Page 34

CHAPTER 34

OLIVIA – D AY T HREE

I lie very still, staring at the curved ceiling of the tiny caravan bedroom. It’s just past 11 p.m. To my surprise and relief both Chloe and Amelie have at last fallen asleep alongside me on the small double bed. Chloe has her head in the crook of my arm. It’s uncomfortable, my whole arm numb. I’m dreading pins and needles but am worried even the tiniest movement will wake them both. Amelie cried herself to sleep. She’s missing her parents. She knows our situation is not right, despite all my reassurances, and is increasingly afraid.

I turn my head very carefully to the left to take in the high, narrow window and curse the fact it’s too small to climb through, even if I could smash off the padlock my father has put on it. When did he come back to this caravan and add all these awful locks and bolts? I feel a chill sweep through me. So – was that just for security? Or did he plan this?

Soon after I heard his car pull away, I tried with all my might to force the bedroom door and then the window but they simply wouldn’t budge; the padlocks are much stronger than I expected. Worse – both Chloe and Amelie became hysterical as they watched me. They couldn’t understand why I was saying everything was going to be all right, while desperately trying to break out.

It’s OK. It’s OK. We’re fine in here. We’ll be OK. I was just worried one of us might need the toilet again before he gets back.

To try to calm them, I read from the storybook Amelie had been reading to Chloe. The tale’s a bit young for Amelie but she didn’t seem to mind. And I shared the juice and a few of the biscuits. I told them that my father is obviously unwell at the moment. Overtired and overworked. He is a big man and I can see that when he shouts, it’s very intimidating for the girls. I realise I need to stop triggering him, making him bellow at them. But I have told the girls he will not hurt them if we all stay calm. Do exactly as he asks.

We will be OK, girls. Tell Amelie. Has your grandad ever hurt you, Chloe?

No. Never.

There you go. We’ll be fine. We just need to stay calm while he’s feeling so unwell. You let me do all the talking. And we do as he says. OK?

OK.

For myself I won’t sleep. Daren’t. I have the light on its dimmest setting to spare the batteries and am listening out for my father’s return, trying to decide what I will do if he doesn’t come back. I glance again around the tiny room, looking for anything I might use to try harder to force the window and the door in the morning if he stays away long enough. There are small fitted cupboards above the bed on one side and I wonder if I could force one of the doors off, then use it as some kind of lever or battering ram on the main door? Yes. That might do it.

I let out a long sigh. I’ll tell the girls when they wake that I need to force our way out of the room to use the toilet. That they mustn’t be scared. Must stay back while I try again to get us out of the bedroom.

I turn my head once more to stare at the girls, wrapped up tight in their sleeping bags. It’s surprisingly cold, as if we’re sleeping outside in a tent, not inside a caravan. There’s condensation building up on the inside of the tiny, narrow window with its wretched security.

Their breathing’s steady. Deeply asleep. Probably pure exhaustion from the worry and the fear. I begin to feel more concerned now about the cold and so I chance the small movement of carefully reaching down with my free arm to the tiny strip of floor between the bed and the caravan wall to scoop up the one blanket I placed there earlier. We need it. Slowly and as quietly as possible, I spread the blanket over myself and the two girls in their sleeping bags as an extra layer, praying the cold will not wake them.

The movement makes Chloe stir. She rolls over on to her other side and I’m able to free the numb arm at last. I’m cold myself but will have to cope. We’re all fully dressed so should be OK for this one night. I listen out for my father. If he does return, I’ll try to negotiate – kid him that I am going along with this madness. Give him a list of things we need for our stay. Not just food and water but some more blankets. More batteries. Torches. I’m so worried our light will fail. That the girls will be terrified of the dark on top of everything else.

Finally, I close my eyes, not to sleep but to think.

Earlier when Chloe fell asleep first, Amelie whispered to me with more details about what happened. She’s worried that her parents will be angry with her for sneaking back into the shop to try on a dress. I made her change back into her jeans and hoodie before we left the house but she made me bring the green dress in my rucksack. I’ve told her that no way will her parents be angry about it.

She said my father appeared at the back door of the shop when Amelie was looking at herself in the communal mirror and said her mother had been taken ill and she needed to come urgently. That there was an ambulance on its way. Amelie couldn’t understand why this was at the back of the shop but she thought it might be to do with access for the ambulance. My father had a handkerchief and she thought he was going to make her blow her nose. But he put the handkerchief over her face and she felt dizzy and sick. Later she woke up on the back seat of the car and he was angry and impatient, saying that he had to look after her until her mother was better.

I’m still trying to work out what he was doing in Devon. My only thought is he must have followed me. Found out I was going to see Matthew Hill somehow. He is always saying I must never leave him. Which means it’s my fault he came across poor Amelie. I squeeze my eyes tight and curse myself for being the trigger. My whole ridiculous plan to try to find my mother. I never imagined it might push him over the edge; drive him to do something this extreme. All I wanted was somewhere to take Chloe. A safer place for her. Why did I risk that? Why?

I breathe in and out slowly to steady myself and the answer comes in a flash of pictures as another long sigh leaves my body.

It was the cards. The birthday cards. I can picture them so vividly, tied in a bundle with a neat red ribbon in the trunk at the bottom of my bed back home. I think of all the times I’ve taken them out to read them secretly when my father was out. Those birthday cards from my mother were always so precious to me. Like a little beacon of hope. Yes. An invisible thread still linking us.

My mum has been sending me birthday cards and Christmas cards ever since she left. Which was when I was eight. Same age as Amelie. My dad always gets really tense when the cards arrive and a couple of times he’s tried to hide them from me. I think he’s always been worried that one day she’ll include an address and I’ll go and live with her instead. I see now that I was right. That’s been his big fear. Me leaving. Why he started to lie to me about the cards.

Once, on my twelfth birthday, he said there was no post for me. I checked through the pile of letters myself. Nothing. I thought she’d forgotten. I was so upset I went to my room and lay on my bed and cried. He came and stood outside my door and said he was sorry but she wasn’t worth it. She met another man and chose him over me. He said he hated to see her upsetting me. But what kind of mother leaves her own child.

But later, I found the birthday card from my mum in the bin when I went to put the vegetable peelings in there. I couldn’t believe it. He’d thrown it away. Lied. I can’t describe how I felt. So angry that it actually frightened me. I felt like I wanted to explode. Hit him. Hurt him.

I took the card, all covered in tea stains and bits and bobs from the bin and I put it on the coffee table beside his empty mug and I just looked at him. I remember that his face was sort of fixed. As if he didn’t know what to say.

Why did you put it in the bin? Why would you do that?

He didn’t say anything for a long time and so I did something extreme. I picked up a glass paperweight from the dresser, a gift from his brother which I knew he loved. Really loved. And I dropped it on the floor. It smashed into a lot of pieces and in that moment I was really glad.

But here’s the thing. He didn’t get mad. He just told me in a very quiet voice to clear up the mess.

I was waiting for him to get mad and to shout at me because I badly wanted a fight. The religious rituals weren’t so bad back then. Sometimes he had tablets in a brown container on the kitchen worktop and when he took the tablets he seemed a bit calmer. I wasn’t yet truly frightened of him. I just thought our life was weird. Not dangerous. Weird. But he didn’t even raise his voice over the smashed paperweight. He just told me to control myself and to clear up the mess. I wanted that fight SO badly. But he just told me to get the dustpan and brush and clear up the mess.

Later he said that he was sorry. That he put my mother’s card in the bin because I was better off without my mother. That any mother who would leave her daughter wasn’t worth thinking about. He said he knew that the cards upset me because they reminded me of her leaving, abandoning me, and he was trying to spare me the pain.

I open my eyes and stare again at the bolt on the caravan window. Even if I could somehow smash out the window, it looks way too narrow for even Chloe to squeeze through. And in any case what would little Chloe do out there on her own?

I narrow my eyes and start to picture where this caravan is. The approach road is nothing more than a dirt track. I remember from my childhood that the caravan was on the edge of farmland near a wood. Several miles from the nearest village. I remember before my mother left, my parents bringing me here a couple of times and calling in at the farmhouse about the arrangements. The caravan, as far as I remember, is more than a mile, maybe even two, from the farmhouse itself. And I realise it’s too much to ask of such a little girl, even if Chloe could make it through that tiny window.

Fact is, we’re stuck. Our only hope is that the police will by now have some CCTV pointing to my father and be looking for his car.

Beyond that? I honestly have no idea what to do.