The Lies We Told by Camilla Way (epub read online books .txt) 📗

contacted her. While she waited for a reply, she imagined reuniting Emily with her family, picturing how ecstatic Rose and Oliver would be to finally see their daughter again, and felt a surge of excitement.

To distract themselves, she and Mac went back to compiling their list of women, and by the next morning they had an assortment of names on their list: a mixture of ex-girlfriends, colleagues, and former flatmates, people who could count as significant women in Luke’s life—none of whom, she had to admit, seemed likely candidates for the role of Luke’s abductor. “I guess it’s a start,” Mac said doubtfully.

“Who shall we contact first?” she asked.

“Luke’s first girlfriend, Amy Lowe, I guess. She still lives in Suffolk, though, so—”

“Right, then, let’s go,” she said, getting up.

Mac blinked at her. “What, now?”

“We’ve got nothing else to do.” She picked up her coat. “We’ll take your car, shall we? Do you have her address?”

He nodded. “An old school friend of mine still knows her vaguely.”

For the first time since Luke went missing, Clara felt her spirits lift a little. “We’ll drop in on Rose and Oliver on the way,” she said as they headed for the door.

—

As they eased slowly through the London traffic, Clara again checked Facebook. Since she’d appeared on TV, there’d been a constant stream of messages from friends and well-wishers asking her how she was, whether there’d been any news, telling her they were thinking of her. And though she was touched by their concern, she’d grown to dread their messages appearing in her inbox, feeling obliquely guilty when the only possible reply she could give was “No, still nothing, I’m afraid.” Today, however, she checked through them eagerly, yet more than twelve hours since she’d first contacted her, there was still nothing from “Rumpelteazer.” Perhaps it had all been a sick joke. She sighed and finally allowed her phone to drop to her lap. She glanced at Mac. “What was she like, then—Amy?”

He shrugged. “Nice. She and Luke were pretty serious back then. I know he was really keen on her.”

She remembered the pictures she’d seen in Luke’s photo albums. An attractive, curvy teenager, with big blue eyes and blond waves—the sexy girl-next-door type that the boys at school always went for. In the photos, she and Luke invariably had their arms around each other, surrounded by happy crowds of friends, faces flushed, eyes shining, taken at some party or other. She felt another pang of doubt; it seemed so unlikely that someone so sweet looking could have sent such threatening e-mails.

She stared out the window, watching as the city’s outskirts segued into the green and yellow fields of Essex. For a while they drove in silence, lost in their own thoughts, until finally Mac fiddled with the stereo and Bowie’s “Life on Mars” filled the car. A memory of the three of them listening to it on other, happier trips returned to her, visits to Glastonbury and Bestival, someone’s wedding in Hampshire to which they’d traveled in a huge convoy of cars filled with all their friends.

She glanced at Mac. The stress was beginning to take its toll on him. Although on the surface he was keeping it together, trying to put on a brave face for her, she could tell that underneath he was starting to fray. He seemed to have a perpetual haunted look in his eyes, a queasy pallor to his skin as though he’d barely slept for days. “Thanks,” she said to him quietly, “for doing this with me. I really don’t know what I’d have done without you through all this.”

“Don’t be daft. You and Luke are my best mates,” he said. “What else was I going to do?”

She smiled, and staring out the window again, she thought about Mac for a while. She’d often wished he would find a girlfriend, worried he might feel awkward tagging along with her and Luke all the time. But on the subject of his love life, Mac had always been intensely private. Occasionally he’d disappear for a few months, alluding vaguely to someone new he was seeing, and sometimes he’d even introduce a girl to them, but nobody ever seemed to last. “She’s not the one,” he’d said once, when pushed. “So what’s the point?”

“Our Mac’s a hopeless romantic,” Luke had said with a laugh.

“Oh well,” Clara had said encouragingly, “the right one’s out there somewhere, you’ll see.”

“Aye.” He’d grinned. “I expect she is.” And then he’d changed the subject.

They were less than a mile from the Willows when a reply from Emily finally arrived. Clara’s heart leaped. When can we meet? it said. I can come to London.

“What shall I say?” she asked Mac excitedly. “Shall I tell her I can see her tomorrow?”

He glanced at her in alarm. “You’ve got to make sure it’s really her you’re talking to first. You can’t just go and meet any old weirdo off the Internet—it could be anyone.”

“Yeah,” she said reluctantly. “I guess you’re right.” It seemed such an incredible thought, to find Emily at last, she could hardly begin to believe it might happen. She looked at Mac. “What was Emily like, do you think? I mean, I know you didn’t move to the area until after she’d left, but I guess Luke used to talk about her to you?”

He thought for a moment. “Not much, to be honest. She was always kind of present, in the sense that you knew they all thought of her all the time, but no one ever mentioned her. I do remember Luke saying she was a big character, quite stubborn and fiery, you know, into her politics and good causes and so on, but that’s about it. Rose especially took her disappearance so hard, I guess they all got used to not talking about Emily in front of her.”

—

When they drew up to the Willows not long after, Clara felt a small lurch of shock when she saw Tom’s black Audi parked