Lucy grabs for the carrier bag, excited, and a swell of people arrive, heading into the shop. Tourists, perhaps – walking gear, a cloud of cigarette smoke that smells like British beer gardens – and Simone and Lucy head down a rare side street between the General Store and a small apartment building, both of them relaxing once in the alley, unseen in its dimness.
‘I just spotted this alley – I hid in it while you shopped. What’re you going to cook?’ Lucy asks, poking through the bag.
‘Chicken,’ Simone says immediately. ‘Roasted.’ It’s cheap. You can do so much with a whole chicken.
Even tinier alleyways head off theirs like tributaries, and it’s interesting here, among the backs of buildings. With extractor fans, old refrigerators, general junk. It’s a run-down sort of place, graffiti, cigarette butts, and they head to Moody’s via a back way, past a fire-exit door pumping out smells of greasy food. There is not much worse than a bar and grill.
Their guards are down. They’ve been to the shops; they’ve seen a lawyer. They have momentum.
But as soon as they let themselves in, Simone knows. A shadow is cast right across the back garden; she can see it from the hallway as they look through the house to the yard. Simone stops. Lucy hasn’t noticed; she is talking loudly about a movie she saw last year.
Simone can do nothing but silently point. They stand there together, next to the drinks cart, and their hands naturally reach for the other’s.
The shadow shifts.
And is it the police, is it the kidnapper, is it somebody who wants harm for them? Simone’s heart pulsates in her ears, and then the shadow’s legs move, and it steps into full view.
And it isn’t the police.
And it isn’t the kidnapper.
CHAPTER 52
It’s him. It’s Damien. Her bear of a husband, here, less than forty-eight hours after she told him where they were. In their bright-and-dark garden in Terlingua.
Simone gapes. Lucy is staring at her father like she hasn’t seen him in years.
‘Damien,’ Simone says, her body flashing with heat. He looks the same as ever. Huge. Nice eyes that crease at their corners, in clothes that are so familiar that Simone’s heart begins to ache. His faded T-shirt with the stag logo on the pocket. Those jeans he’s had for at least twenty years, which he says are his most comfortable. He’shere. She wants to reach out to touch him, to feel the cotton of his clothes.
She unlocks the door and lets him in. ‘I was walking the streets and I saw you leave, but I thought I’d wait here, in private,’ he says. He moves towards her, his body language hesitant. A silence breaks between them.
‘I didn’t want to say anything.’ Simone directs this to Lucy. ‘But we spoke.’
‘Once you told me the place, I couldn’t not come,’ Damien adds.
‘How did you tell him?’ Lucy says.
‘Instagram.’
‘Fucking Instagram!’ Lucy says. ‘Cops too old to check it?’
‘Something like that. You weren’t followed?’ Simone asks Damien.
‘No.’
And there is more to say, and plans to make, but, for now, he is here. Her body is responding to him, her husband. He reaches towards her, one arm around her waist, one draped across Lucy’s shoulders. And they are together, here, still in dusty, bleak Texas, but he is here, her home. Her England, come.
Lucy is looking at her father and he reaches to touch her again, just once, as though he can’t believe it’s her.
‘You came,’ Lucy says to him.
‘I came.’
He glances at Simone. ‘There was a single opportunity,’ he says. ‘After you told me where you were.’ He switches to Lucy. ‘I’ve been telling the police how mad I am about it all. They didn’t stop surveillance, but I think they did relax their guard. The police left my hotel for an hour, went to lunch or something. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I knew where you were. I had the opportunity. Not much press outside; they’re losing interest. I got in a cab. I went to the nearest town, not in this direction, then got another cab. Then got out all the cash I could. Then another cab. Then a fourth for good measure.’
Damien can’t seem to stop looking at his daughter as he is saying this and, after a few moments, he holds Lucy to him, and Simone sees truly for the first time his own pain and relief, and not just hers. It’s the wrong time for her to demand proof he wasn’t followed. To worry that he was, that police are about to descend on them.
‘They will be looking for me,’ Damien says, reading Simone’s mind, still holding Lucy. He talks at Simone over her shoulder.
