on the high street. It wasn’t anything inside the furniture shop either. It was within her. An alarm going off; a shrill, terrifying shriek warning her at an intuitive level, that something was happening right now, to her children.
‘Oh no,’ she whispered to herself.
Her adult mind chided her.
Just a nightmare, Jenny. God knows you’re due one after everything you’ve been through this week.
Yes . . . a nightmare. That was it. But the sensation was strong; an overpowering sense of being hunted, chased, fleeing from certain death.
Classic nightmare material is all this is, Jen. This really isn’t what you think it is.
Isn’t what? Maternal instinct? Of course not. She reminded herself that that was the sort of nonsense that belonged in those silly agony aunt columns, or tales from the heart short stories you’d find somewhere in the middle of those glossy Moronic Mummy Mags, tales of mothers sensing their child calling out to them for help.
But it felt so intense, so real, that Jenny found herself sitting up, and clasping a hand to her chest. It hurt, something in her was hurting, like a stomach ulcer that had gravitated up into her chest.
‘Please . . . please,’ she cried, as huge rolling tears coursed down her face in the absolute darkness, her hand kneading her breastbone.
She desperately wanted to rush out into the street and start running towards home. She was maybe as little as what . . . five or six miles away? She could be home in the space of an hour. But it was dark out there, in which direction would she run? She might start running in the dark, and end up in the morning further away, lost amidst some anonymous suburban warren in Finchley.
Your kids need you to be smart, Jenny. Not stupid. It was a bloody nightmare. Lie down. Get some rest. Just a nightmare . . . just a nightmare. You’ll see the kids tomorrow.
Jenny did as she was told. She lay down. She couldn’t sleep though.
CHAPTER 77
10.11 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
Leona dragged Jacob up the stairs.
At the top, they crossed the small landing and dived into Jill’s guest bedroom. In the corner of the room was a wash-basin. It wasn’t plumbed in, that was something Jill had yet to arrange - ‘you know how it is, you can never find a good plumber in London’.
The basin had been built into a recess in the wall, and the space beneath it, where, one day, plumbing and pipes would descend to the floor, had been boxed in with plywood panels and a little access hatch to make it presentable and flush with the bedroom wall.
Leona knew there was space in there for both of them, they’d tried it out this afternoon. And, as an afterthought, Leona had pulled one of Jill’s chintzy tea-towels out from beneath the kitchen sink, and with thumbtacks, attached it so that it draped down over the hatch. She hoped none of the Bad Boys would think to lift the tea-towel and pull on the small brass handle beneath.
Well at least that’s what she hoped.
She lifted the corner of the towel up and opened the hatch. ‘In you go.’
Jacob scrambled inside. She climbed in after him, curling up with her knees jammed under her chin and her arms wrapped tightly around them; curled up snugly, foetus-like, she just about managed to squeeze into the space beside him. She pulled the hatch to, hoping that the towel hadn’t caught on the handle and had flopped down smoothly, concealing their hiding place.
‘Are we safe Lee?’ whispered Jacob.
‘We’re safe. But you have to be very quiet now, okay?’
She felt him trembling as he nodded silently.
The noises coming from downstairs indicated that several of them were inside the house now. She could hear the furniture barricade being pulled aside in the hallway, the clatter of furniture being yanked at angrily and thrown across the hall. She could hear footfalls along the hallway, kitchen unit doors being opened and slammed as the first of the gang to make it inside hunted for the most important thing . . . something to drink, alcoholic or not. Quenching the thirst came above all else.
She knew they were going to easily find all those two-litre bottles of water stacked in the broom cupboard and it would all be quickly consumed by the gang.
There seemed to be a lot of movement in the kitchen. She heard several voices raised angrily, the sound of a scuffle, a fight