CHAPTER 45 Simone
Simone
Simone’s eyes adjust slowly inside, the world blue-grey from the blinding sun, and some ancient part of her brain begins to signal danger.
Is it because her daughter was kidnapped, or is it because the house doesn’t feel empty that she is terrified? She gazes around her, the sunspots in her vision gradually disappearing.
She is in a spacious mid-century hallway containing a dark-wood drinks cart with glass carafes sitting on the top of it. Bookshelves that divide the room. The first one Simone sees is a textbook titled Innocent. She allows her eyes to linger on it.
It’s warm in here, lit from the day’s sun. She walks into the living room, her footsteps sounding too loud. She spins in a slow circle.
A brown-leather chesterfield sofa. A record player. Simone tickles the surfaces with her fingertips, thinking about strangers hiding behind the curtains, just their shoes visible, about police creeping to surround the bungalow, about the kidnapper coming back, angry his man was killed …
She heads into the first bedroom, checking it’s empty. A wardrobe lines the back wall, and Simone stands in front of it, takes three breaths, then opens the doors. Coat hangers swing and dance with the movement, but there’s nobody here.
The bathroom next. No breaths this time. Simone simply rips back the shower curtain, expecting a crouched man, somebody with a gun, but there’s nothing.
As she finishes her search, she relaxes, and that is when she hears it: the record player. Music. Something old and country. A warbling male voice singing about heartbreak.
Simone freezes in the hallway, by the absurd drinks cart, thinking that they have too many enemies, and wondering which one this is.
She brings herself to look into the living room, and there, with his back to her, fiddling with the needle of the player, is a tall, slim figure carrying a hat under his arm. Perhaps he senses her gaze, because he turns to look at her.
After a beat, he walks towards her, his movements deft and somehow balletic: slim wrists, long limbs, a bent neck like a swan. Simone stares at him, rigid with fear and – again – relief, too. The same relief she felt at the drone. Let him kill her, let him arrest her, only let Lucy be free.
He extends his hand, and he says, ‘Sorry – I own the place. Sorry. Hi. I’m James Moody.’
Simone blinks, her entire nervous system alive like the national grid.
It’s Moody himself. The lawyer. The person they might entrust to help them, only he doesn’t yet know it.
‘Oh,’ she says.
‘And, perfect,’ he tells her. ‘You’re already here. Sorry – I put some papers on the player and it set it off. Temperamental.’
‘I was just checking in,’ Simone says, feigning an American accent.
‘Big place to stay for just you,’ he remarks mildly.
‘Right,’ she says faintly, thinking she can hardly tell him he’s the only person who can give legal advice to criminals, or who doesn’t require ID.
He’s lanky, with grown-out hair that possibly used to be neat but is no longer. Outdoorsy hair. He’s in maybe his early fifties. He looks relaxed, easy. Simone tells herself to drop her shoulders.
She thinks she can see him working something out. His eyes move intelligently across her features.
Simone pauses. She doesn’t know what Lucy put on the bloody form.
God, she’s left her unprepared. Simone finds the notion that she is entirely reliant on Lucy’s version of events suddenly eerie.
Her deleted internet history, the kidnap, the British person at camp, arriving here, in a place she described as a town but which is really a hamlet …
‘OK, great,’ he says. ‘Let’s do formalities, which I always forget. Where are you from?’
Simone feels a great wheel of dread and sadness wrench inside her, steering her like a ship towards home.
Towards stupid British things like the Post Office and Sunday trading hours and traffic wardens and trains that never run on time.
At beach days spoilt by shitty weather and rainbow windbreakers and people with clipped accents and attitudes, at the grungy Goodge Street Tube station opposite the restaurant, at how she will never get back to it – she will – she can’t –
‘Midwest,’ she answers randomly, hoping the accent matches. She knows she isn’t speaking in a New York accent, but that’s about all she can tell.
‘Super. I own the law firm just down the street, Moody Law. So if you need anything while you’re staying, I’ll probably be there.’ He scrawls his number down on the back of a form and gives it to her. Simone can only hope he will forget more formal paperwork.
‘I will.’
‘You look delighted by the prospect.’ He smiles. Two dimples, then accurately assesses her reaction. ‘Not a fan of lawyers?’
‘Is anyone?’ she asks. She thinks of her parents’ social work proceedings conducted by a poker-faced solicitor who wrote their heartbreak into turgid letters, and thinks that most of them are just trying to make a fat fee, anyway.
‘Not really. Is it a week that you’re here?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Great. If I can just get a signature. I was going to leave this here,’ he says, taking another form out of his pocket, neatly folded into four, ‘or email it, but you didn’t leave me an email address … Is it just you staying?’
‘Yes,’ she says, wondering if this is another stupid lie, but it’s what Lucy put on the web form.
Lucy is right out the front and Moody will see her, or already has, but they said one person, and now Simone is doing a fake scrawl that disguises the fact that she doesn’t know which name Lucy put on the website.
Panic and survival have made them disorganized.
‘Just ID to go,’ he says, and Simone’s stomach plummets down a lift shaft right to the basement. ‘Sorry – I usually do this all remotely, but no email …’ he says again.
‘Must’ve left it off the form.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s been … a horrible afternoon,’ Simone says.
And, God, she wants Lucy here, the trained actor.
She’s surprised, though, seconds later, when real, genuine tears spring up in her eyes.
For Simone, today, this afternoon, it isn’t hard to cry.
The reasons are just not the same. ‘I know you need to tick your boxes,’ she says, ‘but it’s been a crappy day, to be honest.’ The accent isn’t holding, feels flimsy, the use of the American word crappy the only saving grace.
‘Oh,’ Moody says, tilting his head slightly to one side. He’s wearing glasses with large fashionable frames. They catch the light from outside and blanch to white periodically.
He seems to study her for just a beat or two. And then his entire body goes still. It’s infinitesimal. He covers it up quickly, a trained lawyer, but Simone sees it. He clears his throat.
And there is the moment. Eyes locked. His face becomes expressionless, like a shutter closing on it. The only thing he does is run a hand through his hair.
And then it’s gone, the moment stopped abruptly like his record player.
‘I’m not the box-ticking type,’ he answers, his tone mild.
‘No?’ she says.
‘No.’
As they move towards the front door, she raises her voice, hoping Lucy will hear. ‘Anyway, I’ll be in touch.’
They step out on to the porch. Lucy is nowhere to be seen, and Simone at first relaxes, thinking she must have heard them and hidden, but then tenses, thinking she has been taken, or found.
Moody looks at her. ‘Enjoy your stay, and swing by any time to the firm.’ Tone light.
Oh, he definitely knows.
‘I will,’ she says, her voice strained, thinking of the things she was looking forward to.
The beds. The showers. And thinking that they will have to make a run for it, from here, tomorrow.
Because Terlingua is far too small, but also because she thinks Moody is far too smart.
And, after all their plans, she thinks she’s too scared to confess to anybody at all.
‘Hope you like the house,’ he tells her. ‘It’s good for relaxing and hibernating.’
And something about this exchange brings more tears to her eyes.
Is she ever going to have a normal conversation again? She doesn’t think so. How can she? She can’t quite pull at the thread of these thoughts. The thread of what the future may hold. For the medium term. For the long term.
‘See you soon,’ Moody says. He jerks a thumb behind him, as he steps off the porch and heads behind the house. ‘I’m your neighbour, live just over there,’ he says, pointing behind their house. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’
Simone watches him go, brown hills in the deep background, and waits for Lucy, wherever she is. Luckily, Moody’s house does not directly overlook theirs. It’s surrounded by tall trees and some stone structures. They still have their privacy, if you can call it that.
She opens the flip phone.
Lucy’s been googling, the history not deleted this time.
She’s been searching for kidnaps in the local area, people convicted for drugs offences – there are thousands – but she hasn’t googled herself.
Her search terms are littered with typos as per Lucy, who acts and types fast: pr8vate investigtors, Terlingua, kidnappers in tx, British kidnappers, victims of kjdnap tx, convicted drugs offendrs, Fort Davs.
Simone sighs.
And then she sees it, another search. Torture kidnapper.
Simone blinks, wondering if she’s misread it in the fierce sun. Hoping she has. Torture kidnapper …? Did Lucy want to torture the kidnapper? Did the kidnapper torture her?