It’s all come to a head, lightning fast and just as frightening.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Leah
Now
The world seems to hold its breath once I’m inside Norwood’s grounds. The silence perfect.
‘Archie?’ Fear tears his name from my throat. ‘Archie!’ A flock of birds rises from the trees, black wings beating, cawing out a warning. The back of my neck tingles.
Is someone watching me?
I turn a slow 360. There’s nobody visible but still I feel eyes on me. Waiting to see where I’ll go. What I’ll do when I get there.
It’s easier than I thought to get my bearings. The camp is huge – hiding places everywhere – but Simon will want me to find him. There’s little point to coming back here otherwise. Archie will be in the room we were held in.
Determinedly, I run over to the building where I was once carried inside, gagged and blindfolded, terrified, but the horror I felt then pales in comparison to the horror I feel now. I’d sacrifice myself a million times over to save my child.
The building is gloomy. Darkness swallows me as I step inside. I need a torch. Too late I realize I have left my mobile in the centre console of the car.
I’d been so young when I was here that I wasn’t sure whether I’d know which room had been our prison, but evil is thick in the blackness, beckoning me forward. Broken glass crunches underfoot as I edge down the hallway.
Something touches my face. I stifle a scream and bat it away.
A cobweb.
I can do this.
My body feels like one of the paper dolls Marie and I used to dress up, flimsy and insubstantial. I place my hands on my thighs to reassure myself that my legs are still there, solid and able to support me.
I can do this.
My teeth chatter as I reach the room.
Our room.
In the muted grey light spilling in through the patchy roof, my eyes scan the door. There are six nail holes where the bolts used to be. Crudely painted in faded red on the outside is RIP Sinclair Sisters as though we had died that day. I suppose in a way we had. We had come out of here altogether different children to the ones who had been dragged in. I squint as I search the corridor for a weapon. There’s a wooden post with rusted nails jutting out from its splintered sides.
I raise it above my head.
I can do this.
Archie is all I can think of as I kick the door open, pelting to the room as fast as I can.
The element of surprise.
But it is me who is surprised.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Carly
Now
Leah’s at Norwood.
Norwood.
Carly thrusts her phone into her pocket and begins to run.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Leah
Now
Archie isn’t here.
Nobody is here.
That’s not strictly true. There are the ghosts of the young Sinclair Sisters who once sang and danced and tried not to be broken by all that happened in this room.
It looks the same and yet different. The piles of rubbish have been cleared but it still stinks here. The bars that once striped the windows have gone. Probably taken as crime memorabilia. After our book came out, Carly saw the blanket we had supposedly been given by Doc for sale on eBay. Whether it was the actual one or not was impossible to tell.
The grubby mattress we had lain upon is also missing. It makes my skin crawl to think that somebody might lie on it and get a kick out of imagining three small, terrified girls, huddled together, fearing for their lives. Morbid fascination for the macabre is something I’ll never get to grips with. I turn and my heart stutters at the face I have never forgotten.
The shock of orange hair and bright red nose. The red mouth slashed into a grin. The graffiti clown laughs.
You’re back! he seems to say.
Fuck you, I reply.
There’s a creak.
The door begins to close.
Chapter Sixty
George
Now
George passes his mobile from palm to palm, as though it is as hot as the shame that burns inside him. Leah’s text still unopened.
What has he done?
Chapter Sixty-One
Carly
Now
Norwood looms larger than in her nightmares. Carly can’t believe she’s here but she’ll do anything for Archie. He really is the light of her life.
Will you ever go back? a reporter had asked her once.
Only in my nightmares, she’d replied but here she is, wide awake and utterly terrified.
A shadow. A movement.
‘Leah?’ she whispers. Scared to shout. Scared to move. Scared about what’s going to happen next.