Simone sucks a breath in.
Then she plays it again, and again, searching. Searching for some hidden phrase. Surely her daughter ought to be able to insert something, a clue. That they are not serious, that they won’t harm her, that if Simone refuses, they might simply let her go.
She watches it five times, but there is nothing. Lucy is clearly being directed very precisely by her kidnapper. The message is straightforward and clear:Do what is asked of you. Lucy isn’t acting. Simone knows Lucy’s acting. Skilled as it is, it isn’t like this. Simone has always known what Lucy is thinking, knew what her cries meant, her jumbled toddler words. Even now, she can finish her sentences. Nobody else can.
Simone blinks, stares, watches it again. This time, she can’t see the wallpaper; there are no tells about the room at all.
She sets the phone down.
Her daughter is pleading with her. She is telling her not to talk to the police. She is, so far, still alive.
And therefore Simone has no choice. She has been right not to press Call on 911.
She tries to put herself in the mind of an organized criminal. If Simone transports the items, whatever they are, then she, too, is a criminal. But if she doesn’t, are they likely to release Lucy? No. She’s a witness to a crime, as is Simone. There’s a risk to the kidnappers that they will whistle-blow.
What do violent criminals do to people who know their secrets? They don’t release their witnesses; they kill them, just like they said.
But … what if? This is what her rational brain asks. What if they have killed her already, pre-recorded her pleas? What if they kill her after this anyway? What if Simone doesn’t get the items across the border, goes to prison?
She meets her eyes in the rear-view mirror. Tired-looking, sunken and stressed, but there’s Lucy in their blueness.
And now, looking at herself, she corrects her thoughts.Thisis her rational brain. The one that says:Get your daughter. She became this second self, the mother, the moment Lucy was born, and she’s stayed this way. Simone was one of those women who really did fall head over heels in the labour suite, entering not only the most important relationship of her life but sharpening her personality, too. Things became threats to her baby that would not otherwise be: rough children in the park, passing cars that splashed them on London streets. Simone, who needed no encouragement to rage a little bit, almost enjoyed scowling at other people. She is sure her hormones didn’t restabilize until Lucy was five.
She watches the video again.Please don’t tell the police. Please don’t tell anyone.
She puts the nearest border crossing into the flip phone. It’s an hour away. She turns the key in the ignition and drives.
CHAPTER 11
Simone is on the highway, and her phone is switched on and immediately ringing. She leans across to get it, where it skitters away from her hand on the dashboard like a beetle with the slight movement of the car. She grabs it, and there on the display it saysDamien.
He’s landed. She pulls the car over.
It somehow does not feel strange for Simone to be dealing with this alone. She recalls a very specific moment when she was taken into care and had started her periods. She’d realized, then, vibrant blood in her underwear in a dingy bathroom, that no one was coming to help her. That the staff at the first children’s home wouldn’t, and nor would the foster family that followed. It was up to Simone. Jaw set, she’d bought pads, decided she didn’t like them, switched to tampons. She still uses the cheap brand she chose then, the first one she picked up. Nevertheless, she can’t not answer the phone. She can’t be that person. She might be somebody who is driving recklessly across a strange country in pursuit of her daughter and against her husband’s wishes, but she isn’t that person, the kind who can go dark on a husband who is desperately searching, too, for answers.
‘Are the police involved?’ Damien says.
In the background, she hears the airport: final boarding calls, beeping, laughter, suitcases being dragged. Something in that bright, lit-up normality makes Simone, alone on a deserthighway in the Texan twilight, yearn. If only. If only they hadn’t come, got a different flight, chosen a different lodge …
‘Damien, I went.’
‘What?’ he says, his voice cold. ‘Is Lucy there?’
‘No. They want me to – to do something else.’
‘What? Where is she? Where are you? Where are the police?’
‘I came alone.’
Damien responds to this with a resounding silence.
‘You didn’t tell them,’ he says finally.
‘Not yet,’ she says, and she knows there is disingenuous misdirection in this statement. She winces. ‘I had no choice.’
‘What are you doing?’ he says, his voice low, the question so broad and loaded, she finds she doesn’t know how to answer it.
‘I …’
