“That’s too many, right?” she said. “I can’t apply to twenty-one schools. That’s crazy.”
“It seems fine,” Nate said. Nate had not been looking at the paintings of fruit with any interest. Nate would tolerate most things for about an hour if he knew there was the promise of a snack and the chance to be left alone in the near future.
“When the answers come back, that’s going to be more to decide. I want to make the cuts now. I mean, I’m not saying I’d get into all twenty-one . . .”
“You will,” Vi said.
“。 . . but if I did, then I have to figure that out. Plus, that’s about two grand in application fees. And all the stuff to write and get. I feel like, I don’t know, seven is a good number? Or ten? How many are you applying to?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
“Probably not twenty-one, though, right?”
“No,” he said.
Janelle had not included Stevie in this conversation, perhaps because Stevie had riveted herself to a picture of a cluster of men dressed in black, standing around a table in their big hats. Why ask Stevie about college? You might as well ask one of the billions of Trafalgar Square pigeons their thoughts on inflation.
Stevie was delighted when her phone buzzed and she saw a message from David.
Where are you guys now?
National Gallery, she wrote.
Are you almost done? Because we’re outside.
“We?” Stevie said.
Sure enough, they were on the steps. With David, shivering in an oversized pink coat, was Izzy.
“I need your help,” she said. “My aunt is missing.”
“Missing?” Janelle said.
“She’s gone,” Izzy said, nodding. “She hasn’t answered any of my texts or calls since the other night. She doesn’t do that. She always answers me. So I went up this afternoon to see what was going on, and I went in and . . . she’s gone. All the things from the other night are still out. Food. Dishes. She would never leave those. Something is wrong. And! I looked on her tablet, which gets her texts. Look at this.”
She pulled a tablet out of her bag and showed Stevie part of a long text chain. The messages were marked from the night they had been there to visit.
9:23 p.m. ANGELA: I’d like to propose a get-together. Maybe this weekend? I think we should have a talk. Seb, is Merryweather free?
9:23 p.m. ANGELA: I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.
9:27 p.m. SEBASTIAN: The house is free and I think I could make the weekend work. What’s going on?
9:28 p.m. THEO: I could possibly get coverage. Is something wrong? Are you all right?
9:29 p.m. SOOZ: Currently backstage. I have a performance Saturday evening, but we’re dark Sunday. What’s going on?
9:31 p.m. PETER: I’m scheduled to take the kids to Peppa Pig World this weekend, but I’m happy to bow out of that.
9:31 p.m. PETER: But same question.
9:32 p.m. THEO: Ange?
9:33 p.m. SOOZ: Ange are you all right?
9:41 p.m. YASH: You make it sound serious, Ange. What’s happening?
9:45 p.m. ANGELA: it’s about what happened
9:45 p.m. ANGELA: we need to talk
9:46 p.m. ANGELA: and I don’t think it can wait
9:46 p.m. ANGELA: She had the button
9:47 p.m. THEO: ?
9:48 p.m. SOOZ: What Theo said.
9:48 p.m. YASH: Button?
9:49 p.m. PETER: what?
9:50 p.m. SOOZ: I have to go back onstage. Please someone explain to me what is happening.
9:51 p.m. SEBASTIAN: Can you ring me?
9:55 p.m. THEO: Ange?
9:57 p.m. THEO: Ange can you pick up?
9:58 p.m. PETER: I just rang as well and it went to voice mail.
10:16 p.m. SOOZ: I’m back. Can someone tell me what’s going on?
10:18 p.m. YASH: Genuinely confused about what’s happening rn 10:21 p.m. JULIAN: I’m at a dinner. Is something wrong? What’s going on? My phone keeps pinging.
10:22 p.m. THEO: Ange please ring me whenever you get off the phone.
10:24 p.m. SOOZ: Which one of you is talking to her?
10:25 p.m. YASH: Not me. Does anyone know what’s happening?
10:26 p.m. PETER: Not me
10:27 p.m. JULIAN: Is there something wrong with Ange? I need to rejoin the dinner.
10:29 p.m. THEO: Ange please ring
“It goes on,” Izzy said, “just lots of texts from everyone asking where she is. Including me.”
“What’s this about a button?” Stevie asked, scrolling down.
“I have no idea,” Izzy said.
“That’s not a phrase? An English thing?”
“No.”
Izzy was right. This didn’t seem good.
“So I thought,” David said, “that we could help? Maybe by going to her house and having a look to see if anything seemed off? That’s kind of your thing.”
He laid on a particularly charming smile. He was right. Going into other people’s spaces was Stevie’s thing. She had done it at Ellingham several times when one of their classmates was killed and another went missing. She had even done it to David himself, something he didn’t let her forget. Her proclivity for investigating spaces was both a serious thing and a joke between them. He wasn’t supposed to just talk about it like that.
Still. Probably a good idea to have a look through Angela’s house.
“Can we talk for a second?” Stevie asked Izzy. “We just have to figure out what we’re doing.”
“Of course. Of course!”
Stevie stepped off to the side with Nate, Janelle, and Vi.
“Do you think this is a thing?” Vi asked.
“I don’t know,” Stevie said. “Angela had a serious trauma. And then she said weird things on painkillers. Every story I’ve ever heard about a crime . . . every person that’s been through something that traumatic, they have theories. They try to work it out. She was high. I don’t know.”
“But now she’s gone,” Vi said.
“People freak out,” Stevie replied.
“And need help when they do,” Janelle said. “You should go and do it. We can put together the report for today.”
It was time to go through a house.
13
OUTSIDE THE SNUG LITTLE HOUSE IN ISLINGTON, DOORKNOB WAS waiting for them, meowing loudly and throwing himself against their ankles and rubbing for all he was worth. Izzy scooped him up.
“You poor thing! Look at him. Look. He’s hungry. He’s scared.”
Doorknob seemed to be neither of these. He thrust his head into Izzy’s chin and purred, then rammed his face down the front of her sweater.
Izzy produced the keys and admitted them into the house. As they stepped into the dark hallway, Stevie slipped on something and grabbed the wall. She looked down and saw that she had almost been taken down by a pile of mail, including some glossily finished flyers for Domino’s pizza.
“See?” Izzy said, extracting a local council statement from under Stevie’s shoe. “Today’s mail. And look. Her coat and bag are normally here.” Izzy indicated some empty pegs on the entryway wall.
There was a stillness—an odd quality houses get when they are left to their own devices, even for a short while. Everything appeared just as they had left it the other night. The living room was in order, with a few mug rings and leftover crumbs on the coffee table from where their tea and cookies had been.