Chapter 46
They go back inside the house. Anna glances at Lucy – the girl looks as if she’s freezing. Anna is cold too, though not sure if it’s the temperature or the fact that exhaustion is now threatening to shut her down completely.
Once they’re in the kitchen, Rachel tells them to sit down before excusing herself and leaving the room.
Anna hears her tread as she walks upstairs, the sound of water running from a tap.
Then a cry. Anna and Lucy both run out of the room immediately to find Rachel halfway down the stairs, her face panicked.
‘Edgar’s gone. He’s taken Rowan, too.’
‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know.’
They join Rachel on the upper floor. The doors along the landing are all flung open – except for one, which is secured with a padlock. Anna peers over Rachel’s shoulder to see an empty cot in the corner of a small bedroom, an empty baby sleeping bag cast on the floor.
‘Edgar never does this. He’s terrified of being left in charge,’ Rachel says. ‘This makes no sense.’
Anna moves past Rachel into the room. There’s a piece of paper on the windowsill. She picks it up. Rachel’s name is scrawled on the outside. She hands it over and stands back while Rachel reads it, before wordlessly handing it back to Anna.
Sorry sweetheart, but Rowan wouldn’t stop crying, wouldn’t take a bottle, nothing. I’ve gone for a drive to see if that helps. Might stop in at my sister’s. See you in a bit.
‘That’s OK, surely?’
The panicked expression is leaving Rachel’s face. ‘I suppose. I guess he didn’t know how long I’d be. He hates the sound of babies crying.’
‘Why don’t you call him?’ Lucy says, but Rachel is already holding her phone to her ear.
‘No reply. He might be driving,’ she says.
Anna looks again at the padlocked door, questions running around her mind. Before she can ask about it, Rachel directs them back downstairs and into the kitchen, where she gestures at them to sit, puts the kettle on.
‘I’m calling his sister,’ she says, leaving the room again.
Anna looks around the room, all its charm faded now. ‘I should go,’ Anna says. ‘I’m just in the way.’
‘Please stay,’ Lucy says. Her jaw is set. ‘I don’t want to be on my own with them.’
‘But—’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Lucy says.
‘What do you mean?’
Lucy shifts around, pushing her hands up the opposite sleeves, holding her arms on the table. ‘Edgar told me to trust him. But then he lied to the police. We saw Victor in Cambridge yesterday. Why isn’t Edgar telling them about that?’
She looks terrified. Anna stretches out a hand to her and Lucy takes it.
‘You should tell Rachel.’
‘I don’t want to make things worse,’ Lucy says.
‘I think they’re about as fucked up as they can be, right now,’ Anna says. ‘Hard to see how it could get any worse.’