Free Our Father Who Are Out There...Somewhere by AJ Taft Page A

mum never went to bed. She lived on the sofa; so I didn’t know when to give her the pills.”
    “You can’t let him get away with it, Lil. He can’t be allowed to say he has no wish for contact. No way. Let’s go back again,” says Jo. “Take another look. Hey, we might have got the wrong David Winterbottom for all we know.”
    Lily shakes her head. Unusually for her, inside her is a sense of deep certainty. She knows they were at the right house.
    “Well then, Lil,” says Jo, when it becomes clear Lily isn’t going to speak. “Let’s pay him another visit. It’s not like we’ve got anything better to do.”

Chapter 11
     
    Jo parks the Mini a few hundred yards away from Newlands and looks at the clock on the dashboard, three twenty. “Hope we’re not too late.”
    Twenty minutes pass before the schoolgirl appears around the corner, hands in pockets, sucking on a lollipop. “God, what a stiff,” mutters Lily, as the girl stops outside the side gate, gets her purse from her bag and her key from her purse and lets herself in.
    Less than half an hour later a dark green Volvo estate pulls up outside the front gates. The driver taps in a code and the wrought iron sweeps aside. Jo watches through the rear view mirror, while Lily cranes her neck to watch through the passenger’s wing mirror, but they see no more than a flash of the side of a face. “I think it was a man,” says Jo.
    Lily bangs her arm against the door. “This is no good.”
    “What we need is equipment,” says Jo. They wait in silence as the light gradually fades from the day. “And a proper plan.”
     
    Three days later they are back, sitting in the red and white Mini, in the small, cobbled side street across the road from Newlands. The side street is only a few hundred yards long. It ends in a pair of large wooden gates. The back entrance to the large detached house is on their right. Each house is shielded from the road by a combination of tall fence and high hedge. Not the privet kind; more the well established beech or laurel. They are both wearing black combat trousers and black sweatshirts. Lily’s dreads are tied back in a ponytail and pulled through a baseball cap, which she wears with the peak pulled down over her eyes. Jo is wearing sunglasses and a black beanie hat. She pulls out a pen and their specially purchased notebook from her bag, and begins to write.
    “Do you think anyone can see us here?” asks Lily.
    Jo underlines her heading with two thick black lines, before twisting and turning in her seat. “Don’t think so. I can’t see any windows from here.”
     Lily pours them a cup of black coffee from the new thermos flask, and unwraps the toast they didn’t have time to eat before they set off that morning.
    Moments later, Jo nudges Lily’s elbow. The coffee that Lily has just poured spills over the top of the mug and onto Lily’s inner thighs. Lily leaps up in pain, trying to hold the material of her trousers away from her flesh. Jo, her mouth full of toast, nods towards the house. The gates are opening. With one hand, Lily raises the binoculars to her eyes. A sleek, black sports car pulls out, pausing momentarily to check for traffic. Lily watches it roar off down Primrose Glen. She doesn’t remove the binoculars until the car is out of sight.
    “It was a woman, I’m pretty sure.”
    “And?” asks Jo. “Hair colour? Age? Was she white? Black? Purple? Come on, Lil, you must have seen something.”
    “White, I guess,” says Lily, rubbing at the warm wet patch on her trousers.
     
     
    DAY ONE (Monday)
    07:30 Newlands. All quiet.
    07:40 Adult Female (AF) leaves. White.
    Black nifty sports car (expensive).
    07:55 Postman drops letters into box on outside of gate.
    08:25 Green Volvo leaves. Adult Male (AM).
    No description available at this time.
     
     
     
    Lily puts the binoculars down. “I can’t tell. It’s a man. It could be your dad for all I know.”
    Jo creates a new column, Adult Male. “Did