.’ I don’t need to feel unsafe, but I do. That man has ruined my life. When he was contained in a prison cell, guarded by officers, I could almost, almost pretend he didn’t exist. Now he’s back out there somewhere. He could be one hundred miles away.