‘This is a secure area,’ the guard begins, his voice low and guarded, ‘and we seem to have had a breach. A nurse spotted a woman acting suspiciously, so we have just re-watched the security footage.’ He shows them the iPad, with a black-and-white photo of a woman paused in a spot Callum recognises as the place they are all standing now.
‘This woman came into the ward last night,’ he said. ‘She walked up and down this hallway and stopped more than half a dozen times outside this window. Do you have any idea who she could be?’
He glances between Callum and Maddie, and Callum sees that his niece has gone pale.
Callum stares at the picture. A woman with dark hair tied back, in jeans and a black top. She appears to be a similar age to Danielle, but she is much taller with a slender frame.
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t recognise her.’
‘What about this one?’
This time she is caught in profile: a narrow face and thin nose, coupled with a serious, gaunt expression. But there’s nothing familiar.
Callum shakes his head again as he tries to process the information, and watches Maddie do the same.
‘We’ve turned this information over to the police,’ the guard tells them, ‘and I’ll stay here unless they provide a police presence. Until we know who she is and why she kept loitering here, please be vigilant.’
‘Okay,’ Callum says, turning to his brother, finding Liam’s expression echoing the confusion of his own thoughts.
12
GEORGIA
The sky had brightened for a while during the morning, but another cold front begins to roll in while Georgia is eating her lunch. She has chosen a secluded step in the school grounds, exhausted by the endless speculation about the accident and Sophia. Her reflexes have been on high alert all day, and she has found herself swinging around at every little nudge and bump. It seems like every two minutes someone collides with her. Surely it’s not usually like this at school?
Alone, she watches the clouds swell and darken again. She has no idea what the weather forecast is for the rest of today, but this doesn’t look good. Phys Ed won’t be cancelled, though, since the elements are seen as a challenge rather than an obstacle, and this suits her fine. She is determined to prove to herself and everyone else that she is ready for the weekend race. And besides, there is so much tension building up inside her that she needs to run.
All her fears have been slowly gathering into one hot ball of anger during the course of the morning. So many people in her life seem determined to decide what is best for her while barely consulting her. And, now, to top it all off, that speeding car in the darkness.
How dare they.
These three words maraud through her mind, cornering her terror and bullying it into rage. She is incensed, and she is terrified. She needs to run. Never mind what her mother thinks. What had Leo told her once? That to win races you shouldn’t fight your doubts, you should conquer them by strengthening your focus.
You can’t put things off forever, snaps that horrible little gollum in her head. Because she isn’t in complete denial. She knows she is close to falling apart, and right now, the race is the best thing she can come up with to hold herself together. It is the finale of four years of effort – and to cap it off, a week ago there had been a big feature on her in the local paper, and Addison’s, a local sports company, had got in touch and offered to sponsor her to run in the national championships for the next two years if she could complete her hat-trick of triumphs. Therefore, she intends to cross that finish line first tomorrow, and until then she refuses to think about anything else.
When had things become so complicated? And how much is she to blame? Her part in her own fate is impossible to discern. Sometimes she feels as light as a feather, blown about in circumstances beyond her control. At other times she can hardly get up, the sum of her regrets heavier than all those great slabs of rock along the Cumbrian hillside.
And she has no one left to confide in. Before she met Leo, she had never known what it was like to feel so alone. When he abruptly disappeared from her life he not only extinguished their relationship but so many others too. She couldn’t talk to anyone, nor could she stand the silences that moved so swiftly to fill the gaps, cutting her off from everyone she loved.