‘But you might not be there next time.’
Shame flooded through Flora. She should be the one Beckie looked to to protect her, not some random neighbour they hardly even knew.
Caroline, she saw, was looking at her. ‘Well, how about I teach your mum some self-defence moves so she can kick their arses, eh? Oops, sorry, bad word slipped out there.’
‘That’s okay.’ Beckie was grinning now. ‘Stress of the moment.’ It was what Neil said when he accidentally swore in Beckie’s hearing. ‘Could you teach me too?’
‘Sure thing. It’s mainly a matter of confidence –’
‘And my dad?’
‘Hey, let’s throw in the dog while we’re at it, let’s ninja up the whole family!’
Beckie laughed. ‘We don’t have a dog, but we have a hamster.’
‘Ninja-hamster? Works for me.’
‘You’re so cool. You’re like Xena Warrior Princess or something. Although actually no, she’s not that cool. Not as cool as you.’
‘Why, thank you. You’re pretty cool yourself. You’re being a very brave girl, I reckon.’
Beckie flushed. ‘No I’m not. I was useless. I just – basically I just cried. And peed my pants.’
‘Well of course you did. It was horrendous for you both. Really horrendous.’ And she set down her mug and reached over and touched Flora’s arm. ‘How are you doing?’
There was so much kindness in her voice.
All Flora could do was nod.
She’d known it was going to be bad, telling Neil, but she hadn’t expected this.
He was shaking.
He was looking at her with repressed fury in his face.
They were standing facing each other in the cramped, bleach-infused en suite of the hotel room. Beckie was finally asleep. She’d been hyper for the last few hours, insisting on exploring every inch of the hotel ‘to make sure it’s safe’ and insisting on both of them coming with her. Trekking after her down one endless corridor after another, each the same, each with a synthetic blue carpet, magnolia walls and row after row of identical veneer doors, Flora had muttered to Neil that it was as if they had somehow become trapped in Minecraft.
And then they’d turned a corner and Beckie had almost walked into the big belly of a man coming the other way, and she’d screamed, clutching Neil, and burst into tears. The poor man had stood there blinking and saying, ‘Sorry. Sorry, is she okay?’
She wasn’t okay. Of course she wasn’t.
Back in the room, she’d sobbed into Flora’s chest, this little girl who never cried, and gulped out, of all things: ‘I’m sorry I was so horrible to Edith.’
‘Oh darling, never mind about that.’
‘Do you think I’m horrible?’
And Flora had squeezed her tight as she felt it again, that sick weight in the pit of her stomach that she’d carried around all her teenage years, the weight of knowing that her mother didn’t love her any more. That she’d forfeited her love.
At the time she hadn’t blamed her mother, only herself. But since Beckie, she could no longer understand it.
How could a mother’s love not be entirely unconditional?
‘There is nothing you could do, my little Beckie,’ she had said, ‘that would ever make me think you were horrible. There is nothing you could do that would ever make me or Dad love you even a millionth trillionth bit less.’
‘My turn for a hug,’ Neil had said then, in a choked voice, and then they’d bathed her together, like she was a toddler again, and brushed her hair, and snuggled with her in the big bed with packets of crisps, Beckie’s tablet and the usually forbidden EastEnders on the big TV.
And now she was finally asleep.
‘How could you let it happen?’ Neil said now.
‘What do you mean, how could I?’
‘She’s eight years old! How could you let her go off on her own –’
‘I didn’t let her go off on her own – she ran away from me!’
‘Well she’s never done that when I’ve been with her.’
Flora took a breath. ‘Okay. I’m sorry I didn’t stop her running away from me. She flounced off in a huff because –’
‘And how did they find us?’
‘That’s my fault too, is it?’
‘I don’t know. Is it?’
He was lashing out because he was scared. She took another breath. ‘Maybe it is. I don’t know, Alec, because I’ve no idea how they found us.’
‘Neil! It’s Neil! Although what the hell does it matter now?’
‘Shh. You’ll wake her.’
He sat down, suddenly, on the loo.
She leant back against the cool tiles. ‘They’ve found us. It doesn’t matter how. What matters is what we’re going to do about it. The police are obviously not going to take effective action. We have to try to discuss this calmly and sensibly and decide what we’re going to do.’
There was a long, heavy silence, and then he lowered his head. ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
Tentatively, she touched his shoulder. ‘Maybe I should have called you. But there was nothing you could have done.’
He took in a long breath. ‘No, it’s okay.’ He put his hand over hers. ‘It must have been… terrifying.’
He stood, and for a long, still moment, they held each other. Then Neil said, ‘So what exactly did the police say? Did they take a statement from Caroline too?’
She pulled away from him and ran a hand through her hair. ‘Yes. We both gave statements, separately, and they took the footage off her phone. I told them I’d recognised the Johnsons from photos in the press – I didn’t land Saskia in it by saying she’d shown us photos. Caroline says she told them she heard Jed Johnson shouting about how we’d stolen Beckie from them –’
‘Did he actually say he was going to take Beckie?’
‘No, not in so many words, unfortunately. And my statement… when it was written down, what they did say didn’t sound that bad. Not as… threatening as it actually was.’
‘But Caroline’s footage…’
‘There’s no audio on it.’
‘Couldn’t you have made something up? Said they said “Beckie’s ours and we’re taking her back” or something?’
‘Well, in hindsight, maybe, but Caroline and I would have had to collude…’
‘So they’re not going to do anything, basically?’
‘They’re going to question the Johnsons about breaching the court order prohibiting contact with us or Beckie, and depending on what they say, they could be charged.’
‘And then what? A few hours’ community service? It was practically an assault! If Caroline hadn’t been there… Isn’t it classed as an assault, or threatening behaviour or…’
‘Apparently not. The footage shows they made no move to touch us.’
‘Attempted kidnap?’
‘There’s no proof of that.’
‘Harassment? Is that a thing? Stalking?’
‘Apparently a single altercation in the street doesn’t constitute harassment or stalking. It needs to happen at least twice.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We have to go. We have to disappear again.’
‘How many times?’ And suddenly Neil was shouting at her: ‘How many fucking times, Flora?’
What did he mean? What did he mean by that?
With a guilty look at the door, he lowered his voice: ‘How many times are we going to have to run from them?’
She breathed. ‘We’ll make sure, next time, that they can’t find us.’
‘And how are we going to do that, if we don’t even know how they found us this time?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not fair on Beckie. She’s only just stopped asking when she’s going to see Emma. And crying about Hobo. She’s made new friends. She’s settling in –’