I turned and smiled cheerily at Rachel and Poppy. ‘Right.Let’s get ourselves somewhere to stay tonight, then.’
‘Are you sure we’ve lost her?’ Rachel murmured, turning tolook out of the back window.
‘Absolutely. Don’t worry. We’ll find a B & B off thebeaten track, then we can draw breath and decide what to do, okay?’ I kept mytone light, so as not to betray my own growing anxiety. I’d no idea what wewere going to do long-term. For now, I just needed to focus on getting Racheland Poppy to safety for the night. I’d worry about tomorrow when it came...
The accommodation options were eye-wateringly expensive. Buteventually, I found a little self-catering cottage that was reasonably pricedin a last-minute deal. It was called Sunshine Cottage, which seemed at oddswith its appearance in the photo online. It obviously hadn’t been updated inyears. But the shabby front door, drab soft furnishings and lack of a modernisedkitchen were hardly important right now, so I took a deep breath and phoned thenumber. Grabbing the bag of chocolate biscuits, I offered them around while Iwaited for a response. Poppy took one eagerly, but Rachel – who was back to staringmournfully out of the window – shook her head.
The owner of the cottage eventually answered the phone andconfirmed that the accommodation was still free that night. She gave medirections and said she’d drive straight over and meet me at the property. Iwas to look out for a cottage with a green gate.
‘Right. Let’s go.’ Thanking my lucky stars that we hadsomewhere to stay, I turned to Poppy, offering her another biscuit before I putthem away.
To my surprise, she was looking at her mobile phone. Rachelonly let her have it when she was at a friend’s house so that Poppy could calland let her mum know when to pick her up. I guessed that in the panic to leave,Poppy must have taken it with her.
‘Are you texting your friends?’ I asked.
Poppy cast a guiltily look at her mum. ‘No, it’s GrandmaRosemary. She wanted to know if I was all right and I told her I was.’
Rachel turned and we exchanged a look of horror. But asecond later, I shook my head. ‘It’s fine. She can’t know where we are.’
‘She does.’ Poppy’s voice was clear as a bell. ‘She can lookat her phone and see.’
‘Oh, God.’ Rachel sat up straight and immediately leanedover to confiscate the phone, ignoring her daughter’s protests and switching itoff. ‘I installed that tracking app on Poppy’s phone as a safety precaution.Rosemary had it, too.’
Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I felt sick. Rosemarycould appear at any moment.
We screeched away down the lane, my heart hammering againstmy ribcage. If Rosemary tracked us down, she’d tell Darren and he’d come afterRachel and Poppy, then we might be back to square one. I’d learned from bitterexperience that Rachel found it impossible to resist Darren’s charm offensives.He had a control over her that I desperately needed to break.
‘Here’s Grandma Rosemary!’ called Poppy excitedly, craningher neck and waving. ‘Can I see her? Can we stop?’
‘No, love. We need to get to the cottage,’ murmured Rachel,putting an arm around her as I accelerated to get away from the blue car. Rosemarywas a very cautious driver and her preferred snail’s pace was probably the onlyreason she hadn’t caught up with us before now. My heart was in my mouth as Irealised we were approaching a village and I’d have to kill my speed and driveat thirty miles an hour.
I glanced back anxiously, hoping Rosemary was slowing down,too. If we could get through the village to the other side, my car had muchmore power than her ancient Fiesta. We’d be able to speed away and escape.
My mind was running at lightning speed, planning how toshake her off. Poppy’s phone was switched off now, so Rosemary would no longerhave our route to rely on. We’d be able to lose her, I was sure...
I drove slowly past a school on the left and speeded up whenwe got to the no restrictions sign a little further on. Spotting a lane off tothe right, I indicated and braked, and headed off in a different direction.Rosemary was way behind us by this time, and I was pretty sure she wouldn’t haveseen us turn off. But I groaned aloud when I saw the sign indicating roadworksand traffic lights up ahead.
What if we got stuck there, with Rosemary right behindus? She could get out of her car while we were at a standstill and come overand demand to know where we were going.
As we approached the roadworks, the traffic lights were at greenand I accelerated, scared we wouldn’t make it before they changed to red. But tomy relief, when the amber light came on, we were already sailing on through.
My heart hammering, I slowed right down and glanced in themirror.
There was no sign of Rosemary. Even when she did appear,she’d be held up at the lights. I drove on, thanking my lucky stars forroadworks.
And that’s when it happened.
We were passing through a little hamlet with cottages oneither side, when out of nowhere, a figure stepped into the road, just yards infront of us.
I slammed on my brakes, confident I could slow down in time.
But to my horror, instead of continuing to walk across tothe other side, the woman – who looked to be in her eighties and was carrying abunch of flowers – stopped right where she was in the road, facing the car. Inthat shocking split-second as we were still moving towards her, she staredstraight in at me, a look of surprise on her face. And then, as the car slowedto a stop, she seemed to sink to the ground.
The world stood still for a second. Then Poppy’s voice,clear as a bell, pierced the shocked silence. ‘What happened to that lady?’
‘I don’t know, Poppy.’ In a daze of disbelief, I opened mydoor. There was no collision, thankfully. She just seemed to fall down. As Igot out of the car, a second woman came hurrying out of the garden gate on ourleft.
‘Oh, my God. Maggie, for heaven’s sake. Are you all right?’She bent over her friend, clearly as shocked as I was at what had happened.Although to my great relief, the woman called Maggie was actually smiling andtrying to sit up.
