One wrong turn, p.27
One Wrong Turn, page 27
And I pulled the trigger.
Twice.
88
Two sharp claps in the night.
Two wrenching jolts through my arms.
Ben was thrown sideways before Collette could stab him. At first, I thought I’d hit him. Cold horror rinsed through me. But then I understood that he’d flung his body over Lila to protect her.
I swayed, then took three steps closer, emerging from the river. The gun fell from my hand as the knife slipped from Collette’s. She let out a final breath, lying motionless in the wash of the powerful searchlight. There were two ragged holes in her chest. Her mouth gaped open in the water at the edge of the river, her skin was bleached, her eyes dull and glazed.
‘Abi!’
I collapsed to my knees in the water as Ben raised himself up from Lila and splashed and sloshed over to me. ‘Abi, are you OK? Are you hurt?’
‘Yes.’
He dropped to his knees and gripped my arms, shaking his head in concern as if he couldn’t tell which question I’d answered. I looked back at him, raising my hand to gently touch the bruising to his eye, Ben flinching back in pain.
This night.
It had been so long. I’d thought I wouldn’t see him again.
‘I love you,’ I told him.
Ben pulled me into his arms and held me. I was still afraid to believe it was real.
‘I love you too,’ he shouted over the chatter of the helicopter. Then he leaned back and reached up with muddy fingers, cupping my face, sweeping back my hair, examining me in the glow from the searchlight before kissing my lips, at first tenderly, then harder.
I kissed him back. I didn’t think we’d ever kissed that way before. It was desperate, pure, special.
‘Wait,’ I told him, breathless. ‘Wait, there’s something I have to tell you.’
‘No.’ He cradled my face in both his hands, shaking his head, a smile breaking out on his face. ‘No, Abi, there’s not. I already know. And I’m so happy about it. I promise, I’m going to keep you both safe from now on. It’s going to be OK this time, I know.’
He hugged me and I hugged him back so very, very hard. Then he put his hand on my belly, and he kissed me again.
‘Lila?’ I asked him.
‘She’s OK. She seems fine.’
Ben helped me to my feet and I stepped through the reeds until I was standing over her. She was crying, shivering. I bent down very carefully and lifted her into my arms, holding her and rocking her, protecting her from the blast from the helicopter. Then Ben helped me to stumble with her back towards the trees, which is where the first police officers reached us.
‘Are you Abi?’ one of them shouted as he got close. He was male, broad-shouldered, wearing a stab-proof vest over his uniform clothes.
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re Ben?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Who do we have here?’
‘This is Lila.’
‘Can I take her from you?’
I shook my head. ‘Not yet. Just . . . give us a minute.’
I kissed Lila’s head. I calmed her and held her. I didn’t let go of her until the helicopter had been waved away and a pair of paramedics had reached us. Only when I was certain that they would take good care of her did I agree to hand her over, and then I waited with Ben as my injuries were assessed before more paramedics arrived and I was loaded onto a field stretcher to be carried back up the hill to the cabin.
When we got there, it was chaos. There were emergency vehicles everywhere, their lights painting the trees and the night in spatters of blue. Jason had been loaded into an ambulance and driven away with a police guard. I’d already told the first officers who had found me about Paul, and teams were now searching the woodland by torchlight. Another team had gone down the hill to retrieve Collette’s body.
‘Abi?’
A woman in a dark raincoat approached me as my stretcher was set down. She showed me an ID badge. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Pauline Denner. Can I ask you some questions while the paramedics work on you?’
I nodded.
I answered her questions the best I could as the clearing became a whirl of movement around us. The shock had hit me by then and I was in a lot of pain from my arm and my ankle. I didn’t know if I made much sense, especially when the paramedics administered some painkillers and then applied suture strips to the cut on my head. I did know that Ben stayed with me the entire time, holding my hand, making sure the medical staff knew I was pregnant before they gave me any medication.
‘OK, I think it’s best that we get you to the hospital now,’ the detective said to me eventually. ‘I’ll need to ask you both some more questions over the next day or two.’
‘I understand.’ That didn’t surprise me. I also knew that I’d have a lot of questions of my own that I’d need to get some answers to. ‘Did you find Gary?’
The detective’s eyes slid to Ben for a second and her face became sombre. ‘We did. His family will be informed.’
I nodded. I could feel my throat closing up. ‘Where’s Lila now?’
She spun on her heels, craning her neck, then she motioned to an ambulance with the pocketbook she was holding. ‘She’s still here.’
‘Can I go to the hospital with her?’
‘Let’s go and find out, shall we?’
The paramedics helped me to my feet and adjusted a blanket over my shoulders, then guided me over to the ambulance while Detective Denner went ahead to consult with the medics who were tending to Lila.
‘They’re OK with it,’ she told me. ‘You need some help getting up?’
‘I think so.’
She took my arm as Ben helped to boost me into the back of the ambulance, then Ben got up beside me on the stretcher where Lila was sleeping, tucked up in a blanket with a drip connected to her. I rested my hand on her leg as she lay there, looking down at her fragile body, feeling so incredibly sad for her.
‘You saved her,’ Ben said, as the doors to the ambulance were closed behind us and the vehicle began to slowly pull away.
But all I could think of was how much Lila had lost and how alone she now was.
‘Is she really OK?’ I asked the male paramedic who was riding in the back with us. He had a hand on Lila’s shoulder and he was holding her steady as the ambulance shook and swayed.
‘She’s bruised, but we don’t think anything’s broken. The doctors will want to run some scans on her when we get to the hospital, but first impressions, she seems healthy. She’s been fed. Cleaned.’
I cried, then. I couldn’t help it. I pressed my free hand to my mouth as I continued to squeeze Lila’s leg.
Ben put his head on my shoulder. He rubbed my back.
‘She’s a fighter,’ the paramedic told me. ‘Must get that from her mum.’
‘Oh, I’m not—’
‘No,’ he said, a trace of confusion crossing his face. ‘Did nobody tell you?’
‘Tell me, what?’
‘Lila’s mum. Samantha. She’s in surgery right now.’
Saturday Night
11.24 p.m.
Samantha stirred one last time when she heard the doors clap shut on the car that had stopped. She heard the low whine of the engine and the scrubbing of tyres as the car pulled away.
And then there was only darkness and the hush of blood in her ears as she sat slumped against her seat belt with her head bowed.
No more voices.
Just silence.
And pain.
She was alone, and she couldn’t move. It felt as if all the strings inside her had been cut.
But she could sip air. Just a little. In and out.
Lila.
Paul had deceived her and placed their baby in danger. The woman he was with was dangerous and evil.
But they’d both underestimated her.
Because she would hang on for Lila.
She just had to hang on a little bit more.
Another sip of air in and then out.
Lila, I’m here for you.
Lila, I won’t let you go.
89
Eighteen Months Later
I’m just fastening the lid on the sippy cup when I feel a tugging on my leg.
‘Grapes?’ says a tiny voice, the ‘r’ sounding more like a ‘w’.
‘Already done, sweet pea.’
I hand Lila the colourful plastic dish of halved grapes and watch as she totters outside, carrying it ever so carefully into the back garden. It’s a beautiful summer’s day. We’ve spread a blanket on the patio and a collection of teddies and dolls are already in position behind pretend plates of food.
‘Abi sit with me,’ Lila says. ‘Here.’
‘Lucky me.’
I take my position, nodding to the other picnic guests, saying each of their names in turn. Peppa, Big Ted, Cookie, Princess Sparkle. The sun is warm on my face and I tilt it to the sky, closing my eyes for a second and enjoying the feel of the heat on my skin. Then Lila’s tiny hand slips into mine, and suddenly I experience a deeper, more complete warmth that fills me entirely.
‘Special bond.’
I open my eyes and smile at Samantha, who is sitting in her wheelchair, wearing a pair of sunglasses and a beautiful print dress.
Samantha often says that I have a special bond with Lila, and I can’t deny that I feel a profound connection between us. Samantha believes that, on some instinctive level, Lila associates me with saving her. I’m not sure I’d go that far, though sometimes when I think back to those woods, to that night, I can’t help but feel that protecting Lila saved me, in a way.
Samantha’s parents wanted to offer me some of the money that was recovered from the cabin for saving their granddaughter’s life, but I refused. I did, though, accept a part-time position as Lila’s nanny just a few weeks after Samantha was discharged from hospital. By then, it was clear that Samantha’s recovery was going to be more complicated than her parents had hoped, and when Samantha told me that she’d decided to get some help with childcare and asked me if I might be interested, it had taken me about a nano-second to say yes.
I love Lila. I love spending time with her. She’s funny and zany and she has the most vivid imagination. It’s been amazing watching her develop and grow over the past eighteen months.
Remarkably, she shows few long-term effects from what happened to her. It’s a cliché to say that kids are resilient, but it’s only a cliché because it’s true. Sometimes she mentions her daddy and we all talk about him openly with her. I tell her I knew him, and that he loved her very much, and usually that’s enough.
It’s been much more challenging for Samantha. It’s not just the deceit or the hurt of what Paul did, it’s also the idea that Lila is going to grow up without her dad in her life. Every time she looks at Lila, I see a hint of the anxiety she carries. I think sometimes she feels as if she let Lila down, that she should have seen through Paul’s lies, and that’s when I try to remind her of what I know – that Paul never meant for Lila to be taken, and that he’d clearly never imagined that any of them might be killed.
‘You said your parents are visiting again this weekend?’
‘Yes.’ Samantha rolls her eyes.
‘That’s nice.’
‘It’s smothering. But I’ve set down some ground rules. They know not to interfere too much.’
Physically, the doctors say it’s fifty-fifty whether Samantha will walk again. The surgeon who saved her life says she survived because of the small calibre of the bullets she was shot with, and because her car seat absorbed some of the impact, although the damage was severe enough to cause extensive nerve damage to her spine. I’m not betting against her. Knowing what she went through that night and how she still clung to life, makes me certain she’ll continue to give her physical therapy everything she can.
Ben still beats himself up for missing Samantha’s pulse. He has night terrors about it. Whenever that happens and he wakes up feeling awful, I hold him and remind him that he’s not a doctor. Samantha, for her part, has thanked Ben over and over for coming back to the car and calling an ambulance, but she also stresses that if he hadn’t left her when he did, he wouldn’t have got to me in time to save Lila from Collette.
‘I’m thinking about adding some shade sails,’ Samantha tells me now.
‘Where?’ I ask her.
‘By the sandpit and the slide.’
‘That’s a good idea.’
Samantha and Lila moved into the modest bungalow where they now live just over a year ago. It was partly a practical decision. Having everything on one level makes things easier for Samantha around the home. But I also get that she didn’t want to live in Clifton any longer. Too many memories, I think. Some good. Many not. She told me once – and only once – about what had happened in their kitchen, and I think that in itself was reason enough for her to move.
Financially, she’s in a pretty good place. Not because of the house sale. And not after Paul’s property business was wound up and his debts were cleared. But it turns out Paul had a pretty big life insurance policy that covered each of their lives. I’m not sure how much it was worth exactly, although I suspect it’s just as well that Collette and Jason didn’t know anything about it.
Jason is in prison, where he’ll be staying for a long time. He was convicted on multiple charges, including for Gary’s murder, and sentenced to serve a whole life term. I gave evidence at his trial. I faced him down and detailed the terror I’d been subjected to, although I’m also aware that it will never fully leave me.
Since his conviction, two other families have come forward with allegations of extortion and blackmail against Collette and Jason. One of the couples had a little girl who was just over two years old at the time, almost the same age as Lila is now.
In the small hours of the night, when the guilt gets its hooks in me and I shudder at the memory of pulling that trigger and killing Collette, I remind myself of that. I tell myself that I didn’t have any choice but to shoot her, and that by killing her I may have saved other families from pain. Some nights I even believe it. And when I don’t, I turn over and go to Ben, and we hug each other and say we love each other until the doubts begin to fade.
‘Abi, want some cake?’ Lila asks me, pointing to the colourful plastic cake on the dish in front of us.
‘One quick bite,’ I say, picking up the pink slice, taking a pretend bite and rubbing my tummy in delight.
‘Abi has to go in a second,’ Samantha says.
‘Awwww.’
‘But I’ll see you Monday,’ I tell Lila. ‘We’ll go to the park. Does that sound fun?’
‘Yay!’
I kiss her head, then walk by Samantha, taking her hand and squeezing it, pecking her on the cheek.
‘Anything else I can do before I go?’ I ask her.
‘Absolutely nothing. You’ve been brilliant, as ever. Enjoy your weekend.’
‘Bye-bye, Abi!’ Lila calls, waving at me.
‘Bye-bye,’ I say back. ‘Don’t give Big Ted too much chocolate.’
And then I’m picking up my things and making my way outside, closing the front door behind me, walking to the car that is parked in the driveway.
It’s not my old Polo. That was written off by my collision with the wall and, to be honest, I don’t think I could ever have driven it again, anyway. We traded up to something bigger and more practical. And I am never, ever, picking up someone at the side of the road again.
‘Hey,’ Ben says, as I open my door and climb inside. ‘Good day?’
Ben is sitting behind the steering wheel. He finally passed his test. For a while, there was talk of banning him from driving altogether after he took Gary’s car and drove without a licence, but DI Denner pulled a few strings and put in some words of support, and the CPS, perhaps not surprisingly, decided it wouldn’t look too good if they charged a man with driving offences after he’d saved a baby from being killed.
‘A great day.’
‘Same.’
Ben quit his high-pressured job in commercial law. He now works in-house for a green investment company. They have an ethical work structure that means everybody at the company works a four-day week, with additional time off to carry out volunteer work. Today, it being Friday, is Ben’s regular day off.
‘How was the science museum?’ I ask him.
‘Pretty cool. We liked the bubbles best.’
‘Again?’
‘Hey, he knows when he’s on to a good thing. Same as his dad.’
I turn then and look at our son, Oscar, strapped into the baby car seat behind us, and that’s when my heart truly soars. I love him. I love everything about him. I could spend every second of every day just looking at him, and it still wouldn’t be nearly enough.
Next weekend, we’re taking Oscar down to Cornwall to meet Gary’s parents for the first time. I don’t think we’ll return to Fowey when we’re down there. Neither of us are ready to travel along those same roads again quite yet. But we want to take Oscar to the beach and dip his toes in the ocean, buy an ice cream, do normal things.
‘So where to?’ Ben asks me, turning the engine on, slipping the car into reverse.
‘Oh, nowhere fancy.’ I reach back to tickle Oscar’s foot, feeling an explosion of happiness as a grin splits his face and he giggles in delight. ‘Just home.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While much of the story in this book is based on real roads around Fowey, Bodmin and other areas of Cornwall, this is a work of fiction and I have, on occasion, changed the layout and features of the roads described for story purposes. Please know, should you ever find yourself driving on the same roads as Abi and Ben, that when I finished writing this book, I put everything back as it should have been. Also, maybe don’t pick up any strangers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe huge and heartfelt thanks to so many people for their help and support with this book, including:
Vicki Mellor, Lucy Hale, Francesca Pathak, Maddie Thornham, Melissa Bond, Nicole Foster, Josie Turner, Stuart Dwyer and everyone in Sales, Marketing and Publicity at Pan Macmillan.
