The Other People: A Novel(63)

Plus, she wasn’t built for emergencies. She was a creature of routine. She didn’t have a panic protocol. Fran did. Fran had always been the rebel. The one who skirted trouble. Headstrong, impulsive. She had had the hardest time from their mum, perhaps because they were so alike. Both always sure they were right; quick to anger, slow to forgive. Katie could still remember the blazing rows, the slammed doors and screaming, Dad trying to play peacemaker between his favorite daughter and his wife.

Yet she also remembered Fran defending her when their mother had had too much to drink. And when some older boys once gathered around to torment her on her way home from school, Fran had waded in with a hockey stick, laying into the boys with such ferocity that Katie had to beg her to stop.

Where are you, Fran? What the hell would you do to get out of this mess?

“Mu–um?”

She looked up. Sam wriggled on his seat. “I need the toilet.”

“Okay.” Katie glanced at Alice and Gracie. “Can you go on your own?”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course. I’m ten.”

“Well, be quick, don’t talk to any stran—”

“Strange men. I know.” He slipped from the table.

Katie immediately felt anxiety kick in. The toilets were only just along the corridor. But what if someone snatched him? Suddenly, everything and everyone around her seemed suspicious, full of threat. Other people, she thought. They were everywhere. And you never knew which ones were dangerous.

She realized that Alice was watching her warily.

“Are we running away again?” she asked.

“What? No. We’re just working out what to do next.”

“That’s what Fran used to say.”

“Right. What else did Fran say?”

“That we just had to get far enough away, and we would be safe.”

“And were you?”

“For a while.” Alice looked over at Gracie, who was still intent on Rapunzel, Jasmine and Belle. She lowered her voice. “Then a bad man came.”

Katie felt herself tense. “When was this?”

“A long time ago. Fran thinks I was asleep, but I woke up. He came to the house at night. They had a fight and Fran got rid of him.”

“How d’you mean?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I crept downstairs and saw her put him in the trunk of the car. The old one she kept locked in the garage.”

Katie swallowed. “Then what happened?”

“I went back to bed and pretended to be asleep. Fran came up and said we had to leave. We drove the car to a hotel, a long way away. Fran went out for a bit. The next day, the car was gone.”

Katie thought about the boys and the hockey stick. How far Fran would go to protect those she loved.

But she wasn’t Fran. So, what should Katie do?

And then she knew. There was really no choice.

“No more running.” She reached out and took Alice’s hand. “We’re going to sort this mess out.”

She picked up her phone.





He hadn’t driven this way for a long time. All the miles he had covered, all the treks up and down the motorway, this was one road he had not been able to bring himself to travel.

The road back home.

Woodbridge, Nottinghamshire.

He and Jenny had bought the rambling Victorian vicarage at an auction, sight unseen. When they got the keys, he realized that they had not only paid over the odds for what was essentially a derelict wreck held together by woodworm and rat droppings, but that the meager budget they had set aside for renovation wouldn’t even cover the cost of replacing the roof.

Jenny had wanted to ask her parents for help. Gabe had said no. Harry and Evelyn’s wealth had always been a bone of contention between them. Harry had paid for their wedding, a lavish affair which had made Gabe feel a little uncomfortable at the time. But he reasoned that Jenny was Harry’s only daughter and it was tradition. However, he didn’t want accepting their money to become a habit. For Jenny, it was too easy. She was used to being given everything she asked for. Gabe didn’t want to be a charity case. He had worked hard not to owe anybody anything.

It became their first real argument, and it had festered for weeks. Eventually, just to cease the hostilities, he had acquiesced, on the condition that they pay back every penny.

It had taken them several years to turn the house into something not just habitable but beautiful. A labor of love, and Gabe had been so proud of their achievement. The hours they spent together covered in plaster and paint. Cuddling around the real fire while it snowed outside and plastic sheets formed makeshift windows. The house that Gabe and Jenny built.

It was a dream home, at least for him. Red brick, draped in a glossy shroud of ivy, sash windows, a long gravel driveway and gardens that surrounded it on three sides. When Jenny fell pregnant, life seemed complete.

They had put a trampoline and a swing out the back for Izzy. In summer, they filled a huge paddling pool and the slide became a water flume.

A home for their family. A home Gabe had hoped they would grow old in, watch Izzy grow up in, maybe even welcome grandchildren into.

And they had been happy there. Mostly. He had tried so hard to believe that. To put aside the dark feeling that the house had come to represent everything that was so very different about Jenny and him: their backgrounds, their wants, their hopes for the future.