‘I know,’ I say, picking up my mobile and trying her number again.
It goes straight to voicemail.
By ten o’clock she’s still not home.
Every time I hear a car, which isn’t often, I run to the window, hoping it’s a taxi, but nothing.
‘Do you think I should call the police?’ I say to Tom, who’s sitting in front of the television watching The Wire on box set, although neither of us can concentrate.
‘The police won’t do anything. Haven’t you got to wait twenty-four hours or something before they’ll look into an adult’s disappearance?’
I take a deep breath, pushing down panic. I don’t know what to do with myself – my body oozes with nervous energy. I know Mum is a free spirit and I never worry about her when she’s in Spain. But something doesn’t feel right about this. I know she would have rung me – after all, this is a journey we’re on together.
I pull back the grey flowered curtains that we’d taken from our Croydon flat and don’t quite fit the window. It’s dark outside. There isn’t even a streetlamp to light the way, the moon a sliver of a crescent in the sky, half obscured by a cloud. The night seems heavy and oppressive, like a thick blanket curling around my car and Tom’s bike, making innocuous shapes menacing.
‘Come away from the window,’ says Tom, gently. ‘I’m sure she’s okay.’
‘Then why wouldn’t she have phoned?’ I wail, my hands clenched by my sides.
I can’t shake the feeling that something bad has happened to her. Something that’s connected to all this.
What have we got involved in?
27
Lorna
Lorna finds herself a window seat on the train back to London, clutching her caramel macchiato, grateful that nobody has occupied the space next to her so she can stretch out. She’s shattered and a little tipsy. She shouldn’t have had that last glass of wine.
Now it’s gone eight and she still has to get from London to Chippenham. She leans her head against the glass as the train pulls out of the station, watching the sun cast purple and peach streaks across the sky, reflecting on her conversation with Alan and her suspicions that Daphne and Sheila are the same person. She can’t wait to tell Saffy.
She sits up straighter. Saffy! She hasn’t called her all day. Damn it, she’d promised she’d ring on her way home. She rummages in her bag for her phone. Where is it? She has so much crap in her bag: old receipts, business cards, a notebook, two pens, her purse and make-up. But it doesn’t matter how much she searches, it’s not there. She flops back against the seat. She must have dropped it or did she leave it on the table when she left? She groans, startling a man in the seat opposite. Her whole life is on that phone. She doesn’t know any of the numbers by heart. Who does any more? She suddenly feels naked and vulnerable without it and inwardly curses the modern world, the advances in technology that have made her so dependent on a stupid little machine. She fights the urge to scream. What is she going to do now? She just hopes there’s a taxi rank outside the station in Chippenham or she’ll have a long walk back to Beggars Nook. It’s at least five miles. And without her phone she won’t know the way.
There’s nothing she can do about it now anyway, she thinks, as she watches the Kent countryside whizz past her. She has no choice but to drink her coffee and try to relax.
It’s gone eleven by the time her second train pulls into Chippenham station. She hopes Saffy and Tom aren’t too worried about her. She feels a stab of guilt that she’s probably keeping them up because she hasn’t got her own key.
The station is deserted: the other three passengers who disembarked with her have melted away into the dark night. She shivers in her tweed jacket and pulls it around herself, aware of her heels echoing on the empty platform. She walks fast, wanting to get home now, back to Saffy, to tell her everything she’s found out today.