Lily showers and dresses. Her jeans are loose around her waist. She must eat. There is nothing in the kitchen that is edible, so she decides to go to the shops.
It’s a pale, sunny day, almost warm when she catches the morning sun. She pulls down her sunglasses and enjoys the feel of it against her face. She walks past the building site next door and glances up at the window where the light flickers every night. It looks so innocuous by day. She can’t imagine why it scared her so much the other day. As she walks she feels her lungs fill and empty, fill and empty, the sun on her skin, her pace wide and long, the paving stones solid beneath her feet. For a while her mind empties of all it’s been holding on to for five days. Before Carl went missing she’d spent her days in limbo, living for the text messages, envisaging the trains coming and going, barely breathing until he was home again. And now, for the first time since she came to this country, she feels as though maybe she lives here. Not just in that flat. Not just in Carl’s arms. But here. In this country.
She picks up some colour in her cheeks as she strides towards town. Blood surges through her. She grabs a basket at the entrance to the high street supermarket, breezes through the aisles collecting things: packets of solid, fibrous cereal, pots of soup, pizzas, bread, a box of doughnuts, milk, toilet rolls, biscuits, chocolate spread, hams and cheeses, bath soap and shower gel. No salads, no health drinks, no vegetables. She won’t eat them. She chooses only what she needs and what she knows will sate her hunger without her having to think about it.
At the checkout she smiles at the girl and says, ‘It’s nice weather today, isn’t it?’
And the girl smiles back at her warmly and says, ‘Hope it sticks around till my shift is over. It’s definitely beer-garden weather!’
Lily doesn’t quite know what beer-garden weather is but she can make a good guess, so she smiles and says, ‘I hope so too!’
She swings the carrier bags off the checkout and starts to head home. But first she notices a dress shop, just two doors down, one she hadn’t noticed before. In the window is a green dress, made of a silky-looking fabric. It has short sleeves and a full skirt. It’s not something she would have looked at before. It’s very grown-up. But it suddenly occurs to her that she has no summer clothes. That she came to this country at the tail end of winter, with just jeans and jumpers and small, clingy things to wear at night. The weather today reminds her that soon it will be May, and she has some of Carl’s secret money in her bag.
She stops at the door of the dress shop, her hand against the door.
Then she thinks of the future. She thinks that Carl is most likely dead and she is alone and this money may be all she has to live on for a long, long time. Suddenly she is taken away from the clarity and peace of the moment and back into the dark reality of her situation. She walks home slowly, the shopping bags heavy in her hands, clouds gathering over the sun.
She quickly unloads the shopping bags. She eats a doughnut and drinks a Coke. Then she plumps all the cushions on the sofa, sits neatly on the edge and calls Russ.
‘Lily,’ he says, clearly having programmed her number into his phone, ‘how are you?’
‘Not so good.’
‘No sign of him then?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘No,’ he repeats, ‘of course not.’ Then: ‘Anything else?’
‘Well, yes. I spoke to his mother. This morning.’
‘Wow! Well, that’s a big development!’
‘No, unfortunately it is not. She pretended not to be his mother. She said she had no children.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I see.’
‘I want you to call her please. Call her for me. Pretend that you are the gas man, you know, or the satellite man.’ This was the thing that occurred to her as she walked through the high street this morning, feeling so light and clear-headed. Now she knew someone in this country, they could help her. ‘Ask her some questions. Maybe find out her name. Please.’
There is a short silence on the other end of the line. ‘Gosh.’
‘Please.’
He is silent.
She lets him think for a moment.
Then he says, ‘Give me the number. First thing I’ll do is google it and see what comes up. Then I’ll call you back.’
‘Fine,’ she says, although it’s not really fine. What would be fine would be for him to do what she asked him to do. She gives him the woman’s number and sits and waits. Her stomach aches, from anxiety and from the sudden hit of sugar after eating nothing but bread and rice for three days.
A moment later the phone rings.
‘Right,’ he says, ‘I’ve googled the number and I’ve got the full address.’
‘What?’
‘It came up on one of those websites for buying and selling other people’s stuff. Someone at that address was selling a grand piano. It was a couple of years ago, but still.’
‘So, where is this place?’
‘Somewhere called Ridinghouse Bay. In East Yorkshire.’
‘Where is that?’
‘North,’ he said, ‘about four or five hours from here.’
‘Can we go there?’
‘We?’
‘Yes. You and me.’
There follows a dense silence.
‘It’s still early, we can go now.’
‘Well, blimey. I don’t know. It’s Sunday. I’m with my family. We’ve got plans.’
‘What sort of plans?’
‘Lunch. We’re having lunch.’
Lily inhales, holding back the urge to shout: Lunch! Lunch! That is your plan? Lunch! ‘He might be there, Russ,’ she says. ‘He might be in that house. With that woman.’
He pauses again. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That’s true.’
‘I would go on my own, but really, I am a foreigner, I would not know how to get to a place so far away.’
‘It’s a really long journey, Lily. I don’t think we could do it in a day.’
It’s eleven o’clock. She tallies it up in her head. If they left now they’d get there at four o’clock. Stay an hour. Be back by 10 p.m.
‘We could, Russ. We’d be home by ten o’clock.’
Russ sighs. ‘Lily, Lily, I’m really sorry. I really am. But I just don’t think . . .’
‘Ask your wife,’ she says. ‘Ask her now. Tell her your friend is in danger. Tell her it’s life and death. Please!’
‘I’ll call you back in a minute, Lily. OK?’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘yes. Thank you, Russ. Thank you.’
She turns off her phone and smiles.
An hour later Russ is in the car park downstairs in a people carrier. Lily climbs in gingerly. It’s dirty and covered in crumbs, sucked-out sachets of baby muck, dried-out baby wipes, a drool-stained baby seat in the back.
‘I would have had a clear-out if I’d known we’d be doing this today,’ says Russ, wiping away some crumbs on the passenger seat. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, it is fine. Here.’ She shows him the contents of a carrier bag. ‘I made us sandwiches. And I have doughnuts, and drinks. And look!’ She pulls out a cylinder of crisps. ‘Pringles.’
‘Great stuff.’ He smiles and the corners of his eyes crinkle. ‘Jo gave me this.’ He shows her a Tupperware box full of raw pasta. ‘Or should I say threw it at me. Said, “This is your lunch. You’ll have to cook it yourself.”’
‘Oh,’ says Lily, clipping in her seatbelt. ‘That sounds not good.’
‘No.’ He turns on the ignition and puts the car into reverse. ‘No. It was definitely not good. I’m in big trouble.’
‘Ah, well,’ says Lily, ‘when you come home you will tell her that you found your friend and that you are a hero and she will forgive you.’
‘Well,’ he says, pointing the car towards the car-park exit, ‘let’s hope you’re right, shall we? Otherwise I’ll be on the naughty step for the foreseeable.’
‘Naughty step? What is this?’
‘It’s a . . .’ He laughs. ‘It’s a place for naughty children to go. For time out.’
She widens her eyes and says, ‘Seriously? Russ? Your wife will make you sit there? Like a child?’
He laughs loudly, boom; it makes her jump. ‘No, no!’ he says, still laughing. ‘It’s just an expression. A turn of phrase.’
‘So she won’t?’
‘No, she won’t. But she will sulk a lot. And I’ll most likely be on the sofa tonight.’
Lily nods and stops talking for a moment. Then, finally, she turns to Russ, appraises his slightly weak-chinned profile, his Sunday-morning stubble and his pale hairless hands upon the steering wheel and she says, ‘I am sorry. I very much appreciate what you are doing for me. You are a very good man.’
He turns and smiles at her and says, ‘You are welcome, Lily. Really. It’s nothing.’
But Lily knows that it is not nothing, that in order to be here he has had to fight against his wife, a woman who sounds strong and terrifying. She sees now why Carl might have wanted to be in his company. For this mild-mannered man is clearly braver than he looks.