Stolen (17 page)

Adam had used a recipe for a pudding he’d never tried before and it had some very odd-sounding ingredients. He asked David whether he would like to try it, or go for the safer option of fresh fruit.

‘I’ll try anything once, except incest and Morris dancing,’ David responded, and Adam and Simon roared with laughter.

‘I can’t claim that as my own, it’s an Oscar Wilde,’ David admitted with an honesty which pleased the other two still more.

‘He’s great,’ Adam whispered when David went off to the bathroom while they were having coffee. ‘And we can see you really like him too, so at least one thing in your life has some promise.’

‘More than one, I’ve got you two again,’ she replied with a wide smile. ‘And I’ve got a feeling everything’s going to come back to me very soon, the baddies will be punished and I can get back to work and normality.’

On the Tuesday, Scott popped in to see Lotte on his day off.

‘Dale was hoping she could get the day off too, but Marisa wouldn’t wear it,’ he explained. ‘In fact she isn’t getting any free day this week. Marisa is making her pay for other time she’s had off.’

‘When she came to the hospital?’ Lotte asked.

Scott nodded. ‘She’s got it in for Dale,’ he said glumly. ‘I don’t know what her grievance is but she’s always picking on her. I tried to talk to Marisa about it once, but I got nowhere.’

‘She probably fancies you,’ Lotte suggested, ‘and thinks you’ve got a thing for Dale.’

‘She’s a good friend, that’s all,’ Scott said.

‘I don’t suppose she believes that’s all it is,’ Lotte laughed. ‘Besides, Dale’s gorgeous, good at her job and probably capable of running Marchwood Spa. That’s enough reason for the woman to resent her.’

‘You were always good at seeing the whole picture,’ Scott said thoughtfully. ‘You are a great peacemaker too. When all this is over and you start thinking about working again, it would be fantastic if you’d come to Marchwood.’

‘I doubt Marisa would welcome me,’ Lotte laughed. ‘She’d think I was another member of your harem, and that Dale would be even more threatening to her with an ally in tow.’

‘Could you also be thinking you don’t want to work long hours because of a new man on the horizon?’ Scott raised one blond eyebrow quizzically.

Lotte giggled and blushed. ‘Do you mean David? I hardly know him.’

‘You’ve given the game away with that blush,’ Scott teased her. ‘My heart is broken now, I had such high hopes for us two.’

Lotte laughed. One of the best parts of regaining memories of both him and Dale was to find how much she loved them both. If she could pick her own brother and sister, they would be the ones she’d choose.

‘That’s her.’ The older man at the wheel of the stationary blue transit van pointed to the dark-haired girl wearing white jeans and a red tee-shirt coming out of the drive of Marchwood Manor and going towards the bus stop. ‘Nice tits and bum. Even better looking than the photo we’ve been given too.’

It was Wednesday morning, eleven days since Lotte had been released from hospital. ‘How do we know she’s going to visit the blonde one?’ his younger companion asked.

‘We don’t, but the boss is sure she’ll go there as it’s her first day off since the blonde came out of hospital.’

The younger man chewed on his nails. ‘I don’t mind passing on the info where the girl is staying, but I don’t like the idea of snatching her,’ he admitted.

Bill glanced sideways at the younger man, a little surprised at his reluctance. He knew Alex had done worse things in the past than just bundling a girl into a van, and as he had an expensive drug habit he would be a fool to pass up earning a grand for something so easy.

Bill was thirty-eight. He’d been released from prison just six months ago and he needed some money to get over to Spain. He had a job lined up there as security officer in a night club and it was a chance to start out fresh. He neither knew nor cared what they wanted the blonde girl for, that wasn’t his problem; all he had to do was deliver her. The first part of that was finding out where she was.

‘It’ll be a doddle,’ Bill said, then, seeing the bus coming along behind him, he turned on the ignition and prepared to follow once the dark girl was on it. ‘But don’t you go yellow-bellied on me if we have a chance to get her later today. I need that money.’

‘I won’t back out, I can’t afford to,’ Alex said as he watched the girl get on to the bus. He was twenty-eight, his girl had left him, his family didn’t want to know him any more, and he was in danger of being evicted from his flat. He wanted to go into rehab and try to get straight. His life was a wreck, but a grand would straighten it out.

Once on the bus, Dale busied herself sending texts to her sister, brothers and a few friends on the ride into Brighton. She wished her parents would join the twenty-first century and get a mobile phone, but they refused, saying they couldn’t see the point when they had a perfectly good land line. This meant Dale had to phone them from the hotel call box on Sundays, a nuisance because she liked to go out to the pub on Sundays and they always got ratty if she forgot to ring. Texts were her favourite way of keeping in touch; in just a few words she could confirm she was alive and well and thinking about them without the need for small talk.

She was looking forward to spending the day with Lotte. Last Wednesday her day off had been cancelled by Marisa because a large group of ladies had booked into the spa for the day, and the other beauticians couldn’t manage without Dale. Marisa pointed out that as she’d had such a lot of time off because of Lotte, it was about time she made it up.

She’d been over to see Lotte with Scott in the evening on three occasions. But Simon and Adam were always there, and they got on her nerves talking about people she didn’t know. It was like they wanted Lotte all to themselves, and didn’t think anyone else mattered to her. Then there was David. He hadn’t visited while Dale had been there, but Lotte always mentioned him. That made her a bit jealous too, even though she knew she was being mean-spirited.

Poor Lotte still hadn’t remembered the rape in Ushuaia, or anything about what happened when she left the cruise ship, and she was frantic about her baby, even though she remembered nothing of its birth.

DI Bryan had followed up hundreds of claims from the public that they’d seen Lotte in the last year, and even more from people who reported hearing a baby cry, or had seen a woman with a baby who they felt was acting suspiciously. But every such claim turned out to be a dead end. He had told Dale that he felt it was extremely unlikely the baby was alive.

All the boatyards and marinas right along the south coast had been checked out. There had been fingertip searches of several deserted premises Lotte could’ve been held in, and raids on houses following information received. But as time went on with no new evidence, or Lotte regaining her memory about where she’d been and with whom, Bryan feared that her captor must have slipped out of the country.

Dale wondered too how much longer Lotte would have to stay holed up in the flat. She was surprised she wasn’t going stir crazy, especially now the weather had turned so nice. But then, Lotte had always been much more patient than her.

Dale intended to try to make Lotte forget it all for today. In her basket she had a lasagne the chef at Marchwood had made for her, a bottle of wine from Frankie and some chocolates from Michelle and Rosie. Even Marisa had unbent enough to send some nice hand cream and her good wishes.

Bryan had asked Dale several times whether she thought Lotte had remembered being raped in South America but just hadn’t said anything. Dale thought it extremely unlikely, for though Lotte had never been one to talk about her own problems, the rape had been such a serious event that she surely would have said something.

Dale got the idea Bryan hoped she’d prompt Lotte to remember it, and that way the rest of her memories might come back too. Dale couldn’t decide whether it was less horrific to be told about it, or to have the memory come back all on its own.

‘Quick! Get out here and follow her,’ Bill said, pulling over to the kerb in the centre of Brighton. The dark girl had just got off the bus and now she was crossing the road. Bill felt she was heading for the Lanes and he couldn’t follow her there in the van. ‘Stay close by wherever she goes in, then ring me. I’ll join you there.’

‘I ain’t got much credit on my phone,’ Alex said.

‘Text me then,’ Bill said irritably. ‘I’ll follow you as best I can, I won’t be far away.’

Alex loped off after Dale, six feet two and skinny as a rake, with lank brown hair in need of a cut and a grubby, worn denim jacket and even more worn jeans. Bill hoped he wouldn’t make it so obvious he was following her that she’d sense it. He didn’t appear to be the sharpest knife in the box; he had been begging on the streets until he was recruited for this.

Dale went through the routine of ringing the doorbell five times as Simon had insisted, then pulled a face at the CCTV camera for good measure.

She heard Lotte giggling as she came down the hall. ‘Who goes there? Friend or foe?’ she called out.

‘Only me from over the sea, said Barnacle Bill the sailor,’ Dale sang back through the letterbox.

‘Scott used to sing that when he knocked on our cabin door!’ Lotte said jubilantly as she opened the door. She flung her arms around Dale’s neck. ‘It’s weird how memories come back just when you least expect them.’

Dale stepped inside, and Lotte shut the door and bolted it. ‘The postman rang the bell this morning. I was fairly certain he was the real thing, I could see him clearly on the camera and his hands were full of mail. But I didn’t dare open the door, just in case. I felt really silly when he left a card to say he had a parcel for Adam, and now he’ll have to go and collect it from the depot.’

‘Better safe than sorry,’ Dale said. ‘Now, are you going to make me some coffee?’

She was so relieved to see Lotte looking much like her old self again. She wore jeans cut off just below the knee, and a turquoise tee-shirt. She’d put on a couple of pounds since leaving hospital, the bruises and all the flakiness had gone from her face, her new short haircut suited her, and if she could only go out in the sun to get some colour in her cheeks again, no one would guess what she’d been through.

‘How are you doing? The true story,’ Dale asked as they went into the kitchen together.

Lotte paused before putting the kettle on. ‘I’m good, well, I’m not sick or cracking up. But I’m finding it hard to deal with this blank chunk of my life. Imagining stuff is probably worse than facing reality, especially about the baby. I keep expecting to feel something inside me, something that will convince me I really did have one. But I suppose that won’t happen until I remember.’

Dale hugged her silently. She had no idea what to say. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to be in her friend’s shoes.

*

It was so good to be back together again without anyone else butting in. They sat cross-legged, facing each other at either end of the sofa, just the way they used to sit on one of the bunks in their cabin, and talked about the first couple of weeks on the cruise.

‘I thought you were a real airhead the first time I saw you,’ Dale admitted.

‘And I thought you were a conceited bully,’ Lotte retorted.

‘But I began to like you late on the first night when you handed me a glass of water as I got into the top bunk and said it would stop me having a hangover the next day. My mother used to do that and it felt really nice,’ Dale admitted.

‘And I began to like you when you said “Sweet dreams” in the dark. I didn’t feel quite so alone,’ Lotte said.

‘We were an unlikely partnership,’ Dale mused. ‘Me so untidy, flinging clothes about round the cabin, and you liking everything in its place.’

‘The other girls betted we wouldn’t last a week without a cat fight,’ Lotte laughed. ‘Yet we never did fall out, did we?’

‘Well, there was the time in Valparaiso when you fancied that sailor off another cruise ship,’ Dale reminded her. ‘You were legless and he was going to take you off to a hotel.’

‘Yeah, you stopped me going,’ Lotte said, putting on a mock wounded expression. ‘I was savage. I was sure he was going to be the love of my life.’

‘You slapped me round the face and said I was jealous,’ Dale reminded her. ‘If you’d met him when you were sober you wouldn’t have even looked at him. He was a medallion man, all cock and no brains, and fancied himself rotten. He accused me of being a lesbian.’

Lotte giggled. ‘I have to admit I saw him again the next morning and you were right – he was awful. He swaggered like Popeye, he’d done so much weight training he couldn’t put his arms down to his sides, and he thought he was God’s gift to womankind.’

Dale kept on reminding Lotte of different incidents, gradually working her way through the year towards Christmas. There were people and events Lotte didn’t remember, but then there were others she recalled which Dale had forgotten.

They laughed so much, prompting each other with tales of difficult clients in the salon and some of their stranger workmates.

‘Remember that girl on the housekeeping team who stripped off in the bar when she was drunk?’ Lotte giggled. ‘She was so fat and hairy we all wanted to die with embarrassment. She must’ve wanted to top herself the next day when her friends told her what she’d done.’

‘She came to me for waxing a day or two after, but I didn’t remind her,’ Dale said with a smile. ‘God knows I’ve done my share of cringe-worthy things when I’ve been drunk. I wouldn’t want anyone reminding me of them.’

They heated up the lasagne later and opened the bottle of wine. ‘I shall get sleepy,’ Lotte warned Dale. ‘It always makes me like that if I drink during the day.’

‘Well, that’s OK, I’ve got to get the bus back at four, there isn’t a later one,’ Dale said. ‘You are supposed to have a rest in the afternoon anyway.’

Around half past two Lotte went off to the bathroom and came back a few minutes later looking worried. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any Tampax on you?’ she asked Dale. ‘I’ve just come on unexpectedly. I hadn’t thought about that happening so I’ve got nothing.’