In the passenger seat, Dani’s eyelids drooped. Stay awake. Stay awake. At the corner of her eye she could feel the driver eyeing her up. Rain hit the windscreen like specks of grit. A car’s oncoming headlights flared; Dani squinted, sat up straight. Up ahead, hills; Dunwich Road cut through them and on through the town. A sign flashed by: Manchester 20. Halfway there, anyroad. And after that–? The van turned right, down a dark, narrow lane that ran beside the hill. “What’s this?” Dani sat up straight. But she knew; of course she knew. It had been on the cards from the minute he’d picked her up. She were young, not daft. “Nowt, lass,” the driver said. “Nowt much.” They were going too fast for her to risk jumping out. She looked back; the lights of the cars on Dunwich Road receded, then vanished as the van rounded a bend. The driver was looking sidelong at her, a smile on his lips. Christ, he was forty-odd – dad’s age – and with a gut on him like a bag of spuds.
