Page 86 of The Best Friend
‘What’s the nature of the emergency?’ the operator asks, calm in the face of my panic.
‘Darcy Lane took my son, kidnapped me and my husband, and then she stabbed her brother,’ I cry. ‘I think he’s dead. And now she’s run off onto Sandbanks Beach. My husband is chasing her. I’m scared for him. She’s dangerous. You need to find my son – the maid took him to the cinema – I don’t know which one. Please find him. Please.’
The woman tells me to calm down, assuring me the emergency services will do everything they can to locate my son. Asking more questions. Reassuring me that they’ll be here within a few minutes. I just hope that’s soon enough.
There! To my left I see a figure running away from me along the shoreline. It’s a man. It’s Jared. I won’t be able to catch him up. My lungs are already burning and I’ve hardly moved any distance at all. Where could Darcy be? Anywhere, I guess. As I stagger after Jared, I throw panicked glances over my shoulder, paranoid that she’s doubled back and is coming after me. But the beach behind is empty.
Ahead, Jared has stopped. He’s looking around. I daren’t call out in case Darcy is lurking close by in the dunes, or somewhere in between the other beach houses. She could be watching me right now. I give an inward shiver as I finally draw closer to my husband.
‘Did you see which way she went?’ I pant.
‘No.’
‘Did she definitely come out the back way?’
‘I saw the kitchen doors were open,’ Jared says, ‘so I assumed she’d come out that way, but I guess she could just as easily have gone out the front.’
‘Shit,’ I say. ‘Shit.’ And then my whole body begins to shake. To shiver and tremble. I can’t tell if it’s because of the cold, or if it’s the shock.
Jared takes off his suit jacket and wraps it around my shoulders, pulling me into his body and holding me close. He kisses my hair and lets out a sob. ‘I’m so sorry, Lou,’ he says. ‘I’m really, truly sorry. I let you down badly. I don’t know how you’ll ever forgive me.’
I don’t reply. For now, it’s enough that we’re alive. Then, my ears pick up the distant wail of sirens.
‘What about Darcy?’ Jared asks, letting me go, but taking my freezing hands in his. ‘Shall we keep looking?’
‘Forget Darcy,’ I say, my teeth chattering. ‘The police will find her. Joe is more important. We need to get Joe. Right now. Make sure he’s okay.’
My voice is drowned out by the juddering, whirring sound of a helicopter passing over our heads. Jared and I run back towards the house as its searchlights sweep the beach.
I wonder if they will ever find her…
Thirty-Four
One Month Later
The fire crackles and my eyes are drawn by the dancing, licking flames. Three empty stockings hang over the fire, and the curtains are drawn. I lean back into my husband’s chest and he kisses the top of my head.
Joe wriggles his body into my side, all cosy in his PJs and dressing gown. I inhale the scent of him – his clean, soft skin, his freshly shampooed hair.
‘What time does Santa actually get here?’ he asks.
‘Once you’re asleep,’ I reply, tweaking his nose.
‘But isn’t there an actual time that he comes? Like a timetable or something?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘He only comes once your eyes are closed and you’re fast asleep, snoring your head off.’
‘I don’t snore!’
‘Of course you do,’ Jared replies. ‘All real men snore.’
Joe looks up at Jared and gives him a crazy stare. We dissolve into laughter and Joe, already over-excited, starts dancing around the lounge, putting on a mad performance for us, leaping about, pulling faces and singingWhen Santa Got Stuck up the Chimney.
After everything that happened with Darcy, I thank God that Joe came out of it unscathed and unaffected. In fact, I think the onlygood and truething Darcy said that night was when she told me Joe had gone to the movies with Tyler. They were safely away from the house in town watching some Pixar movie, blissfully unaware of what was going on. When Marianna brought them home, she drove back to a driveway teeming with emergency-service vehicles. Joe thought he’d landed on a movie set. We didn’t go into details. We just told him that a man had had an accident and the police needed to help him. He seemed to accept our version of events.
After Darcy escaped that night, I almost died with panic that she was on her way to snatch Joe from outside the cinema. Thank goodness she wastoo selfish to risk getting caught.Lucky for us, Darcyput her own survival over any plans for revenge. She didn’t even return to get her own son. Poor Tyler. He may have been a bully but now he has no parents to care for him. He’s gone to London to live with Mike’s sister. I hope, in time, he’s able to get over the trauma. That he doesn’t end up carrying similar scars to his mother.
So, after all that… After all the police, the search helicopters, the sniffer dogs and TV appeals, Darcy managed to escape. No trace has been found of her. The police are still looking, but I don’t hold out too much hope. She’s had a lifetime’s experience of evading justice, of lying and conning. She only told us a small part of what went on during the years after she left care. It seems Nicole Woodward was also wanted in connection with a string of other murders – mainly of vulnerable elderly people. Now she’s disappeared, no doubt with a new identity. She’ll have landed on her feet somewhere else, I’m sure of it.
