Mum seemed to take it well at first when she got home that evening, but when I went up to say goodnight to her later, she was sobbing quietly. I felt awful, even though I knew it was not entirely my fault. I hated to see my mother cry, especially since crying was something I seldom did.
"You OK, Mum?" I asked lamely, knowing that she wasn't really.
"I'm fine, baby," she said, smiling ruefully through her tears. "I'm crying from relief more than anything else. How is the knee?"
"Not too bad."
"Don't forget to take some of those painkillers before you go to bed," she reminded me for the tenth time.
"I won't," I said, leaving the sentence ambiguous for a reason. I was tired of the hazy head feeling and the pain seemed to be settling. I'd be OK tonight. I'd take the tablets when I got the pain again. As I left my mother's bedroom I marvelled at how it was that some people could cry so easily, while others couldn't. I wondered if there was something wrong with me.
Angus
I drove past her address twice that Friday morning. It had taken an hour or so to get from the hotel in Oxford to Banbury, a medium sized town that squatted over the M40 just as the South East became the Midlands. She lived in a semidetached house in the middle of a long row of similar properties. Relatively new builds, it looked like. Maybe ten years old, but already showing minor signs of wear and neglect that seemed to pervade so called middle income areas. I found Rebecca's house easily. Neat garden, peeling paint on the window sills, elderly Peugeot in the driveway. The second time I drove past I examined the surrounding houses. No for sale or for rent signs. People must like living here. Interesting, but potentially problematic.
I'd been thinking about how to approach the situation ever since Marcus had told me that they'd found a match. Straightforward abduction was certainly an option, but it would inevitably lead to complications. Police involvement, media, that kind of thing. Not that that would necessarily stop me. I had abducted people before - it wasn't hard. I guess you could say that it's another one of my talents. It's just that the people I usually abducted, well, their opinions of me were more or less completely irrelevant. This girl, this Rebecca Harding, she was different. It was part of our vague plan that she become one of us, and the smoother the integration, the better. It would be counterproductive to have an infuriated or severely depressed girl on our hands back home.