It is then Archie lets out a piercing scream.
Chapter Forty-One
Carly
Then
Two women were in the car that had stopped. Now, the sisters clung to each other on the back seat while the women asked them for their names. Carly couldn’t answer. Leah and Marie wouldn’t. Strangers were once just people they didn’t yet know, now they were to be feared.
‘Taken’ is all Carly could say.
‘Taken? What have you taken?’ The women exchanged a glance.
‘Taken.’ Carly began to cry.
‘My God.’ One of the women leaned towards Carly and placed a hand on her knee. Carly flinched from her touch. ‘Are you the Sinclair Sisters?’
‘The girls that were abducted?’ the other woman said. ‘You’ve been headlines in every single newspaper and on all the TV channels. Not just in the UK but worldwide.’
Carly cried harder. Leah and Marie also burst into tears.
‘It’s all right. Everyone’s been looking for you. There’s been alleged sightings of you up and down the country, and abroad but… my goodness. You’re here. You’re okay.’
‘Please…’ Carly hiccupped out breaths. ‘Take us home.’
‘Your poor parents will be so relieved. We’re not far from a police station so—’
‘Quickly.’ Carly looked out of the windows fearfully. ‘Before they find us.’ The women exchanged hurried whispers before they pulled away.
Despite the fan blasting out heat, and the tartan blanket draped over their knees, Carly couldn’t stop trembling. The heat magnified the smell of the dried vomit on their clothes, the urine on their socks. She swallowed down bile.
Every pothole, each flash of lightning and rumble of thunder made her jump.
As she tried to stem her tears she was aware of the woman in the passenger seat twisting around, asking her if they’d been hurt, who had taken them, telling her that they were now famous, but Carly couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t tear her gaze away from the window. Rain slid down the glass. The trees shadowed against an iron sky. In the distance, darker shapes, the buildings from the RAF base. Carly couldn’t bear to see it but she couldn’t turn away either.
The car slowed, indicators tick-tick-ticked.
In her peripheral vision Carly caught a movement. She turned her head.
It was him.
Doc.
She inhaled sharply. Her throat was clogged with fear. She couldn’t draw air in or force words out.
He was so close. If he hurried he could wrench open the door and grab her.
She felt hot and cold. Sick. Unable to react.
His eyes found hers and there was something in them that Carly thought she had seen in him before.
Sympathy?
Regret?
He nodded once. The car began to move again. They were leaving him far behind but nevertheless he would always stay with Carly. In her nightmares, in her head.
She twisted further around in her seat, her palms against the window.
He was gone.
Once they reached the police station it all became a blur, as though Carly was, at last, allowing herself to switch off, allowing somebody else to take charge.
‘The Sinclair Sisters.’ A crowd of police officers grinned at them as though they had personally found them. ‘You’ve caused quite a fuss.’
‘Am I in trouble?’ Carly whispered, knowing it was all her fault. She should have taken better care of her sisters.
‘Of course not!’ A lady with a white pixie cut and pink cheeks spoke kindly. ‘I’m Angela and I’ll stay with you until Mum and Dad arrive. Let’s take you somewhere more private while we wait for them. It won’t be long until the vultures find out that you’re here.’
‘Vultures?’ Marie asked.
‘Tabloids,’ the woman said.
‘Do tabloids eat dead people like vultures?’ Marie looked confused.
‘Yes, they like to pick over bones. Don’t you worry, my darling.’
They were ushered into a room and wrapped in blankets. Next to Carly, the radiator was blasting out heat but still she couldn’t stop shivering.
‘Are you hurt?’ Angela asked.
Carly shook her head, ‘But Leah twisted her ankle and Marie has been vomiting.’
‘We’ll be getting you all checked over by a doctor when your parents are here, but first let’s get something sweet inside of you.’
Flimsy polystyrene cups of hot chocolate floating with clumps of powder were pushed into their freezing hands. Leah and Marie drained their drinks, not waiting until they had cooled. Carly couldn’t touch hers, her stomach a mass of worry. She didn’t know how to explain herself. She couldn’t make sense of how it all happened. One minute she was texting Dean while the twins were playing and then… Carly began to cry again. How could her parents ever forgive her?
The twins were on their third hot chocolate when the door creaked open. Her parents rushed inside. Leah and Marie ran over to their father and scrambled up his legs like monkeys climbing a tree. ‘Thank God. Thank God.’ Her stepdad balanced a twin on each hip. Carly’s mum cupped her face.
‘Do you hate me?’ Carly asked.
‘Hate you? No! If anything, I hate myself. I should have been at home with you all. This wasn’t your fault.’
The twins wriggled free and pulled at Mum and then all three girls were encircled in arms, Mum and Dad holding them too tightly, whispering ‘sorry’ over and over again in their hair. Carly sagged against them as she realized they didn’t blame her, they blamed themselves. It felt like they melded together as one. Carly couldn’t tell where her family began and she ended.
And there, in the small room with the plain walls and the harsh fluorescent light, Carly felt like she was home.
‘Mr and Mrs Sinclair?’ The voice melted the glue that held them together and they fell apart. ‘Can I run through what’s going to happen now? I’m Chief Inspector Graham McDonald.’
Dad scooped up the twins again.
‘We will find the bastards, I promise you that,’ said Graham in a thick Scottish accent while Carly’s mother sobbed into a tissue.
It seemed to take forever before they were ushered out of the back entrance of the station to avoid the reporters, but still as they were driven past the front of the building cameras clicked firework-night flashes, rapid and bright. Questions were shouted. Outside of their house were news vans. Neighbours stood on steps in their dressing gowns, breath billowing in the frigid night air. It was chaotic and overwhelming and Carly couldn’t wait to be inside, but once back in her bedroom she found it unfamiliar and unsafe.
For weeks afterwards the twins would creep into Carly’s room after darkness fell, sneaking into the canopied bed she’d found embarrassing before she’d been taken but now she was thankful for the wispy white voiles she could draw around them. Shut out the world. The sisters would cuddle up together and Carly was thankful for the company. She couldn’t bear to be alone even if Leah had started wetting the bed and in the early hours, Marie’s arms and legs would thrash, as though she was running or fighting off an attacker. Carly herself would wake in the middle of the night, her sheets drenched with sweat, and for a nanosecond she’d wonder if it had been some awful, terrible nightmare. Then her tongue would prod the gap in her mouth where her tooth had been knocked out in the van on the way to Norcroft. Her parents had tried to persuade her to go to the dentist. Reassured her that he’d be able to fix it so you’d never know, but she hadn’t wanted to – wanting that physical reminder to never again become complacent.