Escape To Love (The Love in a Hopeless Place Collection)

Escape To Love

by Emma Calin

ESCAPE TO LOVE

First published 2015

by Gallo-Romano Media at SMASHWORDS

copyright © 2015 Emma Calin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author. Your support of authors’ rights is appreciated.

All characters in this compilation are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

A message from Emma

A FREE book for you

More books by Emma Calin

Contact Emma

Publisher details

Escape To Love

Chapter 1

Maria knew for herself the fear of sirens. Now a helicopter hovered over woods at the edge of the estate. On the air of deepening dusk, she caught the sound of dogs. Outside in the strange darkness there was trouble. She shuddered, feeling even more alone and glanced at the clock. Lucy had not come home from school. All day there had been a storm and now beyond her in the unfamiliar landscape, some drama was playing out. She held back the urge to panic and sat down in the bare lounge of her new home. She had had very little to bring and as yet there were no curtains. Lucy was thirteen and despite everything, was old enough to walk home from school. It was early days and she had not made any friends, but she had begged her mother not to wait at the gates. All the experts had said she could handle a mainstream school. And she had not come home.

Now it was dark. Police vehicles sped along the main road outside that led around the estate and towards the woods. Their blue lights strobed out a merciless tension. Any minute she would come home. Any minute the door would open, her bag would be thrown on the floor and her shoes kicked off across the room. Any minute now, this fear would end.

She had not paid her mobile bill and there was no phone in the house. She knew no-one nearby and was a universe away from all she had ever known in North London. Her mouth was dry and her heart pounding. Something had happened. And Lucy had not come home. Looking from her bare front window she saw a police car at an angle across the road. Officers were setting up signs and creating a roadblock. Maria threw on an unflattering anorak and went outside. A policewoman about her own age was talking on a radio, her face alternating dark then ghostly blue in the flashing lights of the police car.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Maria. The officer looked round, unsmiling and with an air of impatience.

‘Escape at the prison – one’s a rapist murderer—a psycho.’

‘What prison?’

‘Blackmarsh—over the other side of the woods.’

‘I didn’t know. I just moved.’

The officer shot Maria a glance.

‘You all right, Love?’ she asked.

Maria shook her head and began to cry, hating herself for her softness.

‘It’s my daughter, Lucy—she ain’t come ’ome.’

‘How old is she?’ asked the officer.

‘Thirteen. She’s at the Comprehensive—Saint Margaret’s. She don’t know the estate.’

‘She’ll be with some mates, just hanging out. I’ll be moving them on later and she’ll be giving me cheek.’

‘She ain’t got no mates here. What if that psycho’s grabbed her?’

‘Look, I can see your worries but she’s not going to be in the woods on the way home from school is she?’

Maria thought for a minute. No. She wouldn’t