Page 73 of The Friend Request

‘What?’

‘Whatever you do, don’t call the police. Not yet. The note – the note on the brick – it says no police. It says if I⁠—’

‘Kim.’ His voice changes. ‘Kim, what are you talking about? What note?’

‘I told you! He left a note. At the cottage. It says to come to our old school tomorrow night, alone, no police, and if I don’t—’ I can’t finish. The words are in my mouth, and they taste like metal. I can’t push them out because saying them makes them real, and they can’t be real, this can’t be happening.

‘Kim.’ Alex is very quiet now. Very still. ‘Our daughter is missing. She’s thirteen years old, and she’s been gone for six hours, and nobody knows where she is.’

‘I know, but the note⁠—’

‘I’ve already called the police.’

The sentence arrives in my chest, a thump from a fist. I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again, and the sound that comes out isn’t a word – it’s just air, punched out of me. The phone is shaking against my ear, and I’m gripping it so tight the case is creaking.

‘They’re on their way now,’ Alex says. ‘I called them an hour ago. I couldn’t reach you. I didn’t know about any note. Our daughter is missing, Kim. What was I supposed to do?’

I can’t answer. He’s right. Of course he’s right. He didn’t know. He didn’t have the note, the brick, the warning. He had a missing child and a wife he couldn’t reach, and the only number that made sense was 999.

But the note said no police.

And now the police are there.

‘I’m coming,’ I say. ‘I’m driving. I’m on the – I don’t know where I am, a dual carriageway, somewhere in Wales still. I’m coming, Alex. I’m coming home.’

‘Drive carefully,’ he says, and his voice breaks again on the second word, and I think: That’s the most Alex thing he’s ever said. His daughter is gone and his wife is sobbing in a borrowed car and the police are on their way. And he’s telling me to drive carefully, because even now, even at the end of everything, he can’t stop trying to keep people safe.

‘I love you,’ I say.

‘Just drive,’ he says. ‘Get here.’

The line goes dead.

I sit in the Land Rover on the verge with the engine running, the hedgerow lit up in front of me and my daughter’s name in my mouth, her face behind my eyes. The note in my pocket presses against my thigh. What have I done?

I pull back on to the road.

I drive as fast as the Land Rover will take me. The miles disappear under the wheels, the darkness rolls past, and somewhere ahead of me – beyond the hills, beyond the border, beyond everything I thought I understood about my life – my daughter is out there in the night. I don’t know where, and I don’t know with whom, and I don’t know if I’m already too late.

The only thing I know is that this is my fault.

All of it. Every single part of it.

Mine.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The blue light is the first thing I see. The patrol car is parked at the kerb outside our house, and the sight of it hits me so hard I nearly stall the Land Rover. It’s stupid to be shocked, I knew they were coming, I heard Alex speak the words while I was sobbing in a ditch on a Welsh dual carriageway – but knowing it and seeing it are different things. Knowing is a fact. Seeing is a fist.

I pull Jeff’s Land Rover up behind the patrol car and kill the engine. My coat is still damp from the hill, and there’s mud caked up my boots and into the seams of my jeans. I’ve been driving for over three hours, white-knuckled, hunched over the wheel of a car that rattles above fifty, and the whole way here I kept telling myself: get home, get through the door, fix this. As if fixing it were something I could do with my hands, like mending a fuse or patching a wall.

The note is still in my pocket, against my thigh, folded tight, the paper probably soft now from the heat of my body. The street is quiet – late on a weeknight, our neighbours’ curtains drawn, their houses dark except for a Christmas tree glowing in next door’s front window. The front door is open, light pouring out across the step, and I can see the hallway and hear voices inside. I walk towards it on legs that don’t feel like mine.

Alex meets me in the doorway.

He looks like he’s been dismantled. Shirt creased, sleeves shoved to his elbows, face grey. His eyes are red, and his jaw is set in that rigid way it gets when he’s holding himself together by force. When he sees me, he doesn’t speak. He just puts his arms around me, pulls me in, and holds on so tightly I can feel his ribs through his shirt. His chin is on the top of my head, and he’s shaking – we both are – and for three seconds the hallway disappears, the blue light disappears, and it’s just us, holding each other upright in the doorway of our own house while our daughter is somewhere in the dark.

Then he lets go.