AllFreeNovel
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I realise I’ve made a mistake: we stand out like sore thumbs in this sketchy part of town, with our clean hair and white faces. We need to blend in with people who look like us.
We drive north to Manchester and I check into a smart hotel in Didsbury. No one gives us a second glance but Lottie is restless and bored, cooped up inside all the time. I take her on a few day trips around the city, risking the crowds and anonymity of the train, but it’s not enough. If we’re going to make this work, she needs to be outside every day, somewhere she can run around and play. She’s starting to look peaky.
So I take her to Anglesey and rent a cottage near Traeth Mawr, on the coast in the middle of nowhere, paying three months upfront in cash. The skinny kid at the lettings agent doesn’t even ask for ID. He’s too busy counting bank notes.
Lottie seems a little happier here, but it’s been too long since she had playmates. She requires constant attention, constant entertainment. I worry she’s been irrevocably damaged by everything that’s happened to her.
I worry I’ve made everything worse.
After ten days together, she’s finally grown used to me – she even calls me Mummy. But there’s a fear in her eyes, a wariness, no child should have. Something’s wrong between us and, despite my best efforts, it grows with every passing day. I want to show her I trust her so I let her play on the beach below our cottage without me, and sometimes I take her to a café in the village where she makes friends with the owner’s dog.
But then one day a woman stares at us a little too hard in the café, and I’m sure I see her watching us again later, when we’re walking back home.
I decide we’ll drive to Scotland in the morning. I know Edinburgh well; it’ll be easy to lose ourselves there. It’s only another week or so until the DNA results come back. Then Quinn can run the story and it’ll be safe for me to bring Lottie home. No one will take my child from me again.
But the next morning, Lottie’s running a temperature. She’s tired and listless, clearly too sick to travel. She needs rest and sleep and plenty of liquids. We can leave in a day or two, when she’s feeling better.
Except she doesn’t get better. She gets worse.
