Steph stared at her husband as they knelt next to her semiconscious cousin. His face was covered with bruises. And it looked like it was in collapse, like his muscles had forgotten what to do. Was he in shock? Was she? The popping in her ears, the sense that the air she was breathing was getting thicker.
She dared to glance at Becca and saw her eyelids starting to twitch, her chest rising: signs of recovery that Steph had often watched for in the past.
“Where is Freya?” she whispered to her, leaning in close. “You still haven’t told me.” The idea struck her, with an inward scream of pain, that what was left to find might be her body.
“No,” she cried softly, to herself now, pulling back from Becca and lurching to her feet.
“Steph?” Paul stood up too.
Steph reeled on the spot for a second, then turned and ran toward the back of the maisonette. The small kitchen was bare, the tiny table and all the surfaces wiped clean. She continued along the corridor to Becca’s bedroom, shouting Freya’s name, her fingertips trailing the cold walls. The bed was unmade, the curtains drawn. A week-old newspaper, which Steph had brought on her last visit, lay unopened next to the bed.
Steph raced on to the spare room, freezing as she tried the handle.
The door was locked.
Her whole chest became a drumbeat. She rattled the handle and pressed her ear to the wood, willing her heart to quieten so she could hear.
“Steph?” Paul appeared beside her but she shushed him, listening hard.
Then she reared back with a hand over her mouth.
“Someone’s in there,” she said, through ragged breaths.
She’d heard a moan. Hadn’t she? Could she have imagined it? Steph threw herself against the door, pounding with both fists. “Freya! Freya? Is that you?”
There was no response, but she thought she heard another noise, barely perceptible. Steph ran back to the living room. There had to be a key somewhere. She yanked out drawers, spilling their contents onto the floor, shouting to Paul to search the bedroom at the same time. Finding nothing, Steph returned to her stirring cousin and frantically patted her pockets.
As she did so, she found herself fixating on Becca’s left arm, still stretched out across the worn carpet. She remembered it flailing to intercept the knife, flailing again at the start of her seizure. Now the hand was in a loose fist. The first finger sticking slightly out.
Becca wasn’t just thrashing.
She was pointing.
Trying to tell me Freya is here?
Had Steph been blind once again? Wasted yet more time?
“Paul!” she screamed. “We have to get into that room!”
She heard the sound of his rapid footsteps, then a thud. The noise was repeated as Steph rushed back down the corridor, to find Paul slamming his shoulder into the spare-room door. He gasped in pain but braced himself and tried again. In different circumstances, Freya would have been tickled to watch him enacting this police cliché. You’ve obviously done this before, Dad. You were a bit younger, though, right?
On his third attempt the door gave way. They both flew into the room. Steph’s vision smudged, unable to take in the scene. For a moment she was so overwhelmed that everything fragmented and slowed.
Then she saw the figure on the bed. The tangle of greasy blonde hair on the pillow. Freya was curled up, eyes closed, her skin pale and sweaty with a weeping red wound on her head.
“Oh, my God.” Steph and Paul almost tripped over each other in their desperation to get to her. Steph grasped her hand, touched her cheek, said her name over and over. Becca, or somebody else, had evidently tried to treat Freya’s injury—there was antiseptic by the bed—but it was obvious that she was very ill.
But she was breathing. Beautiful. Her cloudy eyes were opening now, almost focusing on Steph’s face. Her dry lips moving.
“Oh, my darling.” Steph kissed her daughter’s clammy fingers, then her forehead, wetting her skin further with her tears. “Oh Freya oh Freya oh Freya. Thank God.”
“Mum?” Freya croaked.
“It’s me. It’s us.” Steph reached for Paul and he leaned in close. He gathered Steph’s and Freya’s hands inside his own and brought them up to his lips, his eyes streaming.
“We’re here now, Frey,” Paul said. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”
“We’re so, so happy to see you.” Steph broke down completely, and the release was like something leaving her body, something she’d held in for years and years and years.