My mind drifted back to that roadside and the horrific sight that had greeted me that day. All that blood. So much blood. I wondered if that was what it had been like when they found Laura. Two girls, from the same class in school. Gone. Brutally taken. One by her own mind and one by someone deeply twisted.

I didn’t care then what Ingrid thought of me. I didn’t care about trying to play her at her own game. I simply broke down and cried, now fearing for the safety of those other two women and their children.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Rachel

My back ached and my head was pounding when I woke. I remembered that I’d drunk the best part of a bottle of wine the previous night and my tolerance for alcohol was no longer anywhere near what it had been in my twenties. Or my thirties, for that matter.

I stretched and looked around. Felt the figure in the bed beside me move, turn over and flop one arm over my stomach. I revelled in the moment. The closeness. The sheer uncomplicated nature of how I felt for this person. My beautiful Molly. My innocent baby girl.

I remembered climbing in beside her the previous night – unable to face getting into bed beside Paul. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want to talk to him. I needed space to breathe. That space had ended up being about six inches on the edge of Molly’s bed as she starfished her way through the night, but the wine had ensured that I’d dropped off to sleep with little effort.

I replayed my conversation with Michael over and over in my head when I went home. His plea to run away. I thought of the figure in the blue car, cursed my stupidity for not writing down the registration number, then cursed myself again for being paranoid. Any number of cars could park there. It didn’t have to mean anything.

I’d poured myself a large glass of wine. The registration number had started with PFZ, the same as Paul’s, but I couldn’t remember the numbers. My head throbbed. I’d sat in the living room as Beth and Paul watched their programme about a curious place called the ‘The Upside Down’ on Stranger Things and part of me wondered if I’d passed through some sort of portal myself. My life was more upside down than the poor child on the screen.