CHAPTER 41
Four o’clock in the morning and Simone surfaces from sleep, her arms reaching for Lucy.
Simone was dreaming that Lucy was a baby, and she had rolled over on to her.
She used to have the most horrendous dreams the baby was in the bed.
She’d forgotten until now. She’s sweating, panicked, and she reaches to check and triple-check that Lucy is alive, adult and breathing.
Then she sighs to dispel the adrenaline and begins to make a plan. What exactly did the British man say to her? She tries to remember every word of it, but the peace of their evening and the swim in the stream has gone, and the usual roving morning dread begins. No. They can’t. They’re on the run …
Simone rolls on to her stomach, then picks up the phone. And he’s messaged. The same account, messaging itself and each other.
It’s me, D, he has sent. We need to delete these communications.
Everything is being monitored. I’ve bought a phone while pretending I needed essentials from Target and put the login on it.
I’m pretending to the media and the police to be angry with you so they will leave me alone. And then I can come for you.
And then, before she even has to ask for it, he’s sent a selfie, of him alone in some hotel room somewhere.
Simone lets a gasp out as she reads, lying there in her cold sleeping bag on her stomach. Her husband. Not a betrayer. A smart man who thinks before he acts. Who has concocted a plan to – to what? To help them, she guesses.
You’re there, she replies. You’re there and you’re not angry x
Evidently, he’s still online. I’m so sorry I had to talk to the press, he types, and Simone is dismayed to note he doesn’t deny his anger.
What do the police think? she asks.
The dots bounce for several minutes as Damien types. And then he delivers the truth.
It’s not good here. They think restaurant in trouble and you joined Lucy in order to ship drugs. Think camping was a ruse. A cop called by the lodge and you told him you and Lucy were there after the kidnap (?) so they think the kidnap totally fabricated.
Simone types back: I didn’t want to tell the police! Because of what the kidnapper said!
She sits up. The sleeping bag slides from her body, leaving her even colder, but she doesn’t care. Everything is against them.
I know, Damien types. That cop was working somewhere else the night of the kidnap.
On some shift they were talking about. He seems gutted he missed it.
I’ve been trying to suggest things to the police without arousing suspicion.
The guy Lucy shot at was with his wife; he heard the shot and radioed it in immediately, so he’s discounted too. Tbh he doesn’t look guilty.
Something sad and small sinks within Simone, a kind of humiliation. Neither cop was in on it. They acted so foolishly, so rashly.
But it might mean their suspect is the right one.
Damien, she types, Lucy and I both encountered a British man, me on the coach from Mexico, her at camp. He needs looking into. Grey hair. Mid-fifties. From Manchester. Can you do it?
?? Damien replies.
Can you try and find out who was on the coach? Somehow? It feels too much of a coincidence that Lucy and I both encountered him – seems suspicious.
You think he’s in on it all?
I don’t know.
How would you prove it if you did find him?
I don’t know, Simone replies. It’s such a moon shot. She can see it now.
Do my best, he writes.
She watches him type and stop, type and stop – her husband, to whom the final thing she said was that she loved their daughter more than he did.
But then Damien types again. And it’s a clue: Someone else told the police they saw you at the border? Together? It’s been a big part of the evidence against you. Could it be him?
OMG. Yes? Find out who said it?
They don’t let me be privy to much. But I’ll try.
She lies back down. It must be him.
But I would say the police are asking really leading questions like ‘Did you see a woman and her daughter?’ They’re just intent on getting someone for the shooting and proving you’re lying. So they’re trying to get people to say things, Damien continues.
Simone sighs, a deep sigh that comes from a victim who everybody thinks is a perpetrator. I’m sorry. For what I said, she types to him.
Damien begins to reply, then stops.
Nothing comes back. She types to Damien. What’s your plan? What should ours be?
Leave it with me. I’m working on it. Talk tomorrow, sometime.
And she thinks, suddenly, of the risks he’s taken so far.
Different risks from her, but important ones, too: deceiving the police.
Working with her. Is it an olive branch?
It must be. Simone, prone to extreme thinking, tries to remind herself that there is a vast wasteland between enemies and lovers.
Where shall I say you are? he asks. It isn’t a direct question. Sensibly, he’s only – at the moment – actually asking where she isn’t.
Send them to a major city, she says. And then: Is the restaurant OK? I liked your herring.
Staff a bit besieged, but OK. Bookings soaring lol.
Lol.
And they log off.
What must this look like? Hundreds of bookings, the staff being scrutinized by the press. Lucy’s camp mates speaking out. The photos of them by the side of the road with the gun … but she’s completely removed from it here in the desert.
She blinks. Then the messages disappear right in front of her. Damien’s tidying up again, like he always has. She feels a rush of gratitude for him, her husband out there, trying to help. She relaxes slightly, feeling less alone than before.
Simone passes the next hour browsing the internet in a spiral of self-loathing.
Stories about the restaurant – a waitress she once had to get rid of has told the Mirror that Simone was a control freak – and social media speculating on where they are.
The BBC has covered it, a photograph of Dishes as the lead story, the gold sign on the door that she ordered from Etsy front and centre of a breaking news story.
And then someone writing on Facebook who went to school with her, saying she was always going to turn out rough.
Simone closes her eyes, and lets sleep come for her.
She only gets an hour before the next disaster.