The Vanishing of Class 3B by Jackie Kabler

Author:Jackie Kabler [Kabler, Jackie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008544546
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter Twenty-Eight

CLARE

Day 5: Tuesday, 9.30 p.m.

‘We should have brought something. A bottle of wine, maybe,’ mutters Nick, as he and Clare walk quickly down Littleford High Street, heading for Eldon Beckford’s. It’s a cool, dry evening, and as they pass the Royal Oak laughter and the sound of clinking glasses drifts from the open windows, normal people living their normal lives.

Clare gives her husband a sidelong glance.

‘It’s not a dinner party,’ she says, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. ‘It’s a meeting. We don’t need to bring anything.’

He grunts and they march on, past the village shop, closed for the evening now, with its cheerful window display of yellow chicks and white bunnies grouped around a basket of chocolate eggs.

Easter Sunday is this weekend, Clare remembers. Friday is Good Friday. Half-term break starts in two days’ time.

She’d forgotten all that. It doesn’t seem important, not now. When the latest message had arrived, she’d been in the kitchen with Nick and had had to run from the room, gripped by a fear so sudden and extreme she’d thought she might lose control and blurt it all out; that she might, finally, tell him everything. She didn’t, of course. Instead, she locked herself in the downstairs loo until she got a grip again, managing to mumble something about the stress giving her an upset stomach when Nick tapped on the door.

The police had been in touch within half an hour, their family liaison officer, Melissa, urging them not to do anything rash.

‘We’re still asking you all to sit tight, just for a little while longer,’ she said. ‘The search for the hostages’ location is continuing day and night, and we’re now thinking of possibly lifting the press blackout briefly to make a television appeal to the kidnappers. Please don’t think about paying them any money. Paying a ransom isn’t illegal, as such. But paying money to someone who may use it for purposes of terrorism or other criminal activity may make you guilty of an offence. And this person – or people – well, they’re definitely criminals, right? They’ve murdered one person already – who knows what else they may be capable of? And of course, paying once might just make them come back for more, or it might mean you being targeted again in the future. Just keep the faith, OK?’

Clare and Nick had agreed. What else could they do? But when Reynold Lyon had popped up on the group chat, asking if all the parents could gather at the Beckfords’s place as soon as possible to discuss their next move, and to please not tell the police, Clare had instantly told a wary Nick that they must go.

‘I don’t like going behind the police’s back,’ he’d whined. ‘Surely they know what they’re doing, and the best way to handle this? We could put the children in even more danger…’

‘Nonsense.’ Clare was already pulling on her denim jacket, desperate to get out of the house, to talk this through with someone else, to do something.

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