Emma closed the door behind Steph and leaned against it, expelling a long breath.
She unfurled the address in her clammy hand, and a crush of responsibility bore down on her. Should she carry out Steph’s request in the secretive way she wanted? Or go to the police and tell them everything, hand over the burden? Why did the thought of the latter make her hug the address protectively to her chest?
Maybe Steph wouldn’t have put so much faith in Emma if she knew she was hiding a mess of secrets and troubles too. Or maybe she’d chosen her for that very reason. A strange affinity seemed to be developing between them, impossible to walk away from.
Taking out her phone, she searched on Google Maps and Street View, zooming in on an ordinary terrace near Chertsey, only twelve miles away. She couldn’t think of a way to find out anything more. Couldn’t forget Steph’s wide, desperate eyes, her hands fretting at the fabric of that green scarf . . .
Something made her pause. What had just tapped at the back of her brain? The scarf . . . Steph had been wearing it ever since Freya had gone missing, but Emma had seen it somewhere else recently too.
She followed her train of thought into Zeb’s room, grabbing his photo-booth strip from the bedside cabinet. Freya was wearing the green scarf in those pictures. It made sense that it was hers, that Steph was clinging to it in her absence . . . and now that she thought about it, Emma had seen Freya with it before. But that wasn’t what was nagging at her.
She was sure Freya hadn’t been wearing it in the photo strip Steph had shown her only that morning. As Emma cast her mind back, other differences began to bother her. Hadn’t Zeb been wearing his brown winter coat in Freya’s version but his leather jacket in the pictures she was now studying? And wasn’t Freya’s hair slightly different too? Emma wished she could trust her memory, wished she could put the strips side by side to compare. Each time she swung toward thinking she was imagining things, something else would swing her back. Freya was drinking vodka here; Zeb had mentioned gin in his story. Were they, in fact, separate occasions? Had Zeb lied about the number of times he and Freya had met? If so, why?
Emma left the room and paced around her cluttered flat, something she seemed to have done too many times lately. She went to the window, inching it open to feel the cool night air on her face. The rain from earlier made the dark pavements look varnished, the puddles under the streetlamps like pools of golden oil. When the home phone began to ring, she jumped even more violently than usual, then felt a rush of combustible anger. She’d had enough of these intrusive calls. Enough of everything.
She stomped to the kitchen and snatched the receiver. This time she didn’t even say hello, meeting the other person’s breathy silence with her own. A long, intense moment pulled tight between them.
“Robin?” she demanded.
She expected the click of a hang-up. Instead the caller’s breathing quickened. Perhaps Emma would have hung up herself if her emotions hadn’t been swirling, climbing. What was Robin trying to do to her, even after all this time? She wasn’t fifteen anymore. And in messing with her—the parenting book, the eggs, the calls—he was also messing with a couple who were going through the worst possible ordeal.
She didn’t even want to follow her fears to their very end. To the connection between what she knew of Robin’s character and what she was starting to worry she didn’t know about Zeb.
“This has got to stop,” she said into the phone, heat flooding her cheeks. “Stop fucking with my head. Stop sending things to this house. And”—her voice was rising, uncontrollable—“and give me back my son.”
She shouted the last part much louder than she’d intended. Threw the phone against the wall with a crack. She stood panting, and cringing, but filled with a sense of release. Then she heard footsteps down the stairs again. She gulped air as a knock came on the door, and Steph’s voice: “Emma?”
Emma slumped into her window chair. She couldn’t face Steph now.
“I’m okay,” she shouted. “Sorry.”
She heard Steph lingering at the door. Her head felt as if it was going to explode. She laid her brow against the cold windowpane, letting it freeze away all sensation until her neighbor retreated.