26

THE CAR’S ENGINE SOUNDED LOUD AND THREATENING IN the darkness. They stood between the houses, trying to work out which way it was going as it crawled from one road to another. It seemed to be turning left and right at random.

Then it turned again—and Tom understood. There was nothing random about the turns. The car was moving systematically outward from the Armstrongs’ street, methodically covering the whole development. And the driver knew the roads much better than they did.

“It’s tracking us down,” he muttered. “Figuring out where we are.”

Robert shook his head grimly, and Emma caught her breath—stifling the noise with her hand. The girl was the only one who didn’t react. If she understood what Tom had said, she didn’t show any sign of it. She went on twisting the wool into her hair, with her eyes half closed and her face intent on the complicated pattern she was making.

“We’ll have to take the footpaths,” Emma whispered. “It’s our only chance.”

The car turned again, coming nearer, and Robert heaved the girl up in his arms, shifting her weight from one arm to the other.

“I can’t carry her much farther,” he said. “Can we put her on a bike? We could go faster then.”

“She’ll make a noise,” Emma said doubtfully.

“It’s the only hope we’ve got.” Robert’s voice was firm. “Hold my bike while I have a go.”

At first, they thought it was going to be easy. The girl didn’t seem to notice when Robert rested her body on the seat. But when he tried to move one arm, to hold the handlebars, she looked up sharply and started to squeal in a small, shrill voice.

“We can’t do it,” Emma said. “She’s terrified. She—”

And then the car turned onto the road where they were standing.

Its headlights were full on, lighting up the tarmac and both sidewalks, all the way down the road, and it was coming straight toward them. Robert tightened his arms around the girl and lifted her off the bike again.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “Please. Be quiet.” His voice was gentle, but he sounded anxious and urgent, and she cowered away from him.

“Quiet. Quiet,” she mumbled, shaking her head from side to side. “Stupid. Dohfuss.” One hand went over her mouth, and the other one started punching at the side of her head.

There’s something wrong with her, Tom thought. What are we going to do? Because they couldn’t let her go back. Not ever. Not to that horrible hole under the floor.

Emma was concentrating on more practical things. “No one’s going to see us here. Not if we stay back between the houses. We can just wait for the car to go past.”

“No, we can‘t,” Robert said. “Look.” He nodded at the road.

As the car came toward them, someone inside was shining a flashlight from side to side, now on the left and now on the right, lighting up every house and every front garden. And every gap between the houses.

“They’re bound to see us if we stay here,” Robert said.

“But where can we go?” Emma’s voice was panicky now. “There’s nowhere else to hide.”

“Yes, there is.” Without hesitating, Robert unlatched the gate behind him. “We can get in here. Hurry up.” Still carrying the girl, he went straight through, into the small garden behind the house.

“We can’t go in there,” Emma muttered.

“Of course we can.” Tom pushed her, hard. “Quick—before the car gets here.”

Somehow, he got her through and lugged the bikes behind him. As he pulled the gate shut, Robert hissed from near his ankles.

“Get down. As fast as you can. Otherwise they’ll see us over the gate.”

Emma flopped onto the concrete, and Tom crouched as low as he could, letting the bikes fall sideways against him. They were just in time. A second later, the flashlight beam swept across the gate. It shone through the lattice panel at the top, showing the diamond pattern, and the girl gave a small gurgle of pleasure.

“Quiet,” Tom murmured.

And then wished he hadn‘t, as she hit herself again.

They waited until the car had gone all the way up the road and turned left. Then they struggled onto their feet. Tom could see that Robert’s strength was running out. It took him a lot of effort to heave the girl off the ground, and he was breathing hard as he stood up.

“Let’s try the bike again,” Tom whispered.

Robert shook his head. “No chance. We can’t risk being seen on the roads. We’ll have to leave the bikes here and go through the back gardens. Maybe she’ll walk a bit if we do that. Otherwise we’ll have to take turns carrying her.”

“Leave our bikes?” Emma’s voice was too loud for comfort. “But we can’t just abandon them.”

“Depends what you think is important.” Robert shrugged. “Ride yours home if you like. I’m going this way.” He set off down the garden, hoisting the girl higher so that she rested against his shoulder.

“He’s mad,” Emma said. “Completely mad. We can‘t—”

“Shhh,” Tom said softly. “It’s her or the bikes. Did you really expect him to choose the bikes? How about you?”

“I’m following Rob, of course,” Emma said wearily. “But I don’t know what Mom and Dad are going to say about the bikes.”

“I can come back and get them tomorrow,” Tom said soothingly.

He wasn’t sure it was true. He couldn’t imagine what would be happening by tomorrow. But he wheeled the bikes down the garden and pushed them behind a shed, hiding them as well as he could. Then he and Emma went to help Robert.

Getting over into the next garden was easier than he’d expected. There was a garbage can in the far corner, hidden behind a trellis. He used it to help himself over the fence, and then Emma climbed up and sat on top of it, reaching down for the girl so that she could lift her over to Tom.

“She’s wet,” she whispered as she took Hope onto her lap.

She was very wet, Tom realized when she came down into his arms. And cold. And shaking. And she was very, very frightened. As he lowered her down, her fingers moved faster and faster through her hair, not using the wool now—that was already finished—but braiding new strands that she had pulled out of old braids. He could feel her tugging hard at them, as if she wanted to hurt herself.

“Where are the clothes you brought?” he whispered to Emma as soon as she was over the fence. “We’ve got to get her warm.”

Emma took them out of her backpack, and they pulled them on. It was hard to get the girl’s hands free long enough to push her arms into the sleeves. Her whole body was tense with fear, and her fingers were locked in her hair. It took all three of them to wrestle her into a sweater and warm jacket, and the moment she was in them, she went back to her twisting, twisting, twisting.

Then they tried to get her to walk down the garden, but that was hopeless. She could stand, but she wouldn’t walk. When Tom and Robert tried to pull her along, she bent her knees so that she was swinging between the two boys. In the end, Tom and Emma carried her between them, to give Robert a rest. Her body felt small and slight, but by the time they came out into the light at the front of the house, Tom’s arms were starting to ache.

He and Emma kept the girl in the shadows while Robert went ahead, across the road. They could hear the car somewhere off to the right, but when it turned, it turned away from them. Robert scouted along a little way and then came back and beckoned.

“We can get through easily down there. Let’s go.”

 

IT WAS WORSE THAN ANY JOURNEY TOM HAD EVER IMAGINED. He lost count of the number of gardens they crossed. Once there was a security light, and they had to bolt to the far end before anyone woke up. Three times they found themselves in gardens with high, flimsy fences that were impossible to climb, and they had to backtrack and look for another way. And all the time the car was circling around and around, waiting for a chance to catch them on the road. Waiting for them to make a mistake.

They were seen twice.

Once, they were just running across a road, and the car turned in at the other end. As they plunged into the darkness on the far side, they heard it speed up, heading toward them. But it was too far away to see exactly where they went. And they didn’t wait to be found. They streaked down the side of the nearest house and went straight over the fence at the bottom of that garden, into the next one.

“Stop here,” Robert breathed. “Try and figure out what they’re doing.”

They crouched behind a clump of bushes and listened. The car had stopped, and they heard someone coming slowly down the road, calling in a deep voice. After a couple of minutes, they saw a flashlight beam in the garden they had just left. It shined right down to the bottom fence, and the voice called softly from up by the house.

“Hope? Are you there? Can you hear me?”

It was Mr. Armstrong. In the garden on the other side of the fence.

The girl’s head came up and she looked around quickly. Tom thought she was going to answer, but Robert laid a hand lightly over her mouth, and she slumped back against his chest. Tom held his breath until the light moved away again and they heard Mr. Armstrong calling by the next house. Then they darted down the garden, away from him, and across the next road.

The second time they were nearly caught was when they had reached the very far side of the development. They hadn’t heard the car for a long time, and exhaustion made them careless. They came out opposite a big, twenty-four-hour supermarket, and Emma pointed at the line of shopping carts halfway up the parking lot.

“We could borrow one of those,” she said.

The girl was asleep by then, hunched against Robert’s shoulder. They had all carried her farther than they could ever have imagined, and the shopping carts looked like the most beautiful things in the world.

“Brilliant!” Tom said. “Let’s go.”

They crept across the road and into the parking lot. There were about half a dozen cars parked close to the store. Apart from those, the whole place was deserted, but the lot was brightly lit. Tom maneuvered a cart out of the bay, and Robert lowered the girl gently into it, trying not to wake her.

All they had to do now was go through the pedestrian area in the middle of the city and down the slope on the other side. That would take them to the back of the park and into the little woods.

If they hadn’t been so tired, they would have gone around the edge of the parking lot, staying in the shadows. But they were so tired now that every extra step seemed like a huge burden. So they headed straight across the lot.

And Mr. Armstrong’s car came suddenly up the hill from the development, on the main road to their right. He saw them. There was no doubt about that. The brakes squealed, and the car turned suddenly left, heading for the supermarket entrance.

“Run!” said Emma.

And they ran.