Maggie jumped up.
She’d become dead paranoid about Isla. She was up those stairs in record time, grabbing her up from her carry cot, hugging her close as she grizzled. ‘Come on, then, wee one. Come on and join the party. Bunny can come too.’
She took her down to the kitchen, and Duncan went back for the carry cot and set it up between him and Maggie. They settled her back in it, but Maggie kept a hold of Bunny, smoothing his matted fur, while they talked.
‘You can’t go on living like this,’ said Michael.
Michael, Maggie was discovering, was one of those folk who, ninety per cent of the time, bored the pants off of you, but in a crisis he had the knack of hitting the nail on the head.
Thank God he’d saved her from saying it herself.
‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘But going to the authorities won’t get us anywhere.’
‘So trying to get him sectioned or something . . .’ Michael grimaced. ‘You don’t think that’s an option?’
‘Look what happened when we took him to that psychiatrist, supposedly eminent in his field,’ went Duncan in a tight voice. ‘Nothing to worry about, we were told.’
‘And he’s bamboozled the police too.’ Yvonne nodded. ‘Oh, he’s clever, all right.’
Making out like she really didn’t want to have to reveal this, Maggie told them about the fake identities she’d asked Liam to get for her and Isla. ‘I didn’t want to leave you.’ She blinked at Duncan. ‘But you just weren’t listening to me.’
‘Oh God.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone. I’m such an idiot.’ He slapped a hand down on the table, making the plate of biscuits jump.
Maggie took a deep breath. This was a wee bit of a risky strategy, but surely Duncan wouldn’t agree to what she was about to suggest? She made her voice weak and scared. ‘If he gets what he wants, that’ll be the problem solved. If I go away with Isla, using Liam’s fake identities, so Nick will never find us –’
‘No!’ went Duncan, at the same time as Yvonne puffed, ‘We can’t let him win!’
‘What other option do we have, eh? I can rent a flat somewhere, open another coffee shop.’
‘Absolutely not.’ Duncan’s voice rang round the kitchen. It was his parade ground voice, as Yvonne called it, full of authority, the voice Maggie remembered from the programme when he was wrangling all those hard nuts, but she’d never heard him use it at home before. ‘I may be a pushover when it comes to Nick, but I’m not having that. Why should you and Isla suffer just because I’ve – I’ve let my son grow up to be . . .’
‘A cold-blooded killer,’ finished Yvonne.
Duncan nodded, almost calmly. ‘Who’s to say he wouldn’t track you and Isla down, despite the fake IDs, and try to hurt you, or worse?’ He turned to face Maggie. ‘There’s no way I’m having you going off on your own. You and Isla need me. I’m not going to let you down again. No way.’
Thank Christ for that.
‘But what are we going to do, then?’ she whispered.
Come on, come on.
She could almost see the cogs turning in Duncan’s brain. This couldn’t come from Maggie herself.
‘You all have to go,’ said Yvonne at last.
Maggie shook her head, like she was all confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You all have to disappear, and fast.’ Yvonne sat up straight. ‘You need to get a fake identity for Duncan too, and then the three of you can take off, set up new lives for yourselves far away. As completely different people.’
‘But if we disappear, we’ll be all over the news as missing persons,’ Maggie protested. ‘We’d be recognised.’
‘If the police think you’ve just taken off because you want to get away from Nick – and they will assume that’s what’s happened, after everything that’s gone on – they’re not going to launch an appeal. And you could change your appearances easily enough. Maggie, you could cut your hair short. You’d suit it better like that anyway. Duncan, you could shave your head. You could lie low for a few months in a rental somewhere, an isolated cottage in Cumbria or Wales or wherever.’
Thank God for Yvonne, whose mind seemed to run along the same lines as Maggie’s.
‘I suppose that would work,’ went Maggie slowly. ‘But what about Nick?’
Yvonne snorted. ‘What about him? We can pack him off to boarding school, let someone who’s being paid for it deal with him. Then he’s off to uni. He’ll probably end up a professor of psychology or something, with a spot of serial killing on the side.’
‘Yvonne!’ groaned Duncan.
‘Sorry, but really. Nick should be the least of your concerns.’
‘He’s my son.’ Duncan was staring at Maggie. ‘I suppose, once we’ve got our new lives established, I could come back and try to sort him out. Get him the help he needs.’
The only help Nick needed was a bullet to the head, but Maggie nodded. ‘Aye, you could, right enough. But you’d have to be careful not to let on to him where we were.’
‘Of course.’
No way was that happening. No way was Duncan coming back here once they’d left. She could talk him out of it, if and when the time came. Maggie looked across the table at Yvonne, who raised her eyebrows, just a wee bit, to telegraph that the two women were on the same page here.
Once they were gone, they were gone.
23
Lulu - June 2019
Lulu had the crowbar in her hand. Dad was standing in front of her saying something, but she wasn’t listening, she was too angry, she needed to stop him, she needed to shut him up, and now she was doing it, she was hitting him over the head and he was grimacing.
‘Ow,’ he was saying, his mouth twisting. ‘That hurts. That really hurts, love.’
And now he was falling, there was blood everywhere and Lulu was holding the crowbar and staring down at him and wailing, screaming –