Where was the kitchen?
Where were Mum and Dad and Dennis and John?
And then she was awake, and Nick was stroking her hair and telling her it was all right, she was all right, it was just another bad dream.
10
Maggie - September 1997
Maggie didn’t know what to do.
At least they were safe in here. She’d bought a bolt and fixed it to the bedroom door so Nick couldn’t get in while she was asleep. And she had brought up to the room a supply of food and nappies and bin bags. The one good thing about the situation was that Isla had discovered her appetite, latching on like a wee limpet, as if she was picking up on what was happening and was getting comfort from Maggie in the only way she knew how.
Maggie waited until she heard Nick’s footsteps brattling down the stairs, and then she got up from the chair, wincing at the pull on her C-section scar and the sore skin on her thigh. She took Isla into the bathroom across the corridor, which overlooked the drive, carefully locking the door behind them. When Nick appeared in his school blazer, bag slung over his shoulder as he jogged off down the drive, she unlocked the bathroom door and carefully went downstairs, Isla held safe against her body.
‘Oh, Duncan, Duncan,’ she groaned, collapsing into her rocking chair in the kitchen and undoing the buttons on her top with her unbandaged left hand so Isla could feed again.
Duncan was in prison in Dumfries. He’d been denied bail because of the seriousness of the charge. And Nick was raging about this too, of course. He obviously blamed Maggie for wriggling out of it and putting Duncan in the frame.
Michael and Yvonne were visiting Duncan today, and Maggie was going tomorrow. It would be brilliant to see him, but she was dreading it, too. Dreading speaking to him about Nick.
Should she go back to the cops and admit that her alibi was false, that she’d been there at The Phoenix Centre, that she’d found Dean? That she was set up by Nick? Then they would have to look more closely at Nick’s alibi. But what if it really was watertight? What if Nick had got someone else to do the dirty work, as Yvonne suspected? And if Maggie got arrested and banged up, that would leave Isla at Nick’s mercy. Duncan was a total diddy when it came to Nick. In his eyes, Nick was a fine young man with just a few ‘typical teenage issues’。 Duncan wouldn’t be able to protect Isla from him.
She looked down into her daughter’s big blue eyes and smiled, stroking the soft skin of her cheek.
Such a wee scrap, to be the centre of her whole universe.
Was there some way of proving that Duncan couldn’t have done it, at least? She and Yvonne and Michael had gone round in circles on that one. Duncan had been driving about with Isla on the evening Dean was killed, trying to get her off to sleep. But of course, he couldn’t prove it.
Yvonne had stayed with Maggie and Isla for two days after Duncan’s arrest, but she couldn’t stay forever. She’d gone back to the farm, and the next morning Nick had suddenly been all smiles. ‘Thank God the witch has gone. Why don’t you go through to the TV room and relax properly, and I’ll bring you a cuppa, and we can talk about what we’re going to do to get Dad out of there?’
‘But shouldn’t you be getting off to school?’
‘This is more important.’
She’d been knackered. Isla had been waking through the night and then not settling back to sleep for what seemed like hours. Hoping she and Isla could doze off, she’d sat them and Bunny down in a big armchair in the TV room. Maggie had easily persuaded Duncan to swap the wee telly that had been in here for her one. He watched as much telly as she did – ‘But don’t tell anyone. The hobbies on my CV are kayaking, hillwalking and Roman history, not shoving Maltesers in my face and watching EastEnders.’
Nick had come in with a tray on which he’d set a mug of tea and a plate of chocolate biscuits. Maggie had decided not to eat or drink anything he gave her. She’d wait until he’d gone and then get rid of them. He’d offered the tray to Maggie, and as she’d been about to pick up the mug, the tray had suddenly tilted, and she’d grabbed the handle to stop the mug toppling.
Pain had shot up her arm from her hand.
She had shouted and dropped the mug, and the hot tea had splashed onto her leg, onto Bunny, narrowly missing Isla and burning Maggie through the thin cotton of her trousers.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Nick had raised his voice over Isla’s screams. ‘I didn’t realise the mug was so hot.’
He must have superheated it in the oven or the microwave.