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  All their hopes and dreams dashed.

  Cruelly torn away from them.

  And it wasn’t even their fault.

  Rage churned her stomach. Roughly, she wiped away the tears from her cheek and glanced at her father, who was watching her intently, his eyes creased with sadness.

  “Oh, love…”

  “Where’s Ronnie now?” Minnie asked.

  “Sweetheart, I don’t think…”

  “Has he been arrested?” she choked, imagining him locked up in some tiny, damp cell, his wrists and ankles bound and shackled.

  Henry sighed heavily and gave her a small, sympathetic smile. “I don’t know, Mins.”

  “I’m going over to his place,” she said, standing up.

  “Sweetheart, I don’t think that’s a good id-“

  Before she could stop herself, her right hand struck her father across the cheek, all of the bones in her fingers and palm shaking with volts of electricity as she froze and realised what she had just done. His cheek blazed red, his eyes wide, almost bulging from their sockets, whilst his mouth hung wide open with shock.

  “I’m…” Minnie took a step back, her heart beginning to thud hard against the inside of her chest. “I’m sorry…” she muttered as she dashed out of the room and towards the back door. Still wearing her pyjamas, and with nothing on her feet, Minnie Walter escaped her parent’s house and broke out into a sprint. She crossed the back garden, clambered over the back fence, and didn’t look back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  2019

  The RV looked ridiculously small from this distance. Minnie stood, her arms folded, her cheeks flushed red with rage as she watched the tiny speck of a figure moving about in the narrow strip of doorway at the side of the motor home, the only shape for miles around. By that point, the sky was a watery, pale blue. The air was still cold and damp, but there was no rain, thank God.

  “Don’t worry,” Ronnie breathed under his breath, more to himself than to Minnie. “She won’t hurt her.”

  Minnie blinked away a hot, salty tear that formed in her eye. She tasted blood on her tongue, from where she had chewed her lower lip into shreds. “I know,” she replied quietly.

  Sienna, she could see, was biding her time. The bitch still had her knife pressed into the side of Flo’s neck. Flo’s frightened whimpers still echoed around Minnie’s brain like a broken record. There was no sound, Minnie was certain, more haunting than the distress of a child. The little spit-fire always acted so tough; she wanted to be just like the rest of them.

  But underneath it all, she was still Minnie’s baby girl.

  Just a little kid.

  It broke Minnie’s heart.

  “Why the fuck is she taking so long?” Minnie croaked, her voice breaking as her knee wobbled impatiently in her baggy, mud-splattered jeans.

  Rationally, of course, Minnie knew that Sienna wouldn’t hurt Flo. Sienna wasn’t hardened like they were; she was no killer. She was just desperate. She’d been threatened and had gone into fight mode. In fact, Minnie was sure that Sienna wouldn’t have hurt Flo, even if they’d refused to leave the RV.

  But still, even the smallest of risks was not worth taking. Not when the children were involved.

  Ronnie slid his arm around her shoulders, his demeanour softening. “It’s okay, darling,” he whispered, “I know it hurts, seeing Flo like that, but this bitch won’t do shit.”

  Zach chimed in, the three teenagers listening to their parents’ conversation from afar. “She won’t get away with it, Mum,” he said solemnly.

  “Exactly,” agreed Ronnie, “that bitch will pay.”

  “How?” Stella wondered out loud, “we can’t outrun her in that,” she said, nodding towards the huge, double-decker vehicle.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” said Zach, “that’s one big bus. It’s been pissing it down with rain all night; the mud is bad. Even if she can get the thing to move, it won’t be going anywhere fast.”

  “And we could always get the van?” suggested Lloyd, hopefully. He eyed the keyring dangling from his father’s coat. At fourteen, Lloyd wasn’t legally allowed to drive; however, neither Minnie nor Ronnie gave the remotest of fucks about abiding by the law. And so, he was occasionally permitted to drive if the roads weren’t busy or they were out somewhere desolate.

  Ronnie unclipped the keyring, “go on then,” he grunted. “You and Stella walk back and get the van, walk around, so the bitch doesn’t see you.” He tossed the keys to Lloyd, who caught them eagerly, then led his older sister backwards, around the long way to where their van had been left some distance away.

  “Oh my god,” gasped Minnie, clutching her hands to her chest. She squinted her eyes and watched as Sienna roughly pushed Flo from the entrance to the RV and quickly slammed the door shut behind her.

  “MOVE!” barked Ronnie, and the trio charged across the horrifically muddy marshes.

  *

  Inside the RV, Sienna was vibrating from head to toe, every inch of her shaking with adrenaline as she fiddled clumsily with the lock of the RV, then scrambled on unsteady legs through the motor home and into the driver’s seat.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” she muttered to herself, her blood pounding in her eardrums as she settled into the seat and chanced a look to her left. The tiny shapes in the distance were already dashing towards her. She let out a frightened cry and quickly opened up the concealed glove compartment, where they kept their spare keys hidden in case of emergencies. Her hands shook so much that she dropped them and had to spend a precious few seconds searching for them at her feet. Once she had the set in her hands, she thrust the metal into the ignition and attempted to turn it.

  Foolish as it was, Sienna had never driven the RV before. She’d never had reason to.

  “No…” she gasped frantically, attempting to turn the key again.

  But it wouldn’t budge. It wouldn’t turn, not even an inch.

  “FUCK!” she screamed, her eyeballs bulging from her head in disbelief. She tried again and again, each time straining her wrist just a little more. Frightened sobs escaped her as she snatched it back and rammed it inside again, only for the same stubborn grip to protest against the key.

  Sienna daren’t look up at the window, but even if she had had her eyes closed, she could sense the figures growing taller, advancing on her across the vast marshes. In her mind, she could even hear the squelching of rapid footsteps sprinting towards her; and the deep, heavy pants of concentration as the predators stalked their prey.

  “God, please,” she whimpered, stamping her foot with frustration as she continued to wrench the ignition, her fingers aching with the effort, her heart pounding so hard and so fast that it made her head spin and her vision blur.

  Finally, the engine rumbled into life, startling her in the process. An involuntary squeal of shock erupted from her lips just before she began to hurriedly scrabble about for the unfamiliar controls, her clothes sticking uncomfortably to her cold, sweat-saturated skin.

  “It’s okay… it's okay…” she muttered under her breath, at last pressing down onto the accelerator. As the vehicle slowly crept forward, she let out a triumphant cry of relief and punched the air. “YES!” she shrieked manically, stepping down harder. The RV lurched violently forward a few metres whilst omitting a painfully ear-splitting shriek from the engine.

  Driven by her fear and partial insanity, Sienna kept the pedal pressed down all the way, cackling as the expensive tyres caught speed, and she sensed her captors trailing behind.

  “Fuck you!” she snarled as she glanced out of the window to see the running figures become smaller again. “FUCK YOU! FUCK Y-“

  With an almighty screech, the RV halted abruptly, interrupting her high-pitched screams of triumph.

  There was a horrific thud, and the engine died.

  In the back of the vehicle, Jared face-planted the ground, his limbs as heavy as dead weights with his paralysis.

  “SIENNA!” he croaked as l
oudly as he could, though his voice was hopelessly muffled against the mud-soaked floor.

  A single tear dribbled down one of his cheeks.

  There was no reply.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Summer, 1999

  Minnie didn’t have to go far to find Ronnie. She turned at the bottom of her quiet, suburban road, and found him walking towards her, his hands in his ripped jeans, a sombre expression on his handsome face.

  “Min-“ he began, his eyes lighting up as he caught sight of her.

  But his delight was quickly interrupted as she slapped him hard across his cheek, leaving an angry red mark in the shape of her hand.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Minnie demanded, her brow furrowing with fury, long blonde hair messy and askew around her face. “What the hell did you tell the police?”

  Ronnie quickly looked all around them. They appeared to be deserted, but there was no mistaking the wave of concern that crossed his features. It was a sad sight to see him looking so worried and so afraid. He reminded Minnie of some poor, furry little animal caught in headlights.

  “Why did you incriminate yourself like that?” she asked, her voice faltering. “You idiot…” she murmured, propelling herself into his chest and breathing in his familiar scent. For the briefest of moments, she allowed his heat and the comforting feeling of his limbs curled around hers to transport her back to that night when she’d felt so content and so hopeful for the future.

  “I did it for you,” he whispered.

  Minnie shook her head and sighed. “This… this is all wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  He held her at arm’s length and stared deeply into her eyes. His pupils fixed intently on hers. “This isn’t the end of the world. I’ll get banged up in some correctional facility for kids for a few years, and that’ll be that. My record will get cleared as well, probably.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, “yes. Maybe if we were talking about a robbery or assault. This is murder, Ronnie,” she hissed.

  “Self-defence,” he corrected her, although he sounded worryingly uncertain.

  Quiet fell upon them as a million unspoken sentences fluttered in the atmosphere between them.

  Self-defence.

  It went without saying that a dead guy with almost one hundred stab wounds, then burned, did not look like self-defence.

  “What’s the other alternative, Min?” Ronnie asked, finally. “There isn’t one. Life served us up a shit deal, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Minnie shook her head and stared back at him with defiance. Inside her cool blue iris, he saw a blazing fire reflected that he had never seen in her before. Her forehead creased with determination, and she chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip.

  “What?” he asked, slightly alarmed at the hardening of her expression.

  His girlfriend cleared her throat.

  “I’ve got a plan,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty

  2019

  Darkness. The pleasant kind Flo was happy to realise.

  Her eyes opened, and the child blinked. She could feel the soft weight of a blanket draped around her in a comforting cocoon. Any disorientation she felt was immediately soothed by the familiar scent of her mother’s musky perfume.

  “Mummy…” she whispered in a small croak, her heavy eyelids fluttering as her pupils strained to recognise the dimmed shapes that surrounded her.

  “I’m here, sweetheart,” Minnie replied instantly.

  Flo turned round to face her mother, who was sandwiched behind her beneath the sheets of a double bed. The girl breathed a sigh of relief before scrambling to get up out of the bedsheets.

  “Ugh, Mum!” she groaned in disgust, “I’m not a kid anymore! I don’t need to be cuddled to sleep, for fuck’s sake!”

  Minnie chuckled and sat up. She leaned to her left and flicked a switch, which activated the wooden blinds. As the shutters turned, brilliant white light from outside poured in through the slats and illuminated every inch of the impressive double bed.

  “Shit!” gasped Flo, crawling over to the foot of the bed to stare out the window. “Oh, shit!” she repeated, her eyes wide as she gazed down from the top deck of the RV and looked out on the vast, muddy plains.

  It all came back to her then.

  Whilst Flo’s family were regularly part of various criminal activity and highly dangerous misdemeanours, she had never before been threatened. Especially not at knifepoint. She’d been so frightened; it was as though her brain had temporarily blacked out the feeling of the knife’s edge teasing the side of her neck and the trickle of warm urine that had soaked her legs.

  But, it suddenly came back to her.

  The tight grip of the girl, holding her so hard that it hurt her limbs. Her hot, panting breath at the side of her face. The way her heart skipped a beat as she was thrown from the RV and landed face down in the mud.

  Cold, wet, and afraid.

  “You alright now?” Minnie asked, watching her daughter with concerned eyes.

  “Mum, I’m fine!” snapped Flo, although she was secretly glad that she had woken up nestled inside her mother’s comforting embrace. It signalled that the stupid woman that had held a knife to her throat had lost, and once again, THEY had won.

  They always did. Flo almost felt stupid for ever believing otherwise.

  “You got them?” Flo asked, scrambling to get off of the bed. She pulled apart two thick fabric curtains that hung next to the bed to reveal the rest of the top deck. An astounded gasp escaped her lips as she absorbed the large flat screen and extravagant cushioned sofas that were built into a corner. On the other side was a set of bunk beds, each with dishevelled bed covers as if they had been slept in. There was also a bookcase crammed with books; and what appeared to be a sound system and a plugged-in laptop. Further down, there was a closed-off section, which Flo presumed to be the second bathroom, then a spacious seating area at the front, with a huge, wide window stretching across the front of the bus.

  “They’re in the van.”

  “Huh?” Flo asked faintly, so mesmerised by the top half of the RV that she was barely paying attention to the answer to her question.

  “The couple,” Minnie said, “both secured in the back of the van.”

  A few minutes later, Flo was hurriedly jogging two steps at a time down the steep, spiral staircase onto the lower deck; the clean tiles cool beneath her feet. Downstairs, she found that the furniture and interior had been tidied and washed, so the place was just as neat and pristine as it had been the previous evening. Gone were the muddy, blood-stained boots and clothes and the grisly marks staining the floor. Sat at the table, Stella lazed on the cushioned seat smoking a cigarette, whilst Lloyd and Zach appeared to be playing a racing game on the flat screen.

  It was warm, homely.

  Flo couldn’t help but smile.

  Of course, she knew that they’d never be a normal family. Never the kind of nuclear bullshit you’d find on a cereal box. Flo would never want that, either. But still, the prospect of having this luxurious, cosy abode on a permanent basis excited her. Finally, she could put down her few belongings and not have to move them all around again in a matter of a few days. She’d no longer be sleeping in a hotel, or somebody else’s house whilst their dead body began to decompose in its underbelly.

  “Sleeping beauty is awake then?” Zach chuckled without turning around, sensing his youngest sibling’s presence on the stairs. “Finally. We’ve all been waiting for you to re-surface so that we can get down to business. You over your trauma?” his tone was playful, but eight-year-old Flo scowled in retaliation.

  “Yes, thanks for asking,” she sneered, folding her arms across her chest. “What about you, Zach? Over your trauma from the deal at Mr. Yoki’s place?”

  Stella and Lloyd sniggered whilst Zach snapped his head around and shot Flo a furious glare. “You shut the fuck up about that!”

  Flo smiled smugly, “shut the fu
ck up, yourself,” she replied.

  The family’s last ever involvement in the business of moving cocaine had come to a head just a few months previous when a drug deal had gone horrendously wrong at their supplier, Mr. Yoki’s, house. The entire sordid affair had ended with Zach being beaten the hell out of and then bundled into the back of a car boot, where he proceeded to literally shit himself out of fear.

  His younger brother and sisters had not let him hear the end of it, as soon as they were all back to safety, of course. Just a bit of ‘good old-fashioned sibling banter’ Minnie had referred to it, a wistful shine in her eyes.

  “Touché,” Zach said finally, a small smile creeping up into the corners of his mouth. All jokes aside, he was happy to see that his little sister was okay. He exited his game and turned around. Excitedly, the young man rubbed his hands together, a bright gleam dominating his beady pupils.

  “And, now you’re up, we can finally have our fun…”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Summer, 1999

  “Where the hell did this all come from?” Ronnie gaped.

  Minnie paused before she answered, just to absorb the unfathomable image in front of her and the gravity of what she had just done, what she was doing. Ultimately, her entire body, every fibre of her being, ached with guilt. But, try as she might, there was no denying the tiny spark that had been ignited somewhere inside her chest, exploding like a firework with the adrenaline and all the excitement of being so uncharacteristically…

  …bad.

  “I’m too ashamed to say,” she admitted stiffly, unable to meet her boyfriend’s eye. Though, this didn’t matter because Ronnie was still too stunned by the wads of cash pouring out of the old, pink backpack that Minnie had just dumped at the end of the bed. She hated herself for the glimmer of pride that she felt, to see how flabbergasted he was.

  “I just…” Ronnie trailed off, pressing his hand to his open mouth. “I can’t, Min. I can’t take this from you.”

  Clearing her throat, Minnie folded her arms and glared at him. “Ronnie- it’s done,” she said snippily. “I can’t take it back. There’s a lot of money here; it’ll be enough for a decent hotel.”