“Right, but…you just said you want to retire early from that job, no?” Mum feigned innocence. She can be a right old trickster when she needs to be. “And no one in the world would blame you for feeling that way.” Her phone, in her pocket, pinged.
“Who’s that?” asked Dad.
Mum pulled it out and looked. “It’s Vicky. How the hell did she get my burner phone number?”
“Corinne must have given it to her,” said Dad.
“No. No way,” Mum insisted. “Corinne doesn’t have Vicky’s number.”
“She could easily get it. She’s probably got…operatives all over the country.”
“Oh, don’t be daft, Mark!”
“Sal, there’s no one else it could be except Corinne. Face facts.”
“It’s a fact that Corinne would not have done that. You don’t know her.”
“Neither do you!” Dad’s chin jutted out alarmingly, looking as if it hoped to break free from the rest of his face.
“Look, somehow Vicky’s got my new number, okay?” Mum forced herself to stay calm. “But that doesn’t mean I have to respond or pick up. She can bloody well wait, and I’ll speak to her when I’m ready. When we’re back home. She probably wants to impose some new, absurd restriction on what I can and can’t do.” Mum was thinking, of course, about the Facebook business; that’s how the absurdity impediment prevented her from considering the possibility that Auntie Vicky might have something important to tell her.
“Just hear me out, okay?” said Dad. “We are currently on the run, with the backing of some…sinister billionaire that we barely know—”
“Corinne’s not a billionaire yet,” Mum interrupted. “She will be soon, though.”
“Well, that’s terrible. Billionaires shouldn’t exist, period. The fact that they do means something’s gone very wrong indeed.”
Mum raised her eyebrows. “You’re saying you want Corinne dead?”
“No, of course not! I’m saying no one should be allowed to keep that much money.”
“So, what, you approve of stealing now?” Mum was furious.
“For fuck’s sake, Sal…” Dad groaned. “I don’t care about Corinne’s finances. I just want to go home. It’s what’s best for all of us, including Champ. He didn’t do it. We’ll be able to prove that. You said lots of people passed you and him on the path by the lode, right? We can leave no stone unturned in trying to find some of those people. I bet we’ll succeed. You can give a sworn statement saying Champ wasnowhere nearTess Gavey’s arm at the relevant time.”
“Mark,” Mum said quietly. “You’re right. I’m almost sure that’s all true. I’m not disagreeing.”
“You mean…” Dad’s eyes lit up. “We can go back?”
“Ican’t. Or rather, I could, but I won’t. I’m so sorry. It’s the ‘almost’ that’s the problem. Like you, I’m ninety-nine percent sure we could go home and stop the police from sending Champ off to be…” Mum couldn’t bring herself to say it. “But I’mone hundred percentsure they can’t kill him if they don’t know where he is. And I’m not willing to take that one percent chance. I’m not even sure they won’t find him if Idon’tgo back. How rock-solid discreet are Tobes and Ree, really? How confident are you that they’ve really not told a single one of their friends where we are? They could easily have decided there’s no risk if they only tell Freddie, or Ivan, or Frankie—”
“If you think that, then you don’t know your children.” Dad sighed. “They’re on your side. Everyone always is, about everything, and I get to be the only bad guy, as usual.”
“No one thinks you’re that,” Mum told him. “I know you’ve done your best to do this my way.”
“What’s the latest from Corinne about her brilliant plan B?” asked Dad.
“She’s still working on it. Told me to get some sleep and she’ll have something sorted out by tomorrow morning.”
“Right, but what if…” Dad broke off. He chewed his lip, staring down at his feet. The sound of a dog barking came to them from somewhere far out in the night. “Sal, I just want what’s best for all of us. I’m honestly not sure this is it.”
“Look, Mark, the truth is, I’m not sure I can save Champ. Even if we keep running and never go back—”
“We can’tnever go back. We have to—”
“The thing is, if the police came and snatched him away now—and I’d murder them before I let them take him, obviously…but if I failed and if they did the unthinkable and executed him for a crime he didn’t commit, at least I’d know that Inever chose to take that one percent chance, I never cooperated with the system that unfairly threatened him, that I have absolutely zero confidence in. I couldn’t live with myself if I went back and anything bad happened to him. So, I’m going to put all my energies into believing that Corinne’s plan B will solve all our problems. Then we can go back to Swaffham Tilney knowing Champ will be safe.”
“How are you so sure we can trust Corinne?” said Dad.
