Free Dangerous Promises by Roberta Kray

Epilogue
    It was five days now since Sadie had turned down the invitation to have Christmas dinner with the Hunters and had gone instead to her mother’s house. There had been nothing very festive about the occasion. They had sat across the table from each other, picking at the turkey and making small talk while they tried to skirt around any subject that might cause an argument. As this was pretty much everything – politics, religion, the state of Sadie’s relationship with Joel – there had been a generous amount of dull, heavy silences. When the day had finally come to an end, they had parted with obvious relief on both sides.
    Sadie paused in her packing, her hand resting on the clothes piled into the suitcase. Sometimes, out of nowhere, she would feel that sick dread pressing against her chest again. It came in the dead of night, waking her from bad dreams, and in broad daylight too. A shudder of what might have been ran down her spine.
    The memories of her time in the cellar, her escape, Mona’s death and the long exchange with Nathan Stone were always with her. Some of it was blurred at the edges, other parts so sharp and focused she could feel them cutting like a blade through her mind. Her thoughts drifted back to the morning she had faced the police.
    Sadie had woken, washed, put on the dressing gown and walked down the stairs to the room with the sofas and the magazines. Velma had been waiting for her. There was no sign of Stone, but her coat and bag were lying on the coffee table. Beside them was the holdall that she’d left behind in Oaklands after Eddie’s funeral.
    ‘How are you, hon?’ Velma had asked. ‘Did you get any sleep?’
    ‘I think so, thanks.’
    Velma had brought a set of clothes – a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a pale yellow sweater – everything slightly too big but gloriously clean. There was brand new underwear too. After breakfast, she had got dressed and they had strolled the short distance to a ground-floor flat just round the corner in Meckle Street.
    ‘Walk around, take a good look. This is where you’ve been staying for the past few days.’
    And Sadie had wandered through the sparsely furnished rooms, trying to commit it all to memory: the magnolia walls, the tiny galley kitchen, the bathroom with its cracked bath and rust marks running from the taps. There were sheets and blankets, pillows and a gold-coloured eiderdown on the double bed.
    They had left the holdall in the flat along with toiletries, more clothes and a Sunday newspaper dating from the day she’d allegedly arrived. Milk was placed in the fridge along with eggs, butter and a packet of ham. Teabags and bread were put in the cupboard.
    ‘Do you think the police will check?’ Sadie had asked.
    ‘There’s no way of knowing, hon.’ Velma had placed the key in her hand. ‘Best to be on the safe side, huh?’
    There had been a tall Christmas tree in the foyer of Cowan Road Police Station, awash with tinsel, the fairy lights blinking. While she and Velma had waited, sitting on hard plastic chairs, Sadie had found her eyes drawn continuously towards it. It had seemed out of place, incongruous, in the otherwise cold and clinical surroundings.
    Sadie’s recollection of the actual interview was broken and disjointed. She had done her best to play the part: a girl who had only just discovered that the police were looking for her, a girl who’d been mugged, a girl who flinched and became wide-eyed at the shocking news of the deaths of Mona Farrell and Peter Royston.
    There had been a lot of toing and froing, officers entering and leaving the room. She had the sense of phone calls being made behind the scenes, of information being confirmed, details being checked, before the next set of questions was thrown at her. Why had she come to London? Where had she been staying? What had her attackers looked like? Why did she think Mona Kellston had come to Kellston? She had held her nerve. She had kept it simple. She had