Free Alias by Tracy Alexander Page B

MP?’
    He was still trying to play with me, like a cat with a half-dead mouse.
    ‘It’s a shame,’ he said, louder now, as I was further away. ‘Someone should have done something.’
    I galloped down the stairs, went into the girls’ loos and sat on the seat with the door bolted – like a bullied teenager. A victim.
    How sad was it that the only person who’d appeared to understand me was Sayge? And he wasn’t real.
    The tears ran down my face – I didn’t bother to wipe them away.
     
    Too much wallowing in self-pity makes you despise yourself. I had a wee, splashed water on my face in case Hugo was lurking and set off home.
     
    Dad was at football. Mum was off out. As soon as she left, I went up into the loft to get the rucksack I used for my Duke of Edinburgh Award. When I’d packed the bare essentials, I left it in the lean-to out the back. I wrote an overly dramatic note saying I was going to stay with a girl I’d met at the Cambridge interviews because I needed ‘some space’. I put it under my pillow,ready for the morning. Last of all, I committed social-media suicide, deleting all my accounts on everything.
    There’d been altogether too much thinking.
    First thing Friday, I was off.

22
    Despite the enormity of what I was about to do, I made myself behave exactly as normal. The trick was not to think, just act. Quick goodbye to Dad, short conversation with Mum – without meeting her eye, school suit on – but soon to be replaced by jeans. Usual last-minute bolt up the stairs to fetch something I’d forgotten – this time it was the letter, which I put on my pillow.
    I nipped round the back of the house, got my rucksack and walked to the roundabout, hoping no one I knew would see me before I got a lift. My wish was granted – as soon as I stuck out my thumb a red Golf stopped. It was a youngish bloke going to Bedford. Suited me. I told him I had an interview. Seemed more sensible than telling him I was on the run. Not that I intended to run anywhere. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. My horizon pretty much stopped at the date I’d chosen for London to go kaboom! My grandma’s birthday – or thereabouts. Details like dates of birth, addresses, times were pretty fluid in the mountain village. Maybe I’d go back there … when it was all over.
    As we joined the A5, he sped up. I had a sudden crazy death wish. If we crashed, I wouldn’t have to be the one to take a stand. Mum and Dad could grieve for me and then carry on with their little lives. It would be easier all round …
    Safely in Bedford, I changed out of my suit and dumped my phone – turned off, of course – in an industrial wheelie bin, so I couldn’t be found using the GPS. I kept the one I’d bought when I became Angel in case I needed to make a call. I bought a panini and made myself eat it in the hope that it would settle my stomach – which it did.
    The fear was there, but rather than crippling me, I felt alive.
    The journey went better than I could have expected. A train to Cambridge, two more lifts, lots of small talk and a bus, and I was in Fakenham, Norfolk. I bought enough food for a couple of days and enough make-up for a beauty pageant, and then walked the half a mile along the lonely road to the house we’d stayed in. Not one car, tractor, van or bicycle passed me. A good omen.
    I crept around the outside of the house first to make sure there hadn’t been a last-minute booking. Nope. Deserted.
    The code for the key safe hadn’t changed. The alarm was off, as expected – the housekeeper had told me she didn’t like messing with it.
    I dumped my bags, checked the Wi-Fi was still connected – yes – and then collapsed on the sofa.
    Mum and Dad wouldn’t start to worry until Sunday evening, when I didn’t arrive home. If they called the police, no one would do anything. Every year 140,000 teenagers go missing, that’s 383 every day. I would be a statistic. Full stop. When they got round to