Taken. Rosie Lewis

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       Chapter Eleven

      Later that afternoon I awaited Christina’s arrival with trepidation. The session had been scheduled for 2 p.m., but the hour came and went with no sign of her. At first I wondered whether she might have had trouble finding our house, but by half past two I decided she probably wasn’t coming and got ready to go to the shops. Just as I was about to strap a sleeping Megan into the pram though, I heard a commotion beyond the front door.

      I stood in the hall for a moment with Megan in my arms, my head tilted as I tried to work out what was going on outside. The silhouettes of two people were visible through the frosted glass of the door, and from the way they merged, parted, then crossed over again, there seemed to be some sort of scuffle going on between them. Instinctively, I held Megan closer and ducked out of sight, but then I heard loud outbursts of laughter. A few seconds later, the doorbell rang.

      ‘Oh, hello,’ I said, my eyes drifting from Christina to the man standing behind her. At least a decade older than her, he was skinny, with a drawn, pale face and bedraggled, shoulder-length hair. ‘I’d almost given up on you.’ I didn’t bother trying to disguise the thread of irritation in my tone.

      Christina, who was holding an ice cream, gave me a blank look. Her companion stared at me, equally vacant. After giving her a brief shove in the back, propelling her towards the house, he took a puff of his cigarette, blew a smoke ring in the air and then dropped the stub on the path. I stared at him with incredulity, but neither he nor Christina batted an eyelid, although she jabbed him hard in his chest and threw out one leg, grinding the stub under her shoe.

      ‘You’ll have to wait for Christina outside, I’m afraid,’ I said, as they readied themselves to come in. I tried to sound as if I wasn’t going to brook any argument, although my pulse was beginning to race. Megan stirred in my arms.

      ‘This is Lee,’ Christina said, as if she thought that was enough to prove his credentials. ‘He’s all right.’ She was wearing leggings, shoes with extraordinarily high heels and a stringy long-sleeved black top that slipped off one shoulder as she climbed the front step. Once in the hall she took Megan from me without a word and tottered off out of sight. Lee made a move to follow her but I quickly took a step sideways, blocking his way.

      ‘Sorry, Lee. There’s a café in the park along the way if you’d like a cuppa while you’re waiting.’ My pulse quickened again, but I stood firm.

      He stared at me for a second or two, shrugged and then craned his head around the doorjamb, his face just a few inches from mine. ‘Laters, Chris,’ he shouted down the hall, his fusty breath hot on my face. I turned, partly because of the overwhelmingly strong stench of nicotine and stale aftershave, but also to see if I could work out where Christina had taken herself off to. There was no sign of her, but from somewhere downstairs she grunted a noise of acknowledgement.

      ‘Oh, Lee?’

      He turned. ‘Yeah?’

      ‘Would you mind taking that with you?’

      ‘Huh?’

      I nodded towards the path, where faint wisps of smoke were still rising from the half-finished cigarette. He gave me a look that suggested he thought I was the sort of person who kept the food tins lined up in the cupboard in alphabetical order, then trudged over and kicked the butt into the hedge.

      In the living room, Christina had kicked off her shoes and was sitting on the sofa, her legs tucked up beneath her. Megan lay sleeping in the curve of her right arm, and in the same hand she held a mobile phone, the back of which was chequered with green and yellow striped tape. One of her thumbs moved swiftly over the screen. With impressive dexterity, she managed intermittent licks of the ice cream she held in her other hand without disturbing Megan or diverting attention from her phone. ‘All right?’ she said, biting off the bottom of the cone.