As the connection ended so did Claudia’s mirth, although the outburst did seem to have soothed her slightly.

“Are you all right?” Jasmine asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“No one behind?”

Claudia’s heart clenched.

“Sorry, bad joke. No, don’t check.”

“I’m driving, I have to.”

Accepting that, Jasmine opened her phone again, and as she began setting up her new social media accounts, Claudia said, “No photos.”

“I know that, but I can look at other people’s, right?”

“You mean your old friends?”

Jasmine shrugged. “I didn’t have so many, and I’m not much interested in what they’re doing. I’m trying to find some students who’re at my new school.”

Since the information about that had been on her old laptop before they’d deleted it, Claudia wondered how much she minded searching for it all over again. Their Internet escape planner had warned against forwarding anything: if they did it wouldn’t take long to trace it to their replacement devices, and in no time at all their new lives would be over.

They should have done the same as her mother and thrown everything into a lake, but it was too late now.

Had her mother remembered to turn off the tracking feature?

She was bound to have done so. They’d discussed it enough times, and Marcy was anything but stupid. In fact, she was the joint mastermind of this operation, had even come up with the original plan, having no idea at that time how complicated it would be to pull off. But step by step they were getting through it and now, here they were, five months on with some of the most difficult challenges already behind them.

At a service station Jasmine ran in for coffee while Claudia locked herself in the car and checked her own new phone to make sure there were no messages. Fortunately, there were none—and why would there be when she hadn’t set up any accounts yet? No one apart from Vodafone, Jasmine, and her mother had the number. Using Bluetooth, she connected to the car’s hands-free system so that she and Jasmine could listen to one of the audiobooks or podcasts they’d downloaded in preparation for this journey. Chances were, they’d be unable to focus, but the option was there if they wanted it, and setting it up was giving her something to do as she waited.

She didn’t look around to check if she was being watched, she simply told herself that she had no chilling sense of it, which could mean either that she was in denial or that her instincts were working.

No one knocked on the window or parked too close.