CHAPTER 23
The world explodes back into noise and colour and action.
Simone watches the kidnapper fall, backdropped by the striated desert horizon.
She rushes instinctively to him and from his wound rushes a red Trevi Fountain of blood in rhythmic spurts.
Her hand goes to her mouth, horrified. He is face down but still alive, a guttural, bubbling, frothy moan coming from his mouth.
And right there, Simone feels another decision present itself, one she makes without any thought at all. She turns away from the kidnapper and towards her daughter, the odyssey over.
She rushes to the boot and begins to fumble with the catch. Please be her. Please don’t be another criminal. Please don’t let there be anybody else hiding out in the back, in the footwells.
The car’s engine is still running, and the boot pops with a single click.
With a whirring noise, it begins to rise like a helium balloon.
And there she is. Lucy, gagged with dusty gaffer tape, perhaps formerly bound, red stripes across her wrists.
No shoes, dirty feet. But it’s her, it’s her, it’s Lucy, and she is alive.
‘Oh my God,’ Simone says, and she dips her head over the boot, her hands around her daughter’s, and she gently tugs at the tape and the blindfold, and as Lucy’s eyes open, they become wet and make contact with Simone’s, blue on blue.
Simone reaches down into the boot, same as she did into Lucy’s cot a thousand times. The baby memories storm around her like a tree shaking its leaves off. Morning after morning after morning, Lucy aged one, two, three, then in a big bed, then no longer needing help with getting up.
Sure enough, Lucy puts her own arms up, hands like blinking starfish, just like way back when, and Simone lifts her, even though they weigh almost the same now, and brings her to her chest. Her soft skin, her warm body, it folds into Simone like baking mix, and now, once more, they are one.
And Lucy repeats two words only: ‘You came. You came.’