‘What?’ Lucy splutters, and Simone is panicking. This is what happens when an outsider joins a group, one who doesn’t know the current state of affairs.
‘The best solution is to find the kidnapper and prove what he did to us,’ Lucy says, her tone so icy it practically frosts the hot air between them. Simone gets to her feet, bitter with the irony that family arguments and parenting dilemmas have followed them to Texas. ‘The price is too high not to try.’
‘Moody is not going to help. Even if he finds him, how do you think you’re going to prove the kidnap?’ he asks, and Simone thinks he’s genuinely asking in the way that he does, but he’s chosen the wrong words if so. For this is the true dispute. Clearly, Damien thinks using Moody is pointless. Are they really prepared to go to trial on this, even if they find this British man?
‘I don’t know, but isn’t that the most obvious way out of this?’
‘What would you do if you could?’
Lucy finally answers this question. ‘Tell the police about him? Get them to search his house? Find the – the things?’ Lucy says, her voice rising in pitch. ‘The shitty old bed, the cutlery he gave me with dinner that had other people’s old food on it, the bucket I had to piss in and pass to him?’
Simone gasps. ‘I didn’t know about that.’
‘What did you think I did?’ Lucy asks.
‘I didn’t …’
Lucy just slow blinks at her parents. Simone can see her heart flickering in the hollow between her collarbones; a butterfly held cupped in a palm. And she thinks of her googlingtortureand she can’t believe she doubted her daughter’s account of it. Her kidnap, here it is, in all its ghoulish detail.
‘Look,’ she says, reaching out to her daughter, and, to Simone’s surprise, all Lucy’s bluster leaves her, and she reaches, grasping, for Simone.
‘It’s … He’s ruined … I can still smell him on me!’ she says, right into Simone’s neck. And then: ‘I’m pretending. I’m pretending. I’m always pretending to be fine.’
Simone holds her daughter as she sobs, looking at Damien and trying not to be angry. To think she was suspicious of Lucy, wondering how well she was acting, if she was withholding information. And all the time the acting was this: pretending to be fine.
Simone, Damien and Lucy stand there on the porch together. Simone rubs Lucy’s back. Damien does nothing.
‘Are you saying we stay in the US forever?’ Lucy asks Damien quietly, after several moments. ‘Are you saying you think using Moody is hopeless?’
And, to Simone’s shame, he does what Damien almost never does: he fudges it. Maybe he’s out of practice, maybe these topics are too big for him. Maybe he really, simply means it, but he chooses to answer with: ‘Forever is a big word.’
There are little stone houses on the horizon, clouds that are three-dimensional with fluff, a sky that never ends.
Lucy speaks. ‘The truth is always possible to prove. Moody thinks so.’
‘We’ll see what he comes up with, but I wanted you to know the plan.’
‘No you didn’t. You wanted to change my plans to yours. What a bum fucking deal, and you won’t even be honest about it.’
Lucy paces away from them. She leans her hands on the wooden porch, then reaches out to touch the spines of a huge cactus. A single prick on her fingertip, the skin yielding, a drop of blood, and Lucy looks, for just one moment, dangerous.
CHAPTER 55
The Kidnapper
I head out to one of the two Terlinguan bars, late. It’s full of smoke – normal rules need not apply, I guess – and surprisingly rammed for such a small town. It’s hard to know where all the people have come from; there must be fifty here, a large percentage of the population. It’s excellent for me. I’m looking for a single face in a small crowd. Easy.
An old jukebox plays Tim McGraw in the corner, and a load of middle-aged people shuffle embarrassingly on a dance floor. Smoke curls upwards and dances by the ceiling lights. People down cocktails and beers. There are cowboy hats and men with moustaches and women with high heels on – funny, you hardly see those any more – but not her.
I head towards the women’s room. It’s – sadly – the place to be for this sort of job. I pretend to study a poster on the wall advertising a tribute act coming here next month, hoping I won’t still be here then on this thankless errand, and listen. There are two women swapping lipsticks or something. Another with hunched, suspicious body language leaves out of a side door just as I arrive. I don’t see her face, and it’s too obvious to follow her.
It’s enough of a thrill to think that she might just be here. Everyone cuts loose sometimes, don’t they? Especially youngwomen. Guard down, dancing, drinking, sharing lipsticks and secrets, inhibitions lost.
People come and go, and this is fucking perfect. I could sit here, down a drink, and just sink into this, but I don’t. I can’t stay long – one will get something of a reputation hanging around near the bathrooms – and so I let myself check off twenty women and then begin to leave.
Just as I do so, somebody cuts in front of me. Similar body language to her and the right colour hair, too. I quickly realize that it isn’t her, but I follow her for a while anyway – just for practice.
CHAPTER 56
