24 Hours: An intense, suspenseful psychological thriller by Claire Seeber

much.’
    ‘And listen. You might end up with a boring one like my Richard, but I’m here to tell you, no make-up sex is ever worth getting clouted for.’ She chucks her cigarette out after me. ‘The bastards might be sexy but they’re still fucking bastards. The nice ones might be boring, but they’re safe. Good luck, love.’
    I run up the concourse. The monitor tells me there is a train to London’s Waterloo in ten minutes. At last, something is going my way.
    I stand on the cold platform in the drab day. I am stripped back to basics: no purse, no friend, nothing but survival on my mind. I use the ladies’ in the waiting room; there is a girl in the corner in a checked shirt changing her trousers, pulling clothes from a rucksack. Her legs are skinny and mottled, her arms badly scarred. I think of the girls I have counselled at the Phoenix Centre; the ones addicted by sweet sixteen. I feel suddenly overwhelmed by life’s horrors, by the bleakness, by the lack of hope. Where are the blue skies, the flowers, the happy endings?
    Where is my daughter?
    Back on the platform, I pace up and down. Two minutes until the train comes.
    I take the risk: I switch my old mobile on for the first time since it died in the early hours. The battery sign flashes; it’s about to die again. Maybe I can retrieve my mother’s mobile number before it does.
    But before I can hit the Contact button, it rings. I nearly drop it in horror.
    It is Sid.

17

THEN: POLLY’S SCHOOL CONCERT
    ‘ I ’ll meet you there .’ I doodled a square box on my note-pad. ‘If you’re actually going to turn up.’
    I didn’t know why Sid was so intent on coming to Polly’s concert, but I was most uneasy about it. Not only was I surprised – he was normally impossible to drag anywhere near the school – I was also worried about presenting a united front when we barely spoke these days. But Polly’s Harvest Festival was about her, not me, and I could hardly refuse Sid the opportunity to see his daughter in full singing glory – even if it was while dressed rather ingloriously as a corn on the cob.
    ‘Of course I’m going to turn up.’ He was scornful, as only he who had no right to be could manage.
    I added a lid to the box. ‘Right.’ Through the door, Bev was making signs. I mouthed ‘Five minutes’ at her. Then, lightly as possible, I said, ‘Sid. Just one thing.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You’re not … you’re not going to bring her , are you?’
    ‘Who?’
    Why make anything easy for me?
    ‘Your new … Jolie.’ Beside the box I drew a jagged heart.
    ‘Don’t be stupid.’
    I didn’t bother to argue. Arranging a time and place to meet, I scribbled out the heart and went to see Bev.
    I’d spent hundreds of hours trying to pinpoint exactly where my marriage went wrong, but actually, it was pretty simple really. I’d married Sid too quickly. I thought I knew him – and then it turned out I didn’t, at all. I was fascinated by him, by his dark brooding mystery, by his traumatic childhood, but I didn’t know him. Yet.
    ‘You can take the boy out of the care home,’ he used to say, as if it excused everything, ‘but you can’t take the care home out of the boy.’
    I listened, but I couldn’t see. I was blinded by him: I thought I could help him. Change him, I suppose. Impossible to explain, the thrall he held me in. From the moment we met: the way he looked at me; looked into me like no one else had. The way his gaze wrapped round me. I cannot explain it, even now. Cannot explain, understand, excuse it. The way he trapped me, as if I was a small, rather helpless animal.
    I invested everything in Sid, naïve to the maximum, and I suppose, in the end, I just couldn’t face the fact for a long time – too long – that it was so very wrong.
    Of course, there were many things that I absolutely did know about Sid. For instance, tonight he would be late. He’d make a big entrance, sighing dramatically, pausing until all eyes were on