42

Izzy spends her time in the shower thinking of the black car. As she lathers shampoo into her hair, she wonders if she should have told somebody about it. Her father? Nick? Somebody who could help. But what was it, really? Her father has enough to worry about, and Nick … God, she doesn’t want to tell Nick. Doesn’t want to open up that topic again, doesn’t want to have to answer his questions about how often and why she is seeing her father. But she’s not stupid. She can see what’s happening. Her marriage, constructed so carefully during her twenties … it’s crumbling, like cliffs exposed to the elements.

She turns her mind away from it, away from that possibly benign black car, away from how seldom she and Nick entwine their ankles in bed, and thinks instead of the men at the restaurant. There must be something hidden in her memories.

Marcus. White-blond Marcus with his pale blue eyes used to come in every Friday. She racks her brain. What else? What else? But there is nothing. The things she knows about him – that he liked lasagne, that he spoke very basic French – she can’t remember how she knows. They are just facts that exist in a vacuum, the background information rubbed out, leaving the knowledge but none of the context.

She thinks of Daniel Godfrey, the waiter who was sacked. He had a motorbike. He used to bring a McDonald’s into the restaurant at the start of his shift, which irritated her mother. But that’s all she has on him.

As she is towel-drying her hair in the bathroom, an image springs to mind.

Daniel waiting for her mother to finish serving somebody. He wanted to book a day off. Yes, that’s right. He was standing by the end of the bar, just watching her.

As her mother turned to leave the table she was waiting on, she took two steps, then stopped. Seeing Izzy. Two steps, a pause, then her mother resumed, the pause infinitesimal, and continued towards him.

She hadn’t wanted Izzy to see them interact. That’s it. That’s the impression she got.

Izzy hasn’t thought of it for years, has dredged it from her memory through sheer force. But when was it? There is nothing to anchor it to.

But, nevertheless, it is something. Is it? Or was it just a pause, just an innocent pause? All of her memories are littered with this – this detritus, these loose ends. When somebody dies so suddenly, they leave things behind that don’t make any sense. Ordinary occurrences loom large and seem extraordinary, and it’s hard to tell if the past is littered with mere clues or coincidences.

When she goes downstairs to lock up before bed, she sees Nick’s laptop on the pine kitchen table. He must be working from home tomorrow.

The thought appears in her mind uninvited. I could look anybody up on that. She knows he’ll leave it unattended at least once, the next day. He always does.

No, she thinks. She’s not that desperate for information. She wouldn’t do something like that.

Before she goes to bed, she checks her Facebook inbox. Her message to Pip remains unread, the friend request still pending. Perhaps he’s not logged in since. Or perhaps he just doesn’t want to hear from her. Perhaps, once again, she is reaching out, inappropriately seeking intimacy, when she ought to keep her counsel, become somehow self-sufficient.

She clicks around on his profile. She idly searches his friends for Talbots and Easons. There are a few hits. Carly Eason. Jemima Eason. They must be cousins or something. Steve Eason is the last. His father. How must it feel to be Facebook friends with your own father? To see him casually for barbecues and at Christmas, to phone him up, to trust him.

She brings up his profile. And there is his smiling face, holding up a philosophy book written by him. The familiarity of that photograph makes her open the message box. She writes quickly, before she can change her mind.

I’m trying to get in touch with Pip, she says. She leaves her mobile number.

As she ascends the stairs, she thinks of her father. Imagine if he was innocent. How light she’d feel. She would go out shopping. Hold her head high. Take the ferry to London. Visit Liberty and Jo Malone and Abercrombie & Fitch. Take a ballet class, just for kicks. She’d be … free.

She performs an arabesque on her stairs, in the quiet, in the dark. Nobody sees, but she feels it: her body remembers how to do it. She is still good.

She is woken by a text in the night. She has been programmed to wake up when she hears the tone, in case it’s a David Smith, and now Pip or Steve. In case it’s information.

DO NOT REPLY is who the text message is from. She opens it, half-heartedly expecting some junk text – about free pizzas, or two-for-one burgers – but her hands still when she swipes to reveal its contents.

You might think you’re safe eating dinner with your father in the restaurant, but you’re not. You’re not safe at all.

Her body is covered in goosebumps, the hairs raised.

You’re not safe at all.

Izzy hesitates, in the morning, deciding who to show the text message to. She slept because she knows how to sleep when terrified. She did it for years.

Her choice doesn’t even make sense to her. Izzy is a mystery to herself. The risks she is taking. But something in her gut is propelling her in this direction. It feels right: to tell her father. To tell him is as natural to her as it is for a child who has fallen over in the street to look for their parent.

He answers the phone on the first ring. He understands immediately. He understands the position they’re in.

She reads out the text to him, and he says, ‘Somebody doesn’t want us meeting. They’re trying to scare you. That’s a threat. The clipping was weird. But that’s a threat.’

‘From –’

He doesn’t miss a beat. ‘The person who did it.’

‘But what do we do?’ she says. ‘Should I tell someone?’

‘What do you want to do?’ he says quietly.

‘I want to know who’s doing this to us. But I don’t want to be threatened.’

‘I know. But what if we work it out?’

Izzy’s in only a vest top, the morning sun warming her skin through the kitchen window, but inside she feels cold. She hasn’t slept well, and her eyes are gritty from tiredness and worry. Her father suggests they meet at Nettlecombe Farm Lake, the only lake on the Isle of Wight. Izzy pictures the holiday cottages dotted around the green sloping hills and, sunken in the centre, the expanse of water, reflecting the blue of the sky. The idyllic location and the sunshine through the window are incongruous to Izzy, who is freezing cold with fear. What if she’s followed again? She will be vulnerable, driving alone –

‘Look,’ her father says, cutting across her thoughts. ‘Don’t go to the restaurant today. Meet me at the lake, and we’ll discuss my arrest. The only way to find out who did it is to keep talking. The only way out is through.’