Free Scare Me by Richard Parker Page B

butchery in the family’s lounge could ever give Libby and Luke back alive.
    She drove the thought away before it could get a foothold. Didn’t they have more of a chance of locating them if the authorities were involved? How would she ever forgive herself if she didn’t give them that extra chance?
    Her hand shot to the receiver and her fingertips rested on the plastic. Luke’s parents? The police? The touch became a grip and she heard the click as she lifted it from the cradle. It was lightweight, but felt leaden in her wrist.
    â€œNeed me for anything else, Mrs Frost?”
    The question was like a rivet shot into in her chest and she almost dropped the handset.
    â€œSorry.” Nissa waited for Carla to share her amusement at having made her jump, but her face blanked when it wasn’t reciprocated. “Sorry.”
    â€œThat’s OK. No, that’s all. Please… go on home. Spend the evening with your family.”
    Nissa nodded uncertainly. “OK. The other files you wanted are being sent up. Give me a ring at home if you need anything… at all. I’m there all evening.” Her tight red smile was a seal of the promise as she pulled the door shut behind her.
    The sound seemed to cut her off her from everything outside of Will’s office. Nissa was going home for a routine Saturday evening with her husband and boys. She wondered if she would ever have the luxury of such ordinariness again. Carla looked across the spotless blue carpet to herself smiling with Libby in the photo on the display cabinet. When she considered the photos that had just been posted, the happiness there seemed fictitious. She thought of the new life inside her daughter’s drugged body and the metal ropes biting into the skin of her shoulder.
    She rose and walked unsteadily to the water cooler. She put both hands on top of it and tried to take some breaths. Carla glanced at the daunting stack of folders on the desk. What did she hope to find within them? Anything but the contemplation of how the situation could end. She couldn’t conceive of a world without Libby.
    She’d held Jessie for less than a minute, but her absence was still a vacuum within her every time her name was uttered. They hadn’t wanted to know the sex when they’d been given the choice. Had decided to name them Jessie whichever way it had gone.
    Her lifeless twenty-week-old body had been placed in her arms and the midwife had persuaded them to have a picture taken. There’d been no camera. The midwife had captured it with her phone. It was the only photo that existed of her. A low resolution snap of a low resolution moment, a tiny face like a shrivelled bud that would never open. Carla had bled internally and only emergency surgery had saved her. She’d lost so much blood she’d been delirious as Will had uncertainly leaned into the pillows and circled them both with his arms.
    But they’d both been glad the picture had been taken. Knew why the midwife had persuaded them. Jessie’s existence in the world, however brief, had been recorded and the image had helped them both reconcile themselves with what happened. Less than a minute later the room and everyone in it had drained away and she felt Jessie’s fragile weight lifted from her hands.
    Jessie’s brief presence still resonated profoundly with both her and Will. How could they ever withstand Libby’s removal from their lives? She walked back to the desk, opened another file, but couldn’t see the contents. A sense of darkness came at her from all sides and a familiar claustrophobia trickled into the joints of her shoulders.
    Even though Will was being manoeuvred on the other side of the Atlantic, he was at least occupied and not imprisoned to envisage what they would have to face. She couldn’t allow herself to think that way; even if the fear of it burnt through everything she tried to occupy herself with. If she folded