Finding Grace(83)

She’s clearly unhinged, babbling senselessly half the time to herself, completely incoherent. Then she starts talking about the day Grace went missing.

‘I’d been watching you for a few weeks. Watching you and the house. That was my job and I did it well. You never spotted me, did you?’

She thumps my arm, hard, when I don’t answer. ‘Did you?’

‘No,’ I gasp, thinking about what Jefferey said, that he’d spotted someone skulking around.

‘I’ve always hated being ordinary looking. Nobody ever notices me, looks at me appreciatively… I guess I finally found a use for it.’ She laughs. ‘Anyway, I got to know your routines, I even got to speak to Grace at the playground fence twice, told her that mummy was a liar and had hurt someone very badly.’

The diary entry. It was Angela, not Stefan!

‘So when I saw her walking home that day, she knew my face. Just hopped in the car within a second of me pulling up on the side street, happy as anything when I told her I’d call and see Mummy with her, apologise that I’d been wrong about her lying after all.’

My darling, trusting Grace. No matter how much we tell our kids not to talk to strangers, not to fall for their lies… in reality, if the person is friendly and believable, they’ll trust them every time.

After about ten minutes, the car makes several sharp turns – I assume we’re in a warren of small streets – and it finally stops.

We sit in silence for a few seconds and then she pulls off my hood and whips the blindfold off. We’re sitting in a narrow street lined with terraced houses. Looking at the badly maintained front doors and sheets up at lots of the windows, I’m guessing we’re in student territory.

We get out of the car and she leads me down one of the dingy alleyways that lead to the back yards, spaced out every three or four houses.

Then we’re in the kitchen of one of them. It stinks in here, rancid food and caked-up dishes piled high in the sink and on the side.

She pushes me through a door leading to steep stairs covered in patterned, torn carpet without answering.

‘And just in case you’re thinking of causing trouble…’ She waves a long, glinting blade in front of me. ‘One plunge from me and it’s in your kidneys,’ she says and jabs me with it as I start to climb in front of her.

I can hardly breathe, terrified what I’ll find as we move along the landing. She stops at one of the doors and pulls a key out of her pocket.

‘Grace! Grace, are you in there?’ I call.

She bares her teeth and holds the knife up at my throat.

‘Shut the fuck up. Don’t speak unless I tell you, or she’s dead meat.’

I think I hear a very faint whimper from inside the room but I can’t be sure. For all her bluster, I see her hands are shaking so much, it takes three attempts before she can successfully insert the key properly into the roughly hewn lock.

The key turns and she pushes open the door.

The room is dim. The heavy, lined curtains are closed and my nose wrinkles at the smell in here.

She reaches in front of me and snaps on the light, before rushing over to a tangled bundle of clothes and blankets that moves slightly on the floor.

‘Grace?’ I whisper, almost too scared to hope against hope it’s her.

A small hand weaves up out of the pile and as I dash forward, my daughter’s fearful, tear-stained face appears.

‘Stay where you are!’ Angela brandishes the knife close to Grace.

My beautiful girl looks thin and pale. She is dressed exactly as she was when she left home three days ago.

‘It’s OK, baby, I’m here now. It’s over.’

Except it looks far from over when someone hisses words into my ear from behind.

‘Hello, Lucinda. Long time, no see.’

Breath leaves my body as if someone punched it out of my lungs.

The last time I saw this woman, she lay, naked and comatose, on Stefan’s bed, having the life apparently smothered out of her. Now, here she is, standing in front of me and very much alive.

Rhonda is heavier now. Her hair is dark and the extra weight around her face makes me shiver because she looks uncannily like Stefan himself.

‘Why?’ I whisper. ‘Why did you go along with his sick murder plan… why take my daughter?’

She stares at me with hollow eyes, but stays silent.

‘You loved him,’ I say. ‘You were always watching us. I felt your jealousy.’

‘I still do love him,’ she says coldly. ‘You don’t just stop loving someone because they’re dead.’

I glance at Grace. Her colour, her vague expression… her blood sugar is low, I can see just by looking.

‘My daughter needs medical attention, please let me—’

‘The quicker we get this done, the better,’ Rhonda snaps.

‘Just tell me what you want. Money? How much?’

‘If only it were that simple.’ Rhonda smiles over at Grace.

Angela’s chest is rising and falling too fast. The knife shines in the fluorescent light, reflecting in her mad stare. I have to get Grace out of here.

‘Why? Why take my daughter… after all this time?’ I say anything, to play for time.

Rhonda shakes her head incredulously. ‘Angela told me you were dumb, but I thought even you’d have worked it out.’