The Prisoner(60)

It’s almost a relief when an automated voice answers, telling me that Carolyn’s number is no longer in use. Then I frown; Carolyn wouldn’t have changed her number without telling me. But that was before. My heart sinks. What if she doesn’t want to have anything more to do with me because I didn’t tell her I had married Ned?

I call her office. A man answers and when I ask to speak to her, he tells me that he’s very sorry, but that Carolyn was the victim of a hit-and-run accident a few weeks before, and sadly passed away. The phone drops from my hands, I fall to my knees, and my wails of grief and despair echo around the silent house. I think I will die from the pain of it, I think I will die from the guilt. But most of all, I think that if Ned wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him with my bare hands.





CHAPTER EIGHT




The sun bursting through the clouds sends shafts of light shooting across the room. I blink my eyes open, lift my head from the kitchen table. Carolyn is dead.

Was I never meant to know that she was dead? Is that why I was told not to contact anyone, in case I found out? Or don’t the kidnappers know?

I stand slowly, move to the patio doors, and stare into the garden without seeing it. Since leaving the house in Haven Cliffs on Sunday, I’ve barely been outside. I feel a spark of anger—do the kidnappers realize what they’ve asked of me, insisting I stay here, in this house, until the funeral? And I realize that they don’t, because nobody except Jethro Hawthorpe knows I saw Lina being killed.

Where are they now, the kidnappers? Have they gone back to wives, children? Or are they plotting another kidnapping that isn’t really a kidnapping? What about Lukas, where is he? I need to find him because if I don’t, I’ll never have the answers that will allow me to move on. I need to know why; why I had to lie to the police, tell a man that his son was a murderer. Why I had to be a part of it.

All I want is to leave. With Carolyn gone, there is nothing left for me in London. But I need to wait for Ned’s funeral. I don’t want to play the grieving widow but it’s the price I must pay to be free. And when I am, I will find Lukas and I will get to the truth.





CHAPTER NINE




Ned’s funeral, a service followed by a cremation, is mercifully short. I stand apart from his parents and pretend not to notice the stares of the Hawthorpe family.

I don’t think of Ned, I think of Carolyn. I don’t have proof but I know her death was murder and I know Ned was behind it. Tears seep from my eyes when the words cruelly taken from us before his time are pronounced; nobody watching could doubt the sorrow I feel at Ned’s passing. Paul must wonder, though. He must know more; I’m sure he is somehow linked to the people behind our kidnapping.

This morning, when he remarked that I looked pale, I wanted to tell him about Carolyn. But if he knew I’d tried to call Carolyn, he might have told our abductors, and their instructions had forbidden me from contacting anyone except him.

Last night, I googled Carolyn’s death and found a news bulletin from August 11 about a hit-and-run accident the previous day. It mentioned Carolyn’s name and that she’d been hit during an early morning run. I’d had to work backward—the interview with the journalists had been on the seventh, the hit-and-run on the tenth. It fit: Ned had had three days to track and trace Carolyn.

When the service is over, Paul drives me to his offices in London. A taxi is waiting to take me to Reading.

“Good luck,” Paul says, once he’s transferred my suitcases from his trunk to the taxi. He shakes my hand. “If you need anything, you have my number.”

“Thank you.” I attempt a smile. “I thought you were only meant to look after me until the funeral.”

He smiles back. “I’m not averse to going above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Thank you,” I say again.

On the journey to Reading, I’m grateful that my driver is silent. The movement of the car makes me drowsy and I’m soon asleep.

“Mrs. Hawthorpe—”

I open my eyes and see the face of the driver, turned in his seat.

“Lamont,” I correct automatically.

“Apologies, ma’am … we’re here.”

I look out of the window at the brown front door of my childhood home. Shrouded in neglect, it stands out among the other houses, but only because of its shabbiness. In the three years since I left, the street feels different. The doors of the houses on either side of ours have been painted, one red, one blue. They also have new windows. The home that Papa and I lived in for eight years seems to have been frozen in time.

My fingers curl around the set of keys in my hand. The driver opens the car door for me and insists on carrying my suitcases into the house. He follows me into the dark, narrow hallway and puts them down on the floor.

“Thank you,” I say.

He leaves, closing the door behind him.

I push open the door to the right; it opens onto the sitting room where Papa spent most of his days, and an image comes to me, of him sitting in his chair, getting progressively weaker as the illness took hold. I move along to the small dining room, where we had our meals and where I used to study and dream of being a lawyer. At the end of the hallway, there’s the tiny kitchen. I step inside, look around. The old wooden clock is still on the wall but it’s no longer working. Through the window, I can see that someone has recently mowed the small rectangle of lawn.