After You

And all the while she wondered what her parents were saying at that moment, and what Mr Garside would say about her when he showed them the pictures. She could see her mother’s shocked face, Francis’s slow shake of the head, as if this new Lily was of no surprise to him whatsoever.

She had been so stupid.

She should have stolen the phone.

She should have stamped on it.

She should have stamped on him.

She shouldn’t have gone to that boy’s stupid flat and behaved like a stupid idiot and broken her own stupid life, and that was usually the point at which she would start crying again and pull her hood further up around her face and –

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘She’s what?’

In Mrs Traynor’s silence I heard disbelief, and perhaps (maybe I was being oversensitive) a faint echo of the last thing of hers I had failed to keep safe.

‘And you’ve tried to call?’

‘She’s not picking up.’

‘And she hasn’t been in touch with her parents?’

I closed my eyes. I had been dreading this conversation. ‘She’s done this before, apparently. Mrs Houghton-Miller is convinced Lily will turn up any minute.’

Mrs Traynor digested this. ‘But you aren’t.’

‘Something’s not right, Mrs Traynor. I know I’m not a parent, but I just …’ My words tailed away. ‘Anyway. I’d rather be doing something than nothing, so I’m going to get back out walking the streets to find her. I just wanted you to know the truth about what was going on.’

Mrs Traynor was silent for a moment. And then she said, her voice measured but oddly determined, ‘Louisa, before you go, would you mind giving me Mrs Houghton-Miller’s telephone number?’

I called in sick, noting fleetingly that Richard Percival’s cold ‘I see,’ was actually more ominous than his previous blustering protests. I printed off photographs – one of Lily’s Facebook profile photographs, and one of the selfies she’d taken of the two of us. I spent the morning driving around central London. I parked on kerbs, leaving the hazard lights flashing, as I nipped into pubs, fast-food joints, nightclubs where the cleaners, working in the stale, dim air, peered up at me with suspicious eyes.

– Have you seen this girl?

– Who wants to know?

– Have you seen this girl?

– Are you police? I don’t want no trouble.

Some people evidently thought it amusing to string me along for a bit – Oh, that girl! Brown hair? Yeah, what was her name? … Nah. Never seen her before. Nobody seemed to have seen her. And the further I travelled, the more hopeless it felt. What better place to disappear than London? A teeming metropolis where you could slide into a million doorways, mingle with crowds that never ended. I would gaze up at the tower blocks and wonder whether even now she was lying on someone’s sofa in her pyjamas. Lily picked up people with ease, and had no fear of asking for anything – she could be with anyone.

And yet.

I wasn’t entirely sure what drove me to keep going. Perhaps it was my cold fury at Tanya Houghton-Miller’s semi-detached parenting; perhaps it was my guilt at having failed to do the thing I was criticizing Tanya for not doing. Perhaps it was just that I knew only too well how vulnerable a young girl could be.

Mostly, though, it was Will. I walked and drove and questioned and walked and held endless internal conversations with him as my hip began to ache, and I paused in my car, chewing stale sandwiches and garage chocolate and choking down painkillers to keep me going.

Where would she go, Will?

What would you do?

And – yet again – I’m sorry. I let you down.

Any news? I texted Sam. It felt odd speaking to him while having concurrent conversations with Will in my head, a strange infidelity. I just wasn’t quite sure who I was being unfaithful to.

Nope. I’ve called every ER department in London. How about you?

Bit tired.

Hip?

Nothing chewing a few Nurofen won’t fix.

Want me to stop by after my shift?

I think I just need to keep looking.

Don’t go anywhere I wouldn’t go x

Very funny xxx

‘Did you try the hospitals?’ My sister called from college, in her fifteen-minute break between HMRC: the Changing Face of Revenue Collection, and VAT: A European Perspective.

‘Sam says there’s nobody with her name has been admitted to any of the teaching hospitals. He’s got people everywhere looking out for her.’ I glanced behind me as I spoke, as if even then I half expected to see Lily walking out of the crowds towards me.

‘How long have you been looking?’

‘A few days.’ I didn’t tell her I’d barely slept. ‘I – er – took time off work.’

‘I knew it! I knew she was going to be trouble. Did your boss mind you taking time off? What happened about that other job, by the way? The one in New York? Did you do the interview? Please don’t say you forgot.’

It took me a minute to work out what she was referring to. ‘Oh. That. Yeah – I got it.’

‘You what?’

‘Nathan said they’re going to offer it to me.’

Westminster was filling with tourists, lingering at gaudy stalls of Union Jack tat, their mobile phones and expensive cameras held aloft to capture the looming Houses of Parliament. I watched a traffic warden walking towards me and wondered if some anti-terrorism legislation prevented me parking where I’d stopped. I held up a hand, indicating that I was about to leave.

There was a short silence at the other end of the phone.

‘Hang on – you’re not saying you –’

‘I can’t even think about it right now, Treen. Lily’s missing. I need to find her.’

‘Louisa? You listen a minute. You have to take this job.’

‘What?’

‘This is the opportunity of a lifetime. If you had the faintest clue what I would give for a chance to move to New York … with guaranteed employment? A place to live? And you “can’t think about it right now”?’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

The traffic warden was definitely walking towards me.

‘Oh, my God. This is it. This is the thing I was trying to talk to you about. Every time you get a chance to move forward, you just hijack your own future. It’s like – it’s like you don’t actually want to.’