Page 78 of 59 Minutes

MRS CARRIE DABB

TEN YEARS AFTER THE ALERT

Carrie’s call has been passed to someone important at Devon and Cornwall Police and her whistle-stop backstory has been met with an, ‘I see.’

‘So is it him? Is Ashley Curtiss the one who escaped?’

It can’t be real, can it?

In the breath-space between question and answer, she can hear industrious muffle.

Keys being tapped and screens beeping and conversations just out of reach.

Expectation burns in her chest. She has been suspended here before, in the Venn-centre of fear, hope and disbelief.

A glass ceiling ready to shatter over her.

… the rows of screens showing destinations start to flicker, the train times disappearing, the list of stops wiped …

‘I’m not strictly supposed to release that information over the phone,’ says the woman, whose name and rank have already slipped out of Carrie’s brain.

‘But we can see the address you’re calling from and your voice has passed the rudimentary verification match so I will tell you that, yes, Ashley Curtiss is currently unaccounted for. ’

Every screen in the station is now black.

‘So he really could be coming here? He could be heading to my home to try to snatch my daughter?’

‘Mrs Dabb, I trust you to remain calm and to keep this information restricted to yourself and the other members of your household. We don’t want to start a panic among neighbours.’

‘I don’t have any neighbours,’ she manages to say but her voice is coming from deep underground. She’s stepping onto the tracks, listening for the sizzle.

‘I have dispatched a patrol car with specialist officers and they’re on their way to you right now. I’m sure you’ve already done this, but I would like you to check all of your doors and windows again. Double-lock them where possible and stay inside.’

SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER.

‘And if you have any of those old sash windows that—’

‘No,’ Carrie says, coming back to the surface. ‘None of my windows open from the outside. The whole cottage was fitted out after … after Mum.’

‘You should both stay at my place,’ Mary says, appearing in the doorway, her hearing aids back in her ears.

‘Could we go to my mother-in-law’s home?’ Carrie asks.

‘It’s really best you stay exactly where you are; our helicopter will be passing over in under a minute and the patrol car is already en route.’

‘What do we do if he turns up before the police?’ Carrie says.

‘Just remain calm, stay inside and do not answer the door to anyone except uniformed officers who arrive in a Devon and Cornwall Police patrol car, do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ she says. But no, no I don’t understand anything. Nothing about what’s happening today, or what happened ten years ago.

‘If we need to contact you, we will use this number so make sure you keep the line clear.’

She replaces the handset and looks at Mary, who stares back. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Carrie says. Upstairs, the shower shudders to a stop and they both look up at the ceiling.

‘What was she thinking?’ Mary says.

‘You know exactly what she was thinking.’ Carrie flops down on the bottom step of the stairs.

The toe of her slipper boot touches an invisible tideline on the wooden floor and she snaps it back.

The cleaning company that Pepper arranged had removed all trace of her mother’s blood, tidied away Janet’s last meal, scrubbed the mud and road mess dragged in by Frankie Drake’s feet and all the other damage, the horror, was neatly tidied away. But she can see it anyway, lit up neon.

‘You warned me years ago,’ Carrie says, thudding her forehead with the heel of her hand. ‘You said I had to tell her something or she’d fill in the blanks by herself. And I made up something stupid about meeting someone on holiday before me and Emma …’

Mary puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘You did your best,’ she says. ‘That’s all any of us can do.’

The bathroom door opens on the floor above them, the fan noise switching off with the light. Bunny plods along the landing, one step, two steps, three, four, five to her little bedroom. The same one Carrie slept in every night until she left for university.

Her bedroom door creaks open, rattling the bags, coats and hoodies hung on the back of it.

They hear a gasp, a muffled cry and then the growl of a man’s voice.