‘Hello?’
I recognise his voice immediately. The man claiming to be my dad. When he showed up on TV I couldn’t understand it, but then it all fell into place. Why he followed me, why he helped me escape. He knew I was his daughter.
It didn’t change who he was and what he did, but I often wondered who the man in the white van from ten years ago was to me. If he was still working for Mark, if they’d found out I wasn’t dead and tortured him into telling them where I was.
But even if they went to that cottage in Yorkshire, I wouldn’t be there. I left a long time ago.
I never turned the phone on, not once, but I was tempted when I saw him on TV. Starved of answers and wanting to make sense of a life left behind, of wanting to understand why he was doing it. But then it made sense, maybe they sent him on there to send a message to me : that they know I’m alive, that I’m not the one in control. I stopped using the credit card three years ago. I drew out a large chunk of cash, as much as it would let me, and I left that cottage in search of a new life as someone else. I was done hiding.
‘Katy, is that you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh my God, Katy, I’ve been trying to find you.’
‘I hid,’ I say. ‘Like you told me to.’
‘You changed your name?’ he asks.
‘Changed it, and changed it again. You won’t find me, they won’t find me, if that’s what this is.’
‘No, no, you have it wrong, I thought you were dead, I thought something terrible had happened.’ I hear rustling in the background, muffled voices and then a clear robotic voice announce a flight. ‘I have to go, Katy. I’m sorry, but I wanted to bring you home, that’s why I did the show. I wanted to bring you home,’ he repeats.
‘Is my mum okay?’ I ask.
He doesn’t respond.
‘Is she?’ I press.
‘I think she knows something; I think she’s close.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know, but lie low. I have to go.’
He hangs up and I’m left alone.
* * *
Tiger dozed off across my feet, occasionally looking up at me through the gap in the table.
The more time passes, the more I know something is very wrong. I think about calling the police, maybe that detective from the show, but for the first time in a while, I’m scared.
I’ve been waiting for ten years for something, a sign, to tell me what to do, and this feels like it. Annie is the only one who knows what could have happened to me, but if she’s too afraid to speak up, is this her way of doing so?
I run through all the worst things that could have happened, but it all comes back to that list. The one my mum clutched lovingly and showed the world – all the items on my desk – where I hid the USB stick and the golden key.
I wrote that message in a panic, when I thought something terrible would happen, and if Mark had gone back to my desk to look for clues when he realised I didn’t have the USB on me, well, it would have just looked like any old birthday list. But to Peter, it would have been a clue. He must have seen it finally when she held it up. Would he have contacted Mum?
I lean forward and grab the keys off the table, Tiger leaps up and starts wagging his tail.
‘We’re going home.’
On the drive from Suffolk to Bristol, I slam my hands against the wheel and turn the radio up, trying to drown out my thoughts, but it doesn’t work. What if Mum got involved in this? If she found the USB and the key and went digging – she seemed so resigned to the fact that I was gone – but she clutched that list like it was all the hope she had.
Tiger gives a little bark and whines as he pushes his head between the front seats, trying to comfort me.
‘It’s okay, everything is going to be okay. It’s probably nothing.’
I’ve done this drive before throughout the years, always turning back at Reading services, talking sense into myself. Sometimes, though, the pull towards Mum was too strong to ignore and it was only my love for her that kept me away. Tiger tickles my hand with his nose. I stroke his head as we pass Reading, because I’m not turning back, not now.
As I drive into Bristol, memories of my life here come flooding back and they fill me with a slight warmth that things could be okay. It’s not until I turn onto the road where I used to live that it’s replaced by a new emotion, the reason I left, a life I never had, people I’ve hurt and broken.
The street is dark, apart from a few lounge windows. I’m certain no one will see me, but I pull my hood up anyway. I park a couple of doors away from my old house. I almost don’t recognise it; Mum’s let the garden get overgrown, and tall, unwieldy grass arches over the path towards the front door. It sits in complete darkness.
I check the time. It’s almost midnight, she could be asleep, but I don’t see her car, unless she got a new one. I step out of mine and tell Tiger to wait. He whines a little as I close the door, and I can hear him panting with apprehension as I walk away towards my childhood home.
I push the black gate and it creaks open. What will I say to her? How will I explain this? But I don’t care, I just want to see her safe and alive and then I’ll disappear again and she won’t be left wondering where her daughter went.
I knock on the door, then step back, checking to see if any lights come on, but it is quiet; the house stays dark.
‘Mum?’ I whisper, knocking again.
I walk around the side of the house, hoping she hasn’t fixed the back gate, and feel relieved when I see a brick propped against the door. I slide it away and yank it open, just as the back security light comes on. She’ll see that if she’s in; her bedroom looks out onto the back of the house.
The garden is overgrown too, weeds crawl across the path and bits of loose wire and broken bin bags spill onto the gravel where the old patio furniture sits covered in wet tarpaulin. Mum’s bedroom curtains are closed, but the blinds are drawn back on the patio doors as I hold two hands to my face, peering in. I’m almost winded by the sight.
The lounge is exactly the same. Everything preserved and in place like I never left. I pull on the doors and they glide open, the faint smell of soldering iron and instant coffee in the air. My breath quickens as I slowly walk through the lounge. I stop in the middle, glancing down at the remains of the castle from my snow globe, lying in pieces on the coffee table. I look up at the hallway, tears rolling down my cheeks.
‘Mum?’ I call, but my voice is just a whisper. ‘Mum?’ I cry.
But there is nothing.