The quiet emptiness of her flat seemed to close in on her as she restlessly paced its rooms. It was Friday evening, the end of the third day without Luke, and the weekend stretched ahead of her interminably. She thought suddenly of her parents, and realized guiltily that she hadn’t yet told them what had happened, that it hadn’t even occurred to her to ring them. Quickly she ran to fetch her phone. But returning to the sofa, she sat staring down at it for a long, silent moment before eventually letting it fall, unused, to her lap.
She was an only child, a late and unexpected baby born in Penge to a medical secretary and a bank clerk in their mid-forties. It had always seemed to Clara growing up that Linda and Graham Haynes had never quite acclimatized themselves to the arrival of a child. Clara’s presence seemed to constantly take them by surprise, and she spent much of her childhood playing quietly alone, or trailing after them while they visited garden centers, or car boot sales, not entirely sure they had remembered she was there. They hadn’t been unkind, not at all, and they seemed to love her, in their way, yet she felt that she had always remained a puzzle to them. They’d looked on, nonplussed, while she devoured books or spent hours writing stories, and were clearly baffled when she won a place at university—the first in the family to have done so. They’d retired to the Algarve the moment Clara had entered halls and, in their mid-seventies now, were quiet, private people, prone to anxiety, fond of their familiar routines and their own company, though they dutifully phoned their only daughter every other Sunday without fail.
When she’d moved in with Luke, she had sensed their relief—that she was now settled, and no longer their responsibility, and they needn’t worry about her anymore. The idea of bothering them with news of Luke’s disappearance was not one she relished. She realized she also felt obscurely guilty, as though she’d let them down somehow. She suspected too that the second she admitted it to her parents, the nightmare would lose its sense of unreality: the possibility that she still secretly clung to, that this was all some terrible mistake, would disappear.
She gazed around herself at the quiet normality of her flat, its sense of hopeless waiting, her chest tightening and tightening as the silence grew ever louder. She could not stay here; she couldn’t stand it.
Her friend Zoe picked up after the third ring. “Clara? Is there any news? Are you okay?”
She closed her eyes in relief. “Zo, I know it’s not the best time for you, what with the baby and everything, but can I come and stay with you tonight? I—”
“Of course,” Zoe said at once. “Of course you can.”
Clara burst into tears. “I just can’t . . .”
“Come over.” Zoe’s voice was firm. “Right now. Put some things in a bag, get in the car, and come.”
—
Zoe lived in a small end-of-terrace house in East Greenwich with her husband, Adam, and their new baby, Oscar. Clara knocked and stood on the doorstep, listening to the sound of Oscar wailing from somewhere within, and tried to suppress a fresh, dizzying panic, gripping onto the wall to steady herself. Come on, Zo, she thought desperately. Please answer. The door opened and there was Zoe; the sight of her, the relief of it, almost undid Clara. She was dressed in dungarees that were covered in something that looked like porridge, her auburn curls tied up in a messy topknot, her face lined with tiredness, her hand reaching out to her as she said, “Clara, oh, sweetheart, come here. It’s all right; it’s okay.”
Later, in the warm and untidy living room, its floors strewn with baby paraphernalia, Clara finally stopped crying long enough to look up and see six-month-old Oscar watching her from his mother’s lap, his big brown eyes wide with fascination. She gave a shaky laugh. “Sorry, Ozzy, you must think your godmother’s a loon.”
“Oh well,” Zoe said mildly. “Makes a nice change from your own dramas, doesn’t it, Oz?” She leaned over and, squeezing Clara’s hand, said gently, “Tell me what’s been going on.”
So Clara told her, about Luke’s cheating, the conversation with Sadie, the blue van and the CCTV footage, the strange woman who lived upstairs. As she talked, she felt the knot in her chest gradually loosen fraction by fraction. Despite their lives taking such different directions, despite relationships, careers, motherhood, and all the other myriad experiences that over the years had slowly altered both the people they’d once been and the friendship they’d once had, there still remained between them the closeness and ease they’d known since primary school, and for the first time since Luke had disappeared, she felt her churning panic subside a little.
“Holy fuck, Clara,” Zoe said when she’d finished. She shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t know what to say.”
Clara rubbed her eyes tiredly. “I know he’s a cheat and a liar and all the rest of it, but I can’t walk away from it all and let the police deal with it. I can’t let Rose and Oliver cope with all this by themselves. And I can’t just turn off my feelings for Luke. He’s in danger and I don’t know what to do to help him. I don’t know how to help his mum and dad, who’re going through hell. I don’t know
