‘We will too,’ said Lulu at once.
As Michael hurried off towards a policewoman in a yellow tabard, Nick shook himself like a dog, sending drips flying off his jacket. ‘What did you have to say that for? We’re soaked through already.’
She stared at him. ‘Nick! Yvonne’s probably lying out there hurt! The more people searching, the sooner we’ll find her.’
‘The cops will have drones and what have you. We’ll just be getting in the way, enthusiastic amateurs getting themselves lost.’
She touched his damp arm. ‘I know this must be hard.’ It was bound to be triggering, yet another member of his family going missing.
He snatched his arm away. ‘Of course it’s hard!’
Lulu took a step back.
Then he sort of froze, staring off at the trees so intently that Lulu turned to see what he was looking at. Then she realised that his eyes were unfocused. What he was seeing wasn’t in the here and now.
He made a sort of wordless sound, almost a whimper.
‘Oh, Nick.’ She put both arms around him and pulled him into a soggy hug.
They didn’t find her.
They searched for five hours, until the light began to go and the police called a halt. Lulu suggested that Michael come to Sunnyside with them, but he said he wanted to go back to the farm, ‘Just in case she calls the landline. Or comes home.’
And thank goodness Michael hadn’t come with them, because as soon as they’d stepped into the hall Nick doubled up, as if in pain, and then Lulu was cradling him like a baby while he sobbed.
‘It just takes a heartbeat,’ he gulped, clutching her shoulder. ‘And you’re gone. Snuffed out. The end of it all.’ And suddenly he was roaring in her face: ‘Why is life such a fucking bastard?’ And he was half-laughing, half-crying, and gently Lulu was guiding him through the hall and into the big, airy drawing room, where they’d forgotten to shut two of the windows and the room was filled with the fragrant, earthy scents of summer rain.
In the dusk, the room was cool and shadowed and calming, she hoped. She eased him onto the big chintzy sofa and sat with him, rocking him. ‘We don’t know that any harm has come to Yvonne.’
‘Oh yeah?’ He barked a laugh. ‘Of course harm has come to her! God, Lulu. How do any of us keep going, how do we keep functioning in a world where one misstep, one split second of inattention, one stupid mistake of trusting the wrong person can bring it all tumbling down, and that’s your nice, safe, normal, everyday existence fucked forever?’
‘Nick –’
‘At the wood, it was like I was back in that day, back telling the cops what had happened, and they were looking at me the way they looked at Michael, like they were thinking poor bloody idiot. The cops, they know. They know how fucking dangerous it is, the world out there, and they know that most of us are living in blissful ignorance of the fact until something like this happens.’
Gently, she turned him to face her. ‘But the world can be a wonderful place, too. Look at us. Look at how we found each other. I mean, what are the chances? If I’d chosen another island . . . if I hadn’t had my stuff stolen . . .’
‘You’re the only good thing in my life,’ he groaned.
‘Oh, Nick, that’s not true.’
And it was terrible, but a little surge of impatience went through Lulu as a reprehensible thought surfaced – that she missed the old, stoical, humorous Nick. The Nick who was so scathing about people ‘getting in touch with their feelings’。
Where had that come from?
She was a therapist, for God’s sake.
She should be glad that the barriers were finally coming down.
Maybe it was because the old Nick reminded her a bit of her dad, whose summation of Lulu’s whole client base was ‘load of whingers’。 She knew there was a theory that some women used their father as a template for what a man should be and subconsciously chose the same type for their partner.
But it was more than that.
There was something about Nick’s extravagant emoting that was repelling her.
Nick took a deep breath and covered his face with his hands. ‘Are you regretting it?’ he muttered through them. ‘Encouraging me to let it all out?’ Sometimes it really was as if he could read her mind.
‘No, of course not!’
Karla used to warn her students that the natural human reaction to someone breaking down and letting out their emotions wasn’t necessarily to comfort, but to avoid. ‘It’s part of the self-preservation instinct,’ Karla had explained. ‘To put distance between yourself and someone in trouble. People with mental health problems are often isolated not only because they withdraw, but because those around them instinctively do so too. You need to acknowledge that you’re part of the human race with the same pre-programmed survival instincts, and it’s normal to want to avoid your clients.’ She had grinned round at the class. ‘But you need to let the rational part of the brain get on top of the amygdala and the primitive, instinctual response it’s trying to produce.’