CHAPTER 51 Simone
Simone
Back up the street, Lucy is waiting for her exactly where she left her, by an orange triangular road sign that tells Simone once again that she is not in England.
Lucy grabs for the carrier bag, excited, and a swell of people arrive, heading into the shop.
Tourists, perhaps – walking gear, a cloud of cigarette smoke that smells like British beer gardens – and Simone and Lucy head down a rare side street between the General Store and a small apartment building, both of them relaxing once in the alley, unseen in its dimness.
‘I just spotted this alley – I hid in it while you shopped. What’re you going to cook?’ Lucy asks, poking through the bag.
‘Chicken,’ Simone says immediately. ‘Roasted.’ It’s cheap. You can do so much with a whole chicken.
Even tinier alleyways head off theirs like tributaries, and it’s interesting here, among the backs of buildings.
With extractor fans, old refrigerators, general junk.
It’s a run-down sort of place, graffiti, cigarette butts, and they head to Moody’s via a back way, past a fire-exit door pumping out smells of greasy food.
There is not much worse than a bar and grill.
Their guards are down. They’ve been to the shops; they’ve seen a lawyer. They have momentum.
But as soon as they let themselves in, Simone knows. A shadow is cast right across the back garden; she can see it from the hallway as they look through the house to the yard. Simone stops. Lucy hasn’t noticed; she is talking loudly about a movie she saw last year.
Simone can do nothing but silently point. They stand there together, next to the drinks cart, and their hands naturally reach for the other’s.
The shadow shifts.
And is it the police, is it the kidnapper, is it somebody who wants harm for them? Simone’s heart pulsates in her ears, and then the shadow’s legs move, and it steps into full view.
And it isn’t the police.
And it isn’t the kidnapper.