When they got back from their trip to Langholm, Maggie put Isla in her pram with Bunny and pushed her round and round the garden. There was a breeze, and Isla loved watching the tops of the trees swaying above her. Maggie was talking daft nonsense about how the trees were waving at them when a piercing sound split the air.
The fucking fire alarm.
Probably just Nick or Duncan burning toast, but she’d best check. She parked Isla at the front door and got in there pronto. She could smell burning, the reek of it making her cough. That wasn’t just toast. There was smoke billowing from the kitchen doorway. Putting her sleeve over her nose, she peeked inside.
The smoke was coming from the cooker.
From a pan on the hob.
It had boiled dry and triggered the alarm.
Thank God it was nothing worse. She used a tea towel to push the pan away from the ring and turned it off. Then she opened the windows and got up on a chair to switch off the alarm.
Nick.
Probably hoping she’d take hold of the handle and burn herself again.
She left the hot pan steaming in the sink and ran back out through the hall, out through the front door.
The pram had gone.
No.
No no no!
‘Duncan!’ she yelled. ‘Duncan!’
She ran through the garden, along the paths, across the lawn, behind the greenhouse. As she charged round the side of the house, she was just in time to see the pram hurtling down the drive, bouncing and swaying but going so fast that the bumps in the tarmac weren’t enough to deflect it from its course as it shot in and out of the shadows cast by the trees. Streaming out behind it came Isla’s wail.
Nick stood at the top of the drive watching, just the trace of a smile lifting his lips.
Maggie was running, running faster than she’d ever run in her life, flying down the drive after the pram as she became aware of another sound, a rumbling sound that she knew, the sound of one of the massive timber lorries coming along the road.
‘Duncaaaaan!’
She wasn’t going to catch the pram.
He’d timed it.
He’d probably practised, when he was alone in the house. Timed the pram’s descent. Timed the lorries from when he could first hear them to when they passed the bottom of the drive.
Too slow!
Maggie was too slow.
The pram was moving too fast.
And then Duncan appeared, running out of the trees, right into the path of the pram, staggering backwards as he flung his arms around the hood and stopped its onward rush just as the first of the timber lorries thundered past, the vortex it made pulling at his hair and shirt.
Sobbing, gasping, Maggie snatched a red-faced, yowling Isla up out of the pram and pressed her to her body. ‘It’s okay, you’re okay, my wee darling.’
Duncan was still hugging the pram, his face stiff, chest heaving.
‘He did it! Nick did it!’ Maggie wailed, clutching Isla, although she knew Duncan wouldn’t believe her. ‘He must have waited for the lorries and then pushed the pram –’
But Duncan’s face was white. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I saw him. I saw him do it.’
15
Lulu - June 2019
‘It’s just so strange,’ said Michael. ‘Yvonne always takes her phone with her on her walks.’
He’d told Lulu and Nick that he’d become worried when Yvonne hadn’t returned from her walk at the usual time. He had driven around, checking out the various places she liked to walk, until he’d found her car. Now they were standing in the rain, the three of them, in the small, informal parking area at the entrance to a forest track at a place called Craibstone Wood, waiting for the police to arrive. Yvonne’s phone was visible on the passenger seat of her car.
Lulu was trying to stay upbeat. ‘Typical, isn’t it? The one time she doesn’t take her phone, she twists her ankle or something and can’t summon help. But she can’t have gone far. We’ll find her. Should Nick and I start looking while you wait here for the police?’
‘Yes. Thanks. Yes.’
As she and Nick headed off up the track, Nick grumbled, ‘Stupid bloody woman. Who goes walking in the rain on slick forest paths without their phone?’
As they trudged along, calling Yvonne’s name, Lulu looked around her at the sodden trees and imagined Yvonne, huddled somewhere out here, soaked through, cold, maybe in pain, maybe not able to call out for help . . .
They did a full circuit of the main track, returning to the parking area to find that the police had arrived. Michael came hurrying towards them. ‘They’ve sent for a dog. They said I should go home, and I will, but only to fetch our dogs. I’m going to help with the search.’