Oh God, she was so, so scared. Her legs barely supported her.
The clown flashed her one last grin as the door began to swing open. Doc stalked inside. Carly wondered if he could hear the galloping of her heart. Smell the sourness of the girls’ urine in the corner. Her humiliation made her brave.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded of him, knowing that if it were her sisters he had come for she would die before she let him take them.
‘I’ve brought you some things.’ He held up a white plastic bag before setting it down.
‘I don’t mean now, I mean why are we here?’
‘There’s some more of those crisps and…’
‘We don’t want fucking crisps.’ Carly was furious. ‘We want to go home. We want proper food. We’re starving. A hot meal. The girls are only eight.’
‘My teacher said we need vitamins and minerals to grow,’ Marie said.
‘LET US GO!’ The words rocketed through Carly’s throat, leaving a burning sensation in their wake. Doc turned to leave.
You twist me around your little finger, her stepdad had said to her mum. She tried a different tack.
‘Please. I know…’ she began gently. Waiting until Doc faced her before she spoke again. ‘I know you’re a good man. I can tell. You don’t want to hurt us.’ It took gargantuan effort for Carly to smile. ‘My parents have money. Lots of it—’
‘I can’t let you go—’
‘But we’re children.’ Carly kept her voice soft. ‘You don’t want to scare children, do you? I can tell—’
‘Look. Don’t be scared. It’ll be okay, I promise. I’ll see what I can do about proper food.’
He was softening. She had seen it in her dad before her mum gave one last push for the thing that she wanted.
‘We won’t tell anyone if you let us go. You’re kind. I can tell,’ another forced smile. ‘You’re not like that other horrible man—’
In a flash Doc dropped the bag onto the floor and left, slamming the door behind him.
‘No!’ Carly screamed, hurtling across the room as fast as she could. ‘Don’t leave us!’
But he had.
‘Come back. Come back.’ The girls screamed, hammering on the door until Carly felt the skin on her hands split, blood trickling down her wrists, her forearms.
‘Stop,’ she told the girls. ‘He isn’t coming back.’ She felt oddly numb, not quite able to process she had asked an adult for help and he had walked away. At a loss as to know what else to do, she crouched and looked inside the carrier bag he had left.
Again Spicy Tomato Snaps, bags of blackcurrant liquorice sweets, cans of cherry Coke. Even Marie, who was always particularly fond of fizzy drinks and snacks, shook her head.
‘Isn’t there any water?’ she whined. At home Mum could never get Marie to drink water, she was obsessed with sweet cordials and fresh juices. Fizzy drinks.
‘No,’ Carly said. ‘I’ll ask him to bring some bottles next time he comes.’
‘What if he never comes back?’ Leah asked.
Carly handed her a bag of crisps.
Hours passed.
‘I said I’ll fucking take care of it,’ Doc had said.
It?
Their ransom? Arranging to sell them.
It?
Killing them? Was he going to… No! She wouldn’t let her mind go there. Dean Malden was supposed to be the first boy to touch her and the girls were babies.
It? It? It?
She turned over theories while the clown laughed at her.
I know. He said. I know what’s going to happen to you.
Carly was exhausted from thinking. From feeling.
Lethargically she trudged around the room. Too restless to sit. Too weary to tug at the bars at the window. Too weak to rattle the door handle.
Too tired to scream.
To shout.
To cry.
‘Shall we do some dancing?’ Marie asked. Carly felt ashamed. She should be the one trying to lift the mood.
‘I’m too hungry to dance.’ Leah sucked her thumb.
‘What about… What about “I spy”?’ Carly cast her eyes around the room. P is for prison. ‘Or…’
‘I’ll tell us a story.’ Marie patted the mattress in between her and Leah. Carly padded over to them and lay in the space on her back. The twins nestled into her.
‘Once upon a time,’ Marie began in the voice she used for school plays, ‘there were three sisters who found themselves in terrible danger. They—’
‘The sisters are us, aren’t they?’ asked Leah.
‘I’m not telling. If you keep interrupting I’ll stop.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Anyway, they came face to face with two dragons and they could have run away but they knew they had to make their family proud of them so they were brave and…’
Daylight was fading. Sleep swiped for Carly and she kept pushing it away, only hearing fragments of Marie’s tale of triumph where somehow the girls turned into princesses and won medals for courage. Eventually Marie’s voice grew smaller, her breathing deeper until at last they all slept.
Carly was disorientated as she woke to half light, unsure whether it was the same day. Although her arms were numb, she lay still, not wanting to wake the girls either side of her who were using her shoulders for pillows. She gazed out of the window until she was certain the sun was rising, not setting.
They had been here another night.
A solid mass of melancholy lodged in her throat. What if they really were here forever? There was no prince riding on a white charger to rescue them but there had to be people looking for them. Their parents. The police. Maybe even Dean Malden. Why were they taking so long to find them?
A tear trickled down Carly’s cheek. She turned her head to the side, away from her sisters, and then she saw it, by the door.
A blue carrier bag.
It definitely hadn’t been there before.
Somebody had been in the room. The thought that the men might have stood over them while they were deep in exhausted sleep was chilling. She could have woken to find one of the twins missing. Both of them missing.
Why hadn’t she used the rubbish to build some sort of early warning signal by the entrance so anyone coming into the room would dislodge it and alert the girls to their presence? She must do that before tonight. She was already resigned to the fact they wouldn’t be getting out of here.
She tried to summon up some hope but she felt oddly detached as though this was all some weird dream and she was watching herself from high above, staring at the bag, while the clown stared at her.
She was so thirsty.
There could be water in the bag.
Slowly, she inched out from between the girls. Crawled over to the door. She reached inside the bag and pulled out a tightly wrapped package, grease stains seeping through white paper. A faint smell she recognized.
‘Chips?’ She looked questioningly at the clown. He didn’t answer. She was so parched her tongue was thick. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. ‘Chips?’ she said again, cautiously unravelling the paper, staring in confusion at the thick slabs of potatoes until they danced in front of her eyes. She popped one onto her tongue.
Cold.
Greasy.