But it pays to be cautious when there is so much at stake.
By now that snotty cow Grace would have pillaged her computer. She probably should have given them the password, but why not make them work a little harder for it? Anyway, by now they would know. It would be hard to pass it off as professional interest or even apologize for it as macabre gawping. But did they have anything to charge her with? Of course not.
But she’d have to be careful. The stakes were high now and a single mistake could unravel everything. So much thought and planning had gone into this. It would be criminal to fuck it up now.
Night was falling. It wouldn’t be long now. Could they monitor her mobile phone calls? If it was good enough for the News of the World, then…
She hoped they had been listening. It would make it easier for her. Easier to escape. Hannah felt a thrill of excitement – when the game hung in the balance, every move was thrilling.
Caroline clutched her knees to her chest to ward off the cold, but she couldn’t stop shivering. Was it the cold making her shake? Or fear? Caroline couldn’t tell any more. She had lost her grip on… everything. She had no idea if it was day or night. No real concept of how long they’d been incarcerated. She didn’t know what they’d done wrong or why they were here. She just knew that it was agony.
Her stomach ached for food, her throat was parched, her bones were chilled to their marrow. When she closed her eyes, strange shapes danced in the darkness – multi-coloured patterns that changed into butterflies, birds, rainbows even. She was starting to hallucinate. Was this her body shutting down? If she was lucky. Perhaps it was her mind unravelling, the beginning of a slow descent into paranoia and madness. Please, God, not that.
Initially they’d tried to keep their hunger at bay by eating ants. Caroline had had her period, her menstrual blood clotting on the floor in the far corner of the room. Its sticky sweetness had attracted insects and Martina and she had jostled with each other to hoover them up. A day or so back, she had bagged a cockroach, thrilling to its crunch as she crushed it in her mouth. But the food was gone now. All they were left with was the awful smell. The terrible cold. And the loneliness.
Was anybody looking for them? Nobody would miss a couple of escorts. Martina kept herself to herself and had few if any friends. Caroline had a flatmate – a girl called Sharon who came from Macclesfield – but she wouldn’t call her a friend. Would she have been savvy enough to call the police or would she just have put an advert out for a new roomie? The latter probably – Sharon didn’t approve of what Caroline did for money and would have been glad of the opportunity to get rid of her. She was probably clearing out her room now. Bitch.