They get inside the tent and stand in the very centre of it together, both five feet nothing, eyes level.
‘Jesus,’ Lucy says. ‘It’s not very roomy. Why were we doing this again?’ A tiny smile.
‘A fun trip, to connect with nature,’ Simone answers.
‘Two hours in, we’d google Airbnb, check into one with a hot tub,’ Lucy says, voice wistful.
‘I know,’ Simone says, thinking the last time she shared a bedroom with her child was a long time ago, but she isn’t going to let her out of her sight now.
Airbnb. This springs Simone into action. She gets out the flip phone she bought.No Networkis emblazoned across the screen. Simone thinks of everything she could access on here if it had signal. She could find out what the police know. She could find out what the victim was called, which might lead her to the kidnapper himself.
Nevertheless, Simone drafts an anonymous enquiry on Airbnb ready to send to the lodge, saying she wants to book but asking if they have any CCTV as she issecurity conscious. She will sound suspicious, but she is trying not to care about the risks being taken, her own traceability. It might simply be a race against time: that she gets answers before the police do. She closes the phone again. She’ll send it when she has signal.
Lucy sits down on one of the rolled-out yellow mattresses.She gets into a sleeping bag, pulls it up to her thighs. She takes the matches out and, before Simone can stop her, strikes one against the box. It hisses and flares, illuminating her face from the centre outwards, rippling golden water across her features. She carefully lights a miniature oil lamp they have. It won’t last long – they didn’t bring spare oil – and Simone doesn’t think they should have it on in case somebody is actually passing in this wilderness, but she lets Lucy do it anyway. She will let her fall asleep to light. Perhaps she needs to. Sometimes, certain risks are worth taking, because they allow you to avoid the darkness of the mind.
Lucy pulls the sleeping bag right up to her chin, now. She lies on her back and untangles her hair from a scrunchie, then gets up and begins rooting around. ‘No hairbrush,’ she tells her mother. ‘I had one at singing prison. I don’t know where it’s gone.’
The wordprisonhangs stark in the air between them. Simone ignores it, getting into her own sleeping bag, which is as cold and as crinkly as a winter coat against her skin.
‘You must’ve brought it,’ Simone says absent-mindedly while the wind rages around their tent, rippling it and pulling it. Her hands are so frozen they feel clumsy, the tip of her nose is freezing. She has no idea how they are ever going to sleep.
‘No,’ Lucy says, pulling at their possessions, spreading them slowly around the tent. Food, water bottles, a couple of changes of clothes.
‘We’ll have to Venice it,’ Lucy says, flashing a grin at Simone.
‘Do we have a fork?’
‘Yeah, we have those little wooden ones,’ Lucy says, and she locates one and begins to drag it through her hair, grimacing in good humour as it pulls. And Simone feels a mix of emotions too complex to even begin to unpick. Lucy’shair was shorter on that holiday. She was younger then, obviously, different, enduring the constant, ongoing metamorphosis that is growing up. She still needed help sometimes then to prepare meals, with homework … Slowly, slowly, she lost that. She grew taller, her hair grew longer, the umbilical cord that once joined them so physically, so obviously, was gossamer-thin. That’s parenthood. They begin as part of you, and they end up so far away from you, you begin to wonder if any of it ever happened.
‘You didn’t … make any enemies, at singing prison, did you?’ Simone asks, the thought having just occurred to her.
‘Plenty,’ Lucy says. ‘Everyone who heard me sing, for starters.’
‘No, really.’
‘No!’ Lucy says. ‘Oh yeah, I happened to befriend a drugs baron, and hadn’t said until you asked that exact question. Jesus, this isn’tReservoir Dogs.’
‘Another boring movie.’
‘Not so. Every single scene is an example of dialogue perfection.’
‘What about at camp?’
‘Really not. Camp’s full of good girls.’
Simone pauses, thinking. ‘Do you want to talk about him again? Before you sleep?’ she asks gently. Partly out of care and partly out of curiosity, but also because she is looking for solutions. She hopes a salient detail might reveal itself. Some clue, the way it might in the movies Lucy watches. A tattoo, a piece of jewellery. Something about his daughter. A location. A number plate. She is kidding herself, she knows it, but if they could find the kidnapper, they could somehow prove that this is what he does – couldn’t they?
‘OK,’ Lucy says. She sighs. ‘I want to talk about Dad …’ she says, but her voice trails off.
‘I know.’
‘Will he be in Texas? With the police?’
‘I think so,’ Simone says.
‘God,’ Lucy says, but perhaps the topic is too enormous, because she lies back and begins to talk, as requested, about the kidnap. ‘The lemon smell. The gloved hand. He – he manoeuvred me into position.’
Simone stares at her daughter’s prone form, the oil lamp burning next to her, casting the tent in a golden glow. Half of Lucy’s face is lit, half dark. ‘He didn’t … It wasn’t – sexual?’
