The Choice Read online

  THE CHOICE

  Alex Lake

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

  Copyright © Alex Lake 2020

  Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover photograph © Magdalena Russocka / Trevillion Images

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

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities 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.

  Source ISBN: 9780008373542

  Ebook Edition © August 2020 ISBN: 9780008373566

  Version: 2020-07-30

  Dedication

  To my three

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Saturday, 7 March 2020

  Part Two

  Late July 2004

  September 2004, Birmingham University

  Saturday, 7 March 2020, 8.30 p.m.

  Birmingham, October 2004

  Saturday, 7 March 2020, 10.00 p.m.

  Birmingham, November 2004

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 4 a.m.

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 6.03 a.m.

  Birmingham, December 2006

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 6.15 a.m.

  Grappenhall Library, 2009

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 6.45 a.m.

  Chester, 2011

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 2 p.m.

  Summer 2012

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 4.55 p.m.

  Summer 2012

  Late Summer 2012: Wedding Day

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 5.31 p.m.

  2013 Christening

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 5.35 p.m.

  2013: Christening Party

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 5.41 p.m.

  2014

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 5.44 p.m.

  Part Three

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 5.50 p.m.

  Sunday, 8 March 2020, 6.40 p.m.

  Monday, 9 March 2020, 8 a.m.

  Tuesday, 10 March 2020, 7 a.m.

  Tuesday, 10 March 2020, 6 p.m.

  Wednesday, 11 March 2020, 8 a.m.

  Read on for a sneak peek of Alex Lake’s new novel, coming 2021 …

  Keep Reading …

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Alex Lake

  About the Publisher

  PART ONE

  Saturday, 7 March 2020

  Look at him. I mean, just look. Baggy, out-of-date jeans with brown leather brogues that have not seen shoe polish in years, shirt untucked over his spreading stomach. It’s pathetic. No effort at all. Shabby. Second rate.

  I’m doing nothing wrong. He deserves everything he gets.

  Out he climbs, his car – not washed, of course – parked on the road outside under a flickering streetlamp. He pauses, checking over his shoulder that everything is all right.

  It’s OK, he thinks, everything’s fine. He looks at the car. The kids are arguing in the back seat. One of them puts the interior light on, then off, then on again.

  He hesitates outside the local shop. He’s about to go back and tell them, Stop it, you’ll break the light, but he pushes the door open and steps out of the early spring dark and into the shop.

  He can leave them there, for a few minutes. The car’s unlocked – he doesn’t want the alarm to go off – but no harm will come to them. He won’t be in the shop long enough. His three-year-old daughter is buckled into a car seat, so she’s going nowhere. His five-year-old middle son is erratic and wilful, but he won’t get out of the car. He’ll be too scared, and if he tries his big brother – all of seven years old – will stop him. He’s sensible; a typical, rule-following first child.

  So they’ll stay in the car. Safe.

  Brother, brother, sister.

  Daughter, son, son.

  The lights of his life, no doubt. Annoying, at times, and hard work, but he loves them. He and his wife are blessed. Their children are the most important things in the world to them.

  Yet he leaves them in a car on the road, unattended.

  It’s not illegal. He probably knows that. He’s probably checked. The law allows you to leave children in a car provided there is no undue risk.

  Which is exactly the point.

  He thinks the risk is acceptable, so small as to be easily dismissed. He won’t be long, the kids won’t get out of the car and they can’t start it as he has the keys.

  There are other sources of danger, of course – a runaway truck careering into the parked car and crushing it. An earthquake opening up a rift in the road underneath the car. A flash flood washing it and his children away.

  All as near to impossible as makes no difference.

  So he is right. The risk is small.

  It is safe to leave them in the car for a few minutes while he goes into the shop. After all, what’s the alternative? Get them all out, chase them around? And then there’s the virus: it’s hit Italy and Spain hard, and it could be the same here. People are nervous; they don’t want their kids running around in a shop, picking things up and touching door handles and counter tops. He would have to corral them, which would turn a quick stop into an expedition.

  At least that’s the excuse he makes. The excuse a lot of parents make. In fact, it would not make it into an expedition. It would just make it take five minutes longer, which, when you think what might happen if you leave them alone and unprotected, is not all that much of a price to pay.

  But never mind. It is very improbable anything will happen to them. The odds are vanishingly small.

  It’s one in a million that the kids are in danger.

  And that’s the thing. It might be a one in a million chance, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

  It means it’ll happen one time out of a million.

  One time in a million there will be a stranger out there with bad intentions.

  But who? Who would it be?

  He’ll be asking that question for a long time.

  Matt

  1

  Matt Westbrook stepped into the shop. It was one of the last of its kind – an independent local shop stocking a mixture of groceries, alcohol, newspapers, magazines and basic home cleaning and maintenance supplies – and he was the only customer.

  He was only there because it was open and it was on his way home and Annabelle had texted to say they needed milk, coffee, bread, pasta, and beer or wine – and, if they had any, toilet paper and disinfecting wipes – and could he stop and get them on his way home with the kids?

  Which was fine. She was recovering from a cold and didn’t need to go out on a chilly night. He could pick up the stuff and do a big shop the next day at the supermarket. He wouldn’t bother with the wine, though – they were trying for another baby, so she was
off the booze and he didn’t much feel like drinking alone.

  They had three already, which was quite a handful, but he had managed to persuade her to add one more. Norman, seven, was named after her late father, a physics teacher and one of the most creative and inspiring people Matt had ever met. Keith – named after the Rolling Stone, if anyone asked – had come next, followed by Molly. Each kid had brought with them worse morning sickness and harder labours: Norman was nine pounds, Keith ten, and Molly eleven. As far as Annabelle was concerned, that was nature’s way of telling them to stop at three, but the years passed and the memories faded and, after a while, she had agreed to try for another.

  His friends thought he was crazy, but he liked having kids. It was chaotic and busy, for sure, but he enjoyed it. More than that: he loved it. At work he daydreamed of sitting on the couch watching a movie with the three of them snuggled up to him and Annabelle, or of coming home and reading them a book.

  And even though Norman was only seven he felt the time slipping away. He couldn’t bear the thought there were only eleven years to go until he left for university or a career or whatever came his way, to be followed swiftly by Keith and Molly.

  The first seven years had vanished in the blink of an eye, so eleven more was nothing. He wasn’t ready for it, and the only way to stop it was to have more kids. Five, maybe, or six.

  Annabelle might have something to say about that, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

  He looked out of the shop window at the car. The doors were still closed. The front doors were unlocked, but the rear doors were child-locked so, even if they tried, the kids wouldn’t be able to get out. They’d have to climb into the front and go out that way, which was unlikely.

  Still, he’d be as quick as he could. He didn’t need a police officer walking past and seeing them and questioning where their mum or dad was. He was pretty sure it wasn’t against the law to leave them there but he still didn’t want to discuss whether it was good parenting or not to do so.

  He grabbed a basket and moved around the shop. Milk, skimmed. A block of Irish cheddar cheese. A bag of pasta – fusilli, he noted, whatever that was. Coffee, not a brand he recognized and probably awful, but it would have to do. Bread, brown, unsliced – they had surprisingly good loaves here – and a warm baguette. He paused at the wine shelf. Maybe he would have a glass after all. Red, perhaps. It was cold, the nights drawing in. He picked up a bottle of Cabernet. That would do.

  The checkout was at the far end of the shop. He carried his basket over and put it down.

  ‘All right, mate.’ The man behind the counter was in his fifties and had a Liverpool accent. ‘Got everything you wanted?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. Just grabbing a few bits.’ He glanced around. ‘Got any wipes?’

  ‘We’re out. Toilet paper’s all gone too.’ He shook his head. ‘Load of fuss about nothing, if you ask me.’

  ‘You never know,’ Matt said. ‘There’s quarantine in parts of Italy.’

  ‘Won’t happen here, mate. But I’ll sell people whatever they want to buy.’

  The man punched in the prices, one by one. Easy to fiddle the take. Perhaps this place was a front for a gang, a place to quietly wash clean their ill-gotten gains.

  ‘Twenty-seven fifty,’ he said.

  Matt hesitated and looked at the basket. Seven quid for the wine. A fiver for the coffee. He’d looked at the price of those. Which left fifteen-fifty for the bread, milk, baguette and pasta. How much was bread? Three pounds? Milk and pasta? The same probably. Which meant the baguette was outrageously expensive.

  Or they all were.

  The man looked at him, his expression questioning. For a moment Matt thought about asking for the prices of the bread, coffee, milk and pasta, but then the man interrupted.

  ‘Everything OK, mate?’

  He nodded, and handed over two twenties. If this was a front for a gang they didn’t need to use it to launder any money. They were robbing people in plain sight.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, and picked up his change and his shopping. It was definitely the supermarket next time.

  2

  As he left, Matt noticed the local newspaper had a story on the front page about a new signing for the rugby league team. It was the photo that caught his eye, a picture of a famous Australian playing for the Australian national team.

  That would be quite the coup.

  He was about to pick up a copy and go back to the counter – even this shop couldn’t charge more than the cover price for a newspaper – when he glanced out of the window. A quick check on the kids, that was all; make sure they were still safely in the car.

  He blinked, then looked left and right.

  There must be some mistake.

  The car was gone.

  That was impossible. He had left it there only a minute ago.

  But there was no car there. As if to make the point, a blue Mercedes pulled up and parked right where his car had been.

  He must have parked it further up the street. It was strange; he would have sworn he’d left it almost exactly outside the shop. Maybe he had, and it was the angle from which he was looking out of the window that meant he couldn’t see it.

  Still. There was a church on the other side of the road, the main gate directly opposite the door.

  And when he had got out of the car he had looked at that gate. He remembered it distinctly: his sister had got married there and a memory had come to him of her wedding day. It had been pouring with rain – a real deluge – and when Tessa and Andy came out all the guests had been holding umbrellas over the path to make a tunnel. They had walked through them to the main road and into the vintage silver Rolls-Royce that had taken them to the reception.

  He had looked at the gate and remembered that day.

  And when he had done so he had been standing more or less opposite it.

  Which meant the car had moved.

  His palms prickled with sweat. The kids must have taken off the handbrake, or somehow started the car and driven it off. He patted the pocket of his jeans. The keys were in there, so at least that was off the table.

  He forgot the newspaper and jogged to the door. He needed to sort this out, right away. The man behind the counter coughed.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Yes. Just – I can’t remember where I left my car.’

  ‘Happens all the time, mate. People forget where they park.’

  ‘It’s not exactly that—’ He stopped talking. There was no point explaining. He opened the door and looked up and down the street.

  The car was nowhere to be seen.

  He took a deep breath. His mind was starting to swim and he needed to concentrate. He couldn’t afford to panic. He had to be methodical, but it was almost impossible to fight back the desire to scream and set off at a sprint in some – any – direction.

  He looked left, to the village centre, and then right, to the swing bridge over the ship canal. In both directions the street was more or less straight, so he would have seen his car if it was there.

  It wasn’t.

  ‘Where’s the fucking car?’ he murmured. It couldn’t just be gone.

  But it was. His car was gone, with his kids inside. He began to lose the battle against the fear and panic, because either they had moved it, or it had moved itself, or someone else had moved it. None of them were happy thoughts. As the thought sunk in, he clenched his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms. He had to think.

  It couldn’t have been driven away, because he had the keys – there was no way the kids had jump-started it – which meant it had rolled away – hard to imagine on a flat road, and even harder to imagine it had rolled out of sight – or it had been pushed away.

  His kids couldn’t have done that, so someone else would have had to do it.

  And how far could you push a car in a few minutes? Maybe around a corner, but not much further than that.

  A wave of relief broke over him. This w
as a prank. One of his friends, or more likely a few of them, after a beer or two – had seen the kids in the car and moved it to give him a scare. He pictured them, laughing as they released the handbrake and pushed the car down the street. There was a side street about thirty yards away, on the right. That’s where they would have taken it.

  That’s where he would find them, standing by the car, laughing.

  He would not be laughing with them. This was not funny at all.

  He jogged towards the side street. Banner Road. He’d never noticed the name before; he’d remember it now. He slowed at the corner and turned.

  There was a skip on the right and a white van parked on the left, but other than that the side street was empty.

  The fear roared back and rose into a full-on panic. Where the fuck was his car? Where could it be?

  He sprinted out onto the main road and looked up and down, once, twice, a third time.

  Still nothing.

  He ran back to the shop – to the last place the car had been – and stood outside the window, breathing heavily. His car was gone. His children were gone.

  The shop door opened.

  ‘You OK, mate?’

  He turned around. The man from the shop – the owner, maybe – was standing on the threshold, arms folded, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  ‘It’s my car. It’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I left it here, but it’s nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘You sure it was here?’

  ‘Yes.’ He paused. Was it possible he had parked somewhere further away and walked to the shop? Had he misremembered looking at the church? No – he also remembered thinking he was only using the shop because it was more convenient than a detour to the supermarket, which would hardly have been the case if he had parked a walk away. Besides, he had checked on the kids when he got out.

  ‘Yes. It was here.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Discovery. Land Rover.’

  The man stuck out his bottom lip. ‘Nice vehicle. Maybe someone nicked it. Was it locked?’

  ‘No, but—’