The Good Mother: A tense psychological thriller with a shocking twist. A. Bird L.

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      ‘I’ll come over then, shall I?’ says the man.

      ‘You know I’m not going to agree to that.’

      ‘I just want to talk,’ he says.

      Yeah, right.

      ‘We can talk now,’ I retort.

      ‘Face to face.’

      I don’t say anything. If we were face to face, as he wants, I might not be able to conceal fear within hostility. I’m not sure I’m managing it now.

      He continues to push.

      ‘Where can we meet?’

      ‘So that I leave the house empty? I don’t think so.’ I know his game.

      ‘You’re not helping yourself,’ he tells me.

      I don’t need any help, from myself or anyone else, so I hang up.

      Just imagine he found out where I live – he’d turn up on the doorstep immediately. In darkness, I can leave, if I go out the back entrance. Like this morning. No evidence of anyone staking the place out, at least not from the back. Maybe he hasn’t told anyone what he knows. Maybe the big guns aren’t out to get me. I can reach the woods easily from the back, take a shortcut to where I need to be. Because I have to go there, to that spot. That mound of earth so carefully packed into place. Remind myself why I’m doing it all. What’s gone before. What’s still to come. And keep my resolve. Because I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to stay strong. So I move away from the phone, back to the trays. And perfect the feeding time offering.

Chapter 12

      It’s all very well lying to your mum, but lying to the headmistress takes extra skills, Alice thinks, as she exits the interrogation room aka the headmistress’s study. With your mum, you know all the levers and buttons to pull and press. All the points to cry. And you know that she loves you. The headmistress doesn’t love you. The headmistress pretends to love you, but really she is that very rude word that Daddy uses sometimes. And she can see into your soul.

      So how was Alice supposed to resist? It was Mr Wilson’s fault anyway, not hers. He shouldn’t have read her English homework so suspiciously. Just because a few characters in a composition have a conversation about truth and secrets and best friends, it doesn’t mean that she was talking about her own truth, secrets and best friends. Doesn’t he know what fiction is? OK, so, in this case, it wasn’t totally fiction, but it was so out of order for him to report her to the headmistress. Mrs Wilson. That’s what she and Cara would have gigglingly called him if she’d been there, his voice was so high-pitched. But she wasn’t there, was she? That was the whole problem.

      So Mrs Cavendish had called Alice into her study and talked in very airy-fairy terms about truth and how helping a friend isn’t always by doing what they ask you to do. Sometimes you have to tell people everything you know about a friend in order to be the best friend you can. Mrs Cavendish’s eyes did not stray from Alice’s for one syllable. By the end of the lecture, Alice was sure that Mrs Cavendish could hear her brain, and that there was little point in keeping the secret because Mrs Cavendish must already know it.

      ‘OK,’ said Alice, nodding bravely. ‘I’ll tell.’

      Then in came Mr Belvoir with his questions. What had she seen? What had she heard, smelled, believed? What had Cara told her? Would she swear on that in court? Did she know where the man could be found?

      All these questions, she’d understood. They reminded her of Monsieur Poirot and Mr Holmes, whose stories she’d listened to on Audible.com with her parents in the evening when homework was over. Non-police male detectives asked odd, detailed questions and achieved miraculous results, often changing the world with the results – reappearing the missing, making dead people live. But then there were questions that she didn’t understand at all, even in the Poirot/ Holmes world. Questions that left her a little uneasy. Questions about Cara’s mum. About Cara’s mum’s husband. Personal, private questions, about habits, ways of living, that left her feeling dirty. And perhaps Mrs Cavendish felt dirty too. Because, after a while, she asked Mr Belvoir if he was quite done, as she felt sure Alice must have classes to attend.

      And so Alice left. Now, on the way to History, which was hopefully all about Francis Drake and the Armada, and not about best friends and cars and peculiar gentlemen, Alice thinks she might have made the wrong decision. Perhaps she shouldn’t have told. Although she didn’t quite tell, did she? Because she didn’t have the address. Of where to find the man Mr Belvoir seemed to be so keen to find. She just had the mental picture. From when Cara had taken her there. Because that was Cara. She shared everything. So Mr Belvoir can’t really use the information, because he doesn’t have Alice’s mental map. Although she thinks she described it pretty well.

      This isn’t all Alice is thinking though. She also thinks something else. She thinks that on a second meeting this man, this Mr Belvoir, is very like the secret man that Cara had described to her. The man Cara used to meet. And who she’d gone to meet that day.

Chapter 13

      Dearest Cara

      So, so wonderful to be communicating with you. Not in ideal conditions. I know. And I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. But such a relief, such a comfort, to know you are through there.

      Yes, I am hoping Dad will come and rescue us. I’m hoping that even now there is a police sniper outside with the Captor in his sights.

      But, in case not, we need a plan B. And I’ve got one. I don’t know about your room, but in mine there’s a small window. Don’t get your hopes up – I didn’t mean we can climb out of it. It’s high, locked, small and unsmashable. BUT there’s a girl who uses the grass outside to skip on. So it is possible that I might be seen. And so I’ve made a sign, telling the world that we’re in here. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

      I put the pencil down. It’s so not much that it feels almost futile. I’m counting on a small girl (a) maintaining skipping as a hobby, and not discovering skating or TV or even books (b) keeping up the discipline to practise regularly (c) practising in the same spot (d) looking at her surroundings (e) caring about them (f) seeing the sign (g) distinguishing it enough from her own play world to think it worth telling her parents about it (h) not seeing a small pony or an ice-cream truck on the way home, which makes her forget about the sign entirely and (i) her parents believing and caring about what she said.

      So yes. A lot to rely on. Or not. And a lot to ask Cara to put her faith in. So we probably need a plan C as well, at least. I force myself to continue writing.

      How about you? Do you have any windows? Could you do a sign too? Or perhaps there is a chance of getting through your windows. If you have them. Tell me. And tell me if you have any other ideas too.

      Please let her have ideas. Please let her be able to escape whether she can take me with her or not. But please let her not forget me when she leaves. I won’t be able to manage this without her.

      I think he goes out occasionally, the Captor. So we can make use of that, maybe? I don’t know how?

      I want to go over again how you got here. Anything we know about the Captor could be useful. You said you remember a car. СКАЧАТЬ