Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

a detective superintendent here, and he says he will drive them back to Carnmere, we’ll be happy to leave it to the police there. Do you know if they have family up there – grandparents, aunts and uncles?’

‘I don’t know them well. I’m just a visitor up there. I have the feeling that the family is a bit isolated. But the girls have a close-knit group of friends. I’m sure their parents will step up.’

‘Thanks.’ We walk back to the green room and I detach Freda from the other girls.

‘You should ring Mum again,’ I say. ‘Let her know that David is going to drive us back. Otherwise she’ll be rushing down here to get you.’

Back in the hall she phones and I go to see if I can talk to David, but two scene of crime officers have arrived now and he is over by the blood stains, giving them instructions, so I go to talk to Gary, who is waiting patiently. I am about to tell him that he’s free to go – I’ll be returning with David and the girls – but I am arrested by the sound of Freda’s voice, raised in exasperation.

‘I know what you think about her, Mum. But she did come and rescue me, and anyway I’m coming back with David. You trust him, don’t you? It doesn’t make sense for you to come down, and we can’t go straight on to Heathrow. I’ve—’

I stride over and grab my phone from her. ‘David’s driving her back, Ellie. You can’t—’

She cuts me off. I try to ring back but she doesn’t answer. I hand the phone back to Freda.

‘Take a selfie,’ I say, ‘to show her that you’re all right, and send it to her with a message that you have to go back to give a statement to the police.’

She takes the phone, snaps the selfie with casual aplomb and starts texting.

‘Honestly,’ she says as she is typing, ‘she’s making such a fuss.’

‘She’s just had the worst twenty-four hours of her life,’ I point out.

‘She really hates you,’ she says.

Tracy Arnold reappears. ‘They’d like to see Freda,’ she says, ‘and then they’ll collect up their things and be ready to go home.’

Freda scampers off and Tracey says, ‘I just told them their mum has had a bad accident and is in hospital. No point in saying more till the force up there know more. They are upset, of course, but I think they’re feeling a bit invulnerable at the moment. People do – especially the young – when they’ve come through a danger. The PTSD comes later.’

David comes over to speak to us. This is the first time he has actually spoken to me since he made his dramatic appearance, and what he says is, ‘You might as well go. I don’t know what arrangement you have with Gary here but you’d probably better not keep him waiting any longer.’

I think Tracey must feel something in my body language – an intimation of something violent and alarming about to unleash itself. ‘I’ll be off then,’ she says. ‘Good to meet you, Gina. Safe journey, sir.’ She heads out, almost at a run.

I look around. The SOCOs are looking at the room where I found Dumitru and have the door open. Gary is sitting on a chair, waiting patiently. I don’t want to unleash my fury at David in front of them so I grab hold of his arm and take him outside, into the porch, where I watch Tracey speed away on a motorbike, then shut the heavy front door, push him against a wall and yell at him.

‘I have been through Hell,’ I scream. ‘I lost Freda, Ellie will never forgive me, the police were fucking useless, I found a man dying and a maniac with a weapon. I didn’t know if we were any of us going to come out of it alive. You came just in time, I admit, but only because I told you where to come. I lost her but I was the one who found her too, and I have the right to take her home to her mother, and I will not – WILL NOT – let you pack me off home in a taxi as though I had nothing to do with it.’

It is not until I have finished that I realise that as I have been yelling I have been driving home my points by thumping him in the chest. He could, of course, have restrained me with one twist of an arm, but he didn’t, and as I step back, he rubs gently at his sternum and says, ‘You only had to ask, you know.’

And then I burst into tears. All over the place. A horrible, messy, snotty business which requires him to produce a handkerchief. Then he steers me to his car, puts me in the front seat and says, ‘I’ll send Gary home and round up the girls. Try to get it together or I shall have a car full of wailing women.’

Ten minutes later, he emerges with the girls and Gary. He ushers the girls into the back of the car and calls to Gary, ‘Pizza Heaven, OK, Gary?’ Then he gets into the car and says, ‘The girls are starving, they say. And tea won’t do. We think that only a pizza place will offer a meal at this time in the afternoon, so we’re heading there. I invited Gary to join us – the least I could do, I thought.’

So now, here we are. I don’t know what our waiter makes of us as a group, dishevelled as we all are and in varying states of anxiety, elation and exhaustion. Grace and Ruby are genuinely starving.

‘Ruby and I have had hardly anything but juice and biscuits for the last ten days,’ Grace says as she forks a huge mouthful of pizza. Then she looks guiltily at David. ‘Sorry, I know we’re not allowed to talk about it all