Page 36

CHAPTER 36

OLIVIA – D AY F OUR

I’m still lying awake, worrying and plotting, when there’s a noise outside. I keep very still and listen. It’s definitely a car drawing up. I wait. Finally, there’s the sound of a car door being slammed, footsteps and then various metal and jangling sounds. The key opening the door? Sorting out the bolts he must have put on the caravan’s main door as well?

He’s definitely back. In the main area next door. I hear rustling. The click of cupboards. My stomach growls with new fear and dread. It’s bad news that he hasn’t abandoned us. I can’t try to break out now. But his car may have been seen, which is good, and at least he will have supplies. I need to get breakfast into the girls. Keep their strength up while I figure out how to get us away from him.

I check my watch. Barely 6 a.m. My father’s been gone for hours. Maybe he struggled to find a twenty-four-hour supermarket around here, out in the middle of nowhere?

I turn my head to see that Amelie has her eyes open, though Chloe is still asleep. I put my finger up to my mouth to hush Amelie and whisper.

‘I’m going to try to talk to my father. You stay in here. OK?’

She just nods in reply and again I am amazed at her composure. She’s a brave little girl. She fully understands that none of this is OK and has been terrified at times and yet somehow she’s managing to hold it together.

I stand up very slowly, keen not to disturb Chloe, and tap lightly on the bedroom door.

‘Hello?’

Nothing.

I tap again.

‘What is it? What do you want?’ My father sounds angry. Inside I feel another punch of fear and my hands are suddenly trembling. But I think of the girls and steel myself. They only have me and I have to do something. Try something.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Later.’

‘ Please . The girls are still sleeping. I can make you a coffee. Just the way you like it. We could have a chat. About the ... situation.’

There’s a long silence and then at last I hear the jingle of keys and he opens the door to let me out.

I try to find a small smile, wanting to keep him calm and praying he’ll be in a more sensible frame of mind. But his eyes look wild and exhausted as if he hasn’t slept at all. He’s staring at me, unblinking. Testing me?

‘Well?’ he says. ‘Out with it? Cat got your tongue?’

That’s when I see it, leaning up against the front door. I feel my pulse increasing. I try not to look at it, or rather not to let him see me looking at it. I’ve always known that my father owned a shotgun. I’ve never liked the idea of it in the house with Chloe. But he said it was nothing for me to worry about; that as a boy he had been taught to shoot rabbits which caused havoc on his father’s farm. He has a licence and belongs to a gun club. All official. At home it is kept in a secure cupboard and he only takes it out occasionally when he attends his club to keep up his target practice.

But now that same gun leaning against the caravan door is absolutely terrifying. Why has he brought the gun here? He must have put it in the boot while I was calming the girls.

Until very recently I never saw my father as someone who would hurt me very badly. A bully – yes. Controlling and mean – yes. Weird and unwell. Rough with me. But he was always saying I should never leave him. That he could not bear life without me. Stupidly I thought that drew a line in the sand. Now I see there is no line in the sand and have absolutely no idea where this could all end.

With him in this state, the gun in the room is very bad . I want to ask him straight – why the gun? Is it loaded? But the words stick in my throat. I’m worried it will trigger him. Make him panic. He’s closer to the gun than I am. He’s already taken a girl off the street – something I never imagined him capable of – and I have no idea what he might do next. I have to protect the girls. Get them away. I decide it’s much too dangerous to challenge him openly over the gun and so instead, I try to steady my breathing and glance around the interior. No sign of any shopping bags.

My gaze lands on a drawer in the sink unit, wondering if there might be a knife inside. Do I have the strength and the nerve? To use a knife on him? Should I? Could I?

‘So,’ I say, fighting the pounding in my chest. ‘Shall I make you a coffee? Have you put the milk in the fridge already?’ There’s a tiny fridge under one of the cupboards. I’ve been hoping he might arrange power. Switch it back on somehow? But when I open the fridge, the inside light doesn’t come on and it smells terrible.

‘There’s no power,’ he says, his voice flat.

I shut the fridge door and look around the kitchen. ‘So did you get long-life milk then?’ Still I’m glancing around the space, wondering if he’s already put the cereal for the girls away in the overhead cupboards. After a moment, I reach for the drawer as if I’m just looking for a spoon. I pull it open quickly hoping to find a knife but he dives across to slam the drawer closed, deliberately trapping my hand.

‘Ow!’ The pain is surprisingly bad but he keeps his full pressure on the drawer, squeezing the wood tighter and tighter against my flesh. ‘Please. You’re really hurting me. I was just looking for a spoon.’ I try to keep my voice down, not wanting to frighten the girls. But it’s hard.

‘Do you think I’m stupid, Olivia?’ He pushes even harder on the drawer and I can’t help it. Cry out in pain.

‘What is it, Mummy? What’s happening?’ Chloe’s voice from the bedroom.

‘It’s OK, darling,’ I gasp, leaning forward with the pain.

‘Be quiet in there,’ my father barks.

And then finally, staring right into my eyes, he loosens his grasp on the drawer and I slowly release my hand, the fingers red and throbbing.

‘No silliness, Olivia. And no coffee.’ He is glaring at me as he speaks. ‘I’ve got a new plan for us all now.’

I go cold, thrusting my sore hand into the crook of my arm and squeezing to try to calm the stinging, not letting my gaze move again to the shotgun.

He sinks down on to the banquette seating. ‘I’ve been driving around, praying. Asking God for guidance.’

My hand is really hurting and I feel my heart rate increasing even more. A pounding in my ears too as if the blood is suddenly rushing around my veins too fast.

‘You shouldn’t have tried to leave me, Olivia,’ he says, looking straight at me. ‘I’ve always told you. You’re my everything. You know that I can’t go on without you. This is your doing. I have done all this to protect you. To keep you safe. This all happened because—’

‘I’m never going to leave you. I promise.’

He stares at me for a very long time and I feel almost giddy at the hardening in his expression. So much of what he says these days is pure madness. I feel so guilty. Should have realised sooner that something really bad might happen. The contradiction. Saying that he cannot bear for me to leave him. And yet seeming to enjoy hurting me. I feel sick suddenly, bile in my throat. I turn my head to glance back at the door to the little bedroom behind me, still shut, and decide to sit down on the banquette opposite him to hide how unsteady I feel.

What’s coming next? How on Earth do I keep him calm? Keep him away from that gun ? Away from the girls.

I have no phone. No iPad. No way of knowing what’s going on in the world beyond this caravan, but Amelie’s disappearance must still be headline news. They will be searching for her and appealing to the public to look for her too. I glance to his pocket and see that it’s bulging with his iPhone. So he’ll know exactly what’s being said. I need him to run errands. Somewhere cameras might pick him up. And I need to get Amelie outside where someone might recognise her. One of the farmworkers?

‘How about we have some breakfast and then a bit of exercise outside. Me and the girls. A little walk. Some fresh air.’ All you can see from the caravan windows are the wood to one side and farming land to the other. Fields stretching as far as the eye can see. No sign of life. No sign of tractors or farm activity so far. But there must be someon e out there and I have to somehow boost the chance of them noticing us.

‘I’ve said it already. Do you really think I’m stupid, Olivia?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think I was born yesterday?’

‘No, it’s just that the girls are going to find it a lot more difficult if they’re cooped up all the time. Chloe’s so young. And Amelie—’

‘I prayed while I was out. I asked for guidance about what to do.’

So this wasn’t planned. He really doesn’t know what to do next .

‘Look. Here’s an idea,’ I say. ‘We could leave Amelie here. Head off somewhere, you and me and Chloe. And then when we’re somewhere safe – somewhere so far away that they’ll never find us – we can call from a payphone, tell the police where they can find Amelie. And it will all be sorted. Over with. In the past. Nobody need ever know it was you.’ My pulse is again pounding in my ears. My fingers are still throbbing. It feels so risky to even suggest this. But if he has no plan? Still I try not to look at the shotgun leaning against the door. I have to come up with options. Some straw he might grasp.

He thinks for a while, as if considering my idea, then sniffs. ‘No,’ he says finally. ‘We’re not doing that.’

‘Can I use the toilet?’ A voice behind us.

We both turn our heads to see Amelie standing in the doorway of the bedroom. She looks terrified. I pray that she doesn’t notice the gun. But she does. Her eyes widen but she doesn’t say anything.

Clever girl. Don’t say anything . Please don’t say anything .

She looks back at me and I raise my eyebrows, sharing as much reassurance in my expression as I dare.

‘Go back to your room,’ says my father.

‘But I really need to go,’ she says. ‘I’m really very sorry to be any trouble.’

Good girl. Clever girl.

My father reconsiders. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘But be quick. And then back into the bedroom with you.’ His voice is clipped. Cross.

‘Of course, thank you.’ Amelie moves across the small space to use the toilet. We hear her emptying her bladder. The noise of the chemical flush. So it’s still working. Good. She comes out and asks if she can wash her hands at the sink. My father nods and to my surprise, Amelie repeats the chant as she washes her hands.

‘I wash my hands in the name of the Lord. To cleanse my flesh and to cleanse my soul.’

Clever girl.

‘See,’ I say, close to tears. Astonished again at how smart and brave she is. ‘Amelie is a very good girl. The Lord will be pleased with her and will want her to be safe.’

Amelie looks at us both and then obediently goes back into the bedroom, shutting the door. There is mercifully no more noise from Chloe. Amelie must have warned her to be quiet.

‘So this is my new plan.’ My father leans forward and has dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘The Lord is guiding me, Olivia. I have to listen to him. You know that.’

I have that horrible taste again in my mouth. Bile. It’s clear to me that any voice he is hearing has nothing to do with God. I bark a cough trying to clear it, my heart still racing.

‘He wants us to fast.’

‘ Fast? ’

We’ve never fasted before. For all his religious rituals, we’ve never done that before. Not at Easter. Not even for Lent. No fasting, not ever.

‘Yes. I should have seen that before now.’ His voice is still very quiet. ‘I drove around in the dark when I left and I realised it was too dangerous; there are cameras everywhere, Olivia. Garages. Shops. We can’t risk the main roads. What if they know? That I have taken Amelie to save her. Just as I am saving you and Chloe.’ He is shaking his head as he speaks, his eyes wild. ‘No one must find us because they won’t understand. They will misunderstand .’

I have no idea what to say. How to turn this situation around. He’s right, I hope. They will be looking for us. Hopefully all of us. They will have picked up on cameras that he has taken Amelie and they will be looking for all of us right now. If I can just keep my father calm, they will surely find us before he panics. Reaches for that gun ...

I tell myself they will have helicopters and a big search strategy. Drones in the sky? They will surely have his number plate by now. Or maybe someone up at the farmhouse has noticed my father’s car parked in the field.

‘And so I prayed. And the good Lord answered me.’ My father’s expression changes. ‘We don’t need supplies. We don’t need to go anywhere. He wants us to fast . So that’s what we’re going to do. We are going to stay here. And fast. All of us.’

I glance at the kitchen tap. ‘So just water. We just drink water?’

He shakes his head rapidly. ‘No. Don’t you see? That’s the beauty of it. Nothing, Olivia. To be absolutely pure. To be cleansed. We don’t eat and we don’t drink. Nothing.’ His own gaze now goes to the sink. ‘This water is only safe for washing and the toilet anyway. The tank is dirty, Olivia.’

‘But the girls.’

‘They need to be cleansed too . ’

I feel a wave of pure dread pass through me. I think of the single carton of juice left in my bag. The few biscuits and the one small box of raisins I brought with us. Wishing now I had been more careful to ration them and praying he won’t search my bag. Why didn’t I think more clearly back at the house? In the rush to leave, I was worried about how to entertain the girls without a phone or iPad. I brought paper and colouring pencils. A few books. Why the hell didn’t I bring more to drink and eat? When he took my phone and my iPad, I was just panicking. He saw me packing chewing gum and confiscated that but he didn’t notice me take the juice and the biscuits. Was too busy barking at Amelie to hurry up.

‘It’s decided.’ He lifts his chin, his expression more determined now. ‘No food and no water. It is God’s will, Olivia.’