CHAPTER 52
It’s him. It’s Damien. Her bear of a husband, here, less than forty-eight hours after she told him where they were. In their bright-and-dark garden in Terlingua.
Simone gapes. Lucy is staring at her father like she hasn’t seen him in years.
‘Damien,’ Simone says, her body flashing with heat.
He looks the same as ever. Huge. Nice eyes that crease at their corners, in clothes that are so familiar that Simone’s heart begins to ache.
His faded T-shirt with the stag logo on the pocket.
Those jeans he’s had for at least twenty years, which he says are his most comfortable.
He’s here. She wants to reach out to touch him, to feel the cotton of his clothes.
She unlocks the door and lets him in. ‘I was walking the streets and I saw you leave, but I thought I’d wait here, in private,’ he says. He moves towards her, his body language hesitant. A silence breaks between them.
‘I didn’t want to say anything.’ Simone directs this to Lucy. ‘But we spoke.’
‘Once you told me the place, I couldn’t not come,’ Damien adds.
‘How did you tell him?’ Lucy says.
‘Instagram.’
‘Fucking Instagram!’ Lucy says. ‘Cops too old to check it?’
‘Something like that. You weren’t followed?’ Simone asks Damien.
‘No.’
And there is more to say, and plans to make, but, for now, he is here.
Her body is responding to him, her husband.
He reaches towards her, one arm around her waist, one draped across Lucy’s shoulders.
And they are together, here, still in dusty, bleak Texas, but he is here, her home. Her England, come.
Lucy is looking at her father and he reaches to touch her again, just once, as though he can’t believe it’s her.
‘You came,’ Lucy says to him.
‘I came.’
He glances at Simone. ‘There was a single opportunity,’ he says.
‘After you told me where you were.’ He switches to Lucy.
‘I’ve been telling the police how mad I am about it all.
They didn’t stop surveillance, but I think they did relax their guard.
The police left my hotel for an hour, went to lunch or something.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how I knew where you were.
I had the opportunity. Not much press outside; they’re losing interest. I got in a cab.
I went to the nearest town, not in this direction, then got another cab.
Then got out all the cash I could. Then another cab. Then a fourth for good measure.’
Damien can’t seem to stop looking at his daughter as he is saying this and, after a few moments, he holds Lucy to him, and Simone sees truly for the first time his own pain and relief, and not just hers.
It’s the wrong time for her to demand proof he wasn’t followed.
To worry that he was, that police are about to descend on them.
‘They will be looking for me,’ Damien says, reading Simone’s mind, still holding Lucy. He talks at Simone over her shoulder.
‘I know,’ she says softly.
It’s cool in the kitchen and Simone could close her eyes and pretend the shade is England’s sun.
And even though he is still talking, Simone is no longer listening.
He is here. She lets the worry ebb away.
She sometimes has to remind herself that good things in life do not come with a price, that she won’t have to pay for happiness with disaster, and maybe this is one such time.
Even just for now. He is here. It is no longer only on her.
She looks at Damien standing there and feels a rush of something.
The unsaid. That awful row they had. The separation.
The voicemail she left him. The risks she took, with their daughter.
It’s at this point that she notices that Damien is avoiding eye contact with her; in spite of their joy, their relationship has been changed by what’s been said. She can tell.
She tries to forget it. Their marriage, their family, is in front of them once more, where previously their future had been amputated by Lucy’s kidnapper.
She doesn’t know what it looks like yet, but they have survived this far.
Something unexpectedly delicious rises up through Simone, something she hasn’t felt for days and days: optimism.