‘Felix, I’m so sorry.’ At that moment, Sarah could forget all her negative feelings towards him. So what if he was light-fingered? Trauma like that was bound to affect someone in many ways.
‘Aha,’ said Felix, ‘but that’s not where the story ends.’
‘It’s not?’
‘No. The family went through the motions of a funeral, memorial service, they even had a plaque put up on a bench overlooking the beach where it happened. A stream of tearful teenagers came to lay flowers at the house. The girl’s mum gave away clothes and jewellery, insisting the girl’s friends take them despite the offer making them uncomfortable.’
‘Anyway, the world moved on. The parents drank even more, the boy failed his exams and began heading down the same road as his parents, blocking out his sadness through drink and drugs.’
‘Then one day, when desperate for money, the boy got himself a job. It was a crappy minimum wage job, waiting tables in a café. The café manager took a shine to the boy and began training him up. He found that although useless at most things in life, making coffee wasn’t one of them.’
‘Life got better. The boy moved away from his parents, his memories, and the dangerous crowd he’d fallen in with. He rebuilt his life brick by brick with the help of good people around him and a determination to make his sister proud.’
‘Everything was fine until the day he saw a ghost. She was lurking behind a tree in the forest, watching him. The boy was terrified and tried to run away, but the ghost kept calling his name. The voice didn’t sound spooky, or ghostly. It sounded just as he’d remembered. He walked to the girl and took her in his arms. At first he thought he was hallucinating, but she felt real, her body warm, her breath tickling his neck. He held her at arm’s length, tears flowing down both their cheeks.’
‘Your sister?’ asked Sarah, open-mouthed.
‘Yes, and no.’ Felix pulled the car into a lay-by and turned off the engine. ‘OK, enough of the stories. I’ve never been a great storyteller. And I’m sorry, I know I promised not to talk, but I had to get all this off my chest.’
‘Hang on, at the start of your story, you mentionedsisters, notsister.’
‘Well spotted,’ said Felix, managing a sad smile. ‘There were two sisters, Lily and Mia. Mia was the eldest of the two. When things started going wrong for the family, Lily retreated into her own little world. It was almost like she had disappeared. After Mia’s death, she became even more withdrawn. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t give her a second thought when I upped and left. Anyway, Lily came back into my life six months ago, not long before you started work at the café. She was fifteen, the spitting image of Mia, and had run away from home. Her resemblance to Mia brought everything flooding back, and for a while I was worried I couldn’t pull myself together again, never mind look after a scared teenager.’
‘Why was she scared?’
‘After I left, Mum and Dad’s drinking got worse. They became aggressive and very unpleasant to be around. It reached the point Lily couldn’t take it anymore.’
‘Hattie helped me process everything, just like she’d done when I first arrived at the café. She brought me and Lily together to talk things through, and I began getting to know my sister again.’
‘Where did your parents think she’d gone?’
‘She told them she was moving in with a friend. They never reported her missing, and when her school called to find out where she was, they said they were homeschooling. God, they didn’t even come to ask me if I’d seen her! Lily had been missing for over a year before she came to find me. She hitchhiked up to north Devon, then fell in with some hippy types and travelled round the country with them, doing hair braiding in the summer, working cash in hand jobs in the winter.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?’
‘Lily made me promise not to tell anyone. Hattie knew, but she agreed to keep Lily a secret until we’d figured out a plan. There are some pretty big consequences if you leave home at fourteen. There’s no missing persons case open for her, but as soon as I tell the police where she is, she’ll either be taken back to Mum and Dad, or put into care. We agreed to hide her for a while until we can find a way through that’s in her best interests. Lily’s been camping out in the forest. That’s who I was with the night you followed me.’
‘You knew about that?’
Felix laughed. ‘Of course I knew it was you. I pretended I didn’t as I didn’t want Lily freaking out. So now we get to the food…’
‘I think I can guess.’
‘Hattie agreed I could take food from the café. I paid for it out of my wages, so there were no freebies, but being stuck in the forest without a car, it seemed the easiest thing to do. I couldn’t get a supermarket delivery to the forest without raising a few eyebrows. Anyway, I’d just persuaded Lily to go to the police station and explain everything when we got the news about Fran. The plan is for me to convince social services to let me look after her. It should be easier now I’ve got the café manager's job and we can live in Hattie’s old flat.’
‘Felix, I’m so, so, sorry.’
‘No, I’m the one who should be sorry. I should have told you all this ages ago. You were right to call me out when you thought I was stealing. I would’ve done the same had the tables been turned.’
‘Does Lily have dreadlocks?’
‘Yes. I don’t think they suit her, but she likes them.’
Sarah slapped her hand against her forehead. ‘So she’s your mystery woman.’
‘My what?’
‘I saw you outside the marquee when we had that function. It was the day after we… never mind. Anyway, I thought you had another woman on the go. I should have asked you about it at the time rather than giving you the cold shoulder.’
