Free Me and Mr Jones by Lucy Diamond Page A

head as she heard his voice say them. You can’t get away from me that easy, Iz.
    God. Getting away from him had been the most crucial thing she’d ever had to do, and definitely the most terrifying. She would never forget the way her heart had galloped as they’d sneaked away, her and the girls with their few measly possessions; how she had bundled the cases into the car – quick, quick, before he comes back! She should have known that Gary wasn’t the kind of man to take such a slight without retribution.
    Help. Now what should she do? Were they going to have to move again? Would they have to find another shelter to hide in? The refuge they’d first come to, in Dorchester, had been brilliantly helpful, but returning there would feel like a giant leap back. And what about the girls’ school, what about work? She didn’t want to have to unpick all the progress she had made, just for him.
    ‘Everything all right?’ Charlie had appeared by her side and she jumped. ‘Izzy – are you okay?’
    She must have been looking freaked out, because he sounded concerned, the usual jokiness stripped from his voice. ‘Sure,’ she replied briskly, avoiding his eye. She glanced at her watch, suddenly keen to be somewhere quieter, safer, less public. Somewhere she could slide across bolts and close the curtains. The frightened mice needed to scurry back to their mousehole and hide. ‘We’d better push off now,’ she said. ‘GIRLS! Time to go!’
    ‘Oh, but . . .’ He sagged with disappointment. ‘Really? Already? But it’s only midday. I thought . . .’ He scratched his head as Willow and Hazel galloped over, hair dishevelled, sand in their fingernails. ‘How about I shout us chips and a pasty for lunch first?’
    Sneaky. Like she could say no, when her daughters’ eyes were already gleaming.
    ‘Can we, Mum?’
    ‘PLEASE?’
    ‘Oh, all right then,’ she said, trying to keep up a fake smile. Inside her mind was still ricocheting between potential dangers, and she forced herself to breathe deeply. You’re overreacting , she told herself firmly. Gary couldn’t possibly know where they were – there was no way Lou or Monique would have ratted on her.
    No. Of course not. Get a grip, Izzy.
    But what if Louise had let something slip? What if Gary had somehow got hold of an email or postcard Izzy had sent, with her new contact details? It could have happened – Gary was friends with Lou’s boyfriend Ricky, and he might have gone on the snoop round at their place one evening. He’d got her new phone number, hadn’t he? What else had he found out?
    ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Charlie asked as they began walking towards the café. ‘You’ve gone a bit pale.’
    ‘I’m fine,’ she said, hunching over her phone and deleting the text before he could see it. There. Gone. She stuffed the phone in her pocket, trying not to think about it any more. Salty chips and a strong coffee would take her mind off Gary, she told herself.
    But they didn’t.
    She’d first met Gary when she was fourteen and put into a care home in Burnage. Before then, she’d had a foster placement with the McCreedys, Evangelical Christians who had turfed her out when they caught her smoking at the bottom of the garden. Which, in hindsight, hadn’t exactly been Christian-spirited – throwing an unwanted child back to the wolves – but there you go. People were strange.
    Angry and disempowered by yet another rejection, she’d lashed out at the world, pushing away everyone who tried to help her: her dance teacher, her social worker and Kirsty and Derek, the live-in carers at this particular home. She kept her distance, spending long hours hunched in her room, wrapped in the old leopard-spot coat, which was the only thing of her mother’s that she’d ever owned. Once it had smelled of her (Shalimar, she came to discover, years later), and she’d gone to sleep many times breathing in that scent, imagining she was in her mother’s embrace.