I walked across the park, away from the walled garden, the note burning a hole in my pocket.
I tightened the belt on my coat and braced myself against the sudden chill in the air. Quickly checking my phone, I realised I had been gone for hours... and there were ten missed calls from our home phone and a voicemail. Clamping the phone to my ear, I listened to Stephen’s voice and realised I felt nothing. I didn’t even care enough to tell him I was okay.
‘Freya, it’s Stephen. Carter’s here, wondering where you are. Apparently, you left the station ages ago. Don’t make their job harder than it already is, okay? Just come home.’
I walked to the nearest bus stop and checked the timetable. My mind tried to filter all the information. I still hadn’t been able to get a straight answer from Stephen about why the police had been questioning him for so long on Saturday night – there was a simple explanation for the pictures of Zoe on his computer, so it couldn’t have been that. Could it have had something to do with whatever money he was paying the woman he was having an affair with? What possible reason could he have for kidnapping his own daughter? The thought was paralysing and caused my breaths to come in shallow bursts, as if someone was holding my head under water for seconds at a time.
After a few minutes, the number fifty-two came to a standstill and I boarded.
‘Single to Chilcote, please.’
I fumbled in my bag for my purse and popped the change on the tray before sitting towards the back of the bus. For a moment, I allowed my heavy lids to close and let my head fall back on the seat rest. The bus’s engine started up and we moved off through the dense Oxford traffic. I opened my eyes briefly and glanced outside as I tried to imagine what different individuals’ day-to-day lives entailed. Did many people carry the weight of secrets as dark as mine with them?
My gaze skipped over the passers-by as the bus rumbled on and I was just about to close my eyes again, giving in to sleep, when I saw her.
She was there at a bus stop, her back to the bus.
Her dark, glossy hair glinted in the sunshine and, as the bus’s doors started to close again, I jumped up and pushed the bell to alert the driver.
‘Stop, I need to get off!’ I shouted, pushing past the people standing in the central aisle, my foot catching on the wheels of a buggy. The driver opened the door once more for me and I stumbled off the step. I ran to Zoe and touched her on the shoulder.
‘Zo!’
Zoe turned around: only it wasn’t her.
‘Can I help you?’ said the girl.
‘Oh,’ I choked back a sob, ‘I thought you were someone else. Sorry. I thought I saw my daughter.’
She raised her brows and moved away from me.
I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. I had to sit down on a bench for a few minutes before I could breathe normally again.
My phone buzzed in my bag and I answered, without looking at the caller ID.
‘Freya, where the hell are you?’ It was Stephen.
‘Coming home,’ I said flatly.
‘Where the heck have you been?’
‘I said I’m coming home.’ I went to cut the call but Stephen stopped me.
‘Wait. The reason I’m ringing is because someone’s vandalised our cars.’
My heart stopped. ‘What?’
Our cars were parked up the road, away from the house, where we rented parking spaces at extortionate monthly prices. It was either that or battle to park on the street outside our own house every morning and evening.
‘Yeah,’ Stephen continued, ‘some sickos probably saw us on the news and spray-painted a load of weird stuff on our cars.’
‘What do you mean? Weird stuff?’ As I spoke I boarded the next bus that would take me to Chilcote and, for the second time that day, handed over my fare.
‘Well, actually, it was Keira who spotted it. She came round and told me.’
‘Keira?’
I realised she must have headed straight home after speaking with me and more time had passed than I had imagined.
‘Yes, Keira. She came over and asked me to come and have a look.’
My palms grew sweaty and I sat in a spare seat. ‘What did it say?’
I could hear a ringing in my ears as Stephen spoke.
‘Why don’t you just come home and see for yourself? But anyway I wanted to warn you in case you passed by the cars first.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know why the youth of today think it’s funny to spray-paint everything. It’s hardly a Banksy.’
I exhaled a shuddery breath. ‘I’m coming home now.’
As soon as I stepped off the bus, I made my way to the car parking spaces, in the opposite direction from the house. I needed to see this for myself, and after the day I’d had I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet.
I walked down the street towards the cars and even from quite a distance I could see pink and purple spray paint covering Stephen’s Maserati and my Ford Focus.
As I neared, I saw a police officer noting down the details and nodded a hello as I approached.
‘Sorry about this, Mrs Hall. Seems like some youths got a bit trigger happy with a can.’
I pushed down the bile rising in my throat. In large letters, spanning the width of both cars, read the message:
BETRAYAL
‘Don’t worry, it’s just someone’s idea of a sick joke,’ said the officer, tapping his notepad.
I nodded, unable to speak, tears glistening in my eyes. ‘Yes,’ I said quietly, ‘exactly. The whole thing is a just a very sick joke.’