by C. J. Tudor
My partner, Neil. You already got the dedication at the front, dear.
My little girl, Betty, for giving me perspective on what’s really important in life (glitter).
My mum and dad. Literally wouldn’t be here without you.
The Ladykillers, for their friendship, support and the boozy lunches. Mainly the boozy lunches.
My English teacher, Mr Webster, who once told me: ‘If you don’t become Prime Minister or a bestselling author, I’ll be very disappointed.’
Stephen King. Constant inspiration.
My oldest friends – Kirsty, Suzanne, Julie and Clare – who know how much I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since we all went to comprehensive school together, in a mining village in Nottinghamshire.
And of course, YOU, for reading this book. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t get to keep doing this stuff. Thank you. You’re bloody marvellous!
Read more
Read more
She sleeps. A pale girl in a white room. Machines surround her. Mechanical guardians, they tether the sleeping girl to the land of the living, stopping her from drifting away on an eternal, dark tide.
Their steady beeps and the laboured sound of her breathing are the sleeping girl’s only lullabies. Before, she loved music. Loved to sing. Loved to play. She found music in everything – the birds, the trees, the sea.
A small piano has been placed in one corner of the room. The cover is up but the keys are coated in a fine layer of dust. On top of the piano sits an ivory shell. Its silky pink insides look like the delicate curves of an ear.
The machines beep and whirr.
The shell trembles.
A sharp ‘c’ suddenly fills the room.
Somewhere, another girl falls.
Read more
1
He noticed the stickers first, surrounding the car’s rear window and lining the bumper:
Honk if you’re horny. Don’t follow me, I’m lost. When you drive like I do, you’d better believe in God. Horn broken – watch for finger. Real men love Jesus.
Talk about mixed messages. Although one thing did come through loud and clear: the driver was obviously a dick. Gabe was willing to bet he wore slogan t-shirts and had a picture at work of a monkey with its hands over its head and the caption: You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.
He was surprised the driver could see out of the back at all. It was a bit of a hazard really. On the other hand, at least he was providing reading material for traffic jams. Like the one they were currently stuck in. A long line of cars crawling through the M1 roadworks, which felt like they had started sometime in the last century and looked set to continue well into the next millennium.
Gabe sighed and tapped his fingers on the wheel, as though this could somehow hurry along the traffic or summon a time machine. He was almost late. Not quite. Not yet. It was still within the bounds of possibility that he might make it home in time. But he wasn’t hopeful. In fact, hope had left him somewhere around Junction 9, along with all the drivers savvy enough to take their chances with their satnavs and a country-lane diversion.
What was so fucking frustrating, was that he had left early. Just this once. He had made a lame excuse to get out of the door and given himself plenty of time to get home by six, so he could be there for dinner and Abbie’s bedtime, which he had promised, promised, Jenny that he would do tonight.
‘Just once a week. That’s all I ask. One night when we eat together, you read your daughter a bedtime story and we pretend we’re a normal, happy family.’
That had hurt. She had meant it to.
Of course, he could have pointed out that he was the one who had got Abbie ready for school this morning, as Jenny had to rush out to see a client. He was the one who had soothed their daughter and applied Savlon to her chin when their temperamental rescue cat, Schrodinger (the one Jenny had adopted), had scratched her.
But he didn’t. Because they both knew it didn’t make up for all the missed times, the moments he hadn’t been there. Jenny was not an unreasonable woman. But when it came to family, she had a line – a very definite line. If you crossed it, it was a long time before she let you step back inside.
And now he was going to be late. She would not forgive him. Not this time. He did not want to dwell upon what that meant.
He’d tried to call her, but it had gone to answerphone. And now his phone had less than 1 per cent battery which meant it would die any minute, and typically today, of all days, he had left his charger at home. All he could do was sit, fighting the urge to press his foot on the accelerator and barge the rest of the traffic out of the way, tapping his fingers aggressively on the steering wheel, staring at bloody Sticker Man in front.
A lot of the stickers looked old. Faded and wrinkled. But then, the car itself looked ancient. An old Cortina, or something similar. It was sprayed the colour that was so popular in the seventies: a sort of dirty gold. Mouldy banana. Pollution sunset. Dying sun.
Dirty grey fumes puffed intermittently out of the wonky exhaust. The whole bumper was speckled with rust. He couldn’t see a manufacturer’s badge. It had probably fallen off, along with half of the number plate. Only the letters ‘N’,‘G’, and what could be part of a ‘6’ or an ‘8’ remained. He frowned. He was sure that wasn’t legal. The damn thing probably wasn’t even roadworthy, or insured, or driven by a qualified driver. Best not to get too close.
He was just considering changing lanes when a girl’s face appeared in the rear window, perfectly framed by the peeling stickers. She looked to be around five or six. Round-faced, pink-cheeked. Fine blonde hair pulled into two high pigtails.
His first thought was that she should be strapped into a car seat.
His second thought was: Abbie.
She stared at him. Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth, revealing two teeth missing right in the front. He remembered wrapping them in a tissue and tucking them under her pillow for the tooth fairy.
She mouthed: ‘Daddy!’
Then a hand reached back, grabbed her arm and yanked her down. Out of sight. Gone. Vanished.
He stared at the empty window. Something felt wrong in his chest. He thought it might be his heart. It seemed to have stopped. Either that or it was beating so fast he couldn’t feel it any more.
Abbie.
Impossible.
His daughter was at home with her mum. Probably watching the Disney channel while Jenny cooked dinner. She couldn’t be in the back of a strange car, going God knows where, not even strapped into a car seat.
The stickers blocked his view of the driver. He could barely see the top of their head above Honk if you’re horny. He wasn’t horny. But he honked anyway. Then he flashed his lights. The car seemed to speed up a little. Ahead of him, the roadworks were ending, the 50mph signs replaced by the national speed limit.
Abbie. He accelerated. It was a new Mini Countryman S. It went like shit off the proverbial shovel. And yet the battered old rust bucket in front was pulling away from him. He pressed the pedal down harder. Watched the speedo creep up past seventy, seventy-five, eighty-five. He was gaining, and then the car in front suddenly darted into the middle lane and undertook several cars. Gabe followed, swerving in front of an HGV. The horn blare almost deafened him. Now he could feel his heart. It felt like it might just burst right out of his chest, like bloody Alien.
The car in front was weaving dangerously in and out of the traffic. Gabe was hemmed in by a Ford Focus on one side and a Toyota in front. Shit. He glanced in his mirror, pulled into the slow lane and then darted back in front of the Toyota. At the same time a Jeep pulled in from the fast lane, just missing his bonnet. He slammed on his brakes. The Jeep driver flashed his hazards and gave him the finger.
‘Screw you too, you fucking wanker!’
The rust bucket was several cars in front now, still weaving, tail lights disappearing into the distance. He couldn’t keep up. It was too dangerous.
Besides, he tried to tell
himself, he must be mistaken. Must be. It couldn’t have been Abbie. Impossible. Why on earth would she be in in that car? He was tired, stressed. It was dark. It must be some other little girl who looked like Abbie. A lot like Abbie. A little girl who had the same blonde hair in pigtails, the same gap between her front teeth.
A sign flashed up ahead. Services ½ mile. He could pull in, make a phone call, put his mind at rest. But he was already late; he should keep going. On the other hand, what was a few more minutes? The slip road was slipping past. Keep going? Pull over? Keep going? Pull over? Abbie. At the last minute, he yanked the wheel to the left, bumping over the white hazard lines and eliciting more horn beeps. He sped up the slip road and into the services.
Payphones. No one ever used them any more. He wasted precious minutes searching for one tucked away near the toilets, then several more minutes looking for some change before he realized you could use a card. He extracted his debit card from his wallet, stuck it in and called home. Jenny never answered on the first ring. She was always busy, always doing something with Abbie. Sometimes she said she wished she had eight pairs of hands. He should be there more, he thought. He should help.
‘Hello.’
A woman’s voice. But not Jenny. Unfamiliar. Had he called the wrong number? He didn’t use it very often. Again, it was all mobiles. He checked the number on the payphone. Definitely their landline number.
‘Hello?’ the voice said again. ‘Is that Mr Lawson?’
‘Yes. This is Mr Lawson. Who the hell are you?’
‘My name is Detective Inspector Maddock.’
A detective. In his house. Answering his phone.
‘Where are you, Mr Lawson?’
‘The M1. I mean, in the services. On my way back from work.’
He was babbling. Like a guilty person. But then, he was guilty, wasn’t he? Of a lot of things.
‘You need to come home, Mr Lawson. Right away.’
‘Why? What’s going on? What’s happened?’
A long pause. A swollen, stifling silence. The sort of silence, he thought, that brims with unspoken words. Words that are about to completely fuck up your life.
‘It’s your wife . . . and daughter.’
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin …
Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@penguinUKbooks
Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube.com/penguinbooks
Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest
Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/penguinbooks
Listen to Penguin at SoundCloud.com/penguin-books
Find out more about the author and
discover more stories like this at Penguin.co.uk
MICHAEL JOSEPH
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa
Michael Joseph is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published 2019
Copyright © C. J. Tudor, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket photograph © Bela Molnar
ISBN: 978-1-405-93098-7