I hug Katie so tightly it forces the air from my lungs. ‘Be careful.’ I must have said the same thing thousands of times since becoming a mother, each time a shortcut for something more.
‘Be careful,’ when she was ten months old and cruising the furniture. Don’t break anything, I really meant, Watch that vase.
‘Be careful,’ when she learned to ride her bike. Watch out for cars, I could have said.
‘Be careful,’ the first time she got serious about a boyfriend. Don’t get hurt, I meant. Don’t get pregnant.
‘Be careful,’ I say now. Don’t let them catch you. Keep your eyes open. Be quicker than them. Run fast.
‘I will be. I love you, Mum.’
Pretend it’s a normal day, I tell myself, as tears well in my eyes. Pretend she’s just going to work, and that she’ll be home later and we’ll put Desperate Housewives on Netflix and eat pizza. Pretend this isn’t the last time you’ll ever see her. I’m crying openly now, and so is Katie, her temporary bravado too fragile to survive such an onslaught of emotion. I want to tell her to look out for Justin when I’m gone, to make sure Matt doesn’t let him go off the rails, but doing so would acknowledge what I don’t want in her head: that I won’t be here when she gets back. If she gets back.
‘I love you too.’
I take in every last detail of her: the way her hair smells; the smudge of lip gloss in the crease of her mouth. I fix her so firmly in my mind that whatever happens in the next hour I know it will be her face I see in my head when I die.
My baby girl.
‘Enough, now.’ Melissa opens the kitchen door and Katie walks along the narrow hall towards the front of the house. This is my chance, I think. I consider charging after Katie as the front door opens, pushing us both outside and running; running to safety. But although the knife hangs by Melissa’s side, she is gripping it so tightly her knuckles have whitened. She would use it in a heartbeat.
Knives.
I should have thought of it instantly. The knife block, now missing one resident, still contains a carving knife and three vegetable knives, in descending sizes. I hear the sound of a key in the lock and then, all too quickly, the door slams again and I’m assaulted by an image of Katie, walking towards the Tube station. Walking towards danger. Run away, I beg her silently. Go the opposite way. Find a phone box. Tell the police.
I know she won’t. She thinks Melissa will kill me if she doesn’t appear on that CCTV camera in precisely eight minutes.
I know she’ll kill me even if she does.
When Melissa returns I’m halfway between the table and the kitchen counter. She’s carrying something she must have picked up in the hall. A roll of duct tape.
‘Where are you going? Get over there.’ She gestures with the tip of the knife, and I need no further persuasion. Melissa moves my chair so it is facing her computer. I sit.
‘Put your hands behind your back.’
I comply, and hear the distinctive ripping sound of duct tape, torn off into strips. Melissa wraps a strip around my wrists, then pushes the tape around the wooden struts of the chair, so I can’t move my arms. She tears off two more strips and secures my ankles to the legs of the chair.
I watch the clock in the right-hand corner of the screen.
Six minutes to go.
I’m comforted by the thought that Katie’s journey to work is on busy routes, and that it’s still light. There are no dark alleyways in which she could be trapped, and so surely if she keeps her wits about her, she will be okay. The women who have become victims – Tania Beckett, Laura Keen, Cathy Tanning – they didn’t know they were being targeted. Katie knows. Katie has the upper hand.
‘Ready for the show?’ Melissa says.
‘I’m not watching.’ But I find I can’t help myself. I have a sudden memory of taking Katie to hospital when she was a baby, and forcing myself to look while they put a cannula into her tiny hand, rehydrating her after a bad sickness bug. I wanted so badly to take it all away from her, but if I couldn’t do that, then the least I could do was carry the pain of seeing her suffer; live through it with her.
The score across the front of my neck has already started to scab over, and the tightness pulls at my skin and makes it itch. I stretch my neck in an attempt to relieve the feeling, releasing fresh blood that drips on to my lap.
Four minutes.
We watch the screen in silence. There’s so much I want to know, but I don’t want to hear Melissa’s voice. I indulge myself with a fantasy in which even now the police are speeding towards Anerley Road. Any moment now I’ll hear a crash as police officers break open the front door. It’s so real I strain to hear the police sirens. There is nothing there.
Two minutes.