Read Online To Catch a Rabbit by Helen Cadbury - Free Book Online Page B

but she couldn’t tell for how long. Her heart was pounding in her ears and the light was still on. Her watch said 2.30 and she needed the toilet. She crossed the sticky carpet, thankful for her socks, pausing at the shabby sight of herself in the mirror, make-up worn to a smudge on her pale skin and her hair flattened on one side. She realised that Max must see her like this all the time. That was the point of being married. You said what you thought, looked how you wanted to, nothing mattered. At least that’s what she’d always believed. She was suddenly over-whelmed with the urge to go home to Max and the children.

    Bonfire Night: 8.45 am
    By quarter to nine, the scrubby brown fields and makeshift fences along the main road had given way to the boundary wall of a new-build estate and Phil was trapped in traffic. For the last five minutes he’d been looking at the words: ‘Is your wife as dirty as your van,’ written in the dust on the back end of a white Luton. He used the opportunity to poke at the jammed cassette player with a biro refill. As the Luton lurched forward ahead of him, the tape finally slithered free of the machine.
    The address he was looking for was on the other side of Doncaster Racecourse. He thought he knew a short cut from his one and only visit to the races. Keith, Stacey’s Dad had taken him for a day out and a bit of man-to-man talk, after they’d announced Stacey was pregnant. Phil hadn’t needed to get drunk and be mildly threatened by Keith Clegg to do the right thing by his daughter, but he went along with it. The day had turned out okay, he’d lost a tenner and Keith had won fifty quid. The wedding was all planned before the end of the last race.
    His memory served him well. His short cut opened out on to the road on Mackenzie’s note. Between a hairdresser’s and a pet shop, a narrow entry led to a row of garages. He eased the van up between high red brick walls and out into a tarmac square behind a row of 1960s flats. He turned the music off and waited. Somewhere a siren tried to force its way through the morning traffic. Phil wished it luck. A woman in a navy tracksuit, covered with a floral apron, banged the gate behind her as she came out of the back of the flats. She smiled at Phil and he opened the window.
    ‘You got Mackenzie’s stuff?’ she said.
    ‘Yup.’
    ‘I’m Carole. Back up to garage number 18, will you, love?’
    They unloaded the van into the garage with a bit of small talk about the weather and how it was getting much colder at nights.
    ‘Can’t believe it’s Bonfire Night already,’ Carole said. ‘Doesn’t seem five minutes since August Bank Holiday.’
    The boxes weren’t particularly heavy and Phil could see she liked to work at speed, as if she had plenty of other jobs to get done today. When the van was empty she locked up and thanked him, before disappearing back into the flats with a brisk wave. She was an improvement on the man in Hull, friendly at least. He wondered where Mackenzie found his odd little team. The guys he’d met back on the farm in Moorsby had all been Eastern European. Same as the girls on the cleaning teams. They only cracked a smile when they came into the office for their money. And you never saw them in the village. He suspected the boss didn’t want them mixing with the locals. Stacey was right, Johnny Mac had done well for himself, but Phil didn’t entirely like the smell of his money. A wave of leaves and paper bags blew along the guttering in front of the garages and Phil climbed back into the van. There was another load waiting for him in Hull.
    The sun was low in the sky and failing to reach over the high brick wall, condemning the red freight container to a chilly shade. Len was waiting for Phil in his car. A news broadcast boomed indistinctly from behind the steamed up windows.
    ‘What took you?’ he grunted at Phil, getting out and walking stiffly towards the container without waiting for an answer.
    He