of Pat feeling sorry for himself. This wasn’t about him and Georgia.
Where the hell was his mobile?
‘Sorry, Pat, but I need to phone the police and I need to do it now. You’ve got to stop thinking about what might have been, and think about where Mimi might have gone. And where she came from,’ Tom said.
Tom tried his other pocket, attempting to stem his irritation at Pat’s feeble behaviour. In the end, he gave up the search.
‘We have a problem. I must have left my phone in the car. We can’t use yours because we mustn’t alert Mimi. Do you have any idea at all where she is, because if she comes home we’re going to have to keep her here until the police arrive.’
‘She went out at about six, and I haven’t seen her since. We weren’t speaking. She was mad about something, and I just assumed it was something that I’d done. I didn’t bother to ask.’
‘Right, well you wait there and I’ll go and get my phone.’
* * *
‘Drive, Leo, or I’ll kill you now.’
‘No you won’t. If you didn’t need me, you’d have killed me already.’
Leo could feel Mimi’s sweaty body as she manoeuvred herself farther into the gap between the front seats. She felt hot breath, fetid with nerves, settling damply on the side of her face, and the knife was pressed harder against her throat. Leo knew she was going to die, but not yet if she could help it.
Mimi’s voice had turned brittle with emotion.
‘All you smug bastards did everything possible to break me and Patrick up, didn’t you? He wasn’t part of the plan, but he was a bonus - until I found out what he’s really like. But if Gary hadn’t wrecked everything, I could have made it work - all of it. Me and Patrick. Me and Abbie. I could have seen my Abbie in secret. She’d have liked that.’
Abbie? What could this possibly have to do with Abbie?
‘You didn’t know, did you? None of you guessed that she was mine. My little girl. I was going to make it up to her, all of it. She was my baby. I just wanted to see her - to show that that her mother isn’t a monster. It wasn’t my fault Jessica died – none of it was my fault. I wanted her to understand.’
Mimi was Abbie’s mother? Leo had no idea who Jessica was, but she knew that time was running out.
‘Abbie liked me when I was Chloe. But the real me wasn’t good enough, was it? Not good enough for Abbie, not good enough for Jessica, not good enough for Patrick. She said she hated me, do you know that? She screamed when I tried to touch her. I wish she hadn’t done that.’
Leo could sense a blistering anger, tinged with the heartbreak of a woman who had no illusions left.
‘Get moving, Leo, or I’ll enjoy every moment of watching you die. You won’t be the first person I’ve killed tonight.’ The knife was prodded harder, and Leo felt a new stab of pain as the point penetrated farther into her flesh.
‘I’m not driving anywhere with a knife pressed against my neck. If I go over a bump in the road, you’ll slice through my carotid artery. Move the knife, and I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.’
There was a pause.
‘Hands on the wheel. The top. Hold it tight, and lean your head against your hands. Now, Leo.’
She felt a new stab of pain as the knife twisted in the open wound. She did as she was told. But she wanted to keep Mimi talking.
‘Why Sean? Why did he have to die?’ Leo asked, her voice muffled as it rested on her arms.
The knife never leaving her neck, she felt a shuffling, and realised that Mimi was climbing through the gap in the seats and into the front. If she could just time it right…
‘Don’t move a muscle - I know what you’re thinking,’ Mimi growled as the knife jabbed harder. Leo winced in pain, but Mimi was too busy talking. ‘Sean was a case of mistaken identity. I was sure Ellie was screwing that cold blooded, murdering bastard Gary, and only she could deliver him to me on a plate. It was Gary I wanted. He knew I was there. He knew I was the one that had taken Abbie.’
Mimi had only needed seconds to climb into the front seat, and the pressure on the knife