24 Hours: An intense, suspenseful psychological thriller (20 page)

E
mily
and I stared at each other across the kitchen, listening to the silence after Jolie hung up. I hadn’t answered the phone to her; I hadn’t really absorbed her misplaced offer of some ridiculous olive branch, and God only knew what excuses Sid had given for not going home, or where he was now. Frankly, Jolie was the very least of my concerns. Instead, drawing myself up, I turned away from Emily – my oldest friend – and, for the first time in my life, I asked her to leave my house.

Facing Emily’s fury about my behaviour was only a reminder of everything I knew I was doing wrong. I needed to be alone; I needed to regain control. Of something. Of some part of my life. I did
not
need to be chastised. I could do that to myself.

After Emily slammed her way out with mutterings of ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you’ and I put a somewhat confused Polly into the bath, babbling about Emily having to rush off to see her mother, pretending everything was fine – a talent I had honed well over the past few years – I went to my bedroom to change. Throwing my jumper on the bed, I saw that Sid had scrawled, right across the expensive cotton pillowcase my mother had bought me for Christmas, scarlet words:

I read his message – and all I felt was irritation that, typically, he had not bothered to find a piece of paper; that he’d ruined my one and only Chanel lipstick by writing with it.

T
he next day
I felt horrible; rattled and murky. All morning between appointments, I wrote texts to Emily and didn’t send them. The afternoon was taken up with meetings and a review of the Darfur girls’ situation, and in the end, I was a little late leaving work because I’d so much to catch up on after playing truant. I arrived at St Bede’s as the last children were straggling out of after-school club, taking the stairs towards Polly’s classroom two at a time.

Wendy, the wizened teaching assistant, was clearing up the tables in the empty classroom.

‘Forgotten something?’ she smiled toothily.

‘Er, Polly?’ I said.

‘I’m sure Polly had her book folder
and
her coat.’ Wendy bundled the bright felt-tips together and stuck them in a drawer. ‘For once. She did a lovely picture. Taking after her dad already, isn’t she? Couldn’t wait to show you.’

‘Where is she?’ My heart had sped up a little. ‘In the loo?’

Wendy stopped smiling. ‘What do you mean, where is she?’

‘I mean, where is she?’

‘She’s gone already.’

‘Gone?’ My mouth went dry.

‘Yes.’ Wendy gazed at me, trying not to show her concern. ‘She went with the other lady.’

‘
What
other lady?’

‘The nice one.’

‘Wendy!’ I resisted grabbing her and shaking her. ‘What nice one?’ A cold sweat had broken out across my forehead. ‘What woman?’

Emily? But she would never take Polly without telling me. Would she?

‘The – the pretty one.’ Wendy was frightened now.

‘Blonde? Big bosom?’

‘No.’ Wendy could hardly speak.

Jolie? I remembered her sanctimonious pity for me on the phone last night.

‘Dark? The singer? Her dad’s girlfriend?’

‘No,’ Wendy shook her head, her gold chains swinging wildly. ‘No, she’s a mum.’

‘Roz?’

‘No. New. Her son’s in the other class. She said Polly was coming to play.’

‘What’s her name?’ But now I knew who it was.

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Red hair?’ The panic was building.

‘Yes,’ Wendy’s relief was palpable. ‘Her little boy’s called Leonard.’ She looked at me like a lost spaniel, hoping for reassurance, but I was already turning to go. ‘Sorry, Mrs Smith. She did say that you knew.’

Suzanne O’Brien.

What the hell did she want with my daughter?

F
umbling with my car keys
, I called Mal and left him a message, asking him to call me with Suzanne’s address immediately, asking him why the hell his wife might have taken my daughter.

Then I rang the police. I reported my daughter as abducted and gave them a description of both Polly and Suzanne O’Brien. As I turned the key in the ignition to begin my own search, Mal rang.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he began. ‘I really—’

‘Never mind about sorry, Mal,’ I had no time for sorry, ‘just give me her bloody address.’

‘It’s 23b Greenleaf Avenue. The house on the corner. Middle flat. I’ve rung her. She’s not answering.’

‘I bet she’s bloody not.’ I knew the road he meant, it wasn’t far from the park. ‘Thanks anyway.’

‘Laurie—’ he began again.

I hung up.

There was no answer at 23b, nor at any of the other flats in the house. I paced up and down outside, and then I called Sid, leaving him a message telling him what had happened. I was just dialling the police again when Leonard and Polly appeared around the corner of the road, drinking cans of Coke.

I had never been so relieved to see anyone in my entire life.

‘Pol,’ I ran towards her. ‘Oh, Polly! Where’ve you been, baby?’

Suzanne O’Brien appeared behind them. She was smiling. The mad cow was actually smiling at me.

I scooped my daughter up, spilling her drink down my own front.

‘Mumm-y!’ she protested. ‘My Coca-Cola.’

‘Sorry, darling.’ I put her down and propelled her back towards the car. ‘I’ll buy you another one.’ Suzanne was nearing. ‘Just get in, would you.’ I bundled Polly into the back seat and shut the door firmly, locking it behind her.

Leonard and his mother had caught us up now. I leant down to the little boy.

‘Can I just have a quick word with your mummy?’ I asked him. He blinked sandy lashes at me, looked up at Suzanne for approval. She nodded. ‘Wait upstairs for me, Lenny.’

He wandered up the stairs, banging his Coke can methodically against each railing. Checking he was out of earshot, I moved very close to the woman still smiling beatifically at me.

‘What the fucking hell are you playing at?’

Her smile froze. She blinked at me like her son had just done.

‘Leonard told me Polly wanted to come round.’

‘Oh really?’ I hissed. ‘You let a six-year-old arrange his own social life, do you? Without speaking to me first?’

She shrugged, almost imperceptibly. ‘Why not?’

‘You’re having a laugh,’ I said, my fingers tightening around my car keys. I wanted to punch her right in the middle of her stupid smug face. ‘You knew full well I had no idea about this. About where you were taking my daughter.’

‘Didn’t I?’ she stared at me. ‘Mal said it was okay.’

I stared back, a whisper of doubt creeping in now.

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘I just spoke to him.’

‘Oh really.’ She grimaced. ‘I told you, he’s a liar.’

‘No,’ I refused to go this route. ‘You’re the bloody liar. Don’t ever come near my child again, do you hear me?’

Leonard trailed down the stairs towards us now. ‘Mummy? What’s wrong?’

I glanced at him. Poor little mite. His mother was quite clearly mad.

‘There was just a muddle, sweetheart,’ I said, opening my own door. ‘But Mum and I have sorted it now.’

She laughed, a high bitter laugh.

‘Ha,’ she said. ‘Have we? I tell you something,’ she took a step towards me. ‘Mal will never fucking love you like he loves me.’

Leonard blinked once more and promptly burst into tears.

My heart went out to him – but I couldn’t stay here. He wasn’t my responsibility; this wasn’t my mess. I had enough of my own to contend with.

‘Sorry, darling,’ I said rather uselessly to Leonard. Polly knocked on the car window, waving at her friend. He just sobbed harder.

‘Why is Leonard crying?’ Polly asked as I got in the car.

‘He’s just a bit … sad,’ I watched a motorbike approach from the other end of the road. ‘I’m sure he’ll be just fine soon.’

‘I hope so,’ Polly looked worried. ‘Shall I get out and make him better? I can tell him my best joke—’

‘No!’ I practically shouted, turning the key in the ignition just as the bike drew level with me, and as I indicated to pull out, a red-faced Mal pulled off the black helmet.

My heart racing, I pulled away. In the mirror, as he receded, I could see him staring helplessly after the car, still seated astride the motorbike.

All the way home, I was still so furious that I could hardly speak, so I put Polly’s favourite CD on and bellowed along with her and The Tings Tings, watching her in the mirror, happily oblivious in the back seat.

I felt so tense that my face ached. What damage was I doing to my child? I had the strongest impulse not to drive home; to keep going instead, to somewhere no one knew us, right out of London, away from this web of heartbreak and jealousy; away from Sid, away from whatever strange game Mal and his ex-wife were playing.

Opening the front door, a strange smell assailed me. Polly, allergy-prone, immediately started to sneeze.

‘It’s like flowers,’ she said, wrinkling her running nose. ‘Old lady’s smell.’ She meant like at Auntie Val’s: talc and pot pourri.

I walked into the sitting-room. Something was different.

Someone had moved things around on the coffee-table, I saw at once. My notes were upside down, Polly’s Lego on the other side to where it normally was.

I rang Sid. ‘Have you been in the house?’

‘No.’ He was terse.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. Well, Polly’s okay, you’ll be glad to know.’

‘What? Why wouldn’t she be?’

‘Did you not get my message?’

‘Oh.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘I guess so. Sorry. I’ve been a bit distracted. We’ve had a bit of … of trouble here. Jolie’s not well. And incidentally, she’s upset about your attitude.’

‘What?’ I was startled. ‘What attitude?’

‘You know what I mean. Her offer of friendship. Put Pol on, please.’

I called my daughter to the phone. Jolie was obviously with him, and I wasn’t up for tackling this now.

I went into the sitting-room and moved things back, thoroughly rattled. I thought about ringing Emily; she had a spare key – but I couldn’t face her either. I couldn’t see why she’d have come into the house – but hopefully it might have been her, come to make amends. I recognised the smell from somewhere, but it evaded me. I wondered if it was maybe one of Emily’s exotic perfumes. It was cloying, and I opened a window.

But really, I had other concerns now. I felt foolish; even angrier than when I’d left Suzanne’s. I despised myself.

Once again, after all that had just happened between Sid and I; once again, it apparently meant nothing.

I
wake in the dark
, sweating and confused, my face stuck to something plastic. For a second I don’t dare move, and then I panic, realising my arms are bound to my body.

I start to thrash wildly against my bonds.

It takes me a minute or so to realise that, wherever I am, someone has wrapped something thick and heavy around me, and this is what restrains my arms now.

Eventually I manage to free myself. I lie panting and terrified, quieter now, until my eyes slowly adjust to the light, and I realise I am lying on Mal’s sofa, my face against the duty-free bag he flung there earlier. For some reason, there’s a bucket on the floor beside me and a blanket and a heavy sheepskin coat I’ve become entangled in somehow. Has he tried to bind me?

Why am I still here? I was leaving, I remember; I was leaving to find Polly. But I am still in Mal’s flat; here, in this nasty, dingy basement. Polly is at Randolph’s. I have no idea now what the time is, but Sid must have collected her and my mother by now. She will, at least, be safe.

If Sid is … if Sid is to be trusted.

I try to stand but my head is pounding and for a moment I can’t see for the pain. I slump back on the sofa.

I take a few deep breaths and try again.

I reach the living room door. I switch the light on and try to open it.

The door is locked.

I pull against it, but with my unwieldy bandaged hand, I can’t get any sort of grip. The door won’t budge. I hear a sob rip through me. Oh God.

A sob of frustration: my own sob. It echoes round the room.

I switch the light on, and look frantically around for something to attack the door with. I see the coal-scuttle, and I start to pick it up and then I realise …

It is a ridiculous idea; the door is solid wood, and I have no strength left to smash it in without waking Mal.

I absolutely must not alert him, I am sure of that. I drop it on the sofa, and, head pounding still, I try to think straight.

And then I see the window that I broke earlier, and the board Mal has clumsily put before it to cover the hole. He has only used gaffer or duct tape, I realise.

I bend to retrieve the trainers that Mal must have eased off my feet, trying to contain my nausea. As I lean down, I see the
Evening
Standard
on the floor that Mal brought home from the airport. It has slipped from the carrier bag, its headlines screaming:
Artist’s Wife Killed in Fire
and below it,
Laurie Smith, Dead.
There’s a picture of me below the headline; the same wild-eyed photo from the gala dinner I saw on last night’s news. And another two, smaller pictures; one, slightly blurred, of Sid from a slight distance, coming out of a building I recognise. The clean white lines of the Tate St Ives, above Porthmeor Beach in Cornwall. I pick up the paper and read the caption.
Husband Sid Smith leaving the Tate in St Ives this morning
.

It doesn’t make any sense.

This
morning? I check the date: this is yesterday’s paper.

If the
Standard
is right, it means Sid was still in Cornwall yesterday morning – and so he must have been there whilst Emily and I were in neighbouring Devon the night before. But he hadn’t told me; not even when I rang him to tell him of mine and Polly’s plans. And he certainly hasn’t mentioned it since.

Hands shaking, I read the whole story; skimming the details of the fire, of my death.

The other picture is of Jolie, partially obscured, getting in a chauffeured car. The article continues:

As if I am better off dead. I swallow hard.

But
I
left Sid.

It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make, but I very much left him. It took me a few years to work up the courage, but I did it in the end. And he begged me to stay, but I took Polly, and I went – before he killed me, either literally or metaphorically, with his dark, twisted love. Whatever he’s told Jolie, I know that it was me who made the decision.

They’ve got Polly’s age wrong again, is my first thought. Then I think, the day that Jolie Jones gets her hands on my daughter is the day I will kill the insensitive bitch myself. I can just imagine her granting the journalists this gold-dust: all eyes, lashes fluttering, the press lapping it up – the gorgeous young step-mother saving the tragic tortured widower and his bereft but photogenic daughter.

I throw the paper across the room in disgust. It hits a picture, a horrid copy of a Constable mill, which swings wildly and then crashes to the ground.

I hear movement in the next room.

Sid was only about seventy miles from Forest Lodge, a fact he never mentioned.

Sid was in the vicinity when the fire began.

I don’t bother with my laces. I pull the board from the window and use my good arm to swipe the last bits of glass from the edges of the pane. All thoughts of why I am still here, locked in, of whether Mal may have had something to do with the whole desperate and life-shattering situation dissipate: my sole ambition is to free myself.

And the thought that drives me on is that Sid must have got to Polly now.

I think I hear Mal.

‘Laurie?’ he is calling my name. He sounds angry, I think. ‘Laurie, what are you doing?’

My heart is pounding, the adrenaline is back; coursing through my veins. With every last vestige of strength, ignoring the pain in my hand and shoulder, I wrench the wooden table back from the window, and shove it with all my might against the door.

And he is rattling the door now; I see the handle turning—

I almost throw myself out of the window. Like a snake out of its skin, I slither out; somehow, I am through. My hands hit the gravel, I’m pulling myself up, launching myself up the stairs, tripping on my laces, falling, standing again, running. Running.

‘Laurie!’ I hear the bellow behind me.

I run faster than I ever remember running in my life, smashing through an old rose bush trailing over the garden wall on the street corner, lacerating my face. I push on.

Why did Sid not mention where he was yesterday?

I run until I get to the main road. Gasping for breath; I have no jacket now and I can feel wetness on my back. There’s blood on my jeans where I cut myself on the last jags of glass. But at least I know I still have Linda’s money in my back pocket.

I hail a cab and ask the driver to take me to Holland Park.

He looks disbelieving, frowning at me. Blatantly, I don’t look like I belong amongst the echelons of West London – but, thank God, the man doesn’t bother to argue, just clicks the door open and lets me in. I fumble for my phone to call the police again and realise with horror I’ve left them both at Mal’s, along with the hoodie. I have no means of contacting anyone now. I am totally alone again.

‘Shit!’

But at least I am moving. I sink back into the seat, willing the cab on. I never go to church, didn’t get married in one, don’t believe in much other than the fact the earth goes round the sun, and the world keeps turning. But right now, I am praying.