The Call: A totally gripping thriller with a shocking twist by Kerry Wilkinson

Author:Kerry Wilkinson [Wilkinson, Kerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2024-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

Caitlin was waiting at the front door as Melody pulled onto her drive. It had taken Melody twenty minutes to follow Apple Maps’ route to the house, which was near the junction with the highway. If her phone hadn’t told her where to pull in, there was a good chance Melody would have missed the driveway. It was another massive house, probably five or six bedrooms, set back from the road, hidden by trees.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Caitlin said, as Melody headed up the stairs. Melody went to step around her but Caitlin didn’t move. ‘He’s out back if you want to head around the side but…’ She stopped and then added: ‘He’s with Liam and the boys in the pool. I managed to calm him down. I didn’t know whether to tell him you were coming.’

For an area in which there was little traffic, Melody had somehow managed to find a time of day in which every junction had involved waiting for someone else. She’d been thinking in fast-forward, even as she was forced to move at what felt like a deathly pace. From Evan missing, to memories of Shannon, to the discovery of Chloe – and now this.

‘I’d seen it on Facebook,’ Caitlin said. ‘Someone had posted on the local group about a missing British man. I can’t believe I did it but I didn’t put two and two together. I knew you were here on vacation and wondered if you all knew each other. I asked Sam if he knew the man – but didn’t realise it was his dad…’

It was such an obvious thing to have happened that Melody wasn’t sure how she’d not considered it. She wanted Sam to have a good time at a friend’s house and had somehow been oblivious to the fact that knowledge of Evan’s disappearance was out in the community. Constable Burgess had told her his image and details had been shared but because Melody didn’t watch the local news, or wasn’t a member of the area’s Facebook groups, she hadn’t grasped what that meant.

Except, in a small community, people were obviously going to have heard about a missing man. That was the whole point.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Melody replied. ‘I wanted Sam to enjoy a few days at camp before telling him myself. I didn’t realise…’ The sentence fell away as Melody struggled to explain herself.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ Caitlin asked, with genuine concern.

‘No, I’ll talk to him now.’

Caitlin took Melody around the side of the house, passing rows of raspberry bushes brimming with fruit, and a stack of bikes and scooters. They soon emerged in an enormous back yard. A deck stretched from the back of the house, leading to a pool that was filled with inflatables. Beyond that, a vast expanse of lawn pushed towards a row of trees at the far end. Music was playing, something modern and autotuned to the point that it sounded like angry bees. Melody had once wondered why young people listened to such nonsense, before Evan had pointed out they’d grown up thinking it was normal.

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