To this, Zoe said firmly, “Okay, well, right now you don’t need to do anything but drink a very large glass of wine—and one for me too,” she added, “because I’m still bloody breastfeeding.”
Clara was on her third glass when she murmured, “I must have been blind not to see it.” She shook her head in wonder. “What a stupid, stupid idiot, thinking everything was wonderful, when it was going on right under my nose. I mean, what kind of moron doesn’t even suspect, doesn’t even have a clue that her boyfriend’s shagging the office sex bomb?”
“Not stupid,” Zoe said, “just in love. Just absolutely besotted.” She paused, stroking Oscar’s head thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe this is a wake-up call, that Luke isn’t the perfect man you’ve always had him pegged as. No one can live up to that. Don’t get me wrong,” she said hurriedly. “It’s in no way your fault it happened—the blame’s totally on him—but . . . my God, you fell for him hard. Suddenly there was nothing else in your world but him, and I was happy for you, I really was, but . . .” She hesitated.
“But what?” Clara demanded.
She shrugged. “You were so enthralled by him, by his whole family. All I ever heard was how incredibly clever Oliver was, or about the amazing work Rose used to do for Médecins Sans Frontières, or how fantastically well Luke’s career was going. . . .”
“Sorry if I bored you,” Clara muttered.
“Oh, you didn’t, of course you didn’t! I got it, I really did—I understood why you grew so close to them all. But what happened to the novel you were going to write? Your own career? Suddenly I stopped hearing about that—it was all about Luke: his job, his talent, his amazing family. As if you didn’t deserve him, as if you couldn’t believe your luck. But you are amazing. You are. He was the lucky one. I only wish you realized that.”
They were silent for a while as Clara digested this, until she put her head in her hands and said, “Christ, Zo, what am I going to do? I’ve got to find him. I can’t bear the thought of him being hurt or in danger—it makes me physically sick!”
Zoe nodded sympathetically. “You know you can stay here for as long as you like, don’t you?” She got up, gently shifting an almost asleep Oscar higher on her chest. “Adam’s away at a work thing tonight. I’m going to put Ozzy to bed, then I’ll order us a takeaway. I won’t be long. Pour yourself another glass.”
Clara sat back and closed her eyes, the wine she’d gulped swilling queasily now in her empty stomach. At that moment, her phone began to ring. It was Anderson’s name flashing across her screen, and her heart instantly leaped as she picked it up.
“Clara? We’ve found the van,” he told her.
She sat up. “Where?”
“It was abandoned in a car park on the edge of the Kent Downs.”
She could scarcely breathe. “And Luke?”
“The vehicle was empty. Luke and whoever was driving were long gone. However . . .” He paused. “I have to tell you we found a significant amount of blood on the passenger seat.”
She closed her eyes, the floor seeming to pitch and roll beneath her.
“It will take us a few days to confirm that it’s Luke’s blood, but—”
“Oh God, oh my God.”
“Clara, we—”
“Is he—do you think he’s . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
There was a pause. “The amount of blood suggests a significant flesh wound, but it’s impossible to tell whether it was a fatal one. We also found blood on the ground within a few feet of the van, which indicates that Luke may have been moved to another vehicle.”
Anderson’s words seemed to be coming from somewhere far away. The room felt entirely airless. “I have to tell you that we are assuming the blood to be Luke’s, Clara. The Major Incident Team will be handling the case from now. Which means more officers working on it, a televised appeal, an intensifying of the search . . .”
“You think he’s dead, don’t you?” Clara blurted. “You think he’s been murdered.”
“No. That is not what I’m saying at all. But we have to consider it a possibility, which is why we’re escalating the search. I will, of course, remain your first point of contact, and if you need to speak to either me or DC Mansfield, please . . .”
Clara barely listened as Anderson’s voice rumbled on. When she finally put the phone down, Zoe was standing in the doorway, looking at her in dismay. “Oh God,” she said, crossing the room in seconds. “Clara, what is it? What’s happened?”
—
Long after Zoe had reluctantly gone upstairs, unable to fight her exhaustion any longer, Clara sat up on her makeshift bed on the sofa, wide-awake as the night rolled slowly past. Though she was desperate to drive straight home, the wine she’d had still sloshed sickeningly in her stomach, and after trying and failing to get some sleep, she grimly drank coffee after coffee, trying to sober herself up. When Oscar woke for a feed at five a.m. and Zoe tiptoed down to the kitchen, she found Clara shrugging on her coat.
“You can’t go yet! It’s not even properly morning,” she cried. “Stay! Please stay, Clara. Did you sleep at all? Let me make you some breakfast. I really don’t think you should be alone. . . .”
But Clara barely heard her. “I have to go. I have to speak to the police, see what I can do to help. I can’t just hide out here, while Luke is . . .” Tears filled her eyes and angrily she swiped them away. “I just need to help find him.”
She drove home as dawn broke over London, the new morning filling the city with a pale, golden light. She saw barely a soul as she slipped through the silent streets: the occasional homeward-bound reveler, a fox streaking between parked cars, gray puddles of sleeping forms sheltering in shop doorways.
