‘But social services will, surely? They’ll want to watch you like a hawk with your record.’
‘I’m not worried about them. They’re concerned about me harming a child and there’s no way that’s going to happen. Someone’s preparing me a fake birth certificate and I can easily get fake hospital records if I need them – I’ve got friends underground now.’
I could see how this might – just – have worked, but not now she had a boy on her hands. There was so much to tell Stuart – it was mind-boggling.
‘You have to give him back, Karen.’
‘Don’t you see that I can’t face the horror of going back to square one after all the hope and anticipation, the longing, the waiting I’ve endured to finally get my baby back?’
‘He’s not yours, Karen. You’ll get caught and it will all be terrible.’
She put her hands on her hips. ‘I won’t get caught,’ she said, shooting me a fierce stare through narrowed eyes.
I picked up the receiver. ‘I can’t stand by – even after what you’ve told me. It’s still wrong.’
‘Don’t do this, Alice. Don’t make me hurt you.’
She lurched forward, but I was too quick for her. I let go of the phone and slammed the sitting room door in her face pushing her out into the hall, then shoved a wooden chair under the handle. She rattled it, then threw her weight against it, trying to get in.
‘Alice – don’t do this. It will end very badly.’
I picked up the antiquated handset again and dialled nine three times. I could hear it ringing at the other end. Any minute now and the police really would be on their way, this time.
Then I looked up. I realised too late. I’d forgotten about the door at the other end of the room that connected to the kitchen. The cord was only a metre long and I couldn’t reach that far with the phone still in my hand.
Come on – pick up.
Chapter 49
Karen burst in through the far door before I could say a word to anyone in emergency services. She stormed past me and slammed her hand down on the cradle.
Snapping the wire out of the wall with one hand, she made a grab for me with the other. I winced as she got a tight grip on my hair and pulled me backwards so that my back arched too far. I fell to my knees. She caught the side of my bruised forehead with her elbow and I cried out as the pain multiplied.
‘I’m sorry, Alice. But, I thought you were my loyal friend. The one who would stand by me, no matter what.’
She forced me onto my front, pulled my arms around my back and wrapped the wire from the phone around my wrists.
‘I don’t want to have to do this, Alice – but I’m not going to sit here and wait for you to tell the police where Brody is.’ She dragged me to my feet, hauled me over to the cellar and thrust me down the steps.
At the bottom, she pushed me onto a broken wooden chair and tied my ankles together with a piece of old washing line. She rummaged in a couple of drawers in the bench against the wall and drew out a roll of tape. It was tacky, the sort used to patch up guttering, and smelt of tar. As she pressed it across my mouth, it made me gag. As an afterthought she brought down my anorak and a blanket, both of which she tucked around me.
‘I don’t want you to freeze down here,’ she said. ‘Someone will find you before long, I’m sure.’
I thought of Stuart. He would come back to the cottage any time now, surely, and wonder where I was. He’d come looking for me.
‘I’m going to pack now.’ She was leaning over me, her hands on her knees, articulating her words as if I was deaf. ‘Then I’m leaving with the boy. I’m sorry this didn’t turn out to be the happy holiday we planned.’
I didn’t struggle or moan; there wasn’t much point. I stared at her, hoping my eyes would convey sufficient distress to make her change her mind. But she clambered up the steps again and I heard the key snap shut in the lock. Then she flipped off the light-switch in the hallway and was gone.
As my eyes got used to the darkness there was just enough daylight from the small grubby window at ground level to turn the black mass into shapes with corners and shadows. There were boxes to my right and a large chest to my left with a bundle of clothes behind it on the floor.
After a few seconds, I realised that the bundle wasn’t a pile of clothes. There was a leg sticking out, and another beside it. Someone else was down here with me.
I called out Hello?, but it came out as an indistinguishable muffle through the tape. I stared at the shape above the chest, trying to make out who it was. Shuffling closer, I pressed my arm against a stockinged foot – a man’s foot. It was cold. Not only that – it was stiff.