The Other People: A Novel(67)

“I know you have a lot of questions—” she started to say, her voice thickened by her injured nose.

“What happened to your face?”

“Uncle Steve did it,” the little girl piped up. “He was Auntie Lou’s boyfriend, but he was a bad man. He hurt Mummy.”

“That’s why we can’t go home,” the boy added. “Because he might come back. We’re on the run.”

Gabe stared at the boy. He felt like his brain had gone into freefall. Thoughts tumbling helplessly around his head. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“I know,” Katie said. “And I promise I will tell you everything. Later. Right now, we need to get the children somewhere safe, where no one will look for us.”

He shook his head. “Right now, we need to go to the police.”

“No!” Izzy pulled away from him.

“Izzy—”

“The bad man will come back. He’ll find us.” Her voice rose in panic. “No!”

“Okay, okay,” Gabe soothed his daughter. “We won’t do anything you don’t want to.” He eased her back to him. “I’m your daddy. I’ll look after you now. I’ll protect you from the bad man.”

He glanced back at Katie.

Somewhere safe.

He considered. And then he found himself saying: “I know a place.”





Gabe drove south. Izzy sat beside him, a small rucksack clutched on her lap. She held it tightly, possessively, and he wondered what was inside that was so precious. Katie dozed with her children in the back, exhaustion and the motion of the van lulling them.

What was Katie’s connection to all of this? A waitress in a service station? She can’t have just stumbled over his daughter. So how did she find her? Was she somehow involved? It seemed so unlikely. On the other hand, could it be a coincidence that she just happened to work in the café where he always stopped for coffee? Always smiling, always nearby. Could he even trust her? But then, she had saved his life. And wasn’t she the one making the leap of faith here, letting a complete stranger drive her and her children who knows where?

Secrets, he thought. It’s not the big lies but the small ones, the half-truths—those are the ones that mount up, one on top of another, like a giant, stinking fatberg of deception. And when that blew, you really were in the shit.

He forced his attention onto the road. They had left the motorway a few miles back. It was a dank, dark day, mist starting to lumber in from the hills. As they broke out of suburbia and onto the country roads, it felt more like night, just the flare of cat’s eyes and the occasional glow from a farmhouse guiding the way.

Gabe didn’t need them. He knew this way well. In a few more miles they would be heading toward the coast.

“Where are we going?” Izzy asked.

“Somewhere the bad man won’t find us,” he told her.

She bit her lip, hugged the bag tighter. Something inside rattled and clicked. “Fran used to say that. She promised…but she was wrong.”

“Who’s Fran?”

“She was…she looked after me.”

The woman, he thought. The woman who took her.

“Was she kind to you?”

“Yes. Mostly.”

“Mostly? Did she ever hurt you?”

“No…but she got cross sometimes, and she was sad.”

“Did you love her?”

“I suppose.”

He swallowed down a bitter wedge of anger.

“Well, I never want to break a promise to you. But I will do everything in my power to look after you and make you happy. Okay?”

He felt her eyes on him, searching for the truth.

“Okay.”

“However, I will still make you do your homework—and no boyfriends until you are at least thirty.”

Her lips moved a fraction. Nearly, so nearly a smile.

“Okay.”

And then she yawned and closed her eyes.

He watched her for a moment, drinking in the sight, then he reached for his phone, in the holder on the dashboard. He tapped the screen and brought up a contact, one he hadn’t been forced to speak to in a long time. And then he pressed call.



* * *



—

ANOTHER HOUR, AND he saw the familiar dark swell of the Downs start to rise ahead of them. Soon the winding country roads that snaked through the Sussex countryside would start to rise, the forests and funnels of trees falling away as they started to climb, up to the cliffs.

A beautiful part of the country. A rich part of the country. A lot of “refugees” from London moved here when they decided they had had enough of—and earned enough from—their city lifestyles, investing in renovated farmhouses with acres of land that they tried to prevent walkers from crossing, kidding themselves that they were living the rural life because they owned a Range Rover and wore their Hunter wellies to Waitrose (because, obviously, they paid someone else to walk the Labradoodle through the muddy fields).

However, it was also an area with several impoverished seaside towns where unemployment and crime ran high. Where there was always the undercurrent of violence and a persistent resentment—at the rich Londoners, at the tree-hugging lefties in Brighton and, in particular, at the immigrants who had settled in many of the poor council estates, like the one he grew up in.