She opened her eyes.
Her mouth was sticky. She had to push her tongue between her lips to unseal them. When she sat up the room spun, and she felt woozy, a bit like she did when she woke after taking zolpidem, but much, much worse. The light filtering through the curtain, dim as it was, was too bright.
So it was morning?
There was no sound in the room apart from the pattering of rain on the window.
So she was alone?
Fractured images began chasing themselves across her memory.
Drinking the hot chocolate Nick made for her in the kitchen, trying to act normal. Waiting for her opportunity to escape.
She had to escape.
From Nick.
Nick, who was a killer.
A completely different person from the man she thought he was.
She pushed aside the covers and forced herself upright, but she swayed and overbalanced and sat back down heavily on the bed. A suspicion began to form in her mind, and she reached out to pull open the bedside drawer.
Her pack of zolpidem was there. She hadn’t taken any since she’d arrived at Sunnyside, so there should be what – twenty-three tablets left? With shaking hands, she opened the packet and pulled out the blister strips.
Twenty.
And now she remembered. Last night, he’d left her in the kitchen for a couple of minutes while the kettle boiled. She’d run to the back door, but it had been locked and she couldn’t find the key. And then he was back, his arm round her again, guiding her to a chair at the table. She’d sat there stupidly as he stood with his back to her at the worktop, making her hot chocolate.
He had drugged her.
He knew.
He knew that she had finally, belatedly, realised what he’d done. What he was. So he had drugged her. Given her three times her usual dose to make sure. By rights, she should still be zonked out, but the noise of the rain on the window must have woken her. Or maybe her amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for the fight or flight response, had fought the zolpidem, had fought through it to wake her.
Her heart was pounding in her ears. Killers often drugged their victims, didn’t they, before they . . .
What was he going to do to her now?
24
Maggie - November 1997
Maggie left the farmhouse kitchen to make the phone call to Liam.
‘Maggie, I was just going to call you,’ his chirpy voice came down the phone at her. ‘I’ve got the goods you were wanting, and they are the cat’s pyjamas, let me tell you.’
‘Good. That’s great, Liam. Actually, I’m needing more from you. I’m needing the same again for Duncan. Pronto. I mean yesterday. Can I meet you in town after lunch, and I’ll get you the photos and details you need?’
‘Phew. Aye, okay then, Maggie. How about I meet you in the churchyard?’
Duncan insisted on coming with her.
Liam was standing in the shelter of the massive church doorway, smoking a joint. When he saw Duncan was with Maggie, he looked down at the joint in his hand and then all around for somewhere to hide it. Then he dropped it and stood on it.
‘Old habits die hard, eh?’ went Duncan, shaking rain off their umbrella.
‘Uh,’ went Liam, not making eye contact.
‘Thanks for doing this, Liam. It’s a big ask, I know, making you revive contacts you’d rather not have to see again.’
‘No problemo.’ Liam took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Maggie. ‘Your name’s now Teresa Black. There’s a passport with the baby on it too – she’s still Isla – plus birth certificates and NI number. And a refund. Mates’ rates.’
‘You keep it,’ said Maggie, opening the envelope and handing Liam the notes.
‘Uh-uh. You’re going to need all the cash you can get. Once you’re gone, you can’t access your bank accounts. There can’t be a money trail.’
‘We’re leaving our savings in place for Nick, anyway,’ went Maggie quickly.
Duncan handed Liam the envelope with the passport photos in it and his date of birth and other details that Liam’s contacts would need to match him to his new identity.
‘The two of you will have different surnames.’ Liam pocketed the envelope. ‘You could marry down the line, or not. Up to you, but best not. You need to, like, stay under the radar.’
Duncan nodded. ‘We really appreciate this, Liam. As I said, I’m really sorry to have to ask you to –’
‘Hey, Duncan, it’s my pleasure, you know? If it wasn’t for the two of you, fuck knows where I’d be now. Probably lying rotting in an underpass in Niddry with foxes gnawing my belly, you know?’ He chuckled. ‘Naw. I’m just sorry I can’t do more.’ And he eyeballed Maggie.
She shook her head at him, under cover of saying, ‘You pulled yourself up all by yourself, son. We’re dead proud of you. You keep on the straight and narrow, aye?’
If it was just down to her, she’d say go for it, take Nick out. The world would be a better place without Nick Clyde in it, no question. But she couldn’t do it to Duncan. He’d be devastated if Nick turned up murdered. He still loved the fucker, and Maggie loved him for it. Duncan was the sort of man who was decent through and through, and loyal, and he couldn’t just turn his feelings for his son off, no matter what he’d done.
‘How long do you think it will take?’ went Duncan.
Liam shrugged. ‘Couple of weeks? You can’t rush this stuff. This is the rest of your lives we’re talking about, you know?’
Back at Yvonne and Michael’s, the crisis meeting resumed with an eye on the clock – Nick would be back from school at four-thirty.
‘We’ll have dinner as usual.’ Maggie turned to Duncan. ‘I’ll be giving him the cold shoulder, but you’ll act as if you’ve accepted his version of events, that he was just messing around with the pram. Do you think you can pull that off?’