“Are you sure you won’t come and stay with me?” her mum asked, slowing the car as they approached Emma’s street.
The dark road swarmed with even more police. Lights flashed, officers gesticulated to one another. The windows of Emma’s flat peered out, like scared eyes.
“It’s not the ideal environment for rest and recovery,” her mum pointed out as she parked, then helped Emma out of the passenger side. Emma was still getting used to the crutches. She hobbled along the pavement, convinced that a distracted police officer would kick a crutch from under her. Walking beside her, Julie gaped at the chaos that had engulfed the neighborhood.
Emma kept her ears pricked, listening for information on the crackling police radios. She heard the Harlows’ names. Something about a search. Paul Harlow’s car tracked as far as . . . The rest of the sentence was inaudible.
“I think we should go back to mine,” her mum said. “I’ve got some leftover gnocchi in the fridge. I could whip up a sauce. You must be starving.”
“I’ll double my body weight if I stay with you, Mum. And it’s one a.m., not exactly gnocchi hour.”
“You’re looking too thin. The cookery gene did seem to skip a generation with you, Em.”
Emma ignored this and looked up at the Harlows’ flat. It had an air of stillness that contrasted with the flashing, simmering energy of its surroundings. She wondered where Steph and Paul were. She hoped they were together, and safe, pulling Freya into a tearful embrace at this very moment. The decisions she’d made sat like indigestible rocks in her gut. Would she ever know if they’d been the right ones?
Her eyes fell to her own flat.
“It’ll be good for me to be alone for a bit,” she told her mum. “I need to think about my future.”
“Well,” Julie said, “I wouldn’t bank on the ‘being alone’ part just yet.”
“You don’t have to stay with me.” Emma was half alarmed and half comforted at the thought that her mum might move in until her hip had healed.
“I didn’t mean me.”
Julie was pointing down the road. One of the parked vehicles wasn’t a police car: It was a small white van.
Standing beside it was Zeb.
Emma squeezed her crutches closer to her body as though they might prop up her courage too. She ached when she looked at Zeb, his curly hair falling into his face, his eyes wary. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Just because he’d been running away didn’t mean he’d posted the note or done the other things. Just because he’d been evasive about his friendship with Freya didn’t mean he had more to hide.
She jumped as she registered the long-haired man behind him. Her crutches almost gave way. Robin. He seemed to be smirking at her—or was she imagining that? If she glanced down, maybe her chest would have flattened and her skinny knees would be knocking, and there’d be an Alien Girl cartoon shoved down the front of her top.
She found herself shuffling backward, almost clobbering her mum in her urgency to get away. Julie looked at her in surprise, and Zeb rushed forward. Emma couldn’t stop shaking her head. “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said to Zeb, the words spilling out before she could filter them. She flung a glance at Robin. “Either of you.” That panicky sensation climbing up into her throat again.
“What’s going on?” Julie asked.
“Please, Mum,” said Zeb. “Let me explain.”
“I don’t even know what to say to you, Zeb.” She wished she’d had more time to decide how to handle this. Her emotions were spiraling.
“She asked me to do those things,” Zeb said. “That’s how it started.”
“What?” Emma glanced around. “Who?”
“Freya.”
The mention of her name made a police officer turn their way. Emma seized Zeb’s arm. “You’d better come inside.”
She pushed him toward her flat, aware of her mum and Robin looking uneasily at one another, never having met before.
“Dad needs to hear this as well,” Zeb said, making Emma freeze.
She couldn’t have Robin in her flat. Sitting on her sofa, drinking from her cups . . . no.
“Please, Mum,” Zeb begged. “I want to talk to both of you.”
“Emma.” Robin spoke for the first time. Hearing him say her name made the hairs stand up on her neck. It used to shock her when Andy called her Emma rather than Alien Girl. It was like an alert: Was he going to be nice to her that day? Or was he lulling her into a false sense of security?
She remembered Robin whispering her name into her ear on the night they’d made Zeb.
“We could sit in the van, or go somewhere else, if you’d be more comfortable,” he said now.
His voice was deeper, more pronounced. More his own, perhaps, now that he wasn’t just parroting Andy. She knew his appearance was different, too, but she couldn’t look at him straight. Couldn’t help wondering what he was noticing about her, how changed she was, how bedraggled from a night in hospital.
She pulled back her shoulders. There was no way she’d let him see her break down.
“Let’s go inside.” She nodded toward her flat. Maybe she’d feel more in control on her own turf. She had to admit she was relieved when her mum followed them in.
It was as strange as she’d thought it would be, having Robin among her things. All the photos of her and Zeb from their years without him. The boxes of stock that made her life look as if it was in some kind of chaotic transition. Gilbert was awake and seemed to be rearranging his nest, a flurry of industrious noises coming from the cupboard. Emma urged everybody into the kitchen. Zeb sat between his parents—for the first time ever—while Julie busied herself making tea.
Everything about the situation felt wrong, wrong, wrong. This was a conventional family setup, but not for them. Not for their family.
Zeb stared at the table. “I’ve fucked up.”
“Tell us, mate,” Robin said, and Emma squeezed her fists, trying not to succumb to the rage she felt, hearing him address her son like that. Watching him parent.
This is about Zeb now, she told herself, pinning her eyes on her son’s face.
“The night Freya and I got drunk in the park,” Zeb said. “You were right, Mum, it wasn’t the only time. We bonded that night because we were both pissed off with life. After that we started sneaking out, just to talk, drink . . . It was good for me at first. I didn’t want to tell you because it was my thing, my way of dealing with how I was feeling.” He glanced at Robin, then back to Emma, then down again.
“I would buy the booze and bring the music, she’d lend me books. Sometimes we’d just listen to podcasts, trying to relax. But sometimes she’d be angry or upset, and sometimes I would be. She told me her mum was having an affair and she was planning to get proof. But she also . . .” He paused and coughed into his sleeve. “Well, she kind of recruited me.”
“How do you mean?” Emma asked in alarm.
“She was so fuming and hurt because she’d idolized her mum so much, and she’d always been sold this idea of their family being so close—‘three sides of a triangle’ or something. And she got me all riled up, too, even more than I already was. She convinced me to help her mess with her mum . . . Like, she had this idea of targeting their perfect house. She said it would be like irony or something—”
“But it’s your house too, Zeb!”
“I know, Mum. It was a shitty plan. But I was in a shitty place . . .” He tapped between his eyes. “I was furious with you for keeping me apart from Dad. I wanted to punish you too—it wasn’t just about Freya’s mum. And once I’d started doing all that nasty stuff, it got weirdly addictive. That’s why I kept phoning you, I think. I wanted to confess, wanted you to make me stop. But I always chickened out.” He flattened his palm against his brow and seemed to press hard.
“Mate—” Robin began, but Emma cut him a look that silenced him. Except she didn’t know what to say to Zeb. Whether to scream at him or console him.
“What about after Freya disappeared?” she said. “How could you have kept doing those things, knowing what her parents must be going through?”
“I didn’t know, at first. I was living at Dad’s, out of the loop, but I kept on with the plan Freya had made. When you told me she’d disappeared, I thought she’d taken the plan to a major new level. I felt like I should step things up too. And every day I seemed to get angrier toward you, Mum, not calmer . . .”
Emma remembered the foul smell of dog dirt in their foyer. Her son had done that. Her son, who’d never done anything like it before, as far as she knew. She’d ignored the signs, though, hadn’t she? The recent temper that had led his teachers to suggest “a few anger-management sessions, nothing to be too concerned about.” The change in their relationship since she’d lied to him.
“Then, when I came here and saw it for myself—the police and the posters and everything—I realized there was no way she could be messing about. She really had gone.” Zeb’s voice cracked and Emma instinctively grabbed his hand. On his other side, she saw Robin take his arm. Her mum had stopped making tea and was standing very still by the boiled kettle.
“My anger just . . . exploded,” Zeb continued. “I think it was the shock of realizing this was real, she was missing . . . and then you and I argued, Mum, and you refused to even acknowledge you’d done anything wrong. And I know I was in the wrong, too, but I couldn’t think straight. I wrote that note and I . . .” He broke down into sobs, dropping his head into his hands.
“The last note was aimed at me?” Emma asked, choked with tears too.
“I wish I could take it back. All of it.”
Emma jumped to her feet, her own hurt overtaken by the sight of him so distraught. He hadn’t cried like that since he was tiny. She hugged him from behind, burying her face in his hood; it smelled woody, like a bonfire.
“Oh, shit,” Zeb kept saying, swiping at his eyes. “Shit.” Eventually he stood and ran out of the kitchen, toward the bathroom.
Emma looked at her mum, mainly to avoid looking at Robin. “What are we going to do?” she said.
For once, Julie seemed lost for words. Her gaze flicked to Robin as if to imply that she wasn’t the person Emma should be asking. Emma felt Robin’s eyes on her, and in her mind it was that blank stare from across a classroom as he’d failed to stick up for her, even after he’d been inside her.
But she made herself look back at him. At first all she saw was an older version of the boy who’d followed Andy’s every cruel command. Longer hair, and the freckled, mildly weathered skin of somebody who worked outdoors a lot. After a moment or two, though, she couldn’t help but see Zeb in him. And she had to acknowledge he looked as sad as she felt.
“Emma,” he said, and still she shuddered at her name on his lips. “We need to be there for him.”
“No, I do.”
“Emma.” God, she wished he would stop saying it. “I’m so, so sorry for how I treated you at school. I was a coward. Unforgivable. But if it makes any difference at all, I really did like you. You didn’t follow the crowd the way I did. The way I followed that scumbag Andy.”
Emma made a noise of disbelief. Robin kept going: “I’m not making excuses. I was an utter bastard. But I swear I’m not that guy anymore. It keeps me awake at night, thinking about everything Andy did, and how I let him. Then finding out years later that I’d got you pregnant . . . It was the shock of my life. I can’t blame you for not wanting me to have anything to do with Zeb . . . but you’ve done an amazing job. He’s funny, smart, passionate, artistic . . . Basically, from what I can make out, he’s you.”
Despite everything, Emma flushed with pride. Her stubborn streak bristled, of course (Zeb had that too): I don’t need you to tell me I did a good job. But she had to admit it was gratifying to hear, especially when she’d been doubting herself so much. In the background, her mum nodded manically in agreement.
“The way he’s been acting, though,” Robin added tentatively, “all this bizarre stuff he’s done . . . surely it’s telling us something.”
Emma blew out another sigh. The lights of the police cars outside made her whole flat seem to flash and pulsate. Sounds from upstairs were strikingly absent. She thought of all the times she’d heard the Harlows’ footsteps and voices, their apparently perfect life rippling above. Now upstairs was empty, yet she had the chance to salvage her own family.
She was grown up now. So was Robin. Their son was standing in the doorway of this kitchen, looking from one parent to the other for help. How strange it must be for him, never having been in a room with both of them until tonight. And how lucky they were that he was here, and safe, with a whole life in front of him that could be better all round, if maybe they just called this their new Day One. Got reacquainted, without any secrets.
“I heard that,” Zeb murmured.
“What?” Emma asked, trying to collect herself.
“The stuff Dad said, about being shitty to you at school. About how hard everything’s been for you.” His eyes were wide. “I didn’t know all that.”
“Because we didn’t talk about it,” she conceded.
Zeb sniffed again. “It might’ve helped me understand things . . . you know, from your point of view.”
“I did think about telling you myself, Zeb,” Robin said quietly. “But I assumed there must’ve been a reason your mum hadn’t. And, since we’re being honest, I was worried it would kill our relationship before it even started. I wanted you to get to know me a bit first.”
“Well . . . I can’t exactly judge you,” Zeb said, twisting his cuffs. “I’m the worst person in the world.”
“No!” three voices protested in unison.
Emma, her mum, and Robin shared a glance before Emma pressed the point home: “You’re not, Zeb. You made some questionable choices when you were angry. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
She remembered what he’d said during their last argument, exasperated with her for refusing to give his dad a chance. Is it one strike and you’re out with you? He didn’t realize that he, Zeb, was the one person who could have endless strikes with her.
Emma dried her eyes, smoothed her hair. “We can fix this. It might be tough but we can try to fix everything . . .” Letting her gaze flit toward Robin, she took the plunge and added, “All of us.”
As she said it, she felt an unexpected bud of hope. Maybe this really could be a fresh start for them. Maybe, once they’d got through this, she could even try again with the shop, rebuild her confidence, the vision she’d had . . . After all, she was still the owner. Perhaps there was a reason she’d procrastinated over letting the estate agent relist it.
Her optimism grew a little stronger: Maybe Freya would be found too. Emma would go back to hearing laughter from above, smelling bakery bread and Friday-night takeaways. And she’d feel differently about it now. Not envious or obsessive or excluded, but relieved, and sorry for her own part in their ordeal, and connected to her neighbors because they’d both lost their children and got them back, in the end.