‘I’m sorry I had to put you down here, in the room with the bars on the window… Colin and Ray are coming to stay tomorrow morning,’ said Cilla. Colin and Ray were two teachers from Goldsmith’s Drama Academy. Vicky didn’t know them as well as she knew Cilla, but she’d enjoyed both of their classes.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think that I’d be ruining your plans,’ said Vicky.
‘No! Dear God, you can stay for as long as you like. I’m just explaining why I gave you the worst room in the house.’
‘I’m very grateful. Thank you for letting me stay.’
Vicky looked out of the window as the lightning flashed, lighting up the sand dunes where the long marram grass was blown flat by the gale. Cilla lived on a windswept corner on the west coast of Scotland, but it wouldn’t be long until someone tracked her down. Caught up with her. Cilla took a sip of her cocoa.
‘Vicky, dear. I don’t want to pry, but this seems serious. You only have a wee bag with your things… Where’s your phone? You’re usually glued to the damn thing. Did something happen? Are you in trouble?’
Vicky wiped a tear from her cheek. She took a deep breath. ‘I found…’ She put her hand over her mouth, feeling sick at the memory of what she’d found.
Cilla looked concerned.
‘Are you in danger?’
‘Here? No. Here I feel safe. I just need to sleep,’ said Vicky, silent tears running down her face.
‘Okay. Don’t cry. That’s enough for me right now. You need sleep, you look ragged. Drink that up. The whisky will do you good.’
Vicky clutched her mug in her hands. Despite the warm coat, the fire and the heat of the whisky in her throat, she started to shiver. She felt the terror of what she had seen would never leave her.
19
Just before six the next morning, back in London, Maria Ivanova was walking from the train station back home to Honeycomb Court. She’d just finished two long sixteen-hour shifts at the hospital, and slept at the nurses’ station the night before, grabbing a few hours’ sleep, so she hadn’t been home properly in two days.
Morrison Road was dark and empty and eerily silent. A heavy frost had coated the parked cars and they seemed to shift and glimmer under the streetlights as she moved.
Maria was so tired and focused on her bed, that she didn’t notice the churned-up ground in the front garden of Honeycomb Court at first, or the crime scene tape across Vicky’s flat as she crossed the lobby to her front door. It was only when she dropped her card key and looked up that she saw the tape. She froze for a moment, looking around at the empty lobby, and opened her front door.
It was very cold inside her flat, and when she flicked on the light, she saw that the living room was empty. Maria crossed to the bedroom at the back, and was surprised to see that the bedroom was empty too. She was expecting to see her sister, Sophia. Maria rummaged in her bag, and switched on her mobile phone for the first time in twelve hours.
There was no reply to the message she’d sent to Sophia almost thirteen hours ago. She scrolled through, starting to feel real panic as she saw there was a message from their mother, asking if Sophia was okay. She hadn’t heard from Sophia either, which was very unusual. Both girls were in constant contact with their mother back in Bulgaria. They were a very close family.
Maria tried to call Sophia, but the phone rang out and then went to voicemail. The sisters were a year apart in age, and both in their fourth year of medical studies. In the past few months they’d been working alternate twelve-hour hour shifts in different hospitals. Sophia had lucked out with her placement at St John’s Hospital in Lewisham, which was much closer to Blackheath. Maria’s placement was in Hammersmith, so on top of working long shifts, she had a ninety-minute commute each way across London, which could stretch to two hours if the trains were busy. They had been working their placements for the past three weeks, and both found the pace, working in trauma medicine, thrilling and exhausting.
It hadn’t been unusual for them to be like ships passing in the night in the flat they shared, but on most occasions the ships at least got to meet in the kitchen and share a few words and a cup of tea.
Perhaps she’s been called in for another shift, thought Maria as she went to the fridge to see if her sister had left a note, but there was nothing. Had she gone out shopping? No, it was six o’clock in the morning. Had she met a guy? No, she would have left a message.
Maria shivered and sat on the sofa. She opened the ‘find my phone’ app on her phone, and logged in as Sophia. It showed that Sophia’s phone was switched on. She felt a deep unease as the app loaded, and the compass graphic swung from side to side. When the map popped up, Maria was expecting to see the familiar roads around Lewisham Hospital, or a street around Blackheath, but a different map view came up and for a moment she didn’t recognise the location. All she could see was a wide area of yellow, and her sister’s phone looked to be in the middle of nowhere. She pinched the screen and zoomed out and then back in on the map, her heart starting to beat in her chest with panic.