She opened the front door, and glancing round to make sure no one was about, unlocked the door of Antonia’s car. Then she hooked her hands under Antonia’s arms, and dragged her out, tumbling her onto the back seat. She fell in a twisted huddle that looked painfully uncomfortable. Good. Donna went back into the cottage and looked round. Had she left anything that might provide a clue? No. She closed the cottage door, hearing the lock click home.
Her own car was parked about half a mile from Quire, well off the road and hidden by trees. She would have preferred to be driving it now for this difficult, risky journey, but it might be seen and recognized, or traced afterwards. It did not matter very much if Antonia’s car was seen although it must not be seen before she was clear of Quire’s gates. Hardly daring to breathe, Donna fired the ignition and steered slowly through the darkness onto Quire’s main carriageway. Nothing stirred anywhere and she went through the gates without mishap. Then she switched on the headlights and drove towards the road that led to Twygrist.
At first Antonia was not sure where she was.
She thought, to begin with, that she had fallen asleep on the sofa of Charity Cottage. There had been a clock ticking. Then she thought she was back in prison, huddled onto the thin bed in her cell, dreading the morning.
But as consciousness returned, she realized she was in neither of these places. She seemed to be lying not on a bed or a couch, but on a hard cold surface. The smells were all wrong for prison or the cottage, wherever this was, it was filled with a stifling sourness, like the soot from a very old chimney.
She opened her eyes to nothing. The pitchest of pitch blacks. Panic swept in instantly. I’m blind, she thought. No, I can’t be. But surely nowhere could be as thickly dark as this. She brought her hand up in front of her eyes, and could not see it. Panic clutched her all over again. I am blind. I’ve been ill or I’ve been in an accident–a road smash–and my head must have been injured because it’s aching dreadfully. I don’t know where I am, but I don’t think there’s anyone here with me.
Her mouth felt dry, but she called out, ‘Hello? Is someone here?’ and heard her words whispered eerily back to her. Someone here…S-s-someone here…here…HERE… And then they died away, and there was only a feeling of emptiness. Then I really am on my own. Oh God, where is this?
Some semblance of reasoning was starting to come back. She thought she could not be blind because the blackness was too absolute; blind people almost always had at least a slight perception of light and shade.
She sat up cautiously, but when she tried to stand a fresh jab of pain skewered through her skull. An injury then. But no bandages from the feel of it. She put up a careful hand to explore and found a lump on one side under her hair.
Memory was starting to return with agonizing slowness, and in snatches, like a jerky, badly cranked old film. Being in the cottage after that boy’s death. Locking all the doors against the murderer. Only the murderer had already been in there–hiding, waiting to creep out. Antonia remembered those hate-filled words: ‘This is for Don, you bitch. All this is to punish you for killing Don.’
A woman’s voice. ‘This is for Don.’ And then that crunching blow on her head. Had it been a girlfriend of Don’s? Family that he had not admitted to? Whoever it was, was she going to come back?
Antonia was not going to sit here meekly, hands folded, waiting for her captor to come back. She made another attempt to stand up and, although it made her head throb, this time she managed it. It was horribly disorienting to stand in absolute darkness like this, but it would have to be endured. She would find a wall so she could feel her way along it. It would be something definite to do, and concentrating on it might help her to ignore the darkness and the silence.