Disappeared, page 21
And to have that unconditional support and wisdom and humour ripped away so soon, just when she felt it had saved her as much as meeting Lily had – the sense of loss steamrollered into her. She felt the breath slam from her, leaving her winded and barely able to stay upright. She wanted to fall to her knees and scream.
But she did not, because that was not what Dilys needed now. No, now wasn’t the time to give in, not yet.
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking Dilys’s hand. ‘Thank you!’ Dilys’s eyelids fluttered and she seemed to smile before drifting back to where she was beginning to journey. There was nothing more Cerys could say right then. She had a job to do, as a daughter, and she held Dilys’s hand and talked softly to her about the farm and the sheep. The mundane and beautiful things of the farm and the hills. Rhys glanced in on them and Lily appeared in the doorway at one point. Cerys shook her head at her because she could tell from Lily’s face that she would break down if she came in and that wasn’t how Dilys wanted to go.
So she held her hand and talked about the beauty of the changing season and the moods of the hill, until the rattle grew stronger and louder. And then it eventually stopped entirely, and the dog froze and then let out a low mournful howl.
52
It was over, that little dream she’d had, her space carved out in time here at Bryn Terrin. All of that had ended.
Cerys lay in bed in the cottage the day after they’d lost Dilys, thinking of the letter. She’d honour her wishes and contact the lawyer and make sure she was buried as she wished.
And then what for her?
She still didn’t know the answer to that and she’d been too busy dealing with the practicalities yesterday to think about it until now. She’d been acting like this could last forever, like she could turn it into some kind of new life and of course that couldn’t happen.
You still could, a voice inside said. It sounded strangely like a whisper from Dilys, but that was just the fancy of grief. Her last confidante torn away and she felt the loss like a hole punched through her. She felt as if that was visible to the world, as if they could see through that great gaping void in her that Dilys had helped to patch up for a short time. Too short. And she was alone again. She couldn’t survive that.
Now it was yawning open again – the hole of who she was now she was no longer a mother, no longer a daughter.
She was nothing.
She didn’t even have tears to cry. She was empty of them. This grief was a hollow, cold thing, an Arctic desert. She could feel its chill right down into the tips of her fingers, freezing her.
Killing her.
There it was waiting and laughing softly, the blackness. It always knew it would be back and she had no defences against it. All of that tenuous hope was exposed now as the nonsensical ramblings of a middle-aged woman who had lost the plot. Stupid bitch. It was always coming for her and she was an idiot to think anything else. And this time, as it folded her into its deathly embrace, there would be no escape.
She could feel its hands on her now.
‘I’m sorry, Katie,’ she whispered into the night. ‘I think I nearly made it back but I couldn’t quite do it. I’ll leave a note this time so you understand I love you. And Matt and Alex.’ She almost said Gavin, but that was too bitter a pill.
It would take her under soon and then she wouldn’t be herself again. Best to write the note while she still had some semblance of who she was remaining. She would hang in there until the funeral because that was what she did, but she also knew watching Dilys laid under the earth would be the final nail in her own coffin. The grief would give her back to the blackness, and that’s why it was grinning at her now. She knew how this played out. She’d been here before, after all.
She dragged herself out of bed to get a paper and pen to prepare a letter to her daughter. Lily didn’t need her now. She had Rhys and she would be fine. It had all only ever been a delay. She’d known that at the start of this. Fool to think that had changed.
As she went to the drawer in the kitchen to see if she could find something to write on, she noticed headlights coming up the farm track towards the house. She expected the vehicle to turn off at the fork up to the next farm, but it didn’t. It continued heading to Bryn Terrin and stopped at the farm gate. Cerys peered through the window as the engine was turned off and the lights killed. A figure got out of the car. She could just about make that out. She felt the soft brush of fur on her legs as Kip came to stand beside her. The dog was tense and listening intently.
She strained her eyes to see through the gloom and the figure appeared to turn on a small light. A torch or a phone, she wasn’t sure.
As soon as the hand went on the gate, Kip let out a flurry of barking and flew at the door, scrabbling to get out, snarling. She saw the figure check but then the gate swung open and the light came towards the cottage.
It wasn’t Rhys. He would have driven straight in and Kip might have set up some woofs to alert her, but not like this. She regretted that the shotgun was still in the farmhouse.
She heard Lily’s door open and her call out ‘What’s going on?’ over the dog’s barking.
‘There’s somebody outside,’ Cerys called back, trying to keep her voice low but struggling to be heard over the dog.
Lily paused to check she’d heard correctly and then banged the light on. Cerys saw the terror in her eyes. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t see.’
And then there was a thunderous banging on the door. Not just knocking; Cerys would have sworn it was kicked too. Lily shrank back against the wall.
Cerys went to the door and grabbed Kip’s collar and hauled him back. ‘Who’s out there?’ she shouted. ‘Watch out or I’ll let the dog out on you!’
There was a second of silence, broken only by Kip’s frantic snarls.
‘Who the hell are you?’ came the shouted reply in an unfamiliar voice. ‘And where’s my bloody wife?’
Cerys turned to Lily, who fled into Drew’s room and slammed the door shut behind her.
53
Cerys looked the man up and down. ‘And who the hell are you?’ she said with icy politeness. He was much older than Lily. Cerys wasn’t old enough to be his mother, but she was certainly old enough to take no crap from him. He was around forty, she estimated, and lean with a face she could imagine some women finding very attractive. It did nothing for her. There was no warmth or kindness in those eyes.
But some women looked for that bad-boy edge and he had that in bucket-loads. Though at his age, she thought scornfully, he should have well grown out of that, but she supposed his type never did.
She could imagine the casual cruelty he could inflict without any conscience at all.
He paused at the chill in her tone. She made it very clear she wasn’t fazed by him in the slightest and Kip, still struggling against his restraining collar, helpfully snarled and showed his teeth to emphasise this point.
‘I’m Danny,’ he said, with a smile that didn’t meet those rather unpleasant blue eyes. ‘I’m Drew’s father, and Kayleigh’s husband.’
She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Well, then you need to keep your voice down and your temper in check! And have some respect for the fact that at this time of night, your daughter is well asleep in her bed, and unless you are some kind of lunatic, or psychopath—’ she paused for effect ‘—you’ll not want to disturb her now and frighten her half to death with the racket you’ve just made.’
He was fuming. He couldn’t hide that, though he appeared to try. He gave her that smile again, that was more wolfish than appeasing and she wondered if he knew that. ‘I haven’t seen my daughter in months. I’ve missed her. I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset her but it has been very hard for me, very hard. You obviously know she’s been taken from me. You must appreciate how worried I’ve been. It’s difficult to keep a proportionate reaction after all this time.’
Oh, she could see now why Lily feared him so much. She could imagine how some people believed the act. Even now, raging inside, he was trying to turn on the thing that he would call charm. Unfortunately for him, Cerys had been around enough to have seen his type, even amongst some of Gavin’s business contacts. The men with the slightly loud voices and the over-jovial bonhomie, with the little wives in the background who never looked quite settled, always thought of as having nervous dispositions. She’d come to understand what that façade meant when she saw it. And this was a particularly nasty variant standing in front of her, although who indeed knew what those other women endured behind closed doors.
The key thing now was to get rid of him. They were up here alone and Lily was cowering in a room with Drew. He’d be less threatening in daylight when the two women weren’t in nightclothes. She smiled politely, in control. She already sensed he wasn’t quite so good at handling women like her. ‘Of course, but really, it’s the middle of the night and you’ve arrived without warning, making an enormous commotion. And now is really not the time to be having these conversations. I suggest you come back tomorrow when people are actually dressed.’ She allowed an aspect of her annoyance to show there. It would do no harm. ‘No matter what has happened, it’s important to deal with these things in a civilised manner, especially where children are involved.’
He snarled like the dog. ‘What? So she can leg it in the night again? I’ve been to court, you know. A judge has said she has to return Drew to my care. All I have to do is call the police and they’ll come and take her.’
She regarded him steadily. ‘I think you may find that if this is the approach you take, it’s no wonder she “legged it in the night”, as you put it, last time. You may want to rethink. And if what you have said is true, then go on and call the police.’ Not for nothing had she dealt with Gavin’s stroppy suppliers and retailers in those unregarded stints where she’d supported the business too before he’d been able to get a full office staff compliment.
Lily couldn’t stop shaking. Even the sound of his voice, never mind what he said, the way he’d booted the door, set up that chain of terror inside her that made her disintegrate.
How had he found her? How?
She looked round for her phone but it was back in her bedroom. Incredibly, though Drew had turned over and muttered restlessly, she was still asleep despite the noise outside.
Lily could hear low voices outside but not what they were saying. But even though she couldn’t make out the words, she recognised Danny’s as one of them. She’d heard those quietly menacing tones so many times that they haunted every dream and poisoned every memory. They were lodged into her bones. A visceral reflex of fear whenever she heard them, no matter what she’d done or not done. Even his voice flooded her with adrenalin. Her heart pounded as her body prepared itself for flight. But there was nowhere to run and no escape here.
And that bloody phone was in the other room.
Who had told him where she was?
She strained her ears at the door to hear. The voices were low and quiet as if far away now and she realised Cerys was outside. She could hear Kip’s low, continual snarl, which made it harder still to make out any words.
She took a deep breath. Think, think …
And then she caught a few of Danny’s words: ‘What? So she can leg it in the night again? I’ve been to court, you know. A judge has said she has to return Drew.’
Had he got a court order yet? Because if he had …
Oh God, the thought made her sick beyond bearing. If he had the right to take Drew with him …
She was frozen, deaf for a second to Cerys’s response, until something of what she said registered, ‘Call the police.’
But he said he had a court order. That meant they’d take Drew straight away. Rhys said that’s not how it worked, and Danny wouldn’t be believed. Too late for that though – in her absence, he’d got a judge to believe him. He was plausible like that and Cerys and Rhys didn’t know him, or what he was capable of. She’d seen people fall for his lies over and over again. She couldn’t risk thinking that it would be different this time.
By the time they did believe her anyway – even if she could convince them – he’d already have Drew back. That’s what that judgement meant. He could just take her now. She couldn’t let that happen to Drew, couldn’t lose her and couldn’t let her be taken from her mummy. She’d do anything to stop that. She already had and she’d keep on until she won.
He would not take her little girl. No way.
Danny wavered between exploding with fury at the attitude of the woman in front of him – Cerys had no doubt at all that he had issues with being spoken to like this by a woman, because that was written all over him – and deflating and retreating because she was, of course, absolutely right. If he bullied his way past her and into a house he wasn’t invited into, she would have every right to call the police and have him removed. And that would do his case no good in the courts. He needed to at least appear to be the reasonable one in the marriage. He knew that and so did she.
In the end, he chose the latter. He nodded slowly, but it wasn’t without an air of menace, and nor was that tight, lupine smile. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ he said, and then shouted a threat to Lily that made Cerys slam the door behind him.
He sat in the car for a while before noisily reversing it back down the track, tyres screeching against the rough surface.
‘Well, you really are a charmer,’ she breathed as she watched him go.
Lily heard Danny’s voice call out: ‘I’m coming back for you in the morning, Kayleigh, you be sure of that! And I’m taking Drew with me.’
And then the door closed and the dog’s snarling quietened.
She had to leave. She had to get out of here now, before he came back. Because when he did, he would take Drew, he would take her, and there would be nothing left of Lily when he did that.
And she was gripped with terror at what he might do to Drew when she wasn’t there. If Drew cried, or annoyed him, and he didn’t have his usual punchbag around to take his frustrations out on.
She had to run.
54
When she was sure he was well clear, Cerys went into Drew’s room. Lily was sitting beside the bed, curled in a ball. Cerys couldn’t see her clearly in the dark and didn’t want to disturb the little girl by turning the light on.
‘I told him to go,’ she said softly. ‘Are you okay?’
‘He’ll be back,’ Lily replied after a moment.
‘Yes, I think he will, but we have time to plan for that so don’t worry about it now. Go back to bed and try to sleep.’
Lily got up from the floor and kissed her daughter gently so as not to wake her, and went back to the bedroom. Cerys knew she’d struggle to get any sleep now but she needed her to try because she needed to think how they were going to get out of this without the distraction of Lily panicking.
As she would be, of course, and Cerys could clearly see why now. He was a nasty piece of work, as her mother would say, dressed up as something better.
She made Lily the hot chocolate and took it through. She was sitting up in the bed and Cerys could see her shaking. ‘Drink that and try to get some sleep,’ she said. ‘We’ll work out how to deal with him, don’t worry.’ She wished Rhys had been here, not to confront Danny as that would probably have made everything far worse, but at least to be with Lily now. He was in A&E tonight though and there was nothing he could do to swap out at this time.
She patted Lily’s arm. ‘We’ll sort it out. Sleep now.’
Lily didn’t answer but Cerys needed to think and Lily did need to sleep so she left in the hope that the girl might calm down and get some rest. She wasn’t wildly optimistic about that but she had to hope.
She herself lay awake trying to work out how they should manage this now. They were going to need a lawyer if he wanted custody but how would they afford that? Lily’s wages wouldn’t cover it and she had no money of her own. It had been subsistence levels and accommodation for her job on the farm and, now Dilys was gone, she didn’t have a wage coming in. It would take months to sort Dilys’s estate out and they didn’t have that kind of time. Cerys really doubted he had got a court order – she was almost sure he was bluffing – but Lily wouldn’t see it like that. Thankfully she mustn’t have heard him or she would have said something by now. Best not to say anything to her until Cerys had an answer to the problem.
Rhys might help but she didn’t really want to put him and Lily in that position when they were so new together. It seemed to be going so well, but she didn’t want either of them to feel trapped.
So really there was only one solution and one source of money. It was a huge risk. Huge. In fact, it was more than a risk. It was the end of the line for her and there would be no coming back from it, but Lily needed her.
She got up as quietly as possible and exited the cottage silently. Creeping across the cobbles to the farmhouse, shivering inside the coat she’d shrugged on over her nightdress, she let herself into the farmhouse.
And then she made a phone call.
55
Lily made her move after first light when Cerys had gone to the sheep. Cerys had looked in on her and told her to lock the door and she’d be as quick as possible and then she’d gone off.
As soon as Cerys was safely out of sight, she packed a sleepy Drew in the car and headed off down the track away from the farm. She had no plan. All night she’d been thinking about this but there was no solution other than to run. She couldn’t go back to him, not now. Not when she knew what a better life was. And he wouldn’t stop, he would keep coming.
She couldn’t go to Rhys because she knew what Danny was capable of. She couldn’t put Rhys in that situation. Even if he fought shy of physical revenge, he’d make some kind of sly allegation that could cost Rhys professionally and she wasn’t going to let that happen.
Nor could she pull Cerys into her mess. Cerys would try to talk her out of it. She would think they could fight it, and maybe they could if he didn’t have that order. But Lily was out of time and he was not separating them from each other – this was the only way she could keep Drew safe now.
But she did not, because that was not what Dilys needed now. No, now wasn’t the time to give in, not yet.
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking Dilys’s hand. ‘Thank you!’ Dilys’s eyelids fluttered and she seemed to smile before drifting back to where she was beginning to journey. There was nothing more Cerys could say right then. She had a job to do, as a daughter, and she held Dilys’s hand and talked softly to her about the farm and the sheep. The mundane and beautiful things of the farm and the hills. Rhys glanced in on them and Lily appeared in the doorway at one point. Cerys shook her head at her because she could tell from Lily’s face that she would break down if she came in and that wasn’t how Dilys wanted to go.
So she held her hand and talked about the beauty of the changing season and the moods of the hill, until the rattle grew stronger and louder. And then it eventually stopped entirely, and the dog froze and then let out a low mournful howl.
52
It was over, that little dream she’d had, her space carved out in time here at Bryn Terrin. All of that had ended.
Cerys lay in bed in the cottage the day after they’d lost Dilys, thinking of the letter. She’d honour her wishes and contact the lawyer and make sure she was buried as she wished.
And then what for her?
She still didn’t know the answer to that and she’d been too busy dealing with the practicalities yesterday to think about it until now. She’d been acting like this could last forever, like she could turn it into some kind of new life and of course that couldn’t happen.
You still could, a voice inside said. It sounded strangely like a whisper from Dilys, but that was just the fancy of grief. Her last confidante torn away and she felt the loss like a hole punched through her. She felt as if that was visible to the world, as if they could see through that great gaping void in her that Dilys had helped to patch up for a short time. Too short. And she was alone again. She couldn’t survive that.
Now it was yawning open again – the hole of who she was now she was no longer a mother, no longer a daughter.
She was nothing.
She didn’t even have tears to cry. She was empty of them. This grief was a hollow, cold thing, an Arctic desert. She could feel its chill right down into the tips of her fingers, freezing her.
Killing her.
There it was waiting and laughing softly, the blackness. It always knew it would be back and she had no defences against it. All of that tenuous hope was exposed now as the nonsensical ramblings of a middle-aged woman who had lost the plot. Stupid bitch. It was always coming for her and she was an idiot to think anything else. And this time, as it folded her into its deathly embrace, there would be no escape.
She could feel its hands on her now.
‘I’m sorry, Katie,’ she whispered into the night. ‘I think I nearly made it back but I couldn’t quite do it. I’ll leave a note this time so you understand I love you. And Matt and Alex.’ She almost said Gavin, but that was too bitter a pill.
It would take her under soon and then she wouldn’t be herself again. Best to write the note while she still had some semblance of who she was remaining. She would hang in there until the funeral because that was what she did, but she also knew watching Dilys laid under the earth would be the final nail in her own coffin. The grief would give her back to the blackness, and that’s why it was grinning at her now. She knew how this played out. She’d been here before, after all.
She dragged herself out of bed to get a paper and pen to prepare a letter to her daughter. Lily didn’t need her now. She had Rhys and she would be fine. It had all only ever been a delay. She’d known that at the start of this. Fool to think that had changed.
As she went to the drawer in the kitchen to see if she could find something to write on, she noticed headlights coming up the farm track towards the house. She expected the vehicle to turn off at the fork up to the next farm, but it didn’t. It continued heading to Bryn Terrin and stopped at the farm gate. Cerys peered through the window as the engine was turned off and the lights killed. A figure got out of the car. She could just about make that out. She felt the soft brush of fur on her legs as Kip came to stand beside her. The dog was tense and listening intently.
She strained her eyes to see through the gloom and the figure appeared to turn on a small light. A torch or a phone, she wasn’t sure.
As soon as the hand went on the gate, Kip let out a flurry of barking and flew at the door, scrabbling to get out, snarling. She saw the figure check but then the gate swung open and the light came towards the cottage.
It wasn’t Rhys. He would have driven straight in and Kip might have set up some woofs to alert her, but not like this. She regretted that the shotgun was still in the farmhouse.
She heard Lily’s door open and her call out ‘What’s going on?’ over the dog’s barking.
‘There’s somebody outside,’ Cerys called back, trying to keep her voice low but struggling to be heard over the dog.
Lily paused to check she’d heard correctly and then banged the light on. Cerys saw the terror in her eyes. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t see.’
And then there was a thunderous banging on the door. Not just knocking; Cerys would have sworn it was kicked too. Lily shrank back against the wall.
Cerys went to the door and grabbed Kip’s collar and hauled him back. ‘Who’s out there?’ she shouted. ‘Watch out or I’ll let the dog out on you!’
There was a second of silence, broken only by Kip’s frantic snarls.
‘Who the hell are you?’ came the shouted reply in an unfamiliar voice. ‘And where’s my bloody wife?’
Cerys turned to Lily, who fled into Drew’s room and slammed the door shut behind her.
53
Cerys looked the man up and down. ‘And who the hell are you?’ she said with icy politeness. He was much older than Lily. Cerys wasn’t old enough to be his mother, but she was certainly old enough to take no crap from him. He was around forty, she estimated, and lean with a face she could imagine some women finding very attractive. It did nothing for her. There was no warmth or kindness in those eyes.
But some women looked for that bad-boy edge and he had that in bucket-loads. Though at his age, she thought scornfully, he should have well grown out of that, but she supposed his type never did.
She could imagine the casual cruelty he could inflict without any conscience at all.
He paused at the chill in her tone. She made it very clear she wasn’t fazed by him in the slightest and Kip, still struggling against his restraining collar, helpfully snarled and showed his teeth to emphasise this point.
‘I’m Danny,’ he said, with a smile that didn’t meet those rather unpleasant blue eyes. ‘I’m Drew’s father, and Kayleigh’s husband.’
She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Well, then you need to keep your voice down and your temper in check! And have some respect for the fact that at this time of night, your daughter is well asleep in her bed, and unless you are some kind of lunatic, or psychopath—’ she paused for effect ‘—you’ll not want to disturb her now and frighten her half to death with the racket you’ve just made.’
He was fuming. He couldn’t hide that, though he appeared to try. He gave her that smile again, that was more wolfish than appeasing and she wondered if he knew that. ‘I haven’t seen my daughter in months. I’ve missed her. I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset her but it has been very hard for me, very hard. You obviously know she’s been taken from me. You must appreciate how worried I’ve been. It’s difficult to keep a proportionate reaction after all this time.’
Oh, she could see now why Lily feared him so much. She could imagine how some people believed the act. Even now, raging inside, he was trying to turn on the thing that he would call charm. Unfortunately for him, Cerys had been around enough to have seen his type, even amongst some of Gavin’s business contacts. The men with the slightly loud voices and the over-jovial bonhomie, with the little wives in the background who never looked quite settled, always thought of as having nervous dispositions. She’d come to understand what that façade meant when she saw it. And this was a particularly nasty variant standing in front of her, although who indeed knew what those other women endured behind closed doors.
The key thing now was to get rid of him. They were up here alone and Lily was cowering in a room with Drew. He’d be less threatening in daylight when the two women weren’t in nightclothes. She smiled politely, in control. She already sensed he wasn’t quite so good at handling women like her. ‘Of course, but really, it’s the middle of the night and you’ve arrived without warning, making an enormous commotion. And now is really not the time to be having these conversations. I suggest you come back tomorrow when people are actually dressed.’ She allowed an aspect of her annoyance to show there. It would do no harm. ‘No matter what has happened, it’s important to deal with these things in a civilised manner, especially where children are involved.’
He snarled like the dog. ‘What? So she can leg it in the night again? I’ve been to court, you know. A judge has said she has to return Drew to my care. All I have to do is call the police and they’ll come and take her.’
She regarded him steadily. ‘I think you may find that if this is the approach you take, it’s no wonder she “legged it in the night”, as you put it, last time. You may want to rethink. And if what you have said is true, then go on and call the police.’ Not for nothing had she dealt with Gavin’s stroppy suppliers and retailers in those unregarded stints where she’d supported the business too before he’d been able to get a full office staff compliment.
Lily couldn’t stop shaking. Even the sound of his voice, never mind what he said, the way he’d booted the door, set up that chain of terror inside her that made her disintegrate.
How had he found her? How?
She looked round for her phone but it was back in her bedroom. Incredibly, though Drew had turned over and muttered restlessly, she was still asleep despite the noise outside.
Lily could hear low voices outside but not what they were saying. But even though she couldn’t make out the words, she recognised Danny’s as one of them. She’d heard those quietly menacing tones so many times that they haunted every dream and poisoned every memory. They were lodged into her bones. A visceral reflex of fear whenever she heard them, no matter what she’d done or not done. Even his voice flooded her with adrenalin. Her heart pounded as her body prepared itself for flight. But there was nowhere to run and no escape here.
And that bloody phone was in the other room.
Who had told him where she was?
She strained her ears at the door to hear. The voices were low and quiet as if far away now and she realised Cerys was outside. She could hear Kip’s low, continual snarl, which made it harder still to make out any words.
She took a deep breath. Think, think …
And then she caught a few of Danny’s words: ‘What? So she can leg it in the night again? I’ve been to court, you know. A judge has said she has to return Drew.’
Had he got a court order yet? Because if he had …
Oh God, the thought made her sick beyond bearing. If he had the right to take Drew with him …
She was frozen, deaf for a second to Cerys’s response, until something of what she said registered, ‘Call the police.’
But he said he had a court order. That meant they’d take Drew straight away. Rhys said that’s not how it worked, and Danny wouldn’t be believed. Too late for that though – in her absence, he’d got a judge to believe him. He was plausible like that and Cerys and Rhys didn’t know him, or what he was capable of. She’d seen people fall for his lies over and over again. She couldn’t risk thinking that it would be different this time.
By the time they did believe her anyway – even if she could convince them – he’d already have Drew back. That’s what that judgement meant. He could just take her now. She couldn’t let that happen to Drew, couldn’t lose her and couldn’t let her be taken from her mummy. She’d do anything to stop that. She already had and she’d keep on until she won.
He would not take her little girl. No way.
Danny wavered between exploding with fury at the attitude of the woman in front of him – Cerys had no doubt at all that he had issues with being spoken to like this by a woman, because that was written all over him – and deflating and retreating because she was, of course, absolutely right. If he bullied his way past her and into a house he wasn’t invited into, she would have every right to call the police and have him removed. And that would do his case no good in the courts. He needed to at least appear to be the reasonable one in the marriage. He knew that and so did she.
In the end, he chose the latter. He nodded slowly, but it wasn’t without an air of menace, and nor was that tight, lupine smile. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ he said, and then shouted a threat to Lily that made Cerys slam the door behind him.
He sat in the car for a while before noisily reversing it back down the track, tyres screeching against the rough surface.
‘Well, you really are a charmer,’ she breathed as she watched him go.
Lily heard Danny’s voice call out: ‘I’m coming back for you in the morning, Kayleigh, you be sure of that! And I’m taking Drew with me.’
And then the door closed and the dog’s snarling quietened.
She had to leave. She had to get out of here now, before he came back. Because when he did, he would take Drew, he would take her, and there would be nothing left of Lily when he did that.
And she was gripped with terror at what he might do to Drew when she wasn’t there. If Drew cried, or annoyed him, and he didn’t have his usual punchbag around to take his frustrations out on.
She had to run.
54
When she was sure he was well clear, Cerys went into Drew’s room. Lily was sitting beside the bed, curled in a ball. Cerys couldn’t see her clearly in the dark and didn’t want to disturb the little girl by turning the light on.
‘I told him to go,’ she said softly. ‘Are you okay?’
‘He’ll be back,’ Lily replied after a moment.
‘Yes, I think he will, but we have time to plan for that so don’t worry about it now. Go back to bed and try to sleep.’
Lily got up from the floor and kissed her daughter gently so as not to wake her, and went back to the bedroom. Cerys knew she’d struggle to get any sleep now but she needed her to try because she needed to think how they were going to get out of this without the distraction of Lily panicking.
As she would be, of course, and Cerys could clearly see why now. He was a nasty piece of work, as her mother would say, dressed up as something better.
She made Lily the hot chocolate and took it through. She was sitting up in the bed and Cerys could see her shaking. ‘Drink that and try to get some sleep,’ she said. ‘We’ll work out how to deal with him, don’t worry.’ She wished Rhys had been here, not to confront Danny as that would probably have made everything far worse, but at least to be with Lily now. He was in A&E tonight though and there was nothing he could do to swap out at this time.
She patted Lily’s arm. ‘We’ll sort it out. Sleep now.’
Lily didn’t answer but Cerys needed to think and Lily did need to sleep so she left in the hope that the girl might calm down and get some rest. She wasn’t wildly optimistic about that but she had to hope.
She herself lay awake trying to work out how they should manage this now. They were going to need a lawyer if he wanted custody but how would they afford that? Lily’s wages wouldn’t cover it and she had no money of her own. It had been subsistence levels and accommodation for her job on the farm and, now Dilys was gone, she didn’t have a wage coming in. It would take months to sort Dilys’s estate out and they didn’t have that kind of time. Cerys really doubted he had got a court order – she was almost sure he was bluffing – but Lily wouldn’t see it like that. Thankfully she mustn’t have heard him or she would have said something by now. Best not to say anything to her until Cerys had an answer to the problem.
Rhys might help but she didn’t really want to put him and Lily in that position when they were so new together. It seemed to be going so well, but she didn’t want either of them to feel trapped.
So really there was only one solution and one source of money. It was a huge risk. Huge. In fact, it was more than a risk. It was the end of the line for her and there would be no coming back from it, but Lily needed her.
She got up as quietly as possible and exited the cottage silently. Creeping across the cobbles to the farmhouse, shivering inside the coat she’d shrugged on over her nightdress, she let herself into the farmhouse.
And then she made a phone call.
55
Lily made her move after first light when Cerys had gone to the sheep. Cerys had looked in on her and told her to lock the door and she’d be as quick as possible and then she’d gone off.
As soon as Cerys was safely out of sight, she packed a sleepy Drew in the car and headed off down the track away from the farm. She had no plan. All night she’d been thinking about this but there was no solution other than to run. She couldn’t go back to him, not now. Not when she knew what a better life was. And he wouldn’t stop, he would keep coming.
She couldn’t go to Rhys because she knew what Danny was capable of. She couldn’t put Rhys in that situation. Even if he fought shy of physical revenge, he’d make some kind of sly allegation that could cost Rhys professionally and she wasn’t going to let that happen.
Nor could she pull Cerys into her mess. Cerys would try to talk her out of it. She would think they could fight it, and maybe they could if he didn’t have that order. But Lily was out of time and he was not separating them from each other – this was the only way she could keep Drew safe now.
