by Tudor, C. J.
She goes to close it. Outside, the sky looks sullen and thunderous. A storm brewing on the horizon. Miriam shivers. She is not given to flights of fancy, but she knows when something is wrong. She can feel it in the air.
She turns. A movement in the shadows behind the door catches her eye. A figure emerges. Miriam jumps. Her heart flutters against the brittle bones of her chest.
“Who are you?” she stammers. “What do you want?”
He smiles. White teeth glint.
“I got a lot of names.”
He raises a gun. Miriam clutches at the crucifix around her neck.
“But some people call me the Sandman.”
A traffic jam. Of all the times. Gabe would have laughed at the irony, if he didn’t feel like crying and screaming and punching a fist through the windscreen.
The line of cars in front stuttered and stopped. He watched the speedometer creep up to thirty, pushed the car momentarily into fourth gear and then immediately had to hit the brakes again.
He thumped the steering wheel. Once again, fate seemed to be conspiring against him. Stopping him from reaching her. Déjà vu. Always too late. Always just out of reach.
I’ve found your daughter. Meet me at the coffee shop. Junction 12.
Of course, the text could be a cruel joke. A prank. But why?
A dream is never more fragile than when it’s about to come true. The slightest wrong move and it could disintegrate into dust. He felt like a man teetering on a tightrope across a river of hungry crocodiles, heading toward a mirage. Risking everything for something that could vanish into a haze.
He heard sirens, and an ambulance flashed past on the hard shoulder. There must be an accident ahead. Someone’s routine journey suddenly cut short by a momentary lapse of attention, a missed lane change, a fractional delay on the brakes.
The traffic crawled forward another few feet. He felt his frustration inch up another notch. He saw a sign coming up. The next junction. Half a mile. It wasn’t a quick diversion, but was it better than sitting in traffic? He drummed his fingers. Could he cut across the lanes in time? Or should he just wait it out on the motorway?
The same dilemma he had faced three years ago. He couldn’t afford to make the wrong decision again. The traffic edged forward. The slip road was fast approaching. A few cars had already turned off. He was leaving it too late.
He debated with himself, then quickly slammed on the indicator and darted into the inside lane, in front of a lorry, which hit the horn and flashed him angrily. He ignored it. The slip road was running out. He yanked the steering wheel to the left, felt the wheels of the camper van bump over the white hazard lines, and he was off.
He hoped that, this time, he wasn’t too late.
Where was he? The activity books had been discarded; crumbs and empty cups littered the table. Katie had given Sam and Gracie her phone to play with, to ward off the boredom whines, but she could sense that they were getting restless. Alice sat, ostensibly engrossed in a word puzzle, but Katie noticed that she hadn’t filled in a single letter in the last ten minutes.
She checked her watch again. Over an hour since she sent the text. The phone told her that it had been delivered. He hadn’t replied or tried to call, not that she would have answered. Some conversations needed to take place in person. Maybe he hadn’t read it. Maybe he thought it was some sort of cruel prank. Maybe he wasn’t coming.
What to do? How long should she wait?
Her eyes scanned the coffee shop again. She tensed. Two men in fluorescent jackets and police uniforms walked up to the counter. Her heart beat faster. Were they just stopping for a coffee or here on more official business?
She jumped as Alice gripped her arm. “I know,” Katie whispered.
The police officers appeared to be talking to the girl behind the counter. As Katie watched, one of them turned and surveyed the café. Was he looking for someone—for them? Katie had chosen a table behind another couple and partially shielded by a pillar, but if the police officers started to walk around, if they were looking for a woman on the run with three children, then their little group—in hoodies, pajama bottoms and boots—stood out like a sore thumb.
She nodded at Alice and then whispered: “Sam, Gracie, get your coats on.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“We’re just going.”
They grabbed their coats. The police officers were still at the counter. Katie motioned with a finger to her lips and they pushed their chairs back and rose from their seats.
The police officers turned. Katie froze…and then spotted the two large takeaway cups of coffee. She felt her heart sag in relief. The officers smiled, waved to the girl behind the counter and sauntered out of the coffee shop.
“It’s okay,” she said. “False alarm.”
She turned to Alice. But Alice wasn’t looking at her.
She was staring at another figure walking slowly toward them. A tall, thin figure with straggly dark hair and a tired face. His gait was slightly lopsided, and he clutched his side as if he had a stitch. His eyes searched the café and then, as if drawn by some magnetic force, they fell on Alice.
Shock. Disbelief. The man stopped, raised a hand to his face, dropped it again and took a faltering step closer.
His mouth opened, but nothing came out. It looked like he was searching for a word, a name he hadn’t used in a very long time. Katie willed him to find it.
But Alice got there first.
“Daddy?”
All this time. All these years. All the moments he dared to let himself imagine this.
And for a fraction of an instant, he thought it was all a big mistake.
Her hair was dark and longer than he remembered. She was so much taller. And thinner. Those once-stocky limbs had lengthened and become lanky. Her cheeks had lost their plumpness and her eyes had changed. He could see in them a wariness, a hurt. He couldn’t equate this skinny young girl, dressed in an oversized hoodie, pajamas and Ugg boots, with his chubby-cheeked, blonde-haired daughter.
And then she spoke:
“Daddy?”
The years fell away. Like a dam breaking. He surged forward and wrapped his arms around his daughter, ignoring the painful twinge from his stitches. She stiffened briefly and then collapsed against him, her frail body surprisingly heavy.
He held her as tightly as he dared, scared he might crush her with the strength of his emotions. Three years. Three years of searching for a ghost, and she had been brought back to him. His daughter. In his arms. Real, substantial. Alive.
“Izzy.” He buried his face in her hair, breathing it in. “I’ve been looking for you for so long. I’ve missed you so much.”
Have you seen me? Yes. And now he was never letting her go, lest she might disappear again, evaporate into thin air.
“Gabe?” Another voice spoke, softly.
Reluctantly, he looked up, over Izzy’s head. And he realized it was the waitress. Katie. He barely recognized her. Her eyes were blackened and her nose was sore and swollen. She looked like she had been in an accident. There were two other children with her, dressed in hoodies over pajamas. As if they had left their home in a rush. What was she doing here? How had she found Izzy?
“I know you have a lot of questions—” she started to say, her voice thickened by her injured nose.
“What happened to your face?”
“Uncle Steve did it,” the little girl piped up. “He was Auntie Lou’s boyfriend, but he was a bad man. He hurt Mummy.”
“That’s why we can’t go home,” the boy added. “Because he might come back. We’re on the run.”
Gabe stared at the boy. He felt like his brain had gone into freefall. Thoughts tumbling helplessly around his head. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“I know,” Katie said. “And I promise I will tel
l you everything. Later. Right now, we need to get the children somewhere safe, where no one will look for us.”
He shook his head. “Right now, we need to go to the police.”
“No!” Izzy pulled away from him.
“Izzy—”
“The bad man will come back. He’ll find us.” Her voice rose in panic. “No!”
“Okay, okay,” Gabe soothed his daughter. “We won’t do anything you don’t want to.” He eased her back to him. “I’m your daddy. I’ll look after you now. I’ll protect you from the bad man.”
He glanced back at Katie.
Somewhere safe.
He considered. And then he found himself saying: “I know a place.”
Gabe drove south. Izzy sat beside him, a small rucksack clutched on her lap. She held it tightly, possessively, and he wondered what was inside that was so precious. Katie dozed with her children in the back, exhaustion and the motion of the van lulling them.
What was Katie’s connection to all of this? A waitress in a service station? She can’t have just stumbled over his daughter. So how did she find her? Was she somehow involved? It seemed so unlikely. On the other hand, could it be a coincidence that she just happened to work in the café where he always stopped for coffee? Always smiling, always nearby. Could he even trust her? But then, she had saved his life. And wasn’t she the one making the leap of faith here, letting a complete stranger drive her and her children who knows where?
Secrets, he thought. It’s not the big lies but the small ones, the half-truths—those are the ones that mount up, one on top of another, like a giant, stinking fatberg of deception. And when that blew, you really were in the shit.
He forced his attention onto the road. They had left the motorway a few miles back. It was a dank, dark day, mist starting to lumber in from the hills. As they broke out of suburbia and onto the country roads, it felt more like night, just the flare of cat’s eyes and the occasional glow from a farmhouse guiding the way.
Gabe didn’t need them. He knew this way well. In a few more miles they would be heading toward the coast.
“Where are we going?” Izzy asked.
“Somewhere the bad man won’t find us,” he told her.
She bit her lip, hugged the bag tighter. Something inside rattled and clicked. “Fran used to say that. She promised…but she was wrong.”
“Who’s Fran?”
“She was…she looked after me.”
The woman, he thought. The woman who took her.
“Was she kind to you?”
“Yes. Mostly.”
“Mostly? Did she ever hurt you?”
“No…but she got cross sometimes, and she was sad.”
“Did you love her?”
“I suppose.”
He swallowed down a bitter wedge of anger.
“Well, I never want to break a promise to you. But I will do everything in my power to look after you and make you happy. Okay?”
He felt her eyes on him, searching for the truth.
“Okay.”
“However, I will still make you do your homework—and no boyfriends until you are at least thirty.”
Her lips moved a fraction. Nearly, so nearly a smile.
“Okay.”
And then she yawned and closed her eyes.
He watched her for a moment, drinking in the sight, then he reached for his phone, in the holder on the dashboard. He tapped the screen and brought up a contact, one he hadn’t been forced to speak to in a long time. And then he pressed call.
* * *
—
ANOTHER HOUR, AND he saw the familiar dark swell of the Downs start to rise ahead of them. Soon the winding country roads that snaked through the Sussex countryside would start to rise, the forests and funnels of trees falling away as they started to climb, up to the cliffs.
A beautiful part of the country. A rich part of the country. A lot of “refugees” from London moved here when they decided they had had enough of—and earned enough from—their city lifestyles, investing in renovated farmhouses with acres of land that they tried to prevent walkers from crossing, kidding themselves that they were living the rural life because they owned a Range Rover and wore their Hunter wellies to Waitrose (because, obviously, they paid someone else to walk the Labradoodle through the muddy fields).
However, it was also an area with several impoverished seaside towns where unemployment and crime ran high. Where there was always the undercurrent of violence and a persistent resentment—at the rich Londoners, at the tree-hugging lefties in Brighton and, in particular, at the immigrants who had settled in many of the poor council estates, like the one he grew up in.
But they weren’t heading there.
They turned off the main coast road, on to a small private lane, and the house drew into view. Just the upper stories visible above the high walls that surrounded it. From a distance, in the fog, it looked grey, like some kind of stone castle perched upon the clifftop. Up close, it was whitewashed bright white, like a lighthouse. Beyond the wrought-iron gates stretched a long gravel driveway and acres of green lawn, and almost every room had a view of the sea.
That was the property’s name. Seashells.
Gabe pulled up outside the imposing iron gates. Katie had woken up and she peered out of the window.
“What is this? A hotel?”
“No.”
“Who lives here?”
“A woman named Charlotte Harris used to live here with her daughter.”
“Not anymore?”
“Her daughter was hit by a drunk driver when she was fourteen. She was left in a persistent vegetative state. She’s cared for by private nurses in a special wing of the house.”
“Oh God.”
He waited a second and then said: “I was the drunk driver. I visit her every week. I have done for over twenty years.”
He climbed out of the car and walked up to the gates, leaving this information to sink in. For Katie to put the pieces together. After a moment, he heard her climb out of the car after him.
“And her mother is going to let us stay here?”
“No.” He tapped numbers into the security pad set into the wall. “Charlotte Harris is dead.”
“Then who actually owns this place?”
Gabe pressed a button and the gates started to swing open.
“I do.”
A gift is never just a gift. Sometimes, it’s an apology, sometimes an expression of love. Sometimes, it is leverage or a subtle display of emotional blackmail. Sometimes, it’s a way to assuage guilt. Sometimes, it’s a way to make yourself seem benevolent. Sometimes, it is a show of power or money.
And sometimes, it’s a trap.
When Charlotte Harris’s solicitor had requested a meeting “at his most urgent convenience” that grey Monday in November, Gabe hadn’t known quite what to expect; he hadn’t even known that Charlotte was ill.
He never saw her on his visits to Isabella. Hadn’t done for years. Always a private woman, she had become a total recluse. Miriam, the housekeeper and head nurse, had confided that she only left her room to sit with Isabella. Never even ventured out into the grounds. Both captives, Gabe had thought, in their own way.
But with Charlotte dead, what would happen to Isabella? he had wondered. Who would look after her, pay the staff, ensure that her care continued?
And then the solicitor had told him.
Gabe had stared at the dapper little man, with his shiny bald head and small round glasses, and felt his jaw slacken.
“The whole estate?”
“That is correct.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mr. Barrage had smiled curtly. He looked like a caricature of a solicitor, Gabe thought. He just needed a bowler hat and an umbrella.
“Mr
s. Harris had no other family apart from her daughter, Isabella, who is obviously in no position to administer her own affairs. Charlotte wanted the house and her estate to be looked after by someone who understands Isabella’s condition and will ensure that she continues to receive the highest levels of care. That is one of the conditions of the will. The property cannot be sold, but you and your family are welcome to live there. It is yours to do with as you wish, up to a point.”
Gabe had tried to process this. Charlotte Harris was wealthy. But Isabella’s care must cost hundreds of thousands a year. All the money would have to be kept safe to ensure that her care continued. He supposed he had always thought that, when Charlotte died, then his visits would stop, or at least reduce. His sentence would be lifted. But he should have known she would make provision. He just hadn’t expected this.
“And if I don’t accept?”
“The money will continue to be held in trust for Isabella and the estate will be administered by the executor of the will.”
Mr. Barrage had smiled thinly at Gabe. The executor. The executor was him. He had agreed to it a few years ago. Saying no to Charlotte wasn’t really an option. But it was just a formality, she had told him. Just paperwork. He hadn’t really thought much of it. Now, he understood. Snap. The doors of the cage slammed shut.
He considered. “What if I felt that it was in Isabella’s best interests for her care not to continue?”
“Then you would have to go to court to justify that course of action. Which could be costly. And I would draw your attention to clause 11:5 in the will, which prohibits the use of any of your inheritance for ‘any action which would cause the cessation of Isabella’s care or shorten her life.’ You’d be on your own.”
Of course. Charlotte really did think of everything.
“And then there are all the people who depend upon you, Mr. Forman. The staff at Seashells. They are your responsibility. You can ensure they keep their jobs and are well looked after.”