Calm.
A second message buzzes.
It’s important.
I can just say no.
But I won’t.
I can’t delay it any more. Peeling off my disposable gloves I snap on a fresh pair and gather my keys and my mobile. On the doormat is a business card from a reporter with Call me scrawled across it.
I won’t.
At times like these I wonder why I’ve never moved away from this small town I grew up in, where everybody knows who I am and what happened to me. I think it’s partly because there’s no getting away from it. Once you’ve been global news there is no fading into anonymity. It only takes one person to post a sighting on Twitter or Facebook and your face is everywhere again. The public like a game of hide-and-seek even though I don’t want to play. There’s also a comfort in being surrounded by familiar faces. Strangers still terrify me. The main reason though, if I’m honest, is because staying so close to where it happened is a form of punishment and deep down we all feel in some way responsible.
We still blame ourselves.
Although I’m late, I’m in no hurry to get there; part of me knows what she’ll want to talk about and I don’t think I can face it.
I’m careful as I drive, headlights slicing through the gloom. The dark skies give a sense of early evening rather than midmorning. We’re barely into autumn and it already feels like winter. I’m mindful of the traffic, peering into cars, wondering who’s inside and where they’re going.
If they’re happy.
Everyone in the town was more vigilant after our abduction. The community was pulled together by threads of horror but over time they… not exactly forgot but moved on. Or tried to. Eyes that once looked at me with sympathy became filled with annoyance as another anniversary summoned a fresh batch of true-crime fans, pointing out the house we grew up in. Our old school. The swings in the playground our parents once pushed us on – higher-higher-higher. It’s where I now take Archie.
I’m almost halfway there when I notice the fuel gauge is nearly empty. Inwardly, I curse. George was supposed to fill my car up last night, he knows I find it difficult. I can’t bear the smell of fumes. I was sure he’d gone to do it while I gave Archie his bath and read him a story but I must have been mistaken. He probably got caught up in another long work call. The hours he’s putting in at the moment are ridiculous but I’m lucky he’s working so hard towards our future, even if we don’t always want the same thing.
It’s tempting to go home but I’d still have to refuel before picking Archie up from nursery so I indicate left and pull into the forecourt of the BP garage. The instant I step out of the car the smell of petrol invades my nostrils and I have to swallow down bile.
My hand is shaking by the time I replace the pump and go and pay.
The cashier is busy with another customer and as I wait I impulsively pick up a KitKat for Archie and a Twix for George. I don’t snack, preferring proper meals. My debit card is already in my hand, ready to tap it on the reader, but I’ve gone over the contactless limit and so I stuff the card inside the machine. Out of my peripheral vision I notice a white van pull up alongside my car. Flustered, I enter my pin number incorrectly twice before I remember what it is.
A man with spiked black hair steps out of the van. I’ve never seen him before. He’s young. Younger than me, and he looks happy but still, that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous, does it? We all wear a mask sometimes, don’t we? I’m guilty of it myself. The calm mother, the carefree wife. That’s unfair. I’m being hard on myself again. I’ve had periods of months – years even – when I’ve almost, if not forgotten what I’ve been through, come to terms with it. Learned to live with it, I suppose, like the patches of eczema that used to scab my skin when I was stressed. Oddly my skin has been clear since my rituals became all-consuming. My mental health plummeted and my physical health problems disappeared almost overnight.
‘You can take your card.’ The sharp tone of the cashier’s voice tells me this is not the first time he’s asked me. I mumble a ‘thank you’ to him, an apology to the van driver standing behind me, whose eyes I do not meet. I hurry outside.
I’m just passing the van when I hear a thud coming from inside. I hesitate, ears straining. There’s nothing to be heard except the steady thrum of traffic coming from the main road but still I cup my hands and peer through the driver’s window.
‘Oi!’
I jump at the noise and try not to cower as the driver jogs over to me. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ His manner as spiky as his hair.
‘Do you have anyone else in the van?’ I ask.
‘What’s it gotta do wiv you?’
I keep my gaze steady, waiting him out.
‘No. Just me.’ He jabs his key into the lock but before he can climb inside, we both hear it. The shuffling coming from inside his vehicle.
‘I’m DC Ross,’ I lie. ‘Do you mind if I take a look, sir?’ I stride to the back of the van with a confidence I don’t feel.
‘I’ve told you there’s no—’
‘Then you won’t mind showing me, will you?’
Tutting, he unlocks the back doors. My heart races as he yanks them open. I make sure I’m not standing too close. There’s a delighted yelp as a white Staffie with a dark circle around one eye launches himself at his owner.
It’s just a dog.
I back away, feeling his glare on me. Flustered, I get in my car and start the engine, gears crunching as I pull back out onto the road, breathing heavily. I’m edging forward at the T-junction, waiting to turn left when I catch a flash of the profile of the driver who slides past me in a black car, indicating right.
It’s him.
The man who nearly broke me.
I’m frozen to my seat, neck rigid, willing my eyes to take a second look.
I catch him again as his car turns into the traffic. I’m not as certain as I was a few seconds ago that it is him. The jawline is wrong. A horn blasts behind me and in my rush to move forward I stall my car. I’m trembling as I twist the key to fire the engine to life once more.
It can’t have been him.
It’s impossible.
As I pull forward, I imagine him in his cell. The thick iron bars that contain him.
It’s the anniversary that’s made me so skittish, I know. Twenty years. It’s been almost twenty years.
I’m in a state by the time I pull up outside Marie’s flat. Noticing Carly’s car is already there doesn’t calm me.
Soon we’ll all be in one room.
Three sisters.
Nothing good happens when we’re all together.
I can just say no.
Above me the grey clouds break apart and rain lashes against my windscreen.
It feels like an omen. A sense of impending doom.
Chapter Three
Carly
Then
It felt like fate that something terrible would happen because she’d behaved like such a bitch. Acid coated the back of Carly’s throat. She swallowed her sickness back down. She had to be strong for the sake of the twins. They would be terrified.
She was terrified.
It had all happened so quickly. She could still feel the arm around her throat, another around her waist as she was manhandled into the van, struggling to get free. The catch on the door scratching against her cheek, tearing her skin. The scream that ripped from her throat as she saw the second man following, dragging the girls.
‘Run!’ Carly had shouted as she kicked out again, but she knew that even if one of the twins could wriggle free, they wouldn’t leave the other.
The arms restraining Carly hefted her from her feet, shoving her roughly into the back of the van.
‘Help!’ Carly’s voice growing hoarse.
That was when she saw a glint of silver. A sharp point pressed against her neck. Instantly the bottom fell out of her world, her body slackened. She had to stay alive for her sisters. Carly forced herself to be
passive as her hands were wrenched behind her back. She was shaking so violently that the rope being twisted around her wrists chafed against her skin. Tape was smoothed over the lips she had thought an hour ago Dean Malden would be kissing. She was placid as her ankles were bound. A blindfold snatched away her last glimpse of the sun. She was astonished that something like this could happen in broad daylight. She felt a jarring against her arm. Heard the thud of the twins being shoved next to her and listened helplessly to Leah crying and Marie pleading,
‘This is a game, isn’t it? Please. This isn’t real.’ Marie’s small voice a squeak.
But the real games were being played in the park just metres away, the cheering of a goal drifting through the hedgerow, and Carly knew that whatever this was, it was deadly, deadly serious.
Still, she thought someone would have heard them, would swoop in and save them at the last minute. All her storybooks ended well and it had never really occurred to her that sometimes there might not be a happily ever after. That was until the door slammed shut, the engine roared and she crashed onto her side as the van pulled away.
The stench of petrol in such a confined space was overpowering, along with the stink of body odour. At first Carly thought it must be coming from the men until she felt her shirt sticking to her back with sweat and she realized it was emanating from her. The smell of her own fear.
It was hot. Bumpy. She swayed, unable to use her tethered hands to steady herself. She tried to breathe deeply to calm down but each time she inhaled the tape across her lips prevented air from entering her lungs. Her chest burned painfully. Her nostrils flared as she drew in short, sharp bursts of air until she felt dizzy. The knot from the back of her blindfold dug into her skull.
One of the twins was whimpering, the other frighteningly silent and it was the silence that scared Carly the most. The girls had been nothing but noise since they’d been born. Laughing. Crying. Playing. Chattering away in their twin language that no one else understood. Carly planted her heels on the floor, her ankle bones rubbing uncomfortably together, and dragged her bottom, weaving forwards, slow and uneven – a spider missing legs – until her feet reached something that could have been a body. She shuffled herself around, her hands groping until she connected with another hand. A frightened cry and then long fingers gripping hers. Piano-playing fingers. She thought it must be Leah.
Carly moved again, fumbling around until she located Marie. She was still. Too still. Afraid, Carly pressed against her wrist, willing a pulse to jump beneath her fingers. She blinked back tears of gratitude as she located the slow and steady thump. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry.
She had taken the twins out of the garden and got them into this.
She had to get them out.
Thoughts jostled for attention as Carly tried to process what had happened. Who had taken them and why, but nothing made any sense. Part of her clung desperately to the vague hope that it was a prank. The programme her parents liked to watch where unsuspecting members of the public were fooled – but the blood streaming from a gash in her cheek told her it wasn’t a joke. On TV, the tricks were unexpected, funny. Never cruel.
She rubbed her face against the wall of the van, trying to dislodge her blindfold. Each time they drove over a bump her head smashed painfully into the hard metal but still she persisted until at last she felt the material begin to slide.
She could see blurry shapes. She waited for her eyes to adjust.
The space was compact, dark. Only a small amount of light spilled through a grimy opaque window that led to the cab. Two figures sat shadowed in the front. Just two. Carly felt a flicker of hope. Although the twins were small, together they outnumbered the men. They had a fighting chance if only she knew what was planned for them. Where they were going.
She shifted her weight. If she could get close enough to the partition without being spotted she might be able to hear their conversation over the growl of the engine.
Always have a plan was her dad’s motto.
She might only be thirteen but they shouldn’t underestimate her.
Progress was slow as Carly rocked herself onto her knees. Using her toes for balance she moved her legs apart, waddling forwards, trying not to fall as the wheel dipped into a pothole. The engine grew louder as they gathered speed. They must have left town. A lump rose in Carly’s throat as she thought of the distance they must be from their house. Her pink flowery bedroom she was nagging her mum to decorate now that she was a teenager, her canopied bed she had loved at six but now found embarrassing. The twins’ mermaid room they insisted on sharing, stupid because their house was big enough for a bedroom each. Their cuddly toys lined up on the bed. Carly’s bears were stuffed at the bottom of her wardrobe. Still part of her, but not quite.
Focus.
She forced her left knee forward again as simultaneously the van flew over a bump. She toppled over, her face slamming against the floor. Stunned, she turned to the side, the tape that had covered her mouth hanging off. She spat out blood and a tooth, her nose hot with pain. She thought it might be broken.
She drew her knees to her chest and lay curved like a comma. Not a full stop. Not the end.
Her watch tick-tick-ticked.
Ten minutes? An hour? She’d lost all concept of time. She’d lost all concept of herself; a mass of pain and blood and fear, her cells skittering around her body as adrenaline flooded her system.
Fight or flight. She’d learned about it at school.
Determined, she dragged herself up onto her knees once more.
Another lurch. Wheels dipping in potholes. She was back on her side, juddering over rough terrain.
A slowing.
The crunch of the handbrake.
A momentary silence as the engine cut out.
Carly summoned all of her strength and drew her knees in before kicking both feet as hard as she could at the side of the van over and over. Screaming for help until her throat burned raw.
Someone would hear her.
They had to.
She squinted in the brightness as the door yanked open. She was dragged by her hair.
‘You’re a feisty one,’ a voice said but it didn’t sound angry, more amused. Her blindfold was retied tightly around her eyes. Too tightly. ‘That’s better. Three blind mice, three blind mice,’ he sang.
Carly could feel eyes on her. She clamped her lips together hard as he stretched another piece of tape across her mouth. She wouldn’t cry.
Her breath left her body as she was slung over a shoulder as though she weighed nothing.
She breathed in. Listened. Committing what she could to memory so later she’d be able to tell the police, her parents, everything she knew, for she had to believe there would be a later.
The smell of soil. A farm? The sound of rustling. Leaves?
Inconsequential details that would never make up for her putting the twins in danger.
It was wholly her fault.
The man began to walk, Carly curved over his shoulder. Again a comma, and that thought gave her strength. Not a full stop.
This wasn’t the end.
Chapter Four
Leah
Now
There’s a crackle when I jab the intercom with my finger and before I can speak, there’s the click of the front door releasing its catch. I hadn’t replied to Marie’s text but she hasn’t asked who is at the door. She doesn’t need to – she knew I’d come. The door sticks. I shoulder it open and the letterbox falls at an odd angle, like a slipped smile. I try to stick it back in place but it’s missing a screw.
The stairwell always smells of wee. I spiral my way to the third floor. Flat nine. Remembering her doorbell doesn’t work, I lift the knocker, which is ginger with rust, and let it fall, thumping my arrival. The vibration causes flecks of black paint to drift to the floor. Instantly, the door is yanked open, Marie’s arms wind around my neck, engulfing me in a cloud of the perfume she’s always worn, something woody. Nothing lik
e the floral scent our mother used to wear, or still does wear perhaps. I wouldn’t know, it’s been so long since I’ve seen her. I return Marie’s hug, feeling the sparrow lightness of her jutting bones. She’s lost so much weight, it almost feels like I could snap her in two. She steps back and clasps my shoulders while she studies me. The bracelets that glitter on her wrists jangle as she twists me from side to side.
‘You look good.’
‘So do you. Are you okay?’ What I really want to ask is, are you drinking? – but I don’t. The whites of her eyes are tinged pink but that could be because of the tears we all shed at this time of year. I can’t smell any alcohol on her and that’s a good sign. There was a time we wouldn’t have to ask each other how we are. She used to know exactly what I was thinking. She felt what I felt, but over the years she has become a stranger to me, almost. What we went through brought us all together and then pushed us apart.
‘Carly’s here.’ She gestures me inside and as I squeeze past her I realize she hasn’t answered my question. Is she okay? Are any of us?
I make my way into the tiny kitchen that smells slightly rotten, as though the bin needs emptying.
Carly’s leaning against the old-fashioned gas cooker, fingers flying over the keypad of her phone. As soon as she sees me she tosses her mobile onto the worktop and pulls me close to her and for a few seconds I lose myself in her embrace as though I hadn’t last seen her a couple of days ago. Carly is the one I’m closer to now. She’s the one who stayed while Marie travelled the country, choosing draughty theatres over a proper home. Chameleoning herself into different characters, all of them as beautiful and as damaged as her. There are no happy ever afters in the dark productions she takes part in.
I shuck off my coat and unwind my scarf, piling them on top of Carly’s denim jacket.
The Stolen Sisters: from the bestselling author of The Date and The Sister comes one of the most thrilling, terrifying and shocking psychological thrillers of 2020 Page 2