Dan was standing over me, waiting for a response.
“How do you know she didn’t come home?”
“Her mother reported her missing this morning.”
“How did she seem?”
Dan twitched, irritated. “How do you think she seemed? She was worried about her daughter. She was upset.”
“I told you,” I said, probably unwisely. “I said Gilly was gone.”
“And that’s why I wanted to talk to you. How did you know?”
“It just wasn’t like her to disappear.”
Dan gave me a long, dubious look. “What else do you know?”
“Nothing.” Nothing that you would consider useful, anyway.
“We’re looking for her,” he said. “I have my men out searching. If you see her or hear anything useful, I expect you to let me know.”
“I will.”
“And I’m going to want to speak to you again if she doesn’t show up in the next twelve hours.”
“When did her mother see her last?”
“At home, yesterday afternoon. She said she was going to meet you.”
“And she never got there.”
“Obviously not.”
“Did Mrs. Poynter remember her leaving the house?”
“She said she didn’t hear her leave. She couldn’t say exactly what time it was. Before five, she thought.”
My eyebrows shot up. “How is that even possible? The house is tiny. You could hear a mouse cough in the kitchen from the front bedroom.”
“You said she was out of it.”
“And you told me I was overreacting.”
“What do you want me to say? You were right and I was wrong?”
I shook my head.
“If you think of anything I should know,” Dan said heavily, “call me.” He glared at his son, but turned away without speaking to him.
Will put his arm round my shoulders as his dad disappeared into the crowd. “Who was he talking about?”
“A girl called Gilly Poynter.”
“Do you know her?”
“A bit. She’s in my history class. She was supposed to meet me at the library yesterday and she didn’t turn up.”
“And you told Dad.”
“He told me not to worry about it.” I had thought I was cold before, but now the chill was inside me, around my heart. “Will, what if something’s happened to her? She could have been kidnapped on her way to the library. Or she might have run away and got into trouble. It was so cold last night. If she’s outside somewhere—if she fell into a ditch on the moors, or even got lost—”
“They’ll find her.” Will sounded infinitely reassuring. “They’re good at finding people.”
“What if they don’t? What if she harmed herself? Deliberately, I mean?”
He frowned. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know.” I told him about the party, and how she had cut herself.
He winced. “Sounds nasty.”
“It was.”
“And public. She wasn’t trying to hide it, was she? Do you think it was a cry for help?”
“I don’t know.” I hugged myself. “What if it was, and no one heard her?”
“You mean, what if you didn’t hear her?” Will’s arm tightened around my shoulders. “Why was it your responsibility to rescue her?”
I turned to look at him. “Why shouldn’t I take on that responsibility?”
“Because it makes you miserable.”
“It makes me miserable that I failed.” I shook my head. “I should have asked her about what happened. I should have insisted—”
“Jess, it’s not your job.” Will shook me gently. “You did what you could. You told Dad she was missing. If he’d started to look for her earlier, he might have found her last night. That’s his problem, not yours. You can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do—you know that. And now he is looking for her, he has the resources to find her. He’ll have the search dogs out, the helicopter up—he’s on the case. So please, stop worrying.”
“You want me to forget about her.”
“I want—” He broke off and sighed. “I want to spend two weeks with my girlfriend without having a shadow hanging over us. I don’t know what’s happened to this girl, but you’re right, the chances are she is in some sort of trouble. I don’t want you to get caught up in it for no other reason than that you feel obliged to, just because you happened to be near her when she went mental at a party.”
“That’s not who I am,” I said. “I can’t be like that.”
Will’s eyes had gone very dark. “You think I’m selfish.”
“Not exactly. But…” I was struggling to put it into words. “I have a life here. When you’re at school, I mean. I’m more than your girlfriend. And I can’t drop everything else just because you happen to be here.”
His mouth thinned. “I see.”
“Don’t be angry about it. You should be glad I don’t spend the weeks simply waiting for you to come back.”
“I don’t have many reasons to look forward to coming home, Jess.” Will took his arm away from me and bent over, bracing his elbows on his thighs. He dropped his head into his hands. “I have to have something.”
“I’m a person,” I said quietly. “Not a consolation prize.”
“Right.” His voice was as dark as midnight, and my heart twisted in my chest.
“I care about you, Will.” I put my hand on his back. “But I’m not going to turn my back on Gilly, either. She’s a person too. If I can help her—”
“If you can.”
“If I can help her,” I repeated, “I should.”
I felt him take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Then I hope you find her.” He looked sideways at me and smiled wryly. “And I hope it’s not selfish to hope you find her sooner rather than later.”
* * *
Later, after my shift at the market had ended, I headed down to the seafront. It was dark and cold, but I wasn’t planning a walk. I shouldered open the door of Mario’s and walked into the warm, slightly stuffy café I loved. It was busy, as usual, and at a glance I knew about half the customers. Darcy was there, as she generally was, perched on the back of a booth with her legs swinging. Today she was all in black, her hair in ringlets, her eye makeup a very punchy dark blue.
“Hey, babe. How was work?”
“Fine.” I had overheated the minute I walked into the café, and now I was stripping off layers of clothes. “Freezing.”
“Did you see Will? He was looking for you earlier.”
“Oh, I saw him.” I couldn’t stop myself from sounding very slightly grim, and Darcy raised her eyebrows.
“Trouble in paradise? Don’t break my heart. You’re my OTP.”
“Not this again,” I said.
“My One True Pairing,” she said dreamily. “Because you’ve mated for life.”
“What do I have to do to get you to not ship us, please?”
“Stop being perfect for one another.” She grinned. “Just kidding. Never stop. What are you doing?”
I was scanning the café, looking for someone in particular. I spotted a familiar sleek blonde head right at the back, in a booth. “Is that Abigail Norris?”
“The one and only.” Darcy rolled her eyes. “Is it too much to hope she gets a curling iron for Christmas? Or heated rollers? Should I drop a hint that someone needs a new look?”
“No.” I took her arm and pulled her off the back of the booth to stand beside me. “You should find a way of persuading her to talk to me.”
Darcy fluffed her ringlets thoughtfully. Her nails were the same color as her eye shadow, and scattered with tiny silver stars like the night sky. “Um, do I look like a miracle worker?”
“I know you’re capable of magic.”
“Three words,” Darcy said. She held up her hand and counted them off on her fingers. The silver stars twinkled at me. “Not. A. Hope.”
I gave her a little shove in Abigail’s direction. “Do what you have to do.”
I watched her go, then turned to greet Lily Mancini, one of the waitresses, who was a friend of mine.
“Something to warm you up?”
“Tea?” I suggested.
“Good choice.” She led me to a table in the window. “It’s just you and Darcy, isn’t it?”
“Me and someone, anyway. I think Darcy is too busy working the room to sit down with me.”
Darcy was standing at the end of Abigail’s table. She hadn’t been invited to sit down yet, I noticed, which was both bad and good. Good because I didn’t want her sitting down and getting stuck into a big gossip session. Bad because even Darcy couldn’t always persuade people to do what she wanted.
On this occasion, however, she was coming up roses for me. She threw me a significant look as Abigail began to extract herself from her booth. She said something to Darcy that I couldn’t catch, smoothed her hair, then sashayed toward me, looking around the room as she went to see who was watching her. She sat down in the seat opposite mine and made eye contact for a brief, wary moment.
“Darcy said you wanted to talk to me.”
“What else did she say?”
“That it was important.” Another glance from narrow blue eyes. “That I needed to hear it.”
Good enough. I could have kissed Darcy for being vague. It gave me more to work with.
I leaned forward, lowering my voice. “Did she tell you that the police are looking for you?”
“What?” Abigail was genuinely shocked. “Why?”
“Gilly Poynter has disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“She went out last night and she hasn’t been seen since.”
She frowned. “So? What’s that got to do with me?”
“The party the other night, Abigail. Everyone saw you. You made her hurt herself.”
“That wasn’t me,” she said quickly. “She did that to herself.”
“Why would she harm herself like that?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because you were talking to her right before she hurt herself.”
“It was just an ordinary conversation.” Abigail pressed her hand against her chest, outraged—or pretending to be. “I swear, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What were you talking about? You said it was love and life, if I recall correctly.”
“That’s right.” She sounded sulky now, and scared. “It was friendly.”
“So friendly you didn’t want an audience? So friendly you wanted me and Darcy to leave?”
“I didn’t want you gossiping about it. We were having a private talk.”
“About what?” I leaned closer. “You know I know Inspector Henderson, don’t you? He’s my boyfriend’s dad. He’s looking for you. He wants to know what was going on in Gilly’s life before she disappeared. Someone told him you knew more than anyone else.”
“You did, you mean.”
“I haven’t said a word,” I said truthfully. “Come on, Abigail. Everyone at the party was talking about it. It only takes one person to mention your name and you’re in real trouble. I mean, do you even have a solicitor?”
“No.” She bit her lip.
“I’m trying to help you. I didn’t have to warn you.” I looked at my phone as if I was considering making a call. “Maybe I should tell him where to find you so you can clear all this up with him.”
“No, please don’t.” She was almost crying. “My parents will kill me if I get arrested.”
“I think he just wants to interview you.” I waited a beat. “At the moment, anyway. And obviously he’d have to get your parents’ permission. They’d probably want to sit in on the interview. Along with your lawyer, I mean.”
Tears were standing in Abigail’s eyes now. “If I tell you what happened, can you tell him? Pass it on, I mean? So he doesn’t have to speak to me?”
I pretended to think about it. “That could work. Initially, anyway. I mean, if you’re saying there was nothing strange about your conversation, there’s no point in him wasting his time on you, is there?”
She seized on it gratefully. “No. Exactly what I was thinking.”
“So what were you talking about?”
Abigail smoothed her hair, recovering her composure as far as possible. “We were just asking for her advice.”
“About what?”
A dimple appeared in one of Abigail’s cheeks, unbelievably. “The best places to have sex at school.”
I blinked. “Why would Gilly know about that?”
“Didn’t you hear about her?” It was Abigail’s turn to lean forward. “She lost her diary in the locker room at school. I don’t know who found it, but they read a bit before they gave it back to her—I mean, who wouldn’t?”
“Absolutely,” I murmured. “What did she say in the diary?”
“That she’d screwed someone in the disabled toilet near the staff room.”
“Gilly did?”
Abigail nodded. “The diary didn’t say who and she wouldn’t tell. But, you know, rumors were flying.”
Sent on their way by Abigail and her friends, I had no doubt. I certainly hadn’t heard about it, but then they didn’t really talk to me. “So who was it? Not Max Thurston?”
“No, not him.” Abigail grinned triumphantly. “That was the whole point. They were going out—which no one knew, by the way. When he heard about it, he broke up with her. I mean, he went completely crazy. He told her she’d humiliated him. She tried to apologize, but he wouldn’t even speak to her. She had a black eye and everything.”
“Did he hit her?”
“Yep.” But then she added, “At least, that’s what I heard. She was off school for a few days until it healed so I didn’t actually see it.”
And neither had I.
“What else did you hear?”
“Well, you know she and Nessa Mullen were best, best friends? Nessa wasn’t talking to her, either.”
“Why was that?”
Abigail shook her head. “Neither of them would say. I asked. Gilly just told me to get lost.”
Good for her. “Was this at the party?”
“Yeah. It seemed like a good opportunity to find out what was going on.” Abigail smoothed her hair again, a giveaway that she felt guilty about the next bit. I was willing to bet the next thing out of her mouth was going to be a lie. “So we asked her about it. It was totally her choice to tell us. We didn’t make her talk or anything.”
I could imagine how they’d done it—friendly at first, then more insistent. What did you do? Why aren’t you talking? Did you really do it at school? Who was it? Why did you cheat on Max? Do you love him? Why not? Do you love the guy you screwed at school? Why not? Are you just a slut? Tell us the truth, Gilly. Tell us everything. We’re your friends. Trust us, because if you don’t, we can break you …
She’d talked, of course. Not much, but she’d had to give them something. She had no way out. And then I’d blundered in, along with everyone else in the world. Gilly had been trapped, and it had tipped her over the edge.
“What did she tell you?” I asked Abigail. “Before I came in?”
“Just that she had done something at school but we’d never guess who it was with.” Abigail looked bored. “We tried, obviously. But she said we were way off.”
“Who did you suggest?”
“Um, everyone? Every single guy in our year, the year above and the year below.” Abigail began listing names, counting them off on her fingers, and it was true: she had been thorough. I was dazed by the sheer number she could remember. It was a feat of memory that would probably have surprised her teachers too. Abigail was known to be impervious to knowledge of all kinds, which was another way of saying she was spectacularly dense. Eventually she wound down. “Unless she was cradle-snatching and it was someone further down the school, I think we covered everyone.”
I nodded. “Well, I’ll be sure to pass on what you’ve told me to Inspector Henderson. He might still want to talk to you himself.”
She opened her mouth to complain, but I hurried to reassure her that it was unlikely. “He’ll probably be able to leave you alone because you’ve been so forthcoming and honest.”
“Thanks so much for this.” Abigail reached across the table and patted my hand. “I’ll never forget it. I completely owe you one.”
I twisted my face into something like a smile and watched her wiggle away. Darcy skidded across the café and plumped down in the seat she’d vacated.
“Well, that looked like fun. What did she tell you?”
“More than she realized.”
“What do you mean?”
I shook my head at Darcy, and laughed when she sulked, but my mind was racing. Because while Abigail was listing all the people she’d suggested as Gilly’s possible partner in crime, I’d thought of quite a large group she’d left out.
The girls.