‘I’m sure he was a criminal,’ Lucy says softly. ‘Nobody who’s a good person drives a bound and gagged woman around.’
‘Mmm,’ Simone answers, close to tears. For Jon-Paul, for themselves, for the rental they find themselves hiding in. At least she can message Damien. It hangs brightly up ahead like the moon: contact with her husband.
Lucy is sitting cross-legged on the sofa in a dressing gown. Hair wrapped in a towel, skin shining clean. It was only a handful of days in the desert, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like months. Lucy’s skin is burnished an unnatural pink, her hairline white, and Simone winces at the damage done.
Simone hands her the soup, with bread and salted butter. Lucy dips and takes a bite. ‘Man.’
‘Nice?’
‘Very.’
‘What would you have made if I weren’t here?’
‘Fuck all. Dry bread,’ Lucy replies. ‘Might’ve risked a delivery from the Bar and Grill.’
The lights in the living room are dim. Turquoise lamps dotted around, brass bases. The big leather sofa, then two chairs, bright orange velvet, each with a dark blue cushion. There are shutters which they have closed. It’s a nice house. They’re lucky. It’s two hundred a week. Terlingua is cheap, but their money will still run out in a matter of months, more if they pay for legal advice.
It’s windy outside as the night descends. It rattles the shutters. The porch creaks with it.
They lapse into silence.
‘It’s so weird thinking it might’ve been somebody British. Somebody we know?’ Lucy tells Simone. ‘Details keep coming to me. I wonder if I – I don’t know. Disassociated or something. I remember walking laps of the little room I was in, hundreds of them. I remember, blindfolded, feeling every wall, the hinges of the door, for an escape. I remember banging and banging on the door.’
‘Did you sleep?’
‘No. Not really.’ A sniff. ‘He probably thought I was mental.’ She pauses. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence not to be this British man – that we both saw him, but also that he disguised his voice during my captivity. It’s a distinctive accent.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I miss Dad.’ Lucy says it out of nowhere, and Simone’s hand flutters to her chest. She misses Damien too, but this is nothing compared to what Lucy is going through. She’s lost her father, at least temporarily. Simone looks closely at her face as she stands and puts the soup bowl on the table, then sits back down. Her feet are white, sock marks pale, legs brown from the shins up.
‘I’m so sorry, Luce,’ she says, thinking she still can’t tell her. It’s too dangerous. Lucy would message him herself, call him, demand he come.
‘You know, I’ve been thinking,justone more day,justone more, then we’ll figure it out, it’ll blow over, yadda yadda. Just – just – just,’ Lucy says, ‘and, right now, in the shower, I thought, how long’s it going to be?’
Simone reaches out a hand to Lucy, which she doesn’t take. So she does know. She is aware of the magnitude of the situation they find themselves in. She isn’t as naive as she seems.
‘Not long,’ Simone says. They need help. That is what sheis thinking. And they’re staying in a house owned by a lawyer; they’ve got to go for it.
‘I just …’ And to her surprise, Lucy begins to cry. Bottom lip going first, then her whole face trembling. She scoots over and curls up in her mother’s lap. She is twice the size as the last time she did it. ‘Do you miss him?’ she asks. ‘I’m worried about you.’
‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. But we’ll tell Moody. First thing,’ Simone says thickly.
‘Shall we save the day?’ Lucy asks her then, standing.
‘Sure. How? What’s the best thing we can do right now?’
‘Hot chocolates,’ Lucy says with a grin.
Simone smiles back. ‘Only one thing for it, huh?’
‘I think anyone would have a nice drink in this situation.’ She pauses. ‘Might even add rum to mine.’
‘Coming up,’ Simone says, finding milk, seventy per cent dark chocolate in the pantry, rum on the drinks cart. She heats the milk on a gas hob, flames blue and deliciously responsive, grates in the chocolate slowly, watching it disintegrate to oily cocoa in the milk.
She doesn’t add any rum to hers, but she lets Lucy have some, though cooks most of it off.
Lucy clinks her mug to her mother’s, there on the sofa in their pyjamas. ‘Here’s to saving the day. And to having mattresses. Are you really OK?’
