‘I’ve booked online.’
He gestures to the clipboard. ‘Site says you didn’t.’ A lock of unevenly cut hair falls into his eyes, and he shakes his head like a dog.
‘Please. Do you have any space at all?’ she asks, thinking of giving some made-up detail about why she must go to Mexico today, but then stops herself; people telling the truth divulge no more than is necessary.
He sighs. ‘Got the email confirmation?’
Simone gets out her phone.
She brings up her email and begins to search for something that has never existed. At the top, her phone saysAT&T, notEElike at home. It populates with texts. Luan, asking if Damien’s arrived yet. The man watches her, and Simone suddenly feels suspicion in his gaze. She pretends to be confused by her email. It’s a performance for one person who matters in the way that eyewitnesses do.
‘Oh yeah, wait, it’s on my husband’s email,’ she says casually. ‘I could ring him but he’s in England – he’s asleep and won’t answer. Look,’ she says, ‘do you have any spaces? It’s just me. I need to get to Nueva Rosita.’
The man is standing next to one of the coaches, which is puffing out heat. The sides of the coach, up to about four feet, are brown with dust. A couple of American tourists board it, muttering about delays.
The operator sighs and begins typing into an iPad he gets out of a satchel.
He flicks his gaze to her. ‘All right. You’ll be on this one. When will you return?’
‘Tomorrow night,’ she tells him, and he nods. She gives him her full name again, and she pays for the coach in cash.
He barely glances at her as she ascends the steps of the coach, the vehicle’s suspension swaying slightly underneath her. But just as she reaches the top, something makes her turn and look at him. Their eyes lock, and he is looking at her closely. ‘So just twenty-four hours?’ he calls after her.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Just a day trip. No luggage.’
‘OK – coach leaves at seven in the evening from there,’ he says with a shrug.
Something in the deliberate lightness of his tone makes her glance at him, but he busies himself with his lists of names.
She gets her phone out and finds the message from Luan. She replies saying everything is fine, that the business opportunity for Damien was too good for him to pass up. And then she’s on the coach. Old-fashioned patterned-velvet-covered seats, air conditioning, a pillow on each seat as a token gesture towards sleep, a black cupboard containing a chemical toilet in the centre that smells of urinals, a couple of small families, a handful of pensioners, and her, the almost-criminal.
CHAPTER 13
Simone sees from the collection of missed calls and texts that Damien has now boarded a new flight. She sighs. If she is arrested at the border, it’s better he knew nothing, and clearly he has decided to get to Texas as soon as possible anyway.
Still, she traces a finger across his messages –Where are you?– and feels a sympathetic lurch right in her gut. She replies with only two words:I’m safe.The turmoil he must be going through. What would she do if she were him? She would be seething, she thinks. She’d fly to Texas and she would probably tell the police. Would she? If she knew it might jeopardize the rescue? She doesn’t know. What she does know is she’d give him hell.
Simone leans her head against the window and looks up and out into the blackness. The air con switches off and a heater begins to exhale. She draws her legs up to her chest on her little two-seater, near to the back, and puts her chin on her knees like she did while she was a child. She listens to the sound of quiet breathing around her, tinny noises from headphones, the crinkle of a newspaper in one tourist’s hands. The coach doesn’t leave for a very long time, and Simone sits there, her body as small as possible, and thinks about Lucy. When it departs, it lurches this way and that with little jolts, and Simone could almost sleep but doesn’t.
She puts a palm on the window instead and thinks that, somewhere, Lucy might have her own hand out, too, reachingfor her mother.I’m coming, she thinks.I’m coming, and I’m doing everything I’ve been told to.
A soft clear of a throat in front of her, and a man turns around to look at Simone. ‘Hard to sleep on these things, isn’t it?’ he says. Simone is surprised to note his accent is also British.
‘You’re English?’ she asks him. She can see only a slice of his face through the gap between the seats. Brown eyes, hair that’s gone fully grey.
‘Yes – Manchester,’ he replies. ‘You?’
‘London.’
‘Over for long?’
Simone turns away from him, a friendly man who probably means no harm, but Simone’s system is on overdrive. ‘Not long,’ she says faintly, hoping it’s the truth.
‘Funny place for a vacation, Texas,’ the man remarks.Vacation. The word is dissonant to Simone. A British person wouldn’t use it. There’s suspicion everywhere, but it makes Simone stop talking.
The man seems to get the message and turns away too.
The coach begins to slow, brightness up ahead. They must be at the border crossing; a sign saysDEL RIO.
