Some things were hard to let go of.

With an open packet of rhubarb and custard sweets on the passenger seat within easy reach, her travel mug with coffee in the cup holder and the radio on, Lizzie set off. She hoped the butterflies currently swarming her stomach would abate once she pulled onto the motorway. But then, there was a strong chance they might stay with her until this ‘job’ was over.

Singing along to James Blunt’s ‘You’re Beautiful’ as loudly as she could bear, Lizzie attempted to focus on the road instead of her destination – and what she’d find there. Who she’d find there. Within twenty minutes she’d joined the M5 motorway traffic. Now all she had to do was follow the signs to Devon.

Chapter Nine

1989

Bovey Police Station

Friday 21st July

‘Now, this is important. Tell me exactly what you saw.’

She sat on her hands. They’d begun trembling when the policeman had first started asking questions; now, after what felt like hours, he was still asking her stuff and a funny tingling had filled her belly. Why did she need to go over this? She’d told him again and again. Maybe he didn’t believe her. She’d have to say it in a stronger voice.

‘The truck stopped in front of where we were walking—’

‘Which was Elmore Road,’ he interrupted.

‘Yes, I thi— I mean, yes. It was.’ She mustn’t say ‘think’; it seemed to make her mum and the policeman a bit jumpy. ‘I held back and was going to turn around and take the cut-through to go to the park instead, but before I realised, she’d gone.’

‘Gone to the truck?’

‘Yes. I don’t know why she did that. Why she left me.’ Her eyes stung with fresh tears.

‘And what did this truck look like?’

She was somewhat relieved at being asked this; at least it was a different question to the other ones he’d been constantly getting her to repeat.

‘It was a red one,’ she said with conviction. ‘Dad says those types of trucks are called pickups because they have all that open space at the back to put things in.’

‘And what else? Was there anything else about it you can remember?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She felt confident about this now. ‘It had a yellow stripe all the way across the side. And as it pulled off, it turned so it almost went past me. I couldn’t move. I was scared he was coming for me too.’

‘But he didn’t try and take you?’

‘No, I don’t think so. The truck slowed down, but it didn’t stop. But I did see something weird.’

The policeman sat forward in his chair, his round, ruddy face lighting up. ‘Yes? What was that?’

‘I could see something stuck on the front, on the bit that those red noses for cars go for Comic Relief.’

‘The grille,’ the policeman said as he scribbled in his notebook. ‘But it wasn’t a red nose?’