Even though I had told John Webster that Adam and I hadn’t argued, and even though that was technically true, somehow I felt tense when I saw him next. He seemed completely normal though when he picked me up outside the main gate of the flat complex on Monday at lunchtime. He was driving a nippy little Golf GTI that snarled and groused through the traffic in central London, then ate up the miles to our destination in Guildford. It didn’t surprise me that Adam was a good driver. He was remarkably calm, relaxed to the point of torpor even when he was pushing the speed limit.
‘Don’t you ever get edgy about driving so fast?’ I was clinging to the door handle for dear life.
‘I go as fast as I’m allowed to, when it’s safe. What is there to be nervous about?’
‘Crashing. Dying.’
‘Not today. Today I’m being good.’
I sneaked a look at him. It was strange how there were people who were instantly attractive, and others who grew on you over time: Adam was definitely in the latter category. If Adele had been in the car she would have been kicking the back of my seat. Go on, Ingrid. Don’t let this one get away.
He had sounded excited on the phone when he called to tell me he had found the Lanesburys, and had spoken to them, and had got permission to bring me to see them.
‘Thank you for sorting this out,’ I said now.
‘That’s all right.’
‘I thought you didn’t approve of me contacting the families.’
‘The family of the victim.’ He tilted his head sideways, anticipating what I was going to say. ‘I know. The court decided she wasn’t a victim. Anyway, I don’t mind you talking to the defendant’s family. I’m interested to hear what they have to say about him and what he did.’
‘Don’t go in there with the wrong attitude,’ I warned him. ‘We’ll get thrown out. He was acquitted.’
‘I won’t say anything.’
‘It’s not just about what you say. It’s how you look.’
‘How I look,’ he repeated. ‘How do I look?’
I did my best attempt at an Adam Nash glower and he took his eyes off the road to glance at me, then laughed.
‘Wow. That’s terrifying.’
‘I have a lot to put up with,’ I said sedately. He looked at me again.
‘Ingrid …’
‘Ingrid what?’ I prompted him after a few seconds.
He sighed. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ With a flick of his thumb he turned the radio up, and we passed the remainder of the journey with music that was loud enough to vibrate my seat, instead of conversation. I wondered what he had been going to say, and why he hadn’t said it, all the way to Guildford.
Guy Lanesbury’s parents lived in a small house in a modest housing estate on the outskirts of the town. I leaned forward to look at it as we pulled up outside.
‘Are you sure this is the right address?’
‘Yeah, why?’
‘They must have come down a bit in the world. Four years ago, Mrs Lanesbury was all diamonds and designer handbags. Guy went to a very expensive school. They were proper three-holidays-a-year types, which is how they could afford to pay for his private defence.’
Adam shrugged. ‘My heart bleeds for them.’
‘Well, clearly it doesn’t. I’m just wondering how they went from that to this. Something must have gone wrong for them. They were nice people, even if they were loaded.’
‘Nice people who brought up a nice sort of boy.’
I glared at him. ‘Do I have to leave you in the car?’
‘You can’t,’ Adam said with a certain degree of smugness. ‘They’re expecting me.’
I wouldn’t have recognised Mrs Lanesbury when she opened the door. Gone were the expensive highlights and the diamonds. She was thinner and paler, but her smile was warm when Adam introduced himself, and me.
‘We spoke on the phone,’ she purred, blinking at him. ‘Call me Roberta.’
‘Hi, Roberta,’ I said, and waved awkwardly.
‘Ingrid! It’s lovely to see you.’ She kissed me on the cheek and drew me into the house, leading me to a small living room where Jack Lanesbury was standing.
‘Come in, come in. Please do excuse the house. It’s on the small side but we make do. Things have changed here, let me tell you.’
Jack was leaning on a stick and there was a grey tinge to his skin. He looked dreadful, I thought, and tried to cover my shock with a smile. ‘Mr Lanesbury.’
‘Jack, please.’ He gave me a wavering smile. ‘I’ve been in poor health since we saw each other last.’
‘Jack’s had to shut down his business. He hasn’t been able to work. We had to downsize.’ Roberta shrugged. ‘I couldn’t care less about it. The house, the car – none of that matters. Jack being all right is what matters.’
‘Ah well. We have to make the best of what we have.’ Jack lowered himself carefully into his chair and I sat near him as Adam deftly fended off Roberta’s efforts to feed us and make us drinks.
‘We were surprised to get a phone call from the police,’ Jack said. ‘Especially to do with Guy. We thought that was all behind us now.’
‘It’s not because he’s in trouble again,’ I said. ‘Or not directly, anyway. He hasn’t done anything wrong, as far as I know.’
‘I do hope you’re right.’ Roberta was chewing her lip anxiously. ‘We haven’t seen him for – oh, it must be eighteen months.’
‘Twenty-two,’ her husband said, and gave a deep, rattling cough.
‘Where is he?’ I asked.
‘We think he’s in Australia. Well, not Australia,’ Roberta said. ‘He went to volunteer in one of those offshore migrant camps they have in Papua New Guinea. Manus is the name of the island.’
‘Couldn’t be further away,’ Jack commented. ‘And don’t think that’s a coincidence. He ran away.’
‘What did he need to run from?’ Adam asked.
‘We don’t know exactly.’ Jack coughed again, dragging a tissue out of his sleeve with shaking hands.
‘It was the court case,’ Roberta said. ‘No offence to you and the others, Ingrid, because I know you did your best to look after him, but he never got over it.’
‘But he was acquitted,’ Adam said.
‘The jury believed he was telling the truth – and he was. You know that, don’t you, Ingrid? He was completely honest about what happened that night. He made a terrible mistake, don’t get me wrong, but he was young. He didn’t know what he was doing or how to handle it afterwards. If he’d just talked to me – but then, no young man is going to want to talk to their mother about sex, are they? Would you?’
‘Er, no.’ Adam had been the target of that remark. He was blushing, I was fascinated to see. ‘I can understand why he didn’t want to discuss it.’
‘Well, me too.’ She sighed. ‘But we could have helped him. Instead he got into such a muddle.’
She made it sound as if he’d got into a harmless scrape, as if he’d stolen a traffic cone or something equally trivial. I was afraid to look at Adam; I assumed he was fuming silently and hoped it wouldn’t show on his face.
Jack cleared his throat. ‘The thing is, we did take it seriously. We were worried about his future if he was sent to prison. We knew things hadn’t happened that night as they should, but we knew our son, and we believed him when he said it was a mistake. We thought that if he could just get through the court case and be acquitted then he could put it all behind him and move on with his life. But we didn’t reckon with how he felt about it – afterwards, you know. Because he felt guilty, even if the jury didn’t think he was. He knew he’d upset the girl. He knew he’d hurt her very badly. That affected him much more than going to prison would have, I think. Now, looking back on it, I almost wish he had been convicted. He would have been out by now, with no guilt about getting away with anything he shouldn’t have. I don’t think he should feel guilty, but he does. There it is.’
I swallowed, hard. Well done us for getting him acquitted. Before I could say anything – before I could think of anything to answer – Roberta chimed in.
‘I think he would have got over it in time, if it hadn’t been for the messages.’
‘What messages?’ I asked.
‘Anonymous ones. Emails. Messages telling him he’d get his comeuppance for what he did, that it wouldn’t be forgotten.’
‘Did he report this to the police?’ Adam was sitting up straighter now.
‘He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to talk about what had happened, and the trial and everything. He thought everyone would judge him just as harshly as he judged himself.’ A fat tear slid down Roberta’s cheek. ‘They would have helped him, obviously. That’s their job. Well, you know, it’s your job.’
‘We would take it seriously,’ Adam said. ‘Do you have any of these messages?’
Roberta shook her head. ‘He deleted them as soon as he got them. We only found out about them by chance.’
‘He left his phone behind when he took our old dog out for a walk. I happened to need to check something and I knew his password. The email was on the screen when I unlocked it.’ Jack grimaced. ‘I tried to get him to open up to me about it but he wouldn’t. He did admit that he’d been getting messages for a few months and he said it wasn’t going to stop.’
‘Were there any actual threats?’ I asked.
‘Nothing specific that he mentioned, but he was scared.’ Roberta swallowed. ‘He was worried that someone would take it out on us, too, you see. He wanted to get away from us because he was the target, not us. I told him we didn’t care about that – we only cared about him. But he left home and cut off contact with us.’
‘He came to see us before he went to Manus,’ Jack said. ‘To say goodbye. And that was it.’
‘Are you in touch with him?’ Adam asked. ‘Email? Phone? Skype?’
Roberta shook her head. ‘I wish we were, but he cut us off completely. He doesn’t have a mobile phone or anything. We don’t even know for sure that he’s in Manus. It’s the end of the world, really it is. There’s no way we could go and visit him with Jack’s lungs – he’s not allowed to do long-haul travel any more.’
‘Any kind of travel,’ Jack corrected her. ‘I need oxygen a lot of the time. Better to stay in one place in case I get caught out.’
‘He told us not to tell anyone where he was.’ Roberta looked from Adam to me. ‘But you don’t count, do you? He wouldn’t mind us telling you.’
‘We’ll keep it to ourselves,’ Adam said. ‘And if you don’t mind me giving you some advice, you should avoid talking about him and where he is from now on, especially if someone you don’t know asks you about him – someone who says they’re a friend of his, even. Unless you know them personally, say nothing. The reason we’re here is because there might be a threat to your safety, and to him. It’s vitally important that you don’t trust anyone else who tries to talk to you about Guy.’
Roberta nodded, her eyes wide. Jack shifted uneasily in his chair.
‘Do you think the messages were genuine, then? Actual threats? I thought it was just a load of rubbish. Anonymous messages usually are.’
‘I don’t know if there’s a connection,’ I said carefully, ‘but I do think you should take care. The main thing is to keep you all safe, even if we’re worrying about nothing.’
‘Are you going to try to track him down?’ Jack asked Adam, who nodded.
‘I’ll do my best.’
Jack paused to master his emotions, but when he spoke his voice was steady. ‘If you find him, tell him we miss him.’
We left the Lanesburys and drove away in silence. The radio stayed off this time; jaunty music didn’t seem appropriate. After a few minutes, Adam pulled off the A3 and took a smaller road that struck off to the east.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I don’t know.’
Okay then. I stayed quiet and watched the wintry scenery pass by in a blur. The road ran through the Surrey Hills, an area so ravishingly beautiful that it was like a perfect postcard of England at every turn in the road. The sky was a clear, bright blue, making the most of the brief period of daylight before the night came down again. The trees and fields were muted in colour, despite the low, slanting sunlight: washed-out browns and greens with patches of white frost clinging here and there where the sun hadn’t reached them throughout the whole short day. Adam drove through it as if he couldn’t see anything but the road that dipped and swung beneath our wheels, through tunnels made by bare-branched trees and into the open again.
At last we came to a signpost for Box Hill and Adam took the narrow road that climbed up the side of the hill, twisting and turning, slowing for Lycra-clad cyclists who favoured it as a test for their stamina. I could sense his frustration building as he crawled along behind them, waiting for a chance to overtake. Near the top of the hill he gave up and pulled off the road, stopping at a viewing point. Miles and miles of low, rolling farmland stretched out in front of us, crosshatched with the long shadows of hedges and trees. The sun was already slipping towards the horizon, burning out in a blaze of red. He turned off the engine and sat for a few seconds, silent. He was staring out at the scene in front of us as if he needed to memorise it for a test.
‘Adam,’ I said tentatively.
He got out of the car and slammed the door, hard. I watched him walk a few paces away, the cold air turning his breath to clouds.
I got out of the car too and turned the collar of my coat up – no scarf, not since Webster had tried to strangle me with it on the bus, but God I regretted it at that moment. The air was icy on the hillside, stinging my cheeks, turning them as red as the sunset.
Adam had his back to me. I walked slowly towards him, stopping a short distance away.
‘Nice view.’
No response.
‘Worth the drive.’
Still nothing.
‘Adam.’
He turned and looked at me. Then he closed the distance between us with a single stride. He slid his hand inside the collar of my coat, and turned my face up to his, and he kissed me.