She was denying Alice so many things, internet access being the least of them. And it was only going to get harder as she edged toward her teens. But Fran had no choice: it was what she had to do, to keep her safe.
After they ran the first time, Fran home-schooled her. It stopped the authorities from knocking on their door, asking too many questions, and it meant that Alice was always within her sight. She was still vulnerable, traumatized. She needed time to adjust. They both did.
But as Alice grew older, Fran knew she needed more normality, to mix with children of her own age, so she had buckled and enrolled her at the local junior school.
That had been a mistake. Alice was smart but she was also young, and it was so easy to forget a lie. Plus, people talked—at the school gates, in the staff room. A misplaced word repeated to a stranger. A slip of the tongue to a teacher or parent. A friend of a friend who posted a picture on social media.
Really, it was only a matter of time.
They had escaped. But at a price.
This time around, Fran had tried to be even more careful. No more school. A nondescript house in a small town. She found work at a local café and the owner didn’t mind if Alice studied quietly in the back. They tried, as far as possible, to live under the radar.
They had lasted a year.
She had known something was wrong as soon as they got home yesterday evening. Fran didn’t really believe in a sixth sense. But she did believe in some kind of primeval alarm, wired into our DNA, that warns us about danger; danger even our brains haven’t consciously registered.
She had stood in the kitchen and listened to the house, every sense twitching. Alice had already gone upstairs to her room. Fran heard the clump of her footsteps, the creak of her bed. Then silence. Not even the usual faint murmur of the television from next door. The house rested. Fran’s nerves thrummed.
She had walked across to the window. At six o’clock on a February evening the light was getting thin. The streetlights were just starting to stutter on. She looked up and down the street.
Her battered Fiat Punto sat outside, half propped on the curb. Her neighbor’s blue Escort was parked next to it, almost bumper to bumper. She knew every one of the cars on this street, as well as the cars of all the people who visited. That way, she could spot anyone unfamiliar. Out of place.
Yesterday, she had. Parked a few houses down, on the corner, behind the yellow Toyota that belonged to the Patels at number 14. A small white van. Innocuous. The sort of van people hired if they wanted to do their own removals; and it was true that the Patels had sold their house a while ago. But they were a family of six. She was pretty sure one small white van would not carry all of their possessions.
The van should not be there. Of course, there were probably any number of reasons why it could be. Rational, simple, normal explanations. But she dismissed them.
The van should not be there.
The van had come for them.
As she watched, the driver-side door opened. A man climbed out. Stocky, wearing a baseball cap, a green sweatshirt and jeans. He carried a parcel. Of course. People were always ordering things online now. A delivery driver wouldn’t arouse suspicion. Except Fran didn’t order anything online for that exact reason.
She didn’t have much time. She ran upstairs and threw open her wardrobe. Everything she needed was packed into a small rucksack at the bottom. The house was rented fully furnished. They had no keepsakes or mementoes.
She knocked on Alice’s door and eased it open. Alice lay on her bed, reading, long legs bent up behind her. She was growing fast, Fran thought. There would come a time when there would be questions; when she would no longer acquiesce to this life. Fran pushed that terrifying thought to one side.
“Sweetheart?”
“Yes?” Alice looked up. A few strands of dark hair fell over her face.
“We have to go. Now.”
Fran ran to the wardrobe, grabbed the rucksack and chucked her a hoodie. Alice pulled it over her head and got to her feet, stuffing them into her fake Uggs. Then she hesitated, looking around. Fran fought the urge to grab her, hurry her along.
“Alice. C’mon,” she hissed.
Alice spotted what she was missing. The small bag of pebbles, sitting on the bedside table. She snatched it up and slung it over her shoulder.
They crept out onto the landing and padded softly down the stairs. Just before the bottom, Fran paused, Alice’s small, warm body pressed closely behind. She peered around the corner of the wall. The front door had opaque glass at the top so she could see people approach. She had attached a sign to the door. Casual, handwritten:
Parcels and deliveries, please use the side door. Thanks.
Fran saw a shadow at the frosted glass, waited as the man read the note, then saw the shadow move again, around to the side of the house. Now. She grabbed Alice’s hand and they ran down the hallway. She quickly unlocked the front door. She heard a knock on the side door. They bolted down the short pathway to the car. Beeped it unlocked. Chucked the rucksacks into the back. Alice climbed in the front; Fran threw herself into the driver’s seat. She started the engine.
She was already accelerating away when she saw the man run down the side path of the house, looking confused and annoyed. Fleetingly, she wondered whether he really was making a delivery. Perhaps he had just got the wrong house. Then she saw the flash of metal in his hand. No. She wasn’t being paranoid. He had come for them. She knew.
Within ten minutes, they had been on the motorway, their old lives abandoned behind them, again.
Apart from the brief stop at the services, they had been driving ever since. They hadn’t made bad time to start with, but then they had hit a massive traffic jam on the M5 and, even at such a late hour, been hindered by an endless procession of trucks blocking both lanes on the M42. They were heading up the M1 toward Yorkshire now.
Making time, Fran thought, a line from an old film popping into her mind. I’m making time. What was it? Then she remembered. Withnail and I, the perennial student favorite. We’ve gone on holiday by mistake. We appear to be running for our lives by mistake.
“Where are we going?” Alice asked.
“I don’t know. Scotland, maybe? Somewhere safe, sweetheart. I promise.”
“You promised before.”
And she shouldn’t have. She shouldn’t now. But what else could she say? We’ll never be safe. We’ll never stop running. She couldn’t admit that to herself, let alone to a not-quite-eight-year-old.
“We’ll have a nice new house.”
“Can I go back to school?”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
Alice didn’t reply.