Alex Lake - After Anna

Published by HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2015

Copyright © Alex Lake 2015

Alex Lake asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers 2015

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com (sky); Cherie Chapman (girl on swing)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780008150907

Version 2020-07-10

To my three musketeers: O, F and A

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

PART ONE: BEFORE

Chapter 1: Life Is Complicated

Chapter 2: The First Hours

Chapter 3: The First Day

Chapter 4: The Second Day

Chapter 5: The Third Day

Chapter 6: The Fourth Day

Chapter 7: The Fifth Day

Chapter 8: The Sixth Day

Chapter 9: The Seventh Day

PART TWO: AFTERWARDS

Chapter 10: Back Home

Chapter 11: Not Over Yet

Chapter 12: Losing Control

Chapter 13: Legal Questions, Moral Questions

Chapter 14: Doll’s House

Chapter 15: Home Time

Chapter 16: A Necessary Evil

Chapter 17: War of the Roses

Chapter 18: A Month Later

Chapter 19: Two Months Later

Chapter 20: An Hour Later

Keep Reading …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Alex Lake

About the Publisher

It was easier than you had expected. The girl came without complaint. You spotted her as she left the school, alone, looking around, clearly bereft of a parent to pick her up. Who would do that? Who would be so negligent as to leave a five-year-old in such a vulnerable position? It was appalling, it really was.

But it was good for you.

Not so good for her, and definitely not so good for her poor, soon-to-be grief-stricken, self-hating parents, but good for you.

No one saw you. You were sure of that. You’d been watching them closely. Watching them mill around the school gates, waiting for their spoiled progeny to emerge so they could pepper them with inane questions.

How was your day? What did you learn? Were you a good girl, my princess? Were you a brave boy?

They were raising a generation of precious, weak children, who thought the world revolved around them, that it would adapt itself to their whims, would always allow them to win and never force them to struggle. It was a silent disaster, and it was creeping into every corner of society and no one was doing anything about it.

Except you. You are going to do your part to stop it, however small that part is.

And it starts with the girl.

She is yours now. Now, and forever. You like things to be yours. You have never been good at sharing. You would rather destroy something than share it. You know it is not your most attractive trait, but you don’t fight it. There is no point. It has always been that way.

And you will not share her. She is yours. Vanished into your car; traceless.

It has gone very, very well. As well as could have been expected.

You have to admit to being a little bit pleased.

You have to admit that you allowed yourself a pat on the back.

Have you been lucky, even? Maybe. You need luck. Everyone does. You are no different, at least not in that regard. In some others, yes. In some other ways, you are very different. Better. More clear-sighted. More decisive.

So maybe it wasn’t luck, after all. No, you don’t think it was. It was down to good planning. Yes, you prefer that. It was down to good planning. And ability, of course. Nerve and skill. It was you who’d done it, you who’d made it happen. Luck was not part of it.

Not that you are becoming complacent. That would not do. That way, disaster lies. Complacency is the path to failure. And you did not take the girl, did not get this far, to fail at the last.

So now she sleeps, the girl, dark-haired and beautiful and young, she sleeps in the back seat of your car. She is drugged, hidden away from prying eyes until the time comes for you to use her for the purpose for which you took her. For the purpose that meant you had to take her. It is a shame she has to be involved in this; a shame that she will pay the price for what others have done. It isn’t fair, you know that, but then the world isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. You know that , too. Fair doesn’t come into it. Does the wolf slaying the lamb worry about fairness? About wounded innocence? No, it cares only about its hunger. There is no fair or unfair for the wolf. The wolf takes what it needs, and its need is the only justification necessary. Right, wrong; fair, unfair: they play no part in its world.

And they play no part in yours either. There is only strong or weak, winner or loser. The cry of it’s not fair is just a tool the weak use to constrain the strong. You cannot let it influence your actions.

And you don’t. You didn’t. You won’t.

Fair does not come into this.

Fair is for the weak.

For the losers.

As you drive away you allow yourself a smile. Apart from anything else, this is going to be fun .

i.

She was going to be late. Again.

Julia Crowne looked up at the clock on the wall of the boardroom. It was one of those Swiss railway clocks, with the blocky minute and hour hands. She happened to know that it was not an imitation; it was the real thing. It went with the polished wood of the oval conference table and the comfortable leather chairs. Nothing but the best for the boardroom. The clients they met in here were reassured by that kind of thing.

Two forty p.m. The meeting about the custody of a child was supposed to be over by now, but it had not gone well, mainly because her client, town councillor Carol Prowse, was being unreasonable. It was understandable, since she had come home to find her husband, Jordi, a poet and part-time English teacher, in bed with one of his former students, but it was not making things easy.

Under the table Julia’s foot tapped nervously. She had to pick up her five-year-old daughter, Anna, from school at three p.m., and she couldn’t be late. They had an appointment at three thirty to collect a cocker spaniel puppy from a woman who had been surprised when she woke one morning to plaintive cries and came downstairs to find that her dog – who had been suffering from a mysterious listlessness for the last week – was producing puppies at an astonishing rate.