It’s the cruel hand of a care worker holding you down while a man razors your head until you look like a prisoner. Yes! I know all about danger.
‘I made a decision to get the hell out of there,’ Ronnie lets rip. ‘I somehow managed to get the main door open and was gone.’
‘Did you go back to the Suzi Lake Centre to tell someone? Maybe the manager?’
A rusty, humourless laugh rattles in her throat. ‘And say what? That I was in fear of my life because I went to an interview? That it was gut instinct to escape from there?’
‘What did you do?’
‘I ran and I ran and I fecking ran. Got a knife to protect myself and kept on going.’ Her voice is hoarse, she’s talking fast. ‘I wasn’t going back home. Not to that. I missed my mum though. I was worried what would happen to her without me around.’ Despite Ronnie being a woman approaching fifty all I see is the young woman who would’ve cried her soul out because she left her mum in an abusive situation.
I softly say, ‘Sometimes, the only choice you have is to save yourself.’
‘I think I lost my mind, myself, for a time,’ she replies. ‘The whole world tumbled in on me. I was sleeping rough. No idea where one day ended and another began.’
I’m speechless. To come through all of that and still be sane. Admiration is too small a word for what I feel for this fierce lady.
‘How did you find Sugar?’
‘Sugar found me.’ Her mouth flattens, face clamps tight. She starts again. ‘I was working as a cook at a hostel for many years when Sugar turned up.’ Ronnie grabs my hand. Squeezes tight. ‘I’m betraying him—’
‘No you’re not.’ I squeeze back. ‘One of those women is my mother.’
Ronnie resumes. ‘He told me that Amina and Sheryl had gone missing after being offered jobs via the centre. They never came back.’
‘Hope?’ Ronnie doesn’t say anything, so I press on. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t a company called Pretty Lanes?’ I know I’m repeating myself, but it may jog her memory to hear the name again. And the name won’t stop ringing a bell of familiarity in my ear. Where have I seen or heard it before?
Ronnie scowls. ‘I doubt it was a company called Pretty Lanes. That name sounds like a holiday resort in the country and believe you me where I was taken was no resort.’
‘Where was this job interview held?’
Ronnie sweeps her fingers through the parting of her fine cornrows. ‘Because a cab took me there I never knew its address.’ Whoever had organised these interviews had covered their tracks well. ‘I described the place for Mister Sugar. He searched and searched but couldn’t find anywhere in North London that was like it.’
North London. I hang on to that piece of info.
‘He misses you, you know.’
Ronnie’s unexpected admission hits me in my gut. I miss him too, so much.
‘If I had a father like Sugar I’d be at his house now asking him to tell me what happened.’
‘I have,’ shoots from me. ‘He’ll twist things this way and that and before I know it I’m in knots none the wiser about the truth.’ My breath comes harsh through my nose. ‘Describe this place where you had the interview. You said it was squat and ugly. Tell me anything else you can remember.’
I might be out of luck like Sugar but it’s worth a try. I order two more teas to fortify us as Ronnie starts describing. Around two minutes into her description it dawns on me where she might be talking about. Might.
I tell her what my suspicions are. Head shaking in denial, Ronnie whispers, ‘You have got to be kidding.’
Our eyes meet. Hers hooded with disbelief, mine troubled and pleading.
With hard determination I inform her, ‘We are going there, right now.’
CHAPTER 36
‘You were right. This is it,’ Ronnie utters with an undertone of wonder that I got it right, but mostly her words are as mournful as the prayer of someone laying flowers on the grave of a person they didn’t like. But also disbelief that my suspicions were spot on.
I still have to double check. ‘Are you sure?’
Irritation twists Ronnie’s lips. ‘This place is etched in my nightmares. Back then, because it was night there were red lights everywhere.’
We’re sitting in my car on the road that runs along the back of the hospital. Anxiety and disbelief fill me up as I stare hard at the building that was once called Block J. It’s the derelict block of the hospital that sits on its own in a corner of the complex. Its shadows provided the perfect cover for me to hide in my car so I could stare longingly at the hospital while I prayed to get my job back. And smokers, like Patrick Walsh, use its cover too. When I first arrived at the hospital there was talk of demolishing it and replacing it with a maternity unit.