Robin’s head slipped along the glass; she jerked awake. Ten past four – shit, she’d been out for at least twenty minutes. No wonder: the car was like the tropical house at Kew. She turned off the heater and opened the window, letting in a slap of cold air.
The view was doing nothing to keep her awake, either: a trading estate in Hockley; specifically, the warehouse where Michael Dixon, forty-two, was working a fifty-hour week packing shipments for an online electrical-parts supplier while also claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance. Allegedly. Hollow-cheeked and dull-eyed, his picture suggested he hadn’t had many lucky breaks in life. Maybe today was an exception: if he left work at four, as they suspected, she’d just slept right through it.
No missed calls. Good, at least she hadn’t been caught napping by Maggie, and she hadn’t missed Tarryn.
She’d left a message for her at lunchtime. When they’d spoken on Friday, the significant information seemed to be that Becca had stopped using, but now Robin wondered if she’d missed the point entirely. At least twice during the call, she’d had the impression, hadn’t she, that Tarryn was choosing her words carefully? She also remembered her relief when she’d said she was a private investigator. Her explanation had made sense – if the police weren’t involved, they didn’t know Becca was hurt – but she could think on her feet, she was clearly an intelligent woman. A bit of Internet research this morning had unearthed a history degree from the University of Sydney, and she’d been working in marketing for a big media group before she’d come travelling.
Becca trusted her; she was the only person they’d found in whom she’d confided about either Harry or the drugs. And Tarryn worked at The Spot.
The phone vibrated in her hand – was it her? No. Mum mobile.
‘Robin?’ Her mother sounded anxious. ‘Is Lennie with you?’
‘No. Weren’t you picking her up today?’ For a moment, she doubted herself – god, had she been supposed to? – but no, she remembered Christine telling Len she’d see her in the usual spot.
‘Yes, I was – I am. I’m outside school now but I’ve been here twenty-five minutes and she hasn’t come out. I’m parked where I always do, just round the corner.’
Robin thought of Friday afternoon, how she’d fled the place as if it was on fire. ‘Have you tried ringing her?’
‘Of course. There’s no answer.’
‘Did you leave a message?’
‘Yes but obviously she hasn’t replied or I wouldn’t be calling you, would I?’
‘Okay, sorry. Stay on and I’ll call her from my work phone. Just a minute.’ On the pay-as-you-go, she keyed in Lennie’s number. ‘It’s ringing,’ she said but then it stopped and went to voicemail.
‘Hi, Len,’ she said, ‘it’s Mum. I’m just on the other line to Gran, she’s waiting for you outside school. Obviously there’s crossed wires about pick-up. Could you give one of us a call? Either this number or my usual – whichever, doesn’t matter. Speak in a mo.’
‘No answer?’ said Christine.
‘Have you spoken to Dad? Could he have got her?’
‘No. I don’t think so. He had a meeting with the sales director at four. I’ll try him, just in case. Call you back.’
Her mother hung up. A lorry went by, too fast for the little road, metal doors clanking. The quiet that flooded in afterwards felt deeper, absorbent. The commercial buildings across the road were all in use, there were twenty or more cars parked in the yard out front, but she couldn’t see a single human. She imagined pale men moving behind the mirrored windows, invisible but watching.
The phone. ‘It’s me,’ said her mother unnecessarily. ‘Your father’s at the office. He hasn’t heard from her.’
‘I’ll ring the school. Maybe she’s in detention or—’
‘Detention? Lennie?’
Robin felt a bizarre defensive instinct: yes, Lennie. Was her daughter so blandly obedient she’d never get into trouble? ‘Well, she’s not taking to the place like a duck to water, is she? Perhaps someone tried to push her around and she retaliated, or maybe she saw someone else being picked on. She wouldn’t stand for—’
‘Wouldn’t they tell you if she was going to be late?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know their systems yet. The number’s on this phone, Mum. I’ll ring you back.’
The call was answered almost immediately. ‘St Saviour’s.’
Robin recognized the school secretary from when she’d been registering Lennie. Pam Travis – she’d been no more inspired-sounding then. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘this is Robin Lyons, Elena Lyons’ mother. Has she been kept back at school for any reason? My mother’s waiting outside to pick her up.’
‘Hold on,’ the woman said wearily. ‘I’ll check the detention list.’ A huffing breath suggested she’d had to stand up. Robin heard shuffling papers. ‘Here. Lyons?’ Another breath, this one closer to the phone and heavier, as if the effort was tiring her out. ‘No. Sorry.’
‘Is there any reason she’d be this late out? She couldn’t be talking to a teacher or working on a project somewhere?’
‘Does she do chess club?’
Robin hadn’t known they had such a thing – she was surprised. ‘No.’
‘That’s the only after-school on Monday, sorry.’ The woman took another stertorous breath then seemed to soften. ‘Give me your number and I’ll go down and check, just in case.’
Before calling her mother, Robin took a moment to think. Where could Lennie be? She didn’t know Birmingham well enough to have favourite spots and even if she did, she knew she wasn’t allowed – she was thirteen, for god’s sake, she couldn’t just wander off on her own. No, don’t get cross, concentrate. Maybe she’d needed a bit of space, walked home – she’d used to walk from RPG. But that was always with Naomi, never alone, or if she was going home with Carly and Emma, they all took the bus together. She didn’t have a friend from Savvy’s to walk with yet, or if she did, she hadn’t told them.
Could she have gone into town? To have a look around, drift about some shops? Or the hospital to try to see Peter?
Quickly, she called Will. No reply.
She Googled the number for the hospital and asked to be put through to Intensive Care. ‘Peter Legge?’ said the woman. ‘No, there’s no visitors with him at the moment, and I’ve only got adults in the waiting area, sorry.’
Christine called on the other line. ‘She’s not in detention,’ Robin told her. ‘The secretary’s gone to see if she’s joined chess club without telling us.’
‘Would she?’
‘I don’t think so but I don’t think she’d just wander off somewhere, either. She’s not with Peter, I just checked. Though she could still be on her way there. Maybe she got the bus into town – she’s got money, I gave her some on Saturday. I’ll call her again, hold on.’
Voicemail again. ‘Hi, Len, it’s me. Give me a ring as soon as you can, we’re just a bit worried. You’re not in any trouble, nothing to worry about, just want to make sure you’re okay.’ She paused. ‘I love you.’
‘Now what?’ said Christine.
‘Could you drive the route home, see if she’s walking?’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Go to Corinna’s.’
The snowman house, where they’d spent Christmases and weekends, where Len had been doted on by Rin and Josh and played for hours with Peter, the closest thing she had to a cousin or in fact any family her own age. Poor Lennie, what kind of childhood was it, the single child of a single workaholic mother, no father, no family nearby until now and only then under duress. Mum, Gran, could you please stop fighting?
The school run had shaded seamlessly into rush hour. Edgbaston was almost halfway round the city from Hockley, north-west to south, light after light after light, traffic solid. Both phones were on her lap, ringers on maximum, but her eyes kept going to them anyway. Come on, Len.
There would be a simple explanation, she told herself. But Lennie had never done this before – she was reliable, she’d never gone off on her own. But then, she’d never been uprooted before, had she, never been pulled out of a school where she’d been happy and had a ton of friends, separated from a man who’d wanted to be her father, dragged off to a city she’d only ever visited in order to share a room with her mother and have someone she’d loved be violently killed.
Lennie, I’m sorry – I’m so sorry.
And what if the explanation wasn’t simple? What if she hadn’t just gone off?
Feeling sick, she faced it: if Lennie had been taken, it would be her fault. Her work, either Hinton and Farrell or Becca, would have made her a target. Because even if Becca had been abducted at random – a pretty girl coming home in a unlicensed cab in the small hours, alone, tired, possibly drunk – the likelihood of the same applying to Lennie – taken in broad daylight, in the two hundred yards between the school gates and the door of her grandmother’s car – was nil.
And then there was the other possibility. With another nauseous swell, she thought of that night. If Corinna had been killed for that …
The car in front baulked at an amber light, forcing her to stamp on the brake just as the phone rang through the Bluetooth.
St Saviour’s.
‘Mrs Lyons? It’s Pam Travis at the school.’ She was breathing as if she’d just finished a spin class. She wasn’t radically unfit, Robin realized suddenly, she was asthmatic. Years ago, a bloke she’d arrested had had an asthma attack on the way to the nick. Even after they’d got him an inhaler, his breathing had sounded just like this: laboured, hard work. God, why was she such a bitch?
‘I went down to the gym for you, to chess club.’ She paused, took a painful-sounding breath.
‘Thank you so much.’
‘No problem. Elena wasn’t there.’ Wheeze. ‘But on the way back, I bumped into Mrs Shah, who teaches Chemistry.’ Wheeze. ‘She was supposed to have had her this afternoon, she said – Elena’s class had double chemistry at the end of the day – but she wasn’t there.’ A cough. ‘So I checked the register for the lesson before that, French, and she wasn’t there, either. We think she left school at lunchtime.’
By the time she made the turn into Corinna’s road, Robin’s nerves were jumping. Lennie wasn’t at Dunnington Road – Christine had called when she reached home. She’d even checked Dennis’s tiny shed.
The snowman house was about halfway down, its position marked now by a break in the line of cars parked at the kerb. Robin scanned the pavement. No Lennie. She pulled in opposite the house, as much as the police cones allowed. No one sitting on the wall or huddled among the bushes.
The uniform was still at the gate. He gestured at her to move off; she ignored him. She made herself look properly. First the garden – the white forensics tent was still there, its pointed top just visible over Rin’s huge rhododendron – then the house itself.
Even though she’d seen it on TV, even though she’d conjured those images on the way here to prepare herself, it was horrifying. Nightmarish. The black sockets of the glassless windows, the soot stains like ghoulish make-up. The hole in the roof was covered with a large blue tarp now and the edges flapped in the wind. She could hear the snapping even in the car, like flames, crackling.
A rap on the glass an inch from her ear. She jumped then lowered the window.
‘Miss?’ The uniform stooped, bringing his face into view. He was in his late forties, sandy, avuncular. ‘You can’t park here, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m looking for my daughter.’
‘Sorry?’ A look of alarm.
‘Her name’s Lennie – Elena. Corinna and Josh were friends of ours.’ She pointed at the house. ‘I wondered if she’d come here to … see. To grieve.’
‘Oh. Right.’ He looked at her and narrowed his eyes slightly. ‘How old is she?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Have you got a picture? I’ve been here all afternoon.’
Robin showed him and he shook his head. ‘No. Sorry.’
She drove back to Hall Green sick to her stomach, eyes landing on everyone she saw: not her, not her, not her. Why wasn’t she answering her phone? She thought of Becca’s phone in its sparkly mint-green case, fallen from the bed, out of sight. Had Lennie left hers somewhere – dropped it?
A text from Will: he hadn’t seen her; keep him posted. Christine phoned again: she wasn’t in the little local branch library round the corner, either, but it was half past five now – places would be closing, wouldn’t they, shops and cafés? Maybe wherever she was would shut and she’d make her way home?
As Robin turned into Dunnington Road, her own phone rang again. A spike of hope that collapsed as soon as she saw the caller ID: Adrian. Seriously? Now? She waited for it to ring out. Almost immediately, it started again: Adrian. Was he pocket-dialling? Or had he called back to leave a message this time? It rang out and she waited for a voicemail notification that didn’t come. It rang again: Adrian. Oh, for fuck’s sake. She hit the button.
‘Robin?’ The familiar voice filled the car. ‘It’s me. I just got home from work and found a very shaky Len on my doorstep.’
Her mother wouldn’t let her go until she’d sat for half an hour and drunk the hot chocolate she made her. ‘For the shock. I can see your hands shaking, Robin. I’m not having you on the motorway until you’ve calmed down a bit.’ She’d started to remonstrate then gave in. Alone in the bathroom, she dropped her head into her hands and felt her whole body trembling.
The M40 again, this time alone, the tail-lights ahead streaming in the dark, road signs looming: London, London. The supper Christine had packed for her – ‘All finger-food, I know you won’t stop’ – sat untouched on the passenger seat. She was buffeted by waves of emotion: fury at Lennie for scaring her; relief so profound it felt almost religious; guilt; fury again.
When she reached Shepherd’s Bush and pulled up behind Adrian’s BMW, she leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes for a moment, collecting herself. Rain pattered onto the bonnet from the branches of the lime tree. Her legs were still shaking as she climbed the front steps.
Lennie opened the door, face apprehensive. Robin pulled her into a hug so tight that after a few seconds she wriggled loose. ‘Ow, Mum, too hard.’ Then she laid her cheek back against Robin’s shoulder. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘It’s all right, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t do it again or I’ll murder you with my own bare hands, okay?’ She laughed but the lump in her throat made it come out wrong.
As she’d known she would, Len disappeared the moment Adrian handed Robin a glass of wine. She had no energy to refuse it if she’d wanted to; the adrenaline that had been coursing through her since the phone call in Hockley was gone, wire cut. From the sitting room came the sound of voices; Lennie had turned on the TV.
‘You look shattered,’ Adrian said. ‘Sit down.’
She pulled out a chair, making its wooden legs screech on the slate floor. It was an effort not to put her head on the table; she felt like she’d just got out of bed after surgery. ‘I can’t believe she came all the way here on her own,’ she said.
‘Independent woman. Where does she get it?’ A twitch in the cheek, half a smile.
Adrian’s kitchen. How many hours had she spent in here? They’d both always liked it more than the sitting room, gravitated here naturally, stayed at the table long after they’d finished eating. It looked its best in the evening with the glow of the lamp on the sideboard and the reflected gleam of the spotlights over the steel counter. If Lennie had designed the lighting herself, just for tonight, she couldn’t have done a better job. More indirect light shone through the glass panels over the table – the couple next door were putting their children to bed. They’d never actually lived here, she and Len – Adrian had asked but she’d said no, of course – but they’d been here so much that they knew the rhythms of the place as well as the ones at their own old flat. The so-called guest room upstairs had been full of Lennie’s things, the bed always made up with the candy-striped sheets Adrian had taken her to choose at Peter Jones.
He poured himself a glass and took the chair across the corner of the table from her, two or three feet of space between them. Soft grey shirt, black tie – still in his work clothes. He didn’t need lamplight to look good but it didn’t hurt. It played up the planes of his face, the long straight nose between the wide-set brown eyes, the cheekbones. When he frowned, deep lines appeared between his eyebrows and his lower lip protruded. She’d found that strangely compelling back in the day. Sultry.
‘I’m sorry all this is happening to you,’ he said.
She took a swig of wine. ‘I brought it on myself.’
‘Corinna?’
‘The rest.’
He didn’t deny it, she noticed. ‘Are the police getting anywhere?’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to ask Len. I keep searching online but I can’t find any news.’
‘There isn’t any. They’re not even looking for anyone else any more. They’re convinced it was a domestic. She and Josh had a fight, he whacked her over the head and killed her, probably a moment of madness, then set the house on fire.’
‘Josh? No way. I can’t believe that.’
She felt a rush of affection for him, had to stop herself reaching out and rubbing his arm. ‘Thank you,’ she said instead.
‘For what?’
‘Thinking the best of my friend.’
‘I liked him. Like him. You know that – I always have. Have they got any idea where he could be?’
‘Not as far as I know. The last I heard, they hadn’t got further than finding his car. They probably think he’s taken himself off to end it all.’
He frowned again, deeper. ‘Wasn’t your guy on West Midlands friends with him, too?’
‘He’s not my guy,’ she said pettily. ‘But yes.’
He shook his head, bemused. ‘I don’t get that.’ He took a mouthful of wine then put the glass down, sliding his fingers either side of the stem.
‘Adrian, did Len talk to you at all?’
‘A bit, over pizza. She didn’t want to say anything disloyal but … She’s having a hard time. You know that.’
Robin’s cheeks were hot. ‘Did she mention anything specific?’
‘She says you fight with your mum a lot.’
‘She’s doing my head in. But I’m trying. Anything else?’
‘Not really. It’s kind of …’ He shrugged. ‘All of it, I think. Basically, apart from Corinna, she’s just homesick. She wants to come home.’
Robin felt a burst of frustration. ‘D’ya think?’ She pulled her best gormless expression: Is that why we’re here, in London? In your kitchen?
‘Robin,’ he said.
The look on his face pulled her up short. ‘What?’
‘I know I’ll never be Samir.’
She stared.
‘But I’ll never be Samir. I’d never let you down. I’d never do that to you.’
She couldn’t get the sodding lump out of her throat. ‘I know,’ she said eventually. ‘I do know that, Ade. And I wish I …’ She shook her head. ‘It’s not enough.’
Defeated, Lennie cried as they drove away, big tears running down her cheeks in the strobing amber streetlight. Robin felt sick with self-loathing. Inflicting pain on herself was her prerogative, and Adrian was an adult, he’d known for a while what he was dealing with, the masochist, but not Lennie. ‘There aren’t enough sorries in the world to tell you how bad I feel, Len,’ she said, ‘but I am so sorry.’ Sorry for not loving the right person, for not being able to pretend. Sorry for what I’ve done to you. For what I am.
Lennie said nothing. She turned her face towards the window and wiped her cheeks with her fingers. The network of little streets around Ade’s house – Robin had driven them a hundred times, knew the shortcuts, where the metered parking was, the all-night corner shop. Windows glowed, the people behind them having late suppers, watching the news, accepting without a second thought that in a bit they’d go upstairs to their own rooms, their own beds.
As they approached the Fuller’s brewery on the roundabout at Chiswick, Lennie shifted her body in her seat suddenly and glared at her. ‘You said you missed him.’
‘What?’
‘Here. In the car, on Saturday morning when we were driving. I asked you and you said yes.’
‘No, I didn’t. I …’ She stopped. Yes, she remembered, she did. If it was small and white and no harm could come of it. Despite everything, she felt a flare of frustration – Jesus, could she not get a break? Could she not get away with one single, well-intentioned thing? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re right, I did say that. And I do. He’s a lovely man and I miss that. But I can’t pretend, Len. It wouldn’t be fair to any of us. It would be cheating. It would be cheating him.’
Lennie said nothing. She shifted her body again, turning her back.
The dashboard clock read 11.52 when they reached Dunnington Road. The downstairs lights were on, Dennis up again. Lennie had fallen asleep on the M25, head against the glass, but she’d woken up as they’d left the motorway and now she took off her seatbelt, picked up her backpack and got out without a word. The slam ricocheted down the street.
Glancing up as she locked the car, Robin saw her mother backlit in the doorway. She must have sat up to keep Dennis company; she’d known he wouldn’t go to bed before they were safely home. She saw Lennie hug her tight, their two bodies becoming a single silhouette. Help me, Gran, save me from my horrible, selfish cow of a mother.
They disappeared and Robin felt a stab of abandonment. Weird: did she really care if her mother didn’t give her a hug at the door? But as she came up the path, Christine stepped back into the light. The look on her face.
Robin stopped. ‘What?’
‘Love, Peter had a heart attack.’
‘I didn’t want you to know while you were driving,’ Christine said, Lennie curled in next to her on the sofa. She turned the glass of Scotch between her hands, the crystal catching light from the standard lamp. ‘I rang Di to see if I could bring her some things for the fridge but I didn’t get that far. I knew straight away something was wrong. More wrong.’
‘Where was she?’
‘With Kath, on their way back to the hospital – they’d only just got the call. Kath rang half an hour ago with the update, I told her we’d be up. Thank god they managed to resuscitate him.’
‘What did the doctors say? Could it happen again?’
‘Apparently there’s no way of knowing. It’s the infection in the lung, Di said – his body’s under so much strain and it’s just not responding to the antibiotics like they thought. They’re going to add another one but after that, it’s just a matter of hoping.’ She paused, put her arm around Lennie. ‘They’ve been told to prepare for the worst.’
The words settled round them, toxic dust.
‘But he could still be okay, couldn’t he?’ Len’s voice sounded so small.
Christine pulled her closer. ‘We don’t know yet, sweetheart. He’s very, very poorly.’
They sat up for half an hour or so then began the slow process of rotating four people through one bathroom. Robin went last, in no rush: she knew she wouldn’t sleep for a while. Lennie climbed the ladder to her bunk without a word, said nothing when Robin said goodnight.
She lay alone in the dark, duvet pushed back, window open, sweating.
The day she’d brought Lennie home from the hospital, it had been Corinna who picked them up. She’d arrived at Charing Cross carrying the detachable part of the car seat like an Easter basket. Robin had been terrified of hurting Lennie’s tiny neck so after she’d put her little socks on – less frightening but still scary – it was Rin who’d lifted her into the moulded plastic shell with its grey velvet lining, strapped her in. She’d had to carry her, too, as Robin, white with pain, did the C-section shuffle through the corridors to the lifts. She’d felt deranged, bent in half, staring wide-eyed at normal people, who seemed to have withdrawn from her behind an invisible but impenetrable wall. Her pregnancy bump had deflated quickly – stress, probably, said the midwife, ripe with judgement – and her maternity dress hung off her like a shroud.
It was freezing, a blue-skied knife of a December day, the frost still on the ground at lunchtime. Corinna had salted the stone steps down from the street. On their front door, she’d stuck two tinsel sparklers and a banner with big gold letters, CONGRATULATIONS. When she unlocked the door, Robin smelled beef stew and burst into tears of pathetic gratitude.
The emergency C-section had been all her own fault: by racing to finish as much of her dissertation as she could before Lennie arrived, she’d given herself stroke-level high blood pressure, bringing Len’s arrival forward two weeks. ‘So that backfired,’ Rin had said, dry, from the vinyl chair at her bedside on the ward. They’d started laughing, Robin clutching her abdomen, trying to hold her stitches together, begging her to stop.
Love you, you know.
And I love you. I wish I’d told you. I wish I’d said it at the time.
Do you think I didn’t know, you emotional retard? Get a grip!
Robin grinned as tears slid sideways into her hair. What would Corinna do? If the roles were reversed and she was dead, Corinna the one lying here in a freaking bunk bed while Lennie lay dying in hospital, what would she do?
As if she even needed to ask.