Josephine Cox - Songbird

He gave a velvety laugh. “It’s no use you holding out, or thinking you can lie your way out of it, because then you’ll be treated real bad, until you’ll have no option but to satisfy Drayton’s curiosity. After all, he has a right to know the kid’s whereabouts – him being the child’s father and all.”

For good measure, the man in the back stamped his foot into the back of her neck, at the same time growling a warning for her not to get too clever!

Racked with pain, unable to move or breathe easily, Maddy was almost choked when a sudden gush of blood spurted from her nose to trickle, warm and sticky across her neck. She fought to keep her senses, but the pain was too great.

The last words she heard were from the driver: “Easy, matey, we don’t want to be delivering a corpse, or the two of us will likely get the same treatment!”

Desperate to have her off his hands, the driver put his foot down and sped out of Brighill. He went at great speed through the Brickhill villages, then onto Woburn and out of Aspley Guise. Once he was through Husborne Crawley, the motorway was only minutes away. “The M1 is just ahead,” he called excitedly. “Another hour before we dump her into Danny’s custody… and I for one won’t be sorry to be rid of the bitch.”

They had traveled a good distance along the M1 when it happened. Maddy had opened her eyes; she could feel the thrust of a powerful engine driving them along, and knew that they were going dangerously fast. She told herself that either they would all be killed before they got her to this “Danny” they talked of, or she would be handed over and murdered when they were done with her. Killed on the road, or murdered by one of Drayton’s henchmen. Either way she would be a goner, and Michael would be left without his mammy.

She decided she would pretend to be unconscious, and that somehow, if the chance arose, she would make a break for it.

She glanced up. In the flickering light from the motorway lamps, she saw that her captor must have realized that she was unconscious, because he was not paying her any attention. Instead, he was yelling at the driver to, “Slow down, you damned lunatic, or you’ll kill us all!”

Having been held up behind two juggernauts and a car hogging the fast lane for several miles, the driver was losing his temper; one minute he was surging forward, and the next he was shaking his fist and shouting obscenities at every driver who got in his way.

Seeing his chance to get out from behind the juggernaut, he swerved out in front of a coach, shot past at speed and almost clipped the car in front as he tried frantically to get back in.

As a result, he was forced to slow down, and allow the coach to pull in front; and all the while there were car horns honking and people shouting through open windows at him, “Bloody fool… shouldn’t be on the road!”

The man in the back was leaning over the driver’s seat, telling him to, “Use your head, man! Run alongside, until we can get out of here!”

For the moment, because he was now jammed in, he could do no other, than to run at the same aggravatingly slow speed as the car in front. “Bugger this. We’ll never get there at this rate!” Thumping his fist on the dashboard, the driver was manic. “I’m coming off at the next slip road,” he shouted. “We’ll make time by cutting across. We’ll get back on the motorway at the next junction.”

Maddy marked the moment and she took it.

At the place where the slip road ran off, she felt the car brake violently and skew off to the left. When they got to the junction at the top, the car slowed right down, in order for the driver to check the road signs. “It’s right – go right!” the man in the back was telling him.

So, while her captor was still intent on watching the road ahead, she mustered all the strength she could. When the driver revved the engine and started forward, she sensed it was now or never; she reached up, threw open the door and scrambled out, knowing that whatever happened after that, she had nothing to lose.

As the air whooshed all around her, both men were yelling; there was the sound of screeching brakes, then she felt her body thud to the ground and catapult into the air. As though in slow motion, she hit the ground, bounced several times, and now she was rolling uncontrollably down a grassy embankment and into a muddy ditch. When she actually heard the sickening sound of her bones breaking, Maddy was convinced that by the time she stopped, she would be cut to ribbons.

Then all went black, and she knew no more.

Maddy survived, but she was badly hurt.

Afterward, she learned that she had crashed through the fencing at the side of the slip road, before rolling into the ditch below, where she remained undiscovered for hours.

While she lay there, Maddy imagined she heard the voices of her captors, and in her deepest senses, she experienced the feeling of being shaken and moved about. And yet she was told that when she was found, there was no one in sight, no one searching for her – and no reports of a young woman of her description going missing.

The farmer’s wife was an amateur photographer, who liked to photograph local wildlife at night, in their own habitat. This was what she had been doing when she came across Maddy’s seemingly lifeless body, lying crumpled in the ditch, doused in her own blood. At first she thought Maddy was beyond help. She ran back to the farm and together she and her husband managed to lift Maddy out of the ditch and on to a makeshift stretcher, before carrying her back to their home and phoning for an ambulance.

Now, after two weeks in intensive care, following several operations, she was awake to the world.

Maddy opened her eyes, to look into the concerned face of the doctor leaning over her. “Ah! Awake again? Good girl,” he said. Throwing back the bedcover, he ran his hands over her legs, stroking and tapping and asking if she could manage to move her toes. “Gently now.”

When Maddy managed to move not only her toes, but to raise her legs as well, he grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Excellent! Wonderful!”

He explained that she had been discovered in the field near the motorway. “You’re a very fortunate woman to have been found,” he told her. “If you’d lain there for much longer, I’m certain you would not be here today. It was a very cold night, and you had lost a lot of blood. Can you remember anything about the accident? The police will want to interview you, when you’re feeling a little better.”

Maddy’s head was all over the place as she tried to remember. She recalled being in the villains’ car and making a break for it. Then after that, nothing!

Now, agitated, as she tried to move, the pain in her chest was crippling. “Where is this place?” She looked about, realizing this was a hospital, but she had no idea where.

“You’re in Bedford General Hospital,” the doctor advised her. “When they brought you in, you were in bad shape. You had many abrasions! A dislocated shoulder plus a broken ankle, two broken toes, a fractured rib and…” placing his fingers beneath her left hand, he raised it to where she could see how, in the region where her thumb had been, there was a large dressing. “I’m sorry, but every sinew and bone in your thumb was smashed beyond repair.”

Maddy let the words sink in. She looked at her hand, swollen with dark bruises and meandering cuts, and she was in no doubt.

He confirmed what she was thinking. “I’m sorry. We had no choice but to amputate the thumb.”

Maddy closed her eyes. She thought of Ellen and Michael; she relived that moment in the car when she had jumped knowing full well that she might be killed. But she had had no choice. And now, at least, she had managed to outwit Drayton yet again. And her son was safe. A bittersweet joy filled her heart. At least her darling son was safe !