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

by Louise Jensen

  ‘Is everything okay?’ She looks pale. Dark rings under her eyes. I can’t remember the last time she came over to dinner. It’s not easy to talk in this open-plan office.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says.

  ‘Good. Look, sorry, but I think I might have to take those extra hours.’ I feel awful but I was here before her. ‘George’s business isn’t going so well and—’

  ‘I thought you’d be raking it in with your book?’ She looks shocked as the words blurt from her lips. ‘I didn’t mean… God, sorry. I thought George was stressed yesterday but I assumed…’

  ‘You thought it was just because of me?’ I shake my head. ‘It’s probably a mixture of everything.’

  My phone rings, it’s Lionel.

  I lift the receiver, and hold it slightly away from my head, taking care not to let the plastic touch my ear or mouth.

  After a brief conversation I put the handset back in the cradle three times before I let it go. ‘I need to go out and run a few errands.’ I open my drawer and pull out the company’s bank card. ‘Want anything, Tash?’

  ‘You could pick up the newspapers while you’re out and a Mars bar… two Mars bars. I’ve already eaten my lunch and it’s only ten thirty.’

  I’m jittery while I’m out. Constantly looking over my shoulder, worried I’m being followed. I take a few extra minutes to ring the nursery and make sure Archie is okay, before I ring Carly and double-check she’s picking him up although she hasn’t once let me down.

  In the newsagent’s I pick up a couple of papers and flick through them, making sure there’s no mention of me. There isn’t this time but I know in three days there will be.

  Three days.

  ‘There’s no stories on you girls yet this year,’ the elderly man behind the counter tells me as I’m paying. ‘I remember when it happened I didn’t believe it. I thought, this is a safe place. Who’d come to our small town and do something like that? Now it’s everywhere, terrorism, knife crime. I sell the newspapers but most days I wish I could bloody burn them. I said to our Joan—’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ I scoop up my purchases and hurry from the shop.

  Back in the office I tuck the bank card back in my drawer and take the papers into the staffroom. The stench hits me before I enter the room.

  Grease.

  Salt and vinegar.

  The thought of fish and chips makes my stomach roil, I can’t even walk past a chippy. I’m furious. We have a ‘no hot food’ policy at work. I grip the papers in my hand, ready to toss them onto the table but on the formica top is the remnants of somebody’s lunch. The white paper bag stained with oil, with a few crispy batter bits still inside. The bag is resting on creased sheets of yellowing newspaper, the way chips used to be wrapped. I don’t want to touch it but I can’t leave it there where it will breed bacteria, attract flies. I’m about to scrunch up the newspaper, when I see it.

  The photo.

  Carly, Marie and I the day we left the police station after being missing for days. Our parents’ faces taut and worried as they tried to shield us from the photographers. THE SINCLAIR SISTERS FOUND. I feel I might faint. The heady smell of the chips and the onslaught of memories making me dizzy, I force myself to take a closer look. It’s dated almost twenty years ago. Under the first sheet is another story. First kidnapper found dead, the second still at large.

  Who has done this?

  I scrunch the whole lot together and dump them in the bin.

  Who has done this?

  I run out of the kitchen, and bump into something hard and solid.

  Someone.

  I take in the tool box in his hand. My eyes rise to find the PHOTOCOPY REPAIR badge on his boiler suit. And finally his face.

  His face.

  He’s found me. Come for me. I knew that he would but shock still torrents through me.

  ‘Please…’ I back away, holding my hands up to protect myself. ‘Please…’ I say again as he steps forward. My throat tightens. I can’t say anything else. Can’t scream. Instead, I turn and run. I’m back in the past running, running, running for my life.

  Stupidly, I’m heading deeper into the building, away from the front door. My feet thudding against the hessian carpet. I can’t feel my body properly. I feel like I’m floating. Should I stop and ring the police? I round the corner and steal a glance behind me. I can’t see him.

  But that doesn’t mean he isn’t coming.

  To my left is the toilets. I slam through the door to the Ladies, praying he won’t risk following me here.

  This time it is me sliding the bolt across the cubicle door.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Carly

  Then

  The second Carly heard the bolts slide open on the other side of the door she had ushered the twins behind her and stood, legs splayed, hands ready to fight.

  The door remained shut. The clown laughing at them.

  Think.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ The voice, Doc’s, spoke again.

  A pause.

  Carly glared at the clown. Hatred curdling in her stomach.

  ‘I said I’ll fucking take care of it,’ Doc growled.

  Silence.

  Carly realized he must be on the phone. Moustache wasn’t with him but what had Doc promised to take care of?

  Oh God, she was so, so scared. Her legs barely supported her.

  The clown flashed her one last grin as the door began to swing open. Doc stalked inside. Carly wondered if he could hear the galloping of her heart. Smell the sourness of the girls’ urine in the corner. Her humiliation made her brave.

  ‘What do you want?’ she demanded of him, knowing that if it were her sisters he had come for she would die before she let him take them.

  ‘I’ve brought you some things.’ He held up a white plastic bag before setting it down.

  ‘I don’t mean now, I mean why are we here?’

  ‘There’s some more of those crisps and…’

  ‘We don’t want fucking crisps.’ Carly was furious. ‘We want to go home. We want proper food. We’re starving. A hot meal. The girls are only eight.’

  ‘My teacher said we need vitamins and minerals to grow,’ Marie said.

  ‘LET US GO!’ The words rocketed through Carly’s throat, leaving a burning sensation in their wake. Doc turned to leave.

  You twist me around your little finger, her stepdad had said to her mum. She tried a different tack.

  ‘Please. I know…’ she began gently. Waiting until Doc faced her before she spoke again. ‘I know you’re a good man. I can tell. You don’t want to hurt us.’ It took gargantuan effort for Carly to smile. ‘My parents have money. Lots of it—’

  ‘I can’t let you go—’

  ‘But we’re children.’ Carly kept her voice soft. ‘You don’t want to scare children, do you? I can tell—’

  ‘Look. Don’t be scared. It’ll be okay, I promise. I’ll see what I can do about proper food.’

  He was softening. She had seen it in her dad before her mum gave one last push for the thing that she wanted.

  ‘We won’t tell anyone if you let us go. You’re kind. I can tell,’ another forced smile. ‘You’re not like that other horrible man—’

  In a flash Doc dropped the bag onto the floor and left, slamming the door behind him.

  ‘No!’ Carly screamed, hurtling across the room as fast as she could. ‘Don’t leave us!’

  But he had.

  ‘Come back. Come back.’ The girls screamed, hammering on the door until Carly felt the skin on her hands split, blood trickling down her wrists, her forearms.

  ‘Stop,’ she told the girls. ‘He isn’t coming back.’ She felt oddly numb, not quite able to process she had asked an adult for help and he had walked away. At a loss as to know what else to do, she crouched and looked inside the carrier bag he had left.

  Again Spicy Tomato Snaps, bags of blackcurrant liquorice sweets, cans of cherry Coke. Even Marie, who was always particularly
fond of fizzy drinks and snacks, shook her head.

  ‘Isn’t there any water?’ she whined. At home Mum could never get Marie to drink water, she was obsessed with sweet cordials and fresh juices. Fizzy drinks.

  ‘No,’ Carly said. ‘I’ll ask him to bring some bottles next time he comes.’

  ‘What if he never comes back?’ Leah asked.

  Carly handed her a bag of crisps.

  Hours passed.

  ‘I said I’ll fucking take care of it,’ Doc had said.

  It?

  Their ransom? Arranging to sell them.

  It?

  Killing them? Was he going to… No! She wouldn’t let her mind go there. Dean Malden was supposed to be the first boy to touch her and the girls were babies.

  It? It? It?

  She turned over theories while the clown laughed at her.

  I know. He said. I know what’s going to happen to you.

  Carly was exhausted from thinking. From feeling.

  Lethargically she trudged around the room. Too restless to sit. Too weary to tug at the bars at the window. Too weak to rattle the door handle.

  Too tired to scream.

  To shout.

  To cry.

  ‘Shall we do some dancing?’ Marie asked. Carly felt ashamed. She should be the one trying to lift the mood.

  ‘I’m too hungry to dance.’ Leah sucked her thumb.

  ‘What about… What about “I spy”?’ Carly cast her eyes around the room. P is for prison. ‘Or…’

  ‘I’ll tell us a story.’ Marie patted the mattress in between her and Leah. Carly padded over to them and lay in the space on her back. The twins nestled into her.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ Marie began in the voice she used for school plays, ‘there were three sisters who found themselves in terrible danger. They—’

  ‘The sisters are us, aren’t they?’ asked Leah.

  ‘I’m not telling. If you keep interrupting I’ll stop.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Anyway, they came face to face with two dragons and they could have run away but they knew they had to make their family proud of them so they were brave and…’

  Daylight was fading. Sleep swiped for Carly and she kept pushing it away, only hearing fragments of Marie’s tale of triumph where somehow the girls turned into princesses and won medals for courage. Eventually Marie’s voice grew smaller, her breathing deeper until at last they all slept.

  Carly was disorientated as she woke to half light, unsure whether it was the same day. Although her arms were numb, she lay still, not wanting to wake the girls either side of her who were using her shoulders for pillows. She gazed out of the window until she was certain the sun was rising, not setting.

  They had been here another night.

  A solid mass of melancholy lodged in her throat. What if they really were here forever? There was no prince riding on a white charger to rescue them but there had to be people looking for them. Their parents. The police. Maybe even Dean Malden. Why were they taking so long to find them?

  A tear trickled down Carly’s cheek. She turned her head to the side, away from her sisters, and then she saw it, by the door.

  A blue carrier bag.

  It definitely hadn’t been there before.

  Somebody had been in the room. The thought that the men might have stood over them while they were deep in exhausted sleep was chilling. She could have woken to find one of the twins missing. Both of them missing.

  Why hadn’t she used the rubbish to build some sort of early warning signal by the entrance so anyone coming into the room would dislodge it and alert the girls to their presence? She must do that before tonight. She was already resigned to the fact they wouldn’t be getting out of here.

  She tried to summon up some hope but she felt oddly detached as though this was all some weird dream and she was watching herself from high above, staring at the bag, while the clown stared at her.

  She was so thirsty.

  There could be water in the bag.

  Slowly, she inched out from between the girls. Crawled over to the door. She reached inside the bag and pulled out a tightly wrapped package, grease stains seeping through white paper. A faint smell she recognized.

  ‘Chips?’ She looked questioningly at the clown. He didn’t answer. She was so parched her tongue was thick. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. ‘Chips?’ she said again, cautiously unravelling the paper, staring in confusion at the thick slabs of potatoes until they danced in front of her eyes. She popped one onto her tongue.

  Cold.

  Greasy.

  Delicious.

  ‘Girls! Wake up.’ Carly was delirious as she unwrapped the rest of food; a sausage, a huge piece of cod, a pie. The twins stumbled over to her, rubbing sleep from their eyes. They didn’t carry their breakfast back over to the mattress. They didn’t talk. Instead, they squatted among the dust and the rubble and the broken glass, and shovelled food into their mouths with both hands, looking fearfully around them as they chewed, half-expecting someone to burst in and take it away.

  After eating, Carly dozed again. Waking to the sound of Marie crying.

  ‘I don’t feel very well.’ She splayed her hands over her stretched stomach.

  ‘You’ll be okay.’ Carly yawned, soothing her sister’s hot forehead with her fingertips, her tangled fringe damp.

  Although her skin was slick she was shivering. Carly covered her with the blanket and wished she had a bottle of water. Suddenly, violently, Marie began to vomit, coating the blanket, the mattress, herself. She retched again and again.

  ‘It’s okay.’ Carly looked around for something to mop up the mess with but anything absorbent they had already used for their makeshift toilet in the corner. ‘It’s probably the same bug that kept you off school with stomach ache.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that.’ Marie shook her head.

  ‘Well, perhaps you ate your food too quickly. It’ll pass.’

  ‘Maybe it was poisoned,’ Leah whispered.

  ‘It wasn’t poisoned,’ Carly said.

  ‘How do you know? Marie’s the only one who ate sausage.’

  ‘It definitely wasn’t poisoned.’ Carly tried to keep the doubt and the worry out of her voice. She glanced frantically at the clown. The graffiti on the wall.

  You’re going to die.

  ‘Carly…’ Marie didn’t often cry.

  ‘Shh. The food was fine. It could be anything making you ill. The shock of eating so much, your tummy isn’t used to it.’ Carly felt her own stomach cramping as they’d eaten. ‘Eating with dirty fingers.’

  ‘It’s the germs.’ Leah looked around fearfully. ‘You said the germs would make us ill. You said the germs could kill us.’ She frantically wiped her hands over her skirt as though dislodging an army of invisible insects.

  ‘It’s fine. Marie is fine, just a little sick. Tell Leah a random fact, Marie.’ Marie retained snippets of useless information, recalling them the way she did at home would make her feel better and cheer Leah up, Carly was sure. She waited for Marie to speak.

  Kangaroos can’t walk backwards.

  You fart on average fourteen times a day.

  Hippopotamus milk is pink.

  But she didn’t. Carly searched through her memory banks for something she could share.

  ‘Hey! Did you know that fingernails grow quicker when you’re cold?’ Sometimes Carly painted the twins’ nails a frosted pink.

  ‘Then I guess our nails will get really, really long here.’ Leah drew her knees up to her chest. ‘If no one finds us our nails might fill the room.’

  Carly knew she’d picked the wrong fact. ‘But they’d be good for picking your nose!’ She waited for one of the twins to say something gruesome about accidentally spearing your brain and pulling it out through your nostrils, but they didn’t.

  Carly fell into silence, using the blanket to clean up as best she could but the mattress was a mess.

  Everything was a mess.

>   It was difficult to gauge the time. Outside, the rain hammered down. The sky was a dark grey. There was a sense of foreboding in the air.

  ‘Are you feeling any better?’ Carly pressed the back of her hand against Marie’s forehead, the way her mother did to her when she was ill. She wasn’t quite sure what she was feeling for – how hot was too hot? Mum always said it was as good an indicator for a fever as putting the thin tube of mercury under your tongue. ‘Because Mum is literally in the title, ther-mom-meter,’ she would laugh. Carly wished she were here. She’d know what to do.

  ‘No. I’m… I’m sorry, Carly.’

  Carly dropped her hand. If Marie did have a temperature there was no medicine to give her. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘It’s all so awful. I…’ Marie closed her eyes.

  ‘You can’t help it.’

  ‘Carly, I…’ Marie trailed off as she began to throw up again. Her face was green.

  ‘Shhh.’ Carly didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. Carly had vomit over her fingers, her own mouth flooding with saliva at the smell. She looked hopelessly around the room for anything that might help her but there was nothing.

  She had never felt more helpless.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed. ‘We need help!’ She needed a grown-up. She needed her mum. Her stepdad.

  Marie stopped vomiting.

  Stopped crying.

  Talking.

  Her stillness, her silence was even more terrifying.

  The girls huddled together. Help, Carly called again but it was only in her head. Nobody was coming.

  Nobody.

  All she had was the clown and a wall of scrawled words.

  You’re going to die.

  Panic shook her hard.

  They were all going to die.

  A noise?

  Again the sound of sliding bolts. This time Carly didn’t stand. There seemed little point. Her energy had gone, her fight too.

  ‘I’ve brought something that will help you,’ Doc said as soon as he stepped into the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Leah

  Now

  The photocopier repair man… it’s him.

  Panic slams into me. My chest so tight I cannot cry.

  I am so, so scared.