Текст книги "Without a Trace"

Автор книги: Lesley Pearse

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

George reached Hastings just on four. He was stiff from the long ride and it seemed hours since he had drunk the last of the tea in his flask. He stopped on the seafront to look at his map, and was pleased to see that Brookland was only about another half an hour away.

His mind had been on Molly constantly the whole ride. He kept on remembering little incidents, like when they were about six and he fell over and cut his knee badly while they were out playing. She had washed the cut in a stream and tied the belt of her dress round it like a bandage. Always the nurse and the comforter.

She had often tried to get him to play Mummies and Daddies, too, and he remembered how she’d told him off for not coming in and asking, ‘Why isn’t my dinner on the table?’ Of course he hadn’t realized then that her father was so difficult and demanding, not like his own, an easygoing, kind-hearted man who always had time for his kids.

Later, when he did know what a tyrant Mr Heywood was, he asked his mother if Molly could come and live with them.

‘I’d have her like a shot. She’s a lovely girl,’ his mother had replied. ‘But you can’t take children away from their parents just because they are grumpy and sour. I only hope that, when you have children of your own, you’ll be like your father with them, and not like that pig.’

His mother said she had gone out of her way to befriend Mary Heywood when she and her family had first arrived in the village. She said that Mary had been a sweet, kind woman, but even then she had become like a little mouse when Jack was around. Yet Mary had made good friends in Sawbridge: they watched over her and popped round to see her when they knew Jack wouldn’t be there. Everyone said what a kind heart she had; she’d slipped many a customer a few extra slices of bacon or a few ounces of cheese when she knew they were having a hard time. She passed on the girls’ clothes when they outgrew them to those who were struggling, and there was hardly a new mother in the village that hadn’t had a lovely hand-knitted pram set from her.

Since Molly had gone off to London, some people had told George that Mary seemed distant and withdrawn, but he hadn’t found this himself, and he’d gone in to see her often to check. He felt that she was happier now than she’d been for a long time, going off to Mothers’ Union meetings or popping in to see friends.

She had told him herself that she didn’t want Molly to come home. ‘She needs to make her own way in life and not worry about me,’ she said. ‘Besides, Jack is a bit better since she’s been gone. So you can stop checking up on me!’

He hadn’t stopped, of course; he just made out he was coming to the shop to buy something.

Brookland was easy enough to find, as the marsh was as flat as a pancake and the old church, with its strange, wooden three-part tower, which reminded him of a child’s stacking toy, stood out like a beacon. He asked a man out walking his dog if he knew where Mrs Coleman and her housekeeper lived.

‘They won’t open the door to you,’ the man said. ‘Completely cuckoo, both of them.’

‘Are they now?’ George said. ‘Well, I’m with the police, so they’ll have to open up for me.’

The dog walker shrugged and gave him directions to Mulberry House. It turned out George had already driven past the house, so he turned his bike round and set back off. He hadn’t gone far when a little girl darted out of a side lane and ran towards him, waving her arms.

He slowed right down, as it was quite clear she was in great distress, and as he got closer, to his shock, he realized it was Petal.

He pulled up and jumped off his bike.

‘Petal, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’m George, the policeman from back home in Sawbridge. I came to find you and Molly.’

‘She’s in there!’ The child waved her hand towards the high stone wall beside the road. ‘She came and got me, she told me to run for help, but the nasty lady has got her now.’

George took in the neglected dirty state of the girl, the long, far too large dress, and no shoes. However much he wanted to go straight to Molly’s aid, he couldn’t leave the child here unprotected.

‘Jump on behind me and hold on tight,’ he said, getting back on his bike. ‘There’s a shop along here. I’ll take you there and get them to phone for more police. Can you be a brave girl for a little bit longer?’

She nodded and climbed silently up behind him. He looked down at her thin, brown arms clasped around his waist and felt a lump rising in his throat.

It took only a couple of minutes for him to flash his warrant card at the stunned shopkeeper and to ask him to phone 999 and explain that PC George Walsh had left a missing child called Petal with him while he returned to Mulberry House. He told the shopkeeper to tell them he was assisting Molly Heywood, who was being held captive there. An ambulance might be needed, too.

George roared back to the house, left his motorbike by the gate and ran around to the back door.

There, on a paved area by the back door, he found Molly lying in a pool of blood and a wailing woman crouched a little way off with her head on her knees and an axe lying beside her.

Kneeling beside Molly, he found that she had a pulse but it was very faint. The blood was coming from a wound on the top of her head. He couldn’t tell how deep it was because of her hair.

‘You’re safe now, Molly,’ he said to her, even though she was unconscious. ‘It’s George, and I’ve got Petal safe and sound, too, and I’ll have you in hospital in no time.’

As he waited for assistance, he heard a sound from inside the house. He went in to see what it was and found another woman slumped on the floor. She was older than the first one, and her face was a bloody mess where she’d been hit. She was conscious, but appeared to have taken leave of her senses. She was just making a keening sound and didn’t respond when he asked her name.

The woman outside didn’t appear to have any injuries, but she was still just crouching there, rocking herself to and fro. He removed the axe, just in case she thought of using it again. He guessed that Molly had thrown the big eagle thing he’d seen on the floor in the hall at the other, older woman to escape, and that this younger one had hit her as she came through the kitchen door.

It seemed to take for ever for the emergency services to arrive, and he sat at Molly’s side, urging her to hold on until help came. Looking at what he could see of the house and thinking of the unbalanced state of the two women who lived here, he felt sick to think that Petal had been kept here for months, and he was astounded that no one had reported seeing her.

But, above everything else, above even his anxiety for Molly and Petal and the need to get the two older women into custody, he felt so proud of Molly. She had said she was going to find Petal, and she had. She’d stuck at it like a dog with a bone, even coming to work down here because she had what he thought was a crazy idea that Cassie had lived here. How wrong was he? It was Molly who should become a detective.

Then, all at once, he heard the clanging of an ambulance bell and a police siren.

‘That’s it now, Molly,’ he said to her. ‘You’ll be in hospital in no time and I’m not leaving you.’

George sensed the detective inspector’s hostility even before he opened his mouth to speak. He was middle-aged with a military-style moustache and had introduced himself as DI Pople.

‘We got the message about this from Somerset. So why did you feel it was necessary to come?’

George gritted his teeth at the man’s arrogance and stupidity.

The ambulance men were getting Molly into the ambulance now and George was ready to follow it on his motorbike. He’d already asked them to pick up Petal as they went past the shop.

‘It was as well I did, or she might have been dead before you got here. But you must excuse me, I’m going with her and Petal.’

‘You are not. You will come back with me to fill me in on the background,’ DI Pople said briskly. Two other police cars had arrived. The younger woman had been handcuffed and led to one of them, and two policemen were trying to get some sense out of the older, injured woman while waiting for a second ambulance to arrive.

‘Sorry, sir, but my duty is to my friend, who is badly hurt, and to the little girl she risked her life to save from these two madwomen,’ George said. ‘I’ll contact you as soon as I know Molly is going to make it.’

It was midnight before George was finally assured that Molly was out of the woods.

The doctor at Hastings Hospital who came to tell him was elderly but had bright-blue eyes and a warm smile. ‘She’ll be having a few headaches for a while and she’s not going to be amused by how much hair we had to cut away to stitch her scalp, but she’ll be fine after a nice long sleep. She became unconscious not just because of the head wound but through severe dehydration and lack of food. The poor girl must have been through a terrible ordeal.’

‘And Petal?’

‘She isn’t speaking at all, but that isn’t unusual for a child after a long and frightening experience, but apparently she wolfed down scrambled eggs and three glasses of milk after she’d had a bath and then threw a tantrum until we let her go in with Miss Heywood.’

‘You’ve let her stay with Molly?’ George asked.

‘Of course. After what she’s been through, the best place for her is close to someone she trusts. As I understand it, she owes her life to Miss Heywood, so we’ve put a little bed in her room for Petal.’

‘But how is she physically?’ George asked.

The doctor frowned. ‘She’s severely undernourished – her weight’s more appropriate for a four-year-old – she has a rash, possibly an allergy to something she was given in that house, and bruises, which suggest rough handling. But I’m confident that with more food, a good night’s sleep and some loving care, by tomorrow, when she wakes up beside Miss Heywood, she’ll start to open up. Now, where are you staying, young man? I believe you rode up from Somerset on a motorbike?’

‘That’s right, sir,’ George said. ‘I’ve been offered a bed for the night at the hotel where Molly works in Rye. Mr and Mrs Bridgenorth are frantic about her, so I’d better get off there now and give them the good news. But I’ll be back tomorrow. When are visiting hours?’

‘For you, anytime. She’s in a private room, of course. That makes it easier for Petal to be in there, too.’

‘I suppose Petal will have to go into care?’ George asked, his eyes prickled at the memory of those little arms around him earlier in the day. ‘She calls Molly “Auntie” but she isn’t a real aunt unfortunately, just her mother’s closest friend.’

‘Let’s not worry about anything just now. First, both of them need to get over their ordeal. You’ve been something of a hero today, too, and I’m sure you are exhausted. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

George spent the night in Molly’s bed at the hotel.

He was exhausted, but he forced himself to stay awake long enough to savour the smell of her on the sheets, to note the tidiness and the feminine touches that were so much part of what he loved about her.

Before he came to bed he had told Mr and Mrs Bridgenorth all he knew, and Mr Bridgenorth had told him that he was going to drive up to find Charley the next morning, as he needed to be told what had happened.

It was a real blow to hear that Molly had a boyfriend and that she hadn’t told him. But, to save face, he pretended he had known and nodded as Mr Bridgenorth spoke of him.

‘We kept hoping he’d ring,’ Mrs Bridgenorth said. ‘We did send him a telegram. Clearly, he isn’t at his home or he would have responded.’

George went straight to Rye police station as soon as he’d eaten his breakfast. DI Pople hadn’t come in yet, but Sergeant Wayfield, a tall, thin man with a face like a bloodhound, was there to take his statement.

‘There isn’t much to it, really,’ said George to the sergeant. ‘I was on my way to Mulberry House when Petal ran out of the lane in distress.’ He went on to explain the rest, ending up with him following Molly’s ambulance to Hastings Hospital.

‘So how did Miss Heywood discover the child was being held at Mulberry House? And why didn’t she speak to us before she went off there?’

George went further back in the story to when Molly had found Petal’s mother dead and the child missing last June. ‘She felt the police didn’t do enough,’ he explained. ‘And I have to agree it looked that way. Anyway, Molly got it into her head that she was going to find Petal, and she didn’t divulge the small pieces of evidence she found to anyone, not even me. As far as I know, a Church Army lady who Molly had stayed with in London helped her get the job at the George, but it looks to me as if Molly must have already discovered that Cassie came from somewhere round here.

‘Anyway, a couple of days before Molly disappeared she wrote to me. She said she thought she’d tracked down Cassie’s mother, someone called Christabel Coleman, who had a daughter called Sylvia, who was the same age as Cassie, and it was rumoured she’d had a black baby. She said she was going there in the morning to see her.’

‘And how did you discover that Miss Heywood had gone missing?’

‘Mrs Bridgenorth phoned me; she found my number in Molly’s address book. She said that no one here at the nick had taken her seriously when she reported that Miss Heywood hadn’t come home, so I think she rang me in desperation. As I was on leave I came straight away, asking my mother to inform you.’

‘I sense an implication that you didn’t trust us to act immediately?’

George looked the sergeant in the eye. ‘Wouldn’t you have done the same if you were in my shoes?’

The sergeant scratched his head, but didn’t answer the question. ‘Well, it was very high-handed of you. You might have made the situation very much worse, or put yourself in danger. Thankfully, Miss Heywood was very resourceful. We found the cellar room she was kept in, and the child had been imprisoned in an attic room.’

‘All the time?’ George asked, horrified at the thought.

‘We can’t be sure one way or the other until she’s ready to talk, or one of the women does. There’s an old doctor’s surgery in the house, full of drugs and medicines, so it’s possible they gave the child something to keep her quiet. We found a pair of baby reins in the room, too, so we think they used them to walk her around the garden sometimes. She was fed sporadically but, judging by her weight, not nearly enough. As for bathing her or washing her hair, that appears not to have been done for some weeks.’

‘But that woman is her grandmother!’ George said angrily. ‘How could she treat a child that way? And just how long was she intending to keep her like that?’

The sergeant shook his head. ‘Mrs Coleman was taken straight to an asylum. She’ll be seen by a psychiatrist and, in due course, we might have a better idea of what her intentions were. Miss Gribble may give us some answers; she is, by all accounts, devoted to Mrs Coleman. She’s something of a dragon but, it appears, not insane. Her injuries are superficial and later today she’ll be taken to Holloway Prison, where she’ll be held on remand while we ascertain the full extent of her crimes.’

‘Then, if I may, I’ll be off to see Molly and Petal. I’ll be staying another night in Rye. I’ll be at the George if you need me.’

‘Before you go, do you have an address for the Church Army lady? We might need to contact her as a character witness.’

‘She died back in winter,’ George said. ‘Just as Molly got the job here. If you need a character witness there are dozens of people back in Sawbridge who’d be happy to tell you what a good, honest person Molly is.’

‘Well, thanks for the statement,’ said Sergeant Wayfield. ‘Please pass on to Miss Heywood that we’re all hoping she’ll get well soon.’

‘I’ll thank her for doing your job for her, too, shall I?’ George asked, unable to resist making a jibe.

Wayfield looked him up and down, his mouth bent into a sneer. ‘If she’d come in here with that photo and explained to us that she felt the girl’s mother lived near here, we would have checked it out. As it happens, we’ve already found the child’s birth registration, and her name wasn’t Petal March but Pamela Coleman. It was a home birth and the father’s name is marked as unknown, as the mother wasn’t married.’

George decided to quit while he was ahead, and said goodbye. The police here seemed to be annoyed with him for muscling in on their territory. It didn’t seem to have occurred to them that, if he hadn’t acted as he did, Molly and Petal might be dead now.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Ted Bridgenorth arrived at Charley Sanderson’s address in Bethnal Green and winced when he saw how squalid it was. It was a shabby, three-storey terraced house in a row of eight equally run-down ones. The other side of the street had fared even worse for, though the bomb sites between some of the houses had been cleared of rubble, weeds had taken over, and only partially covered the piles of dumped rubbish.

As it was a pleasant day a great many people were sitting out by their front doors on boxes or chairs, and dozens of children were playing in the street. A gang of children had surrounded the car as he drove into the street and, though they appeared to be admiring it, Ted wished he’d come on a school day instead of a Saturday, as they might just let his tyres down while he was talking to Charley.

He rapped on the door of number twelve.

‘There’s no one in. Who you after?’ a strident female voice called out from the street.

‘Charley Sanderson,’ he called back. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Well, I do ’is washing, so I ’ope I do.’ A woman with red hair broke away from a group of other women and came towards him. She was in her twenties, an attractive, shapely woman with a look of Rita Hayworth.

‘Are you his girlfriend?’ Ted asked. He really hoped Charley hadn’t been playing fast and loose with other women, but he wasn’t the kind to tell tales or to cause trouble for another man.

‘No fear,’ she laughed.

‘Well, that’s good, as I came to tell him that Molly’s in hospital. I sent him a telegram, but I think he must’ve been away as he didn’t get back to me. Do you know how I can get hold of him?’

She moved in much closer to him. ‘Is it an emergency?’ she whispered.

‘Well, yes, something really nasty has happened to Molly, and she needs him.’ Ted thought the woman was being a bit odd, but then he wasn’t used to London girls of her class.

‘Then you’d better go round and knock him up at Balaclava Street,’ she said. ‘’E’ll be at number five, it’s only a couple of streets away. ’E’ll be with ’is mate Alan.’

She gave him directions and, as he was getting back in the car, she leaned forward to speak to him through the window. ‘Is Molly ’is sister?’

‘No, his girlfriend,’ Ted replied.

To his surprise, the woman spluttered with laughter.

Ted drove off, a little puzzled by the woman’s attitude, but found Balaclava Street easily. It was almost identical to the first street he’d been to, and equally squalid, except that the houses here were only two storeys.

He rapped at the door of number five and was just about to rap again when the door was opened by a very attractive young blond man wearing a pair of trousers but with his chest and feet were bare.

‘What can I do for you?’ the young man said.

Ted was taken aback by his effeminate manner, and the way he spoke. If this was Alan, he understood why the red-haired woman had laughed. ‘Are you Alan?’ he asked.

‘Yes, who wants to know?’

‘I was told that Charley Sanderson is your friend. Is he here?’ Ted asked. ‘I have a message for him.’

‘Charley!’ Alan yelled, still looking at Ted. ‘Someone to see you.’

Ted heard someone’s feet coming down the stairs. When the man got to the hall he was buttoning up his shirt. His feet were bare, too.

‘I sent you a telegram,’ Ted said hesitantly, so shocked he wanted to drive off in his car. ‘You didn’t reply.’

Charley looked puzzled for a moment, and then suddenly apprehensive. ‘Oh, couldn’t place you for a moment,’ he said, then flashed that wide smile of his. ‘It’s Mr Bridgenorth, from the George in Rye. I haven’t been home, so I haven’t seen a telegram. Don’t tell me something has happened to Molly?’

‘It has, I’m afraid.’ Ted hastily told him the bare bones of it. ‘We heard this morning she was going to be all right, but I’m sure she’d appreciate a letter, a phone call or visit from you.’

Charley’s eyes were wide with shock. ‘Of course! I’m just sorry I didn’t get the telegram. I would’ve come straight away. What a terrible business!’

The young, blond man was standing just back from Charley, his anxiety showing clearly in his face. Ted had met other homosexuals since he’d been in the hotel trade and didn’t have a particularly strong view on homosexuality. His attitude was, each to his own, as long as no one wanted to try anything on with him.

But this was totally different. Both he and his wife had got the distinct impression that Molly and Charley loved each other. Molly would be destroyed if she knew he preferred men to women.

‘I must go now,’ Ted said, unable to get away fast enough. ‘It’s busy at the hotel, and my wife and I had planned to visit Molly this afternoon.’

He saw Charley glance over at Alan. He couldn’t have looked guiltier if he’d been caught in the act.

As Ted got into his car Charley shot over to him and leaned in at the window, just as the redheaded woman had.

‘I know what you are thinking, but it’s not like that,’ he said.

‘Oh, really?’ Ted raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Do you think I was born yesterday?’

Charley turned scarlet. ‘Alan and I are just friends, nothing more,’ he insisted in a shrill voice. ‘I love Molly and want to marry her.’

‘I don’t doubt you care for her, as my wife and I do, too,’ Ted said. ‘But I saw for myself how it was between you and Alan, and marrying a woman you have no physical desire for is doomed from the start.’

‘You don’t know how it is with Molly and me,’ Charley said belligerently. ‘I ought to knock your block off for suggesting I’m homosexual.’

‘Charley, stop right there,’ Ted said firmly. ‘I know, and you know, so there’s no point denying anything. I don’t give a damn about your preferences, but I do care about Molly. So you’ve got to be fair to her and let her down gently.’

He didn’t stop for a reply but drove away quickly, feeling faintly sick. It wasn’t about Charley’s persuasion – the man couldn’t help that – but only that he was trying to cover his tracks and avoid the risk of being prosecuted by being seen to be a happily married man. Such a marriage would be a disaster, especially for someone like Molly.

The question was, what should he do about it? Tell her, or keep quiet and hope Charley was man enough to do the right thing?

Evelyn was probably naïve enough to imagine that a good marriage would ‘cure’ Charley, but Ted knew that couldn’t happen. In the days when he was an accountant he’d had two clients who had married, perhaps even fooling themselves they’d be cured. But neither of them was: one was caught by the police and went to prison; the other committed suicide in the end because he was so unhappy. He guessed that their two wives had been through hell.

Any intelligent, humane person could see that the law against homosexuality ought to be abolished. But while it was still in place Ted felt that he must protect his employee. She was worth far more than a cowardly man who wanted to hide his dark secret behind a flimsy veil of marriage.

The irony of it was that Molly already had a man who loved her truly, someone she’d grown up with and knew all about and was ideal for her. Ted felt sure she could love him, too, if he would just make his feelings known.

‘Over to you, George,’ he said aloud. ‘Over to you.’

On Sunday afternoon Molly remarked to the nurse that she was feeling almost like her old self again. Food, drink and lots of sleep had restored her spirits and, even though her head hurt where she’d been hit and probably would for some time, even after the stitches came out, it wasn’t too dreadful. ‘I could almost convince myself I imagined the whole thing. Well, that is, until I look in a mirror and see my bald patch.’

The nurse laughed. ‘And there’s this little one to remind you,’ she said, nodding towards Petal, who was snuggled up on a small bed beside her.

Molly smiled. Petal looked so adorable in a pair of red pyjamas someone had donated, and clutching a teddy bear Evelyn and Ted had bought her.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ Molly said. ‘Once you aren’t really hungry any more, you can’t quite remember what it was like.’

‘I believe childbirth is much the same,’ the nurse joked. ‘I’d avoid that one if I were you. It might make you remember being hungry, too.’

Molly laughed. She felt she had a dozen reasons to be joyful. She’d finally found Petal, she had Charley, and a job she loved with people who clearly cared about her. Mrs Bridgenorth had left a message at Warwickshire House for Dilys to contact her, and her friend had rung last night just before the Bridgenorths came to visit her. Dilys had sent her love and said she would come down to Rye on Wednesday, her day off. Molly had also had a telegram from her parents, and she was inclined to believe her father was as worried about her as her mother was.

Petal wasn’t right, of course. What child could be after such a terrible, long ordeal? She didn’t sleep calmly, she woke frequently with bad dreams and was fearful when anyone new came into the room. Sometimes she sat staring into space, and who knew where her mind was going to.

But she was talking to Molly, even if she wasn’t to anybody else, and she’d told her about the car ride from Sawbridge to Brookland. She said Christabel kept talking about someone called Sylvia who was going to come and join them very soon, and that they were all going to the house she’d lived in when she was a little girl.

‘But she told me lies,’ Petal said indignantly. ‘Sylvia was what she called my mummy, and she said Sylvia was going to join us. Miss Gribble told me the truth in the end, she said Mummy was dead because she’d got a bang on the head. She said if I didn’t do what she told me, she’d kill me, too. They gave me horrible food, and when I couldn’t eat it Miss Gribble brought it back the next day when it was cold and made me eat it or have it again the next day when it had gone off. She said I was a spoiled brat and she was going to teach me how nice girls behaved, and if I didn’t learn she would beat me.’

Molly felt sick to think that Petal’s hideous ordeal hadn’t been just for a few days but for months. She could imagine, too, the struggles Petal had had with that fearsome woman. She must have felt totally abandoned, locked up in that attic room, scared out of her wits whenever she heard a footstep on the stairs.

Luckily, she hadn’t seen what had happened in Stone Cottage, as she’d been out in the car. But Petal cried when she told Molly about how the two women had tricked her into thinking they were taking her to the Coronation party but just kept on driving.

‘She slapped me really hard, too,’ Petal sobbed out. ‘Just for saying I wanted Mummy. I didn’t know why she was being so mean to me, or where they were taking me. It was so scary.’

Petal didn’t know how they’d found her and her mother, or why they’d taken her away with them. She said that Christabel and her were out in the car while Miss Gribble was talking to Cassie, and they stayed there until Miss Gribble came out and then drove away. It was a blessing she hadn’t seen her mother lying there by the hearth with her head caved in. That was something even an adult would struggle to get over.

An examination of Petal when she was admitted to the hospital showed numerous bruises on her small body, proof of many cruel attacks on her since the women had got her into Mulberry House. She said Miss Gribble took her out into the garden most days, but always on a pair of baby walking reins or, latterly, with a rope around her waist so she couldn’t make a bolt for freedom. She said that the first couple of times she had screamed really loudly, trying to attract a passer-by, but the beating she got for it put her off trying again.

The strangest thing was that Petal had seen very little of Christabel, in fact so little that Petal had the idea that ‘the younger lady’, as she called her, was locked up like her, and felt sympathy for her. It was quite clear that, although Christabel had gone along with keeping Petal at Mulberry House, she hadn’t had a hand in any of the cruelty.

Molly wasn’t sure that any child, however strong and determined, could go through all that and remain normal. But, for now, Petal derived comfort from getting into bed with her and listening to stories.

What would happen next was anyone’s guess. Molly had already been told in no uncertain manner by a social worker from the Children’s Department that they would make the decisions on her future. Molly didn’t think they were going to think it important that Petal stayed in close contact with her mother’s friend. She wondered, too, if anyone would care enough to try to rebuild Petal into the happy, well-adjusted child she’d been before all this? Just thinking about that made her so sad.

Molly was lying back against the pillow daydreaming that she and Charley would be allowed to adopt Petal once they were married when the ward door suddenly opened, and there he was. He looked very smart in a dark-grey suit and striped tie.

Molly was unable to hold back her tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘It’s just that it was only thinking about you that kept me going while they had me locked up. And I was afraid I’d never see you again.’

She expected him to embrace her, to tell her that no one was ever going to frighten her like that again, but he didn’t, he just stood at the side of the bed with his arms against his sides looking awkward, distant and embarrassed.

‘You didn’t think there was something funny about George coming to rescue me, did you?’ she asked, thinking that might be why he was being so chilly. ‘I’ve known him since I was five, and I only wrote to him about getting a lead on Cassie’s family because he worked on the case when she was killed and Petal disappeared.’