Page 33 of 59 Minutes

MRS DABB

‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’

She is outside Jasmine’s house, somehow back inside her car with no memory of getting in it, slapping the steering wheel so hard that the horn sounds and her slightly loose ring cuts into her finger.

Nearby, curtains and shutters flicker. This is impossible.

What Jasmine said can’t be true. But even as she’s thinking it, she knows that’s wishful thinking.

Clearly they got to Bunny, ensnared and corrupted her.

Forced her to lie to her best friend and her mother.

The school too. And now they must have her, where else could she be?

Why else would she forge a note to get away?

She starts the car and flies into the fog without thinking about any other vehicles.

Tears stream and her throat is sore from shouting, but she has to hold it together.

She cannot waste time screaming and crying, collapsing inward.

A heavy hourglass settles on her chest, Bunny breaking into tiny pieces of sand and slipping through, running out of time.

She always convinced herself that she could keep everything – everyone – separate.

That Bunny knew nothing about him, had no way to find him, and couldn’t be convinced and cajoled even if he did get to her via some kind of intermediary.

And while Bunny didn’t know he was her real father, she certainly knew his family’s name.

Everyone knows them, they’re notorious. That should have been enough to scare her off completely, before any cajoling could even begin.

But no. All it took was a phone, passed out of a truck window, in broad daylight.

The siren continues in the distance. She glances at the dashboard clock and presses the accelerator harder.

The rest of the country seems to have been rebuilt from the ground up during her lifetime but the lanes she drives on now have never changed.

Even in this greyness, the same sturdy red banks and looming foliage frame the road, the iron gates and passing places are centuries old.

She has to squint into the fog to stay on track.

If she wasn’t concentrating so hard, she might not have seen the man running a few metres up the road, at the fringed edge of the fog. Has he just run from the village?

He is wearing grey, perhaps deliberately trying to hide in the fog, but his rapidity marks him out even against the monochrome backdrop.

He’s big, she can see that, and she reaches to lock the door even though the central locking is automatic and already on.

As she passes him, she sees him wave in the mirror, trying to flag her down. No chance.

Shit. She didn’t mean to come this way again, back through the village. Her and the car on autopilot, heading for home. But she’s not going home though, she’s going somewhere she never ever wanted to go. Straight into the hornet’s nest.