‘Oh,’ he says, and the syllable is sympathetic. ‘No,’ he says now. ‘You weren’t to … Anyone would’ve done the same thing. I would,’ he adds earnestly, so kindly, in the face of such awful consequences.
‘I know,’ Simone says, and she presses her ear right into the phone. She thinks, for just a moment, that she might cry, but finds she can’t. The panic and fear are too much, they’ve burned off all the other emotions. ‘Thank you,’ she adds, her voice choked with tears that don’t exist. ‘They say nine o’clock, tonight.’
‘I’ll get a flight,’ Damien says.
‘This seems – She might just walk in. It might be fake.’
‘I’ll fly out.’
‘OK,’ she says dully. She blinks, looking at a basket of cheap toiletries sitting next to the shower, resting on the small wall of glass bricks. ‘What do I …?’ She thinks how many hours and hours it will be until he gets here, maybe even days.
‘What did you mean?’ Damien asks suddenly. ‘About writing things down?’
‘They might know if I send a photo of the text.’
‘Right,’ he replies, and he is clearly thinking deeply, the silence as full-bodied as a mouthful of chicken soup. Damien is somebody who is able to say what he feels but do so considerately. He is not chaotic. He would never lash out, fire off half-formed thoughts, nor keep his intentions secret, either.
‘You don’t want there to be any evidence.’
‘Yes. I think so. I don’t know.’
‘Simone,’ he says, several seconds later. He does this often, uses her name, and she has always found something romantic in it, rather than formal.
‘Damien.’
‘We have to tell the police,’ he says. ‘About a kidnap.’
CHAPTER 5
It is only in her reaction to Damien’s statement that Simone finds any clarity. Horror. Dread. Revulsion.We can’t.They said they would kill her.
Simone stares at the shower again, sitting on the lid of the toilet, and the world feels much murkier than those rough-cut glass bricks. ‘I tried to dial 911 … but I just couldn’t. I can’t bring myself to do the one thing they say not to. They said –’
‘Obviously they’ve told you not to tell the police. They’re criminals. But the authorities are trained to …’
Simone hesitates. They shouldn’t have come here. They shouldn’t have come so far from home. They should have known that anything could happen.
‘I …’
They both wait, neither quite ready to outrightly disagree with the other.
‘They will want money,’ Damien says. ‘They must know about the business?’ Simone winces. Surely not? Their restaurant might finally be profitable, but some months they often still make close to cost. A rainy January, a football tournament, a rise in business rates – they are only ever a month or two away from hardship again. They are not rich. Maybe they are. But they are nothigh-profilerich. They are still people who have to choose between nice things, even if those things are nice cars or nice holidays.
But what if someone thinks they are? What if this is atargeted kidnap? What if Lucy’s put every detail of this lodge on Snapchat, or somewhere else Simone doesn’t understand?
‘I don’t know,’ she says.
‘There’s no way we can get big money,’ Damien says.
‘We could,’ Simone says, thinking, of course they could. A loan, credit cards, liquidate the business, sell the fucking house. There is nocan’twhen it comes to your child’s life.
‘We have to tell the police,’ he says again. But the sentiment is wrong: there is nowe. It isshe,me, alone in the desert in Texas, the responsibility of bringing her daughter back hers, and hers alone. Does she think this because he is five thousand miles away, or because she is the mother? She isn’t sure.
She reaches out a hand to touch the tiny frosted window above the sink, no bigger than a cat flap, beyond it a distorted palette of vivid sand and blue. The pane is cool and dry, dusty underneath her fingertips. If anybody were looking, it would appear like a cry for help.
She pauses, panicked. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she tells him. The simple truth.
‘The police will be able to …’ He hesitates. ‘They will be able to find them. Get her out safely, better than you can. They won’t kill her. They want money.’
