‘I thought she’d been dropped again?’

‘Are there any friends you can think of that might—’

‘She hasn’t got any friends. You girls—’ I hear the spark of flint as she lights a cigarette, a long inhale. She never smoked. Before. ‘You girls used to be enough for each other.’

My eyes water as though I have smoke in them.

‘I’ve got to go, Leah. I can’t do this.’ She cuts the call. I want to redial and ask her what she can’t do. Cope with the prospect that again, she doesn’t know where one of her daughters is.

Carly closes the keypad and hands my mobile back to me. ‘Let’s go.’

‘I wanted Marie to know. That he’s out there again.’ Now there’s six weeks until she comes back. She’ll miss the anniversary. In a way I’m envious. Rather than putting the spare key back on top of the door, I slip it into my pocket as we leave.

Something draws my eye as I’m starting the car. I try to speak but I’m too frightened. Instead I clutch Carly’s arm.

It’s him. Through the teeming rain. The face of my nightmares on the opposite side of the road. He spots that I’ve noticed him, turns and rushes away. Climbs into a black car. The same sort of car I’d seen after I left the BP garage.

He was watching us go into Marie’s flat.

Had he followed her?

Had he taken her?

Is he coming for us all?

I have to know. My foot squeezes the accelerator. I yank the wheel and we lurch into the traffic.

‘Leah! Slow down.’

Instead I speed up. I can’t risk losing him.

The blare of a horn. The screech of brakes. Carly screaming my name, ‘Leah!’

The oncoming bus.

Chapter Seventeen

George

Now

George feels safe and warm, cocooned in loving arms and a warm quilt. The rain drums against the window of his sanctuary. His mobile buzzes angrily, skittering across the bedside cabinet.

Leah.

He’s tempted to ignore it. He knows she’ll be agonizing over the letter, wanting to go over it again and again. She always finds it impossible to let things go but then doesn’t everyone to some extent? Clinging on to lives that don’t quite fit any more. Living in a skin that feels like someone else’s. The phone quietens. For a minute he worries that it wasn’t Leah’s anxieties that would have poured down the handset if he’d answered, but that something is wrong with Archie. He calls the nursery to check his son is okay.

He is.

George tries to summon up the feeling of a few moments ago when he felt both the protected and the protector. It had been a long time since he had felt that way, life with Leah was a one-way street. But sometimes the rescuer needed rescuing too. He tunes in to the pitter-patter against the glass. Feels her soft body curve against his. Her hand dipping low again. He closes his eyes and tries to relax. Even if Leah looked for him she couldn’t find him. She has no idea of this address.