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

‘That’s nonsense,’ her mother said. ‘He’s from an EU country.’

‘He said everything was changing because of Brexit.’

‘But he wasn’t happy about taking you along?’ Jane Hapgood asked.

‘No. He was pretty nasty to me actually. He wouldn’t let me text Gran just to let her know that I was safe, and he took my phone away from me.’

‘We have the phone,’ Jane Hapgood said. ‘It was retrieved from Dumitru’s car.’

‘Can I have it back?’

‘When our forensic officers have finished with it.’

‘Well’ – she looked at her mother – ‘we’re going to Italy on Friday. Will I get it before then?’

‘I should think so.’ Jane Hapgood sat forward in her chair so that she was quite close to Freda. ‘You say Dumitru was pretty nasty to you. Can you tell me in what way?’

‘Well, at first he didn’t realise how long the drive was going to be. He looked up the route on his phone but I don’t think he checked the distance, and then he switched off the phone so we couldn’t be traced. He kept saying ‘It can’t be far. England is only a small country.’ His idea was that we would drive down there, scoop Ruby up and come back with her and no-one would really mind the trouble we’d caused because we’d brought Ruby. But we got lost quite a bit and it took ages and he realised that the police would be looking for us and he made me lie down on the back seat under the duvet so no-one could see me and he wouldn’t stop for a drink or the loo and it was hours and hours.’ She was horrified to hear her voice beginning to wobble. ‘He just got a bit crazy,’ she finished.

‘But he didn’t touch you?’

‘No, not at all. I know what you mean and it wasn’t like that at all.’ She stopped, thought, and then said, ‘I know I said he was nasty to me but what I want to say is that he was trying to do the right thing. He was trying to help Ruby. He is a hero, actually. When Ruby’s dad arrived, Dumitru saved us. He went straight for him even though he had that horrible glass dagger thing and it gave us the chance to get into the cupboard and lock ourselves in. So I would like that to be in my statement – that he was a hero.’

Jane Hapgood leaned back in her chair and looked at Mark Abington. ‘I hope you’ve made note of that, DC Abington,’ she said.

‘Certainly have.’

Freda had the sense that she was being laughed at and she could feel herself blushing, but her mum, surprisingly, put a hand on her arm and rubbed it gently in a way that was surprisingly comforting.

‘So can you tell us about what happened when you got to Alcott Park, Freda?’ DS Hapgood asked.

‘Well, it was quite late but it wasn’t dark yet, so we found a way in up a fire escape. We could see that the door at the top wasn’t closed. Grace had gone into the village to get some chips and she’d left it ajar.’

‘So you found Ruby there?’

‘Yes. She was really angry. We scared her and she said she wasn’t going back to Carnmere anyway. And then Grace got back and she was a bit calmer, and we all sat down to talk about it, and they gave us some of their chips. But Grace explained about Ruby’s audition for a scholarship and she said she had to stay till –well, today, actually – for that, and then if she got the scholarship they would go home and tell their parents what they’d done.’

‘And how did Dumitru feel about that?’

‘He was furious. He said he’d risked everything to come and get Ruby and now he was going to be in trouble. He was really tired, too, and he knew he couldn’t do the drive back, so we decided to stay the night and go back in the morning.’

‘You didn’t think of ringing someone then to tell them you were safe?’

‘I wanted to, but Ruby got hysterical and said then her dad would find out where she was and she was scared of what he would do. So we just went to bed. I shared Ruby and Grace’s room – I slept in one of the beds and they shared the other one.’

‘And what about Dumitru?’

‘He said he’d sleep on the sofa in the green room.’

‘And in the morning?’

‘We all slept late and then we went down to the green room and we all had some juice and an energy bar – that was all they had – and Dumitru had another go at persuading Ruby to come back with us and she said no, and they wanted to show us round the school – to see what a great place it was – and Dumitru didn’t seem to be in a hurry to go – I think he was still hoping Ruby would change her mind. So we all had a tour of the school and we had just got back to the green room when we heard someone out in the hall and it was their dad. He shouted out their names and Dumitru told us to wait there while he went to deal with him, but we followed and I saw…’ she faltered for a moment, ‘I saw this weird thing he was carrying, like a glass icicle, and he lunged at Dumitru with it and we turned and ran. Grace ran straight for the big costume cupboard and got us in there, and she had the key so she locked us in.’

Mark Abington looked up from his note taking. ‘How come she had the key?’ he asked.

‘She’d had it at the end of term because she’d done wardrobe for a show some of them put on, and she’d kept hold of it because she knew Ruby