hot liquid onto Abbie’s arm.
‘Oh God, and now I’m trying to burn the poor child. What a useless mother I am.’
Kath put the cup down and started to mop Abbie’s arm. But Ellie wasn’t paying attention. She was watching Abbie, positive that when the hot tea hit her, her arm moved away just a fraction. Ellie jumped up and moved to Abbie’s feet.
‘Did you see that?’ Ellie asked. Kath’s face was suddenly bright with expectation as she watched Ellie run her usual tests. They weren’t actually due, but if Kath believed that her accident with the hot tea had brought Abbie out of her coma, that was absolutely fine by Ellie.
And there was no doubt about it. The coma was definitely lightening
‘This is great news. She’s starting to respond to pain. We’ve got a long way to go, but it’s the first positive sign we’ve had since Abbie was brought in. I know the doctor has explained to you that coming round from a coma isn’t like it is on the TV. She’s not suddenly going to sit up and start talking - but this is a very good sign. Do you want to go and call Brian and tell him? I’ll sit here with her, don’t worry.’
Kath was clearly torn between staying with Abbie and phoning her husband, but she couldn’t bear the thought of him not knowing.
‘I’ll be two minutes - that’s all. I promise.’
Grabbing her mobile phone from her handbag, she dashed for the door.
Ellie sat down by the bed, and started stroking Abbie’s head - just as she had done the day before. She had checked out some of the words to Abbie’s favourite song as well, and memorised the chorus. She started to sing very softly, close to Abbie’s ear. This was all that mattered now. Abbie recovering.
But even the words of the song couldn’t drive out the knowledge that somebody - somebody not too far away from here - had ruthlessly planned and executed the abduction of a teenage girl.
30
The route to Penny and Gary’s house was imprinted on Leo’s brain, as they lived right next door to Ellie and Max’s previous home. She remembered that they had two young girls and as it was the school holidays, there was every chance they would be at home. She hoped she would get a chance to chat to Penny alone, though. With any luck on this bright, sunny day the girls would have found something better to do with themselves than sit around watching TV, chatting on their computers, or playing online games, although any recent experience Leo had had with kids of this age didn’t give her much hope.
Leo had decided to call on Penny to see if she’d had any more thoughts about the life coaching session, because in her view if anybody needed it, Penny did. As she approached the house, she looked at it with interest. The garden was beyond immaculate, far too much order and uniformity for her taste. Somebody had gone berserk with the bedding plants, and the garden was full of colour; but each plant was equidistant from the next and in a regular pattern - one red, one blue, one white. She wasn’t sure if it was patriotism or a desire for high impact that had dictated the colour scheme, but either way it was a bit extreme. The front lawn was a neat square with crisply trimmed edges, and at each corner stood an identical pyramid shaped shrub. Leo thought they were probably conifers, but since the only plant she could identify with any reliability was a rose, this was just her best guess.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement at one of the windows. But when she turned her head to look properly, she couldn’t see anybody. She had always thought it strange that a man who had aspirations to be an architect had chosen to live in a house like this. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was a flat fronted nineteen seventies detached house with nothing to differentiate it from its neighbours - apart from the fact that most of them, including Ellie and Max’s old house, were semi-detached. The curtains at the windows looked unnecessarily fussy to Leo, and she could see that they were tied back with care so that the windows upstairs and down looked identical. She could just make out some flouncy pelmet on the inside as she walked up the drive. There were