by Helen Rolfe
She’d told Morris more in these conversations than she’d ever told anyone over the years, but Morris didn’t seem to have given up on her. And even better, he was having a laugh with it all; she was giggling away like a schoolgirl at his witticisms and it was a long time since she’d laughed so hard. How could a friend on the other end of a computer become someone who felt so real, so alive?
She was just beginning to wonder whether he’d ask her to meet in person, when Layla came downstairs rubbing her eyes.
‘Why aren’t you asleep, young lady?’ Veronica was straight up, ushering her back up the stairs.
‘I can’t get to sleep and when I heard you laughing I felt like I was missing out. What were you laughing at?’
‘Just the television.’
‘The television wasn’t on.’
‘I just switched it off a moment ago,’ she fibbed. ‘Now, enough of the questions, you get yourself to sleep or your daddy is not going to be very happy with me when he comes to collect a worn-out little girl.’
‘I know,’ she said excitedly and not at all sleepily. ‘We could do a shift like Daddy, stay up now and then go to bed when he does.’
‘Nice try.’ Veronica pulled the duvet up and gave Layla a kiss on the forehead. ‘Goodnight, again.’
‘Goodnight, again.’
Veronica was about to get back to her messaging when her phone rang. Audrey’s number flashed up on the screen; she hoped this didn’t mean Audrey would be asking to stay out later; she was exhausted and she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep until Audrey was tucked up in her own bed.
She answered the call but she couldn’t make out what Audrey was saying. ‘Audrey, calm down.’ Her heart skipped a beat, panic was beginning to set in. ‘Audrey, please, calm down, I can’t understand a word.’
‘Gran, I can’t get home.’
‘What do you mean you can’t get home? Where are you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
She babbled out some more details and from what Veronica could pick up, she’d gone for a walk in the woods with Alex, the boy she was keen on. And then he’d kissed her and she’d run away. He hadn’t hurt her but she was going on about not being sure, not feeling ready, and something about having some beer too.
Veronica did her best to keep calm. ‘Is Alex there now?’
‘I don’t know where he is,’ she shrieked. ‘I don’t know where I am, Gran.’
Veronica hadn’t been in those woods for many years but she knew one thing: they were enormous. Getting lost would be easy. ‘Audrey, can you use the map function on your phone, find your way out somehow?’ She did her best not to think of her granddaughter all alone, frightened, lost.
She waited for Audrey to answer, but the response didn’t come. And when she realised she’d lost the phone signal and couldn’t get an answer again, Veronica felt a familiar warmth rise up in her body. Her breathing was increasing rapidly and the room began to spin. She did her best to take the deep breaths she’d been taught about when she’d tried to manage a panic attack before. But it wasn’t working. She stumbled into the kitchen and almost too dizzy to do so, steadied herself enough to bend down to the bottom drawer. She took out a brown paper bag, pulled the top apart, pushed her face into the opening and shut her eyes and breathed. And she counted in her head, allowing her breath to calm as she did so.
‘Veronica…’ A timid voice came from behind her, where she’d slumped against the wall oven, the bag still over her chin, mouth and nose.
It was Layla. How long had she been there? Judging by the worry on her face, long enough.
She kept the bag in place. A few more breaths, just a few, to get her equilibrium.
Layla’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You’re scaring me.’ She clutched her teddy bear to her chest, her little face creeping further and further behind it.
Veronica at last took the bag away. Layla had already sat at the table. She wouldn’t be going to bed again, not like this. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you, I’m fine, honestly.’
She had to focus on Audrey now. She tried her number again, a second time, a third.
Should she call the police?
‘Veronica, what’s happening?’ Layla’s voice brought her back out of her trance.
The laptop on the table made its peculiar incoming message sound and Veronica thought about how happy and relaxed she’d been conversing with Morris, how easy it was to escape the feelings of panic that were usually triggered by far less than what was going on now.
Veronica didn’t answer Layla’s question, instead she brought up Sam’s number on her phone. She was about to hit the green button to make the call when she clicked away from it. Panicking Audrey’s mother when she didn’t have much to tell her was pointless.
And then Veronica’s phone rang again. It was Audrey. ‘Gran, my phone keeps dropping out,’ she panicked. ‘I’m cold, I’m really scared.’
‘Can you hear traffic?’ If she could find her way back to the main road, she’d get her bearings but if she didn’t, she could end up miles away from Mapleberry.
‘No, I can’t hear…’ She broke off. ‘I thought I heard someone coming.’
Veronica shut her eyes, breathed slowly and calmly. ‘Can you see anything at all? Audrey, you need to calm down,’ she said when she heard sobbing, ‘we need a landmark, anything that may help.’ She put as much authority into her voice as she could and stayed on the line until Audrey could name anything that might pinpoint the area of the woods where she was.
‘There’s some water,’ Audrey said all of a sudden. ‘I’ve found a pond I think, not very big.’
Veronica remembered there were a few ponds in the woods, some that had walking trails around them and were accessed from parking areas closer to the roads. ‘Good. Anything else?’
‘Nothing,’ she sighed, although at least she wasn’t crying anymore; she seemed to find having Veronica on the end of the phone a lifeline. ‘Wait, hang on, there’s something on the other side. A stile!’
Veronica knew there were a few of those too. ‘Anything else?’ Veronica tried to quell her panic at the radio silence until finally Audrey came back on the line.
‘I can see a field with a row of barns, or they could be stables, I’m not sure. It’s too dark to tell.’
There was only one farm on the other side of those woods, so Audrey had to have stumbled all the way to the boundary. Veronica felt they were getting somewhere. Or at least they had been until the call dropped out again. And this time, Veronica couldn’t get her granddaughter back no matter how many times she redialled her number.
Veronica sat with her head in her hands and Layla softly rubbed the space between her shoulders. ‘It’ll be all right.’
‘I wish your daddy was here,’ she said out loud. He’d go there to get Audrey for her, she knew he would. He’d scour those woods until he brought her home.
‘He’s good in a crisis,’ Layla agreed, tears dried up for now.
The practicality of Layla’s summation made Veronica realise the only person here who could help Audrey now was her.
But how on earth was she going to do that?
‘What’s that funny sound?’ Layla flipped up the top of the laptop, easily distracted, but when she saw Veronica clutching the paper bag still in her hands, her eyes shut as she tried to think of how she could possibly fix this, her voice wobbled. ‘Is Audrey going to be OK?’
Veronica couldn’t share her fears. ‘Yes, of course she is.’ She had to be.
She put the bag down and picked up her phone again and this time dialled the number of a local taxi firm. She rarely swore but she almost did when the wretched engaged tone blasted in her ear. It was a Saturday night near Christmas and she suspected this was going to be harder than she’d thought. She tried another two firms after that, then retried the original one again. But no success. She wanted to cry, she wanted to curl up in a ball and wish for this all to g
o away, but most of all she wanted Audrey here with her, she wanted to see her head off to her room with an absent goodnight and a smile Veronica treasured more than the teen knew.
‘I don’t want Audrey to get hurt,’ Layla sniffed, the tears back again. This wasn’t what Charlie would’ve wanted for his daughter. He’d trusted Veronica and here she was letting Layla down, Audrey, Sam too.
Veronica hugged Layla. ‘She won’t get hurt. I’ll get to her – the taxi drivers will fit us in soon, I promise.’
She tried each of the taxi numbers again and again. Finally, she got through. ‘Taxi please. Name is Veronica Bentley. House is number nine, Mapleberry Lane, Mapleberry. I need the taxi fast. Ten minutes? Great.’ She said it as though she booked these all the time. As though she went out every Saturday night on the town and it was no big deal.
She hung up and the second she did, it hit her. She knew what this meant. And Layla did too.
‘Veronica, you have to do it,’ Layla urged. ‘You have to leave the house. For Audrey, she needs you.’ And as Veronica tried to focus on the small task of putting on her coat and shoes in the hallway, Layla got herself ready, found the house key and Veronica’s bag. She even passed Veronica the brown paper bag she’d already been using in case she needed it again.
Veronica suspected she’d need a lot more than a flimsy little bag to save the day.
The taxi was going to be here in ten minutes. And after five years of failing to venture beyond the end of the garden path, Veronica had ten minutes to psych herself up and do this.
It was time to go and rescue her granddaughter.
Can Veronica face her fears and rescue Audrey? And will the kindness club finally make all their Christmas wishes come true…?
Continue the story in Part Four, A Winter Wish, available to pre-order now:
About the Author
Helen Rolfe writes contemporary women’s fiction and enjoys weaving stories about family, friendship, secrets, and community. Characters often face challenges and must fight to overcome them, but above all, Helen’s stories always have a happy ending.
To learn more about Helen and her writing, find her at:
www.helenjrolfe.com
Facebook: @helenjrolfewriter
Twitter: @HJRolfe
Instagram: @helen_j_rolfe
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Orion Books
Copyright © Helen Rolfe 2020
The right of Helen Rolfe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 3987 0028 4
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
www.orionbooks.co.uk