Rachel calls Freddie.
‘Lara’s safe, they didn’t hurt her.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Have the police arrived?’ As she poses the question, she hears a siren approaching and lets out a sigh of relief. ‘Thank goodness. I’m coming back.’
As she leads Lara out of the farmhouse, a police car is parking adjacent to Heidi’s Fiat. Three officers emerge.
‘My daughter was kidnapped,’ Rachel says. ‘She’s unhurt but in shock.’
A female officer takes care of Lara, radioing for an ambulance.
‘Try and keep calm, madam,’ one of the others says. ‘We’re here now to help you. Was it you that called us?’
‘No, that was Freddie, my friend, he’s in the woods. He needs help.’
‘Can you take us to him? We need to check he’s not in immediate danger.’ Rachel looks back towards Lara. ‘Your daughter is in safe hands now. An ambulance will be here in five minutes.’
‘You need to come this way,’ she says, running towards the woods, suddenly terrified that Danny might rise up and pull Freddie into the pit. The police hurry to keep up, radios crackling, feet crunching over the ground beneath their feet.
The police go into feverish action, making lots of phone calls, and it’s only when they’re taping off the area that Rachel realises Danny is dead. Rachel and Freddie are escorted back to the farmhouse. Lara has already left in the ambulance. Heidi too is taken to the hospital, as she needs to be treated for shock.
Rachel calls her mother to let her know where she is.
‘And Josh, is he OK?’
‘Fast asleep upstairs,’ her mother says. ‘Have you been out looking for Lara all this time?’
‘Something like that. I’ll call you tomorrow, Mum, I don’t know when we’ll be home.’
She ends the call, energy draining from her body. She should have told her mother about Tom, only she can’t bear to, not tonight. The policewoman has explained that the site will be guarded overnight and dug up in the morning as soon as it’s light.
Rachel and Freddie snatch two hours’ sleep once they are finally released from the police station, neither of them bothering to undress. Rachel sleeps with Lara, who has been released from hospital. She stares at the ceiling and digests everything that has happened on this longest night of her life. She thinks of Freddie, his comforting presence in Josh’s room. incredulous that she suspected him, smiling when she remembers him saying he loves her. Then she thinks about Tom, her tears soaking into the bedclothes.
She shakes Freddie awake when the alarm shrieks into the silence, and they drive back to the woods without speaking, dropping Lara off at her gran’s on the way. A uniformed officer guards the scene, and ghostly people in white suits move around the clearing where last night’s revelations played out. Blood rushes to Rachel’s head as she is back on the edge of the hole, teetering forward. She grips Freddie’s hand in an attempt to stay upright.
The white-suited forensic team make slow, careful movements, the detectives who have taken control of the case standing to one side drinking coffee from cardboard cups and talking into their phones. Rachel and Freddie are asked to move away from the scene. They sit in the car, waiting. After half an hour that seems to stretch out forever, a ghost raises an arm and people move in, the detectives bark commands and a white tent is erected. Rachel is about to discover what happened to her husband seven years ago.
Freddie comforts her as the day becomes lighter and the truth is revealed. Tom’s remains are found at eight thirty. Rachel collapses and Freddie fetches a paramedic, who wants to take her to hospital and treat her for shock, but she insists on being taken to her mother’s house, to her children, to the people who matter to her. Yes, she is in shock, but the difference is she knows the truth at last, and her life is no longer in limbo. She can finally grieve for Tom, a man she loved. Freddie is by her side and a new life is possible.