The film was an American comedy about two mismatched cops who find themselves mistaken for criminals. It wasn’t very funny, but I laughed anyway. Sam’s fingers appeared in front of me, bearing a bulbous knobble of salted popcorn and I took it, and another, then, as an afterthought, kept hold of his fingers between my teeth. He looked at me and shook his head, slowly.
I finished the popcorn and swallowed. ‘Nobody will see,’ I whispered.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m too old for this,’ he murmured. But when I turned his face to mine in the hot, dark air, and started to kiss him, he dropped the popcorn and his hand slid slowly up my back.
And then my phone rang. There was a hiss of disapproval from the two people at the front. ‘Sorry. Sorry, you two!’ (Given there were only four of us in the cinema.) I scrambled off Sam’s lap and answered. A number I didn’t recognize.
‘Louisa?’
It took me a second to register her voice.
‘Just give me a minute.’ I pulled a face at Sam, and made my way out.
‘Sorry, Mrs Traynor. I just had to – Are you still there? Hello?’
The foyer was empty, the cordoned-off queue areas deserted, the frozen-drinks machine churning its coloured ice listlessly behind the counter.
‘Oh, thank goodness. Louisa? I wondered if I could speak to Lily.’
I stood, with the phone pressed to my ear.
‘I’ve been thinking about what happened the other week and I’m so sorry. I must have seemed …’ She hesitated. ‘Look, I was wondering if you thought she would agree to see me.’
‘Mrs Traynor –’
‘I’d like to explain to her. For the last year or so I’ve … well, I’ve not been myself. I’ve been on these tablets and they make me rather dim-witted. And I was so taken aback to find you on my doorstep, and then I simply couldn’t believe what you both were telling me. It all seemed so unlikely. But I … Well, I’ve spoken to Steven and he confirmed the whole thing and I’ve been sitting here for days and digesting it all and I just think … Will had a daughter. I have a granddaughter. I keep saying the words. Sometimes I think I dreamed it.’
I listened to the uncharacteristic flurry of her words. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I felt like that, too.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about her. I do so want to meet her properly. Do you think she’d agree to see me again?’
‘Mrs Traynor, she’s not staying with me any more. But yes.’ I ran my fingers through my hair. ‘Yes, of course I’ll ask her.’
I couldn’t focus on the rest of the film. In the end, perhaps realizing that I was simply staring at a moving screen, Sam suggested we leave. We stood in the car park by his bike and I told him what she’d said.
‘There, see?’ he said, as if I had done something to be proud of. ‘Let’s go.’
He waited on the bike across the road as I knocked on the door. I lifted my chin, determined that this time I would not let Tanya Houghton-Miller intimidate me. I glanced back, and Sam nodded encouragingly.
The door opened. Tanya was dressed in a chocolate linen dress and Grecian sandals. She looked me up and down as she had when we’d first met, as if my own wardrobe had failed some invisible test. (This was a little annoying as I was wearing my favourite checked cotton pinafore dress.) Her smile stayed on her lips for just a nanosecond, then fell away. ‘Louisa.’
‘Sorry to turn up unannounced, Mrs Houghton-Miller.’
‘Has something happened?’
I blinked. ‘Well, yes, actually.’ I pushed my hair from the side of my face. ‘I’ve had a call from Mrs Traynor, Will’s mother. I’m sorry to bother you with this, but she’d really like to get in contact with Lily, and as she’s not picking up her phone, I wondered if you’d mind asking her to call me?’
Tanya gazed at me from under perfectly plucked brows.
I kept my face neutral. ‘Or maybe we could have a quick chat with her.’
There was a short silence. ‘Why would you think I would ask her?’
I took a breath, picking my words carefully. ‘I know you have strong feelings about the Traynor family, but I do think it would be in Lily’s interests. I don’t know if she told you but they had a rather difficult first meeting the other week and Mrs Traynor would really like the chance to start again.’
‘She can do what she wants, Louisa. But I don’t know why you’re expecting me to get involved.’
I tried to keep my voice polite. ‘Um … because you’re her mother?’
‘Whom she hasn’t bothered to contact in more than a week.’
I stood very still. Something cold and hard settled in my stomach. ‘What did you just say?’
‘Lily. Hasn’t bothered to contact me. I thought at least she might come and say hello after we got back from holiday but, no, that’s plainly beyond her. Suiting herself, as usual.’ She extended a hand to examine her fingernails.
‘Mrs Houghton-Miller, she was meant to be with you.’
‘What?’
‘Lily. Was moving back in with you. When you got home from your holiday. She left my flat … ten days ago.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We stood in Tanya Houghton-Miller’s immaculate kitchen and I stared at her shiny coffee machine with 108 knobs, which had probably cost more than my car, and ran through the previous week’s events for the umpteenth time.
‘It was around half twelve. I gave her twenty pounds for a taxi and asked her to leave her key. I just assumed she’d come home.’ I felt sick. I walked the length of the breakfast bar and back again, my brain racing. ‘I should have checked. But she tended to come and go as she pleased. And we … well, we’d had a bit of a row.’
Sam stood by the door, rubbing his brow. ‘And neither of you has heard anything from her since.’
‘I’ve texted her four or five times,’ I said. ‘I just assumed she was still angry with me.’
Tanya hadn’t offered us coffee. She strolled to the stairwell, peered upstairs, then glanced at her watch, as if she were waiting for us to go. She did not look like a parent who had just discovered her child was missing. Periodically I heard the dull roar of a vacuum-cleaner.
‘Mrs Houghton-Miller, has anyone here heard from her at all? Can you tell from your phone whether she’s even read her texts?’