‘You know I sent one thirty minutes ago. Just telling her where we were, how much longer we would be. I have no idea what would happen if Amber saw Klara texting back and forth all the time. She’s come out of sexual abuse and captivity. Even though part of her realizes that Klara is her savior another part of her has no idea where she is, what will happen next. I’m just surmising here. Trying to figure out why this is happening … and also: where the hell did she get the gun?’

We were supposed to stop and get food. I told Elise: ‘To hell with that. We’re getting there as fast as we can.’ But Elise insisted, when we were just fifteen minutes away and passing through a series of strip malls, that we find a supermarket and arrive with a bag of groceries.

‘She’ll see it as a sign of normality,’ she said.

‘There’s nothing fucking normal about this. And my daughter is –’

‘Trust me here. Amber needs to see that we are not coming in hostile. I’ll get the shopping done in ten minutes, maybe less.’

We stopped at a Ralphs.

I stayed outside and smoked and tried to not think dark thoughts. Klara. My only child. The only person for whom I have felt unconditional love and whom I sometimes think is the only reason I haven’t slammed my Toyota into a brick wall and given in to the idea of permanent darkness. Were anything to happen to her …

No, no, don’t go there again. Don’t invent a nightmare before the nightmare has actually arrived. Listen to Elise. She’s smart when it comes to other people’s worlds. She knows what to do.

Elise emerged eight minutes later with two big bags of groceries.

‘I got a very rich chocolate cake along with a six-pack of Corona.’

‘You think we’re going to drink that much? I’m driving … and the girl is pregnant. She’s also seventeen.’

‘She’s not going to be drinking for all those reasons – even if she tries to argue that, as she’s not keeping the baby, she can have a beer.’

I said nothing. The whole idea of having an abortion at five months … it struck me as all wrong. But I didn’t feel right speaking up about it. Not with everything else that was going down.