Silent Voices

seemed too strong and purposeful for her visitor to be a woman.
    She called to Alice. ‘Look, sweetheart, we’re going to get rescued.’ And the two of them waved like mad things. The man on the shore only raised his hand in greeting.
    Now he’d pulled the dinghy onto the bank and had taken out a couple of oars that must have been stowed under the seat. He pushed it back into the pool and waded in as far as his calves, then he climbed aboard.
    He rowed towards them, circling towards the boathouse. The light was no longer behind him, but as he approached he had his back to them and still Connie couldn’t make out who it was. Even when he’d reached them, and tied the rope around one of the planks that made up the rail of the deck, she didn’t recognize him. Then her attention was elsewhere, stuffing all their belongings into a bag, making sure that Alice was with her and not too close to the water.
    ‘Just wait a minute!’ she shouted and some of the panic returned. Though that was ridiculous because their saviour wouldn’t just turn round and row back to dry land without them.
    She heard him climb onto the boathouse deck. There was the creak of the planks, the splash of displaced water as his weight left the dinghy, then footsteps. He stood in the doorway and she saw him properly for the first time and recognized him. She’d seen that face before.

 
Chapter Forty
     
    Vera told herself that there was no hurry. The social worker and her daughter would be in the boathouse. It would have been an adventure for them, like camping out. The girl would probably have enjoyed every minute. Vera hadn’t minded a bit of an adventure herself when Hector had first taken her on his expeditions. It was only as she got older and realized the implications of the night-time raids into the hills that she’d disliked and then come to hate them. Perhaps that was why she drove so fast, because she didn’t want the girl to have the same sort of memories of childhood that she’d been left with: the fear in the pit of the stomach and the longing to be home in a familiar place. Because there’d always been people chasing Hector: the police, the National Park wardens, the RSPB. Absorbed in his passion, he’d enjoyed the game of cat-and-mouse. It hadn’t bothered him that Vera had been terrified.
    Vera felt a sort of sick excitement now as she coaxed the ancient Land Rover to greater speed. Just before the turn-off through the stone pillars with their cormorant carvings there was water across the road. A sign saying: Way Closed. Flood. An elderly man was trying to do a three-point turn in the narrow track to get back to the village. Or a forty-point turn. Vera pushed the Land Rover into four-wheel drive, drove it so that two wheels were on the steep verge and the vehicle was tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees, then ground past the pensioner’s Volvo. The water was deep enough to seep in through the doors. She wasn’t sure the old man noticed they were there until the spray caused by their movement splashed onto his windscreen. Beside her Joe Ashworth swore.
    The grass track past the formal gardens of the old house was much boggier than it had been when she walked down it a few days before. Even in four-wheel drive, she felt the vehicle slide. She kept the pace slow. It was most important now not to get stuck. She wanted to get the mother and daughter back to safety, and then she had an arrest to make. Before anybody else got hurt.
    She knew Ashworth had questions, but she couldn’t concentrate on getting them to the boathouse in one piece and chat to him at the same time.
    ‘What’s that?’ Ashworth’s question annoyed her because she was just navigating a tricky patch, but she looked all the same. A small car stuck, water up to the bumper, the driver’s door wide open. Ashworth had the righteous indignation of the careful driver; he always seemed old before his time: ‘They must have been mad trying to get down here without four-wheel drive.’
    Then Vera knew that the little girl was in danger, not of having bad dreams and tarnished childhood memories, but of not growing old enough to remember anything.
    ‘Out!’ she said. ‘Quick! We haven’t the time for this.’ She was wearing wellingtons, but Ashworth was still in his work shoes, newly polished every morning. He looked at the mud and slime surrounding the vehicle and hesitated. She’d already gone four paces down the track, slithering and swearing