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

that she’d hitched a lift because this was a careful plan and you don’t make a careful plan that depends on standing out on the road at night with your thumb out – certainly not if you’re a thirteen-year-old girl.’

‘Micky,’ Freda says.

‘So I see from the map. And Micky has two advantages. One is that he has access to boats – his father owns them, his uncle hires them out. Micky can get hold of a boat any time. So Micky comes and picks her up – in a rowing boat or another canoe. But where does he take her?’

‘You said Micky had two advantages,’ Freda says. ‘What was the other one?’

‘He’s a local. He knows his way around.’

‘He does,’ she says.

‘I wasn’t sure about this bit, but Ruby wasn’t going to try to travel at that time of night, was she? So where did Micky take her?’

‘The ferry,’ David says.

‘What?’

‘How did you know?’ Freda asks. ‘I didn’t know that bit till Ruby told me.’

‘You said it,’ David says. ‘Micky had access to boats, but the only one someone could spend the night in in any safety was the ferry.’

I do have a momentary impulse to shout ‘OK clever clogs’ at him, but I restrain myself. Instead I say, ‘And that meant she didn’t start out on her journey till the following morning, but the police were checking CCTV at the bus station for the previous evening.’

I have my back to Freda at this point but she leans forward to say in my ear, ‘They wouldn’t have recognised her anyway, because of the wig.’

‘She was wearing a wig?’

‘I guessed that,’ she says with some smugness. ‘That was why no-one spotted her even after the police put out descriptions and photos the next morning, while she was on buses going down to Oxfordshire. You remember in the play, all the fairies had those short blonde pixie wigs. So everyone was looking for a girl with long red hair, but she was a short-haired blonde.’

‘A cunning plan,’ I say.

‘And the rest is obvious,’ Freda says, as though the interest has now gone out of this exercise. ‘Grace met Ruby in Oxford and took her back to her school. She’d been hiding out there since term ended at the weekend. She’s done it once before to get out of going home for the holidays. Mostly she went and stayed with schoolfriends.’

‘So Grace wasn’t in any touring production,’ I say. ‘I knew that. The detective superintendent checked that out for me – among other things. But what was the plan then?’ I glance back at David. ‘Are we allowed to talk about this? We’re not in Freda’s mind anymore.’

‘It’s not a crime to run away,’ he says.

‘Good.’

Freda says, ‘OK. Well Grace and her mum had cooked up the plan for Grace to go to Alcott Park two years ago, when her dad started – you know… but then this year, when they were going to try the same thing with Ruby before he got interested in her, he wouldn’t let her audition for a scholarship. He was suspicious that she might try anyway and he was watching her all the time, which was why it was hard for her to get away. Her mum had given in – she’s really scared of him – but Grace forged her signature on an application and she got an audition.’ She stops suddenly and claps a hand over her mouth. ‘Oh! The auditions are tomorrow. What’s she going to do?’

‘It’s all different now, isn’t it?’ I say.

‘I suppose,’ she says. She looks at Ruby. ‘I wonder what she will do now.’

‘That depends rather on how her mum’s doing.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes.’

We are quiet until I say, ‘What were they going to do if Ruby got her scholarship?’

‘Go back, confront their dad and tell him they would go to the police if he didn’t let Ruby go.’

‘Why hadn’t they done that before?’ I ask. ‘Wouldn’t that have saved all this business?’

‘I asked them that,’ Freda says. ‘It was their mum. She begged and begged them not to go to the police.’

‘And she really didn’t know where Ruby had gone?’

‘They were afraid their dad would get it out of her.’

‘Well it looks as though he thought she knew anyway. Somebody’s done something very nasty to her. It’s an odd coincidence if it wasn’t him.’

David clears his throat. ‘Gina, enough,’ he says, and I subside. I tuck Freda’s crumpled mind map back in my bag. When I get home I shall frame the sketch with all its secrets tucked into its creases.

I pass my phone back to Freda. ‘Ring Mum,’ I say. ‘Give her an ETA.’

‘Say ten-thirty,’ David puts in, ‘but we shall have to check in at the police station as soon as we get there. I can’t see them wanting to interview any of you at that time of night, but they will want to see that you’re back and make arrangements for interviews in the morning.’

Freda has a muffled conversation with Ellie, consisting on her side mainly of ‘OK’s, then she hands back my phone and says, ‘They’ve booked into a B & B and they’ve got a room for me.’

‘Right. Well, I should try to get a bit of sleep now. I’m going to.’

I don’t sleep, of course. Our triumphant return with all three girls safe and sound feels fraught with problems now. What am I going to say to Ellie? Will she speak to me at all? What is to happen to Ruby and Grace with their father in a police cell and their mother in intensive care? Where will they sleep tonight? They can’t sleep alone in their house, can they?

My phone rings and, as if summoned by me like a genie out of a bottle, there is Eve. She has all the news of course; much of it has whizzed round Carnmere and she has spoken to Ellie to get the rest. So she knows where the girls have been, she knows where