Plan B

Chapter Forty-one

It wasn’t a long drive to Conrad’s house, but Fran dreaded it ending.  While they were in the car, it felt almost as if everything was suspended in some kind of limbo.

Caitlin drove like a maniac, but Fran wouldn’t have noticed even if she’d been coherent and taking interest in what was going on.  The only thing that anchored her to the real world was Caitlin’s hand on her knee as Brookie’s sister tried to keep her calm.

“Deep breaths, now, Frankie,” she’d say every couple of minutes.  “Everything’s going to be okay.  Don’t cry.”

Eventually, they turned off into an upmarket housing estate in the suburbs of a nearby town.

“I should probably warn you,” Caitlin began as the car slowed to a crawl and she started to count the house numbers, “my big brother Conrad… well, he’s a little odd.”

Fran stared blankly out of the windscreen.

“Try to avoid asking him questions.  And… okay, if he opens his mouth, let him deal with the situation and keep quiet, all right?  Conrad should be able to handle it.  That is, if he feels like it, which he might not.”

Caitlin parked the car and came round the front to open Fran’s door.  The blast of cold air brought her back to reality.

“Come on,” Caitlin said gently, gripping Fran’s shoulders to steady her.  It was only than that Fran realised exactly how violently she was trembling.  Her hands and forehead felt clammy, and everything was lighter than it should have been, and objects that ought to have been stable were starting to swim.

Caitlin must have felt Fran going limp, or at least seen some of the colour draining from the girl’s face, because she stopped.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asked.  Fran shook her head.

“Do you think you’re going to faint?”

Fran waited, but she didn’t seem to be getting any worse, so she shook her head again.

“All right.  Come on, then.  Let’s get you inside.”

The front door opened a little before she had finished speaking, and a man popped his head around.  He looked up and down the street twice and then beckoned frantically.  The second they were all inside, he slammed the door behind them and slid a deadbolt into position.

“Hallo, Cait!” he said brightly, and grinned.

His smile was like Brookie’s and his eyes were the same green as Caitlin’s, but other than that, Conrad didn’t look as though he was related to his siblings at all.  He had a rugged appearance, with sandy hair that was already beginning to grey and bushy eyebrows.  Laughter lines creased the skin beside his eyes.  All in all, he was fairly nondescript and looked happy, not odd.

And then he turned on the hall lights and Fran saw his huge collection of stuff that lined the walls.  There was a passage all of about two feet wide down which they could walk, because tables covered with ornaments and gadgets of every description under the sun lined the walls.  Fran saw miniatures of planes she was pretty sure were only ever used by the military, match-stick models of several famous buildings and lots she didn’t recognise, porcelain dolls and plates, photographs, a fox’s tail, as well as an object that looked suspiciously like a ninja star.  The walls themselves were covered with swords and guns of every type, interspersed with the odd painting.

“Oh my God,” said Fran weakly as Conrad turned and lifted a painting away from the wall to reveal a series of screens.  From a brief glimpse at the pictures they were showing, it looked like he had security cameras covering the entire street he lived in.  “What does your brother do?”