didn’t work,’ I said. ‘I’m still here. I’m still in hell.’
He paused then and took his arm away and I had the terrible feeling that I’d said the wrong thing without knowing it; that I’d somehow given myself away. The phone, small as it was, felt like a brick against my skin, sticky and warm. My blouse was damp and clinging to me, and I pulled the wet cardigan around me just in case he could see the outline of the phone.
‘Help me,’ I said.
‘You can help yourself, Annabel,’ he said.
‘How?’ I said. ‘Tell me what to do. Please tell me.’
‘You can go home,’ he said, ‘and shut the door…’
I was shaking my head before he’d finished. ‘No, they’ll find me again. They put me in the hospital. They watch me all the time. I just want to be alone. There’s nowhere I can be alone.’
I looked up at him then, even though it would have been better to keep my head down. I wanted to check his face, to see if he looked suspicious. The rain was running down my face like tears and I didn’t brush it away. He didn’t look suspicious. He looked sad, sorrowful, but his eyes were bright.
I thought he was going to say ‘I can’t help you’. I could picture him saying it and standing again and going back to his Fiesta and driving away. And if he had done that, I would have found Sam and we would have probably gone back to his house and dried off and everything would have been fine. We would have lost nothing – other than the chance to find Audrey.
But he smiled, and stood up, and held out a hand to help me to my feet. I’d got stiff sitting there in the rain and the awkwardness in standing up was completely genuine.
‘You can come with me,’ he said.
I didn’t smile back. I just kept my head down, out of the rain, and followed his feet back to the car park, my steps measured, docile, compliant. He had a bag with him, a reusable canvas bag, swinging against his legs, full of shopping. My stomach grumbled and I wished I’d thought to eat something before launching myself into this crazy plan.
He stopped next to the Fiesta and opened the passenger door for me.
I think I hesitated, just for a moment. What was I doing? What was I getting myself into?
‘Get in, then,’ he said.
I got in and sat down. Colin shut the door and a few moments later opened up the boot, putting the shopping inside and slamming it shut again. The windscreen had started to mist up almost straight away, but I could see Sam across the car park, walking towards his car, hunched into his jacket. I hadn’t been afraid until then, not really, but something in me made me want to launch myself at the door and open it and run towards Sam.
And then the driver’s door opened and he got inside. I didn’t look at him. I looked at my hands in my lap.
‘You put your seatbelt on,’ he said.
It had been habit, I hadn’t even thought about it. His tone – curious. Suspicious?
‘Yes,’ I said simply, and went back to sitting with my hands in my lap, head low.
This seemed to satisfy him and he reversed out of the parking space and drove through the exit, then turned left on to the main road. We were heading up the hill towards his home. Surely he wasn’t going to take me there? I wanted to look behind to check whether Sam was following but I didn’t move. I was sitting as still as I could but now, for the first time, I felt the panic rising inside me like a swell of salty water, and I had to concentrate to keep my breathing steady. I could hear my heart above the noise of the car, the blood rushing through my ears. And I was picturing the DCI asking what the hell I thought I was doing, jeopardising a case that I’d been specifically told I was not involved in.
This was not a good idea. It was insane. A wave of terror hit me. And it was far too late to back out of it now.
We drove straight past Colin’s road and onwards, through the leafy suburbs, past the business park and the council dump, and then right down a lane that took us out of town completely and past fields. The windscreen