Duncan nodded. ‘Then we lock ourselves in the bedroom overnight.’ He was in military campaign mode now, Maggie was glad to see. ‘Tomorrow he’ll be in Edinburgh with Carol and Andy all day. That will be our chance. As soon as he’s gone, we leave.’
‘We don’t want the police tracing the car,’ said Maggie quickly. ‘We can’t count on them not launching a massive missing person search. We’ll have to leave the car at Sunnyside. Maybe hire one, although –’
‘No, no,’ went Yvonne. ‘I’ll drive you. Come here on foot, via the track, and I’ll drive you to Wales. Tell Nick that I’ve gone to a conference or something. There’s bound to be one going on somewhere that would be relevant to the business. I’ll take you to a hotel, or maybe a holiday rental would be better. I’ll phone around tonight, see what I can arrange. Then you can wait there, under Maggie’s new name, until Liam can get Duncan’s new documents to us.’
‘We can’t withdraw money from our account, even before we leave. It could be traced when we spend it,’ said Maggie. ‘They sometimes keep a record of the numbers on banknotes.’
And Yvonne stepped up, as Maggie had hoped she would. ‘I’ll give you money from the business. It would be suspicious if a large amount of cash left our personal accounts – I suppose the police might try tracing those notes if we did – but I’m paying out to suppliers all the time from the business account.’
Duncan sighed. ‘Thanks, Yvonne. We’ll pay you back when we can.’
‘No need for that. The business is doing well. The money’s just sitting there. You may as well make use of it.’
‘Well, we’ll see. This way, though, Nick will have all our savings, and the house. You’ll make sure he’s okay, won’t you?’ Duncan swallowed.
‘No way is he living with us, but yes, we’ll arrange the boarding school and make sure he’s comfortable financially.’
‘But you’ll have him for the holidays?’
‘That’s a lot to ask,’ Maggie put in.
‘But we can’t just . . . turn him loose. Without anyone.’
‘Okay.’ Yvonne sighed. ‘He can come here for the holidays.’
Maggie wouldn’t be surprised if she had her fingers crossed under the table.
As they got up to go, Maggie turned away to hide a triumphant smile. This was all going even better than she could have expected. None of them, not even Yvonne, had rumbled her plan.
25
Lulu - June 2019
Lulu managed to stand up, straining her ears.
Nothing.
He couldn’t have left her alone in the house, surely? He must be downstairs.
Stupid stupid stupid!
How could she have been so stupid, marrying a man she barely knew? Telling herself he was her soulmate, when all the time he was just being what he had worked out she wanted him to be.
Typical Lulu.
Gets herself married to a psychopath.
Her stomach roiled, and she only just made it to the loo in time, staggering along the corridor in her bare feet, throwing up into the toilet, trying to do it as quietly as possible.
She needed a phone.
But there was no landline here because it was just a holiday let. And now he would have all three phones, his own and the burner and Lulu’s, either on him or hidden away. He wasn’t stupid.
She peed, quickly washed her face and tiptoed back to the bedroom. Then she pulled on clothes at random and her trainers. Slung her bag across her body and opened the bedroom door.
She still couldn’t hear him.
Maybe he was in the kitchen. She ran lightly down the stairs and across the hall. Carefully, she turned the knob on the library door and eased it open; eased it shut behind her. The room was shadowed. Torrential rain was now being flung against the windows and it was as dark as dusk out there, huge black clouds blocking the light.
There was a bureau desk with cubby holes full of stationery for the use of the holiday let guests. She flicked on the little desk lamp to examine what was there. She remembered watching a programme on TV in which a reformed burglar revealed the tricks of the trade, and one of them was to stick parcel tape all over a windowpane before breaking it to reduce the noise and the risk of injuring yourself.
Was there parcel tape?
She rifled through the cubby holes, through the little drawers under them. Paperclips, marker pens, paper, scissors . . .
She couldn’t see any.
But there was Sellotape. She picked up the roll and the scissors and crossed the room to the far window facing the front of the house, the one furthest from the kitchen. Her heart was going into overdrive, pumping away, and she could hardly get her fingers to work. The breath sobbed in her throat as she fumbled with the first length of tape and it all stuck to itself. She balled it up and threw it down.
The ripping sound the tape made as she pulled another length from the roll seemed to reverberate through the room. She fumbled with the scissors. Finally she had a length of Sellotape in her hands. The huge size of the Victorian window meant just one half of the lower sash would be plenty big enough for her to get through. She pressed the tape to the lower right-hand pane, diagonally, and then another piece the other way, like she’d seen in old wartime films. The pane of glass, streaming with rain, was cold to the touch. She stuck more tape across it horizontally and vertically.
That would have to do.
There was a tweedy throw across the sofa.
She balled her hand up in it and, turning her face away, punched at the window.
The old glass, thankfully, was thin. It shattered, but the tape held most of the shards in place. Lulu punched again with the throw wrapped round her hand. The pieces of glass fell out to the gravel below and rain came flying in at her.
She pushed the remaining jagged shards out of the frame and spread the throw over the bottom edge of it. Then she clambered out into the wet and ran across the sodden lawn to the path that led to the garage, her feet splashing through big puddles.