I turned to face his empty room. I picked up his pillow and held it to my face. I breathed him in.
35
It’s still dark when Lucy leaves the Blue House the next morning. The children are wall-eyed and silent. She holds her breath as she hands over the cash for the train tickets to Paris to a woman who looks like she knows all of Lucy’s deepest secrets. She holds it again as they board the train, and she holds it again when the inspector enters their carriage and asks to see their tickets. Every time the train slows down she holds her breath and scans the sidings for a flash of blue light, for the navy képi of a gendarme. At Paris she sits with the children and the dog in the quietest corner of the quietest café as they wait for their train to Cherbourg. And then it starts again: the stultifying fear at every stage, at every juncture. At lunchtime, as they board their next train, she imagines Joy at Michael’s house starting to wonder where he is, and the adrenaline pumps so hard and fast around her body that she feels she might die of it. She mentally pans around Michael’s house, looking for the thing she forgot, the huge red flag that will tell Joy to look in the cellar immediately. But no, she’s certain, absolutely certain, she left not a clue, not a trace. She has bought herself time. At least a day. Maybe even three or four days. And even then, would Joy tell the police anything about her, the nice woman called Lucy, the mother of Michael’s son, that would lead them to suspect her in any way? No, she would tell them about Michael’s shady underworld connections, the rough-looking men who sometimes came to the door to discuss ‘business’。 She would lead them in an entirely different direction and when they eventually realised it was a dead end, Lucy would be nowhere to be found.
By the time the train pulls into Cherbourg that evening her heart rate has slowed and she finds enough appetite to eat the croissant she bought in Paris.
At the taxi rank they climb into the back of a battered Renault Scenic and she asks the driver to take them to Diélette. The dog sits on her lap and rests his chin on the half-open window. It is late. The children both fall asleep.
Diélette is a tiny harbour town, green and hilly. The only people catching the late ferry to Guernsey are British holidaymakers, mostly families with small children. Lucy clutches the passports hard inside sweaty hands. Her passports are French, but she is English. Both children have different surnames to her on their passports. Stella is a different colour to her. They have huge grubby rucksacks and are so tired that they look unwell. And their passports are fake. Lucy is certain, utterly convinced that they will be stopped, pulled aside, asked questions. She planned this long and meandering journey back to London to dilute her trail, but still, as she shows the passports to the inspector at the ferry port her heart beats so hard she imagines he can hear it. He flicks through the passports looking from photo to person and back again, hands the passports back, gestures them through with his eyes.
And then they are on the sea, the churning, navy grey froth of the English Channel, and France is soon behind them.
She holds Stella on her knee at the back of the ferry so that the little girl can watch the country of her birth, the only home she has ever known, recede to a fairy-lit wreath on the horizon.
‘Bye bye, France,’ says Stella, waving her hand, ‘bye bye France.’
36
Libby stares at Phin.
He stares at her. ‘I used to live here,’ he says, although no one has asked him to explain who he is. Then quickly, before Libby can form a response, he says, ‘You’re really pretty.’
Libby says, ‘Oh.’
Then he looks at Miller and says, ‘Who are you?’
‘Hi.’ Miller offers him a big hand. ‘I’m Miller Roe.’
Phin peers at him questioningly. ‘Why do I recognise that name?’
Miller makes a strange noise under his breath and shrugs.
‘You’re that journalist, aren’t you?’