“Elliot!” I heard Mrs McKenna cry as she fumbled putting her phone to her ear. “Oh, Elliot. Noah knows . . . she knows about Bailey! Please, come! Oh, Elliot. Please.”
I pulled the door shut and locked it as the car pulled away from the kerb. The driver didn’t say anything to me, but I saw him glance back repeatedly in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t realise I was breathing heavily until then. My hands were shaking, and I felt like I was going to be sick.
Row twenty-three, ninth plot from the left.
I could barely form a coherent thought. All I knew was that I had to get to the cemetery and prove to myself that this was all wrong. Bailey was okay, she was. I physically couldn’t believe she wasn’t – my body, and mind, refused to do so. My head throbbed and it was a fight to keep my eyes open, but I somehow managed it. Quicker than I expected, we came to a stop.
“West Norwood Cemetery,” the driver said with a heavy accent as my phone rang. “That’ll be six pounds and seven pence . . . Miss, are you okay?”
Without answering, I pushed a twenty-pound note blindly at the driver and all but fell out of the car. He didn’t call after me; he barely waited more than a couple of seconds before he drove off. I didn’t look at him go; I was too busy glancing around. The cemetery was huge – there were over forty thousand graves in the place. I thought of what Mrs McKenna had said – she’d mentioned the lawn cemetery, and I knew that was the modern section away from the historic sections and the catacombs.
I followed the signs, and numbly made my way to where I needed to go.
As fast as I could, I hobbled through the cemetery and ignored the pain in my leg. Mrs McKenna’s directions were forgotten in my panic and I lost count of the rows. I looked from left to right, looked for graves that had freshly upturned dirt, indicating recent burial. I saw three, and the first two I checked were for men I had never heard of. As I approached the third, I spotted a bunch of pink lilies sitting prettily in front of one of the small wooden crosses that every grave had until a tombstone was made and installed.
“No,” I said out loud.
I dug out my phone again, rejecting Elliot’s call, and tried to ring Bailey again. It went straight to her voicemail once more, and I felt myself choking on air.
“Phone me back, Bailey!” I demanded angrily. “Right when you get this message, you call me straight away. No messing around! Baby, please. Please, phone me back.”
I tried to put my phone back in my pocket, but I fumbled with it and it fell to the ground. I didn’t look at it or attempt to pick it up. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the pink lilies. They were Bailey’s favourite flowers. I was too scared to walk forward so I could read the name on the golden plaque on the cross, in case it was her name printed on it.
“Please be okay, Bails,” I said, finally shuffling forward one step at a time. “Please, please, please.”
I kept my eyes on the lilies for ages, so long that I heard my name being shouted from a distance. The touch of a cool breeze startled me into reacting. I looked up in that moment and the second I read the name and date of birth on the plaque, I dropped to the ground and screamed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
NOAH
“Noah!”
I could barely hear his voice over my cries.
“No!” I fought against the arms that suddenly surrounded me. “No! Let me go! Let me go!”
The arms around me tightened as I screamed in emotional pain. My heart felt like it had been ripped out of my chest and torn apart in front of my very eyes.
“Not Bailey,” I sobbed, my fingers digging into the dirt. “Please, not my Bailey.”
I heard Elliot’s choked intake of breath as he pressed his face against the back of my head. I cried until my throat went raw with pain and until no more tears fell from my eyes. I had stopped struggling against Elliot, because I could no longer move. I felt numb to everything except the pain in my heart.