Carla answers the door. She doesn’t seem surprised to see us. She pulls my dad into this big over-the-top hug, like, hangs on his neck and then she starts to cry. I am getting a bit bored of everyone crying all the time. I just stand there. After about a year she seems to remember I’m there and says, “Megan is in her room.” Pretty rude, not even a polite inquiry into my health. On the other hand, everyone is treating me so carefully, it’s almost a relief to be treated normally. I don’t wait to be asked twice. I bound up the stairs.
On Megan’s bedroom door there is a tin sign, it says: “Megan’s messy room. Enter at your own risk.” I have one that says the same, but “Emily’s messy room” obviously. We bought them at Camden Market when we were about ten. We’d come to London because the three mums wanted to take all of us to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels. The crowns were flashy, but the best bit of the trip was the market. Ridley sulked that you couldn’t buy the room sign with his name on it. We teased him and said he wasn’t in our club. I don’t know where my sign is anymore; at the back of some wardrobe until we moved, I’d guess, maybe in the loft now, or a bag that ended up at a charity shop. I’ve always thought it was funny that Megan kept her sign up. In so many ways she’s so cool and conscious of being seen as adult but then she’ll just do something funny like keep up a sign that basically advertises her kid status. Megan can do that. She can make something uncool, cool, just by her disregard for caring whether it’s cool or not.
I’ve missed her.
The last time we saw each other she was punching me in a loo. Or was she feeding me water and chocolate?
I’m still gathering my nerve to knock on the door, or maybe just open it and go in without announcing myself, when Carla shouts up the stairs. “Your dad is just going to run me to the shops. With everything that’s been going on, we have nothing in for supper. He says you are staying.”
Megan obviously hears her mother and she flings open the door. I try to pretend I’ve just walked up the stairs and not admit that I’ve been hanging about, gathering courage to go into her room. She stares at me but doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t seem like she’s going to answer her mum, so I yell down the stairs, “Okay.”
“Keep an eye on your brothers, Megan. Text your mum and tell her you are staying for a bit, Emily.”
I guess Dad knows Mum will be less than chuffed with this news, which is why he’s letting me deliver it. Cheers, Dad. I decide I’ll text in a bit, put it off for a while. Megan and I stay on the landing until we hear our parents leave the house, the door bang behind them and the roar of my dad’s Ferrari down the street.
“She’s been dying to get in that car,” comments Megan, rolling her eyes. “I promise you there is food in the house—she’s just looking for an excuse for your dad to take her somewhere in the Ferrari. She is so shallow.”
“Total puddle,” I add. Megan grins and then grabs me, folding me into a tight hug.
“It is a fucking cool car, though, hey?” she asks.
“Totally,” I murmur into her neck. I inhale her and I’m not mistaken. Of course I’m not. Her smell is as familiar to me as my own.
CHAPTER 50
Lexi
Logan and I play FIFA. He is Manchester City and I am Real Madrid. He wins all three games. I get a text from Emily saying she is staying at Megan’s for supper. I’m conflicted. Emily needs all the friends she can have around her right now, but how can Megan be a friend when her father is responsible for the kidnapping? It’s a lot to process. I decide to let it go. Emily needs her space. Logan and I order a pizza delivery. He thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. I grin at my son, glad I can make him so happy so easily. I don’t hear from Jake. I guess he could be eating with them, or maybe he’s gone to the gym. Or maybe somewhere else. Jennifer’s.
The thought keeps creeping up on me. I wish it didn’t, but I can’t quite shake the fact that for years I thought I knew where he was, what he was doing. I didn’t. Logan gets bored of beating me so easily and says he’s going to play with his friends online now. I’ve enjoyed our mother-son time, but honestly, I hate video games and am relieved. I go downstairs into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine.
I am not planning on snooping. I’m planning on picking up a book and losing myself in someone else’s world, but I find myself in the room that Jake designated as his office. I flick on his PC. A subconscious part of my brain has taken over and my body is just following instructions. Whilst the PC is warming up, humming into life, I open his desk drawers. I idly flick through his paperwork. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for—emails or cards from her, phone records that prove they are still talking to one another. I wonder if he’s changed his password. It used to be our wedding anniversary.
CHAPTER 51
Emily
Megan keeps her room
