Chapter Thirty-One
The cafe was by the embankment and served coffee in bowls rather than actual cups.
Iona had never understood the appeal of drinking from crockery designed for soup, but then Ellie had always had better taste than her, she’d always been that little bit more refined.
More refined than all of them, really, which made it a bit weird to be sitting opposite her now wondering just what to say about the worst thing she’d heard.
"You look terrible," Ellie said.
"Thank you. That's exactly what I needed to hear." At least it broke the ice. Iona hadn’t been at all sure how to start this conversation.
"I meant it with love." Ellie set down her spoon. "When did you last sleep properly?"
"Define properly."
"More than four hours. Without waking up to check your phone."
Iona considered this. "Sometime in the nineties, possibly."
Ellie almost smiled. Almost. It was more than Iona had expected, given everything.
"I'm sorry," Iona said. The words came out in a rush, like she'd been holding her breath.
"I should have noticed something was wrong.
All those moments, the fumbling, the tiredness, and I just thought you were stressed or tired or having a bad day.
I should have paid attention. I should have asked. "
"No." Ellie's voice was firm. "I'm glad you didn't."
Iona blinked. "What?"
"I'm glad you didn't notice. It meant I still looked normal.
It meant I could still be just Ellie, not Ellie-with-the-condition.
" She wrapped both hands around her bowl.
"Do you know how exhausting it is when everyone treats you like you're made of glass?
When your husband starts looking at you with that careful expression, like he's waiting for you to break?
Being around you lot was the only time I felt like myself. "
Iona didn't know what to say to that. She'd been prepared for Ellie to be angry, to need convincing. Not this.
"I've got a treatment regimen now," Ellie continued.
"Injections, mostly. Some pills. It's all very glamorous, needles in my thigh every week like I'm training for the Olympics.
" She smiled, dry and self-deprecating. "So far, I'm fine.
The doctors are cautiously optimistic, which apparently means they're not actively preparing my coffin. "
"That's good. The optimism part, not the coffin part."
"I know what you meant."
They sat in silence for a moment. The cafe's speakers were playing something acoustic and earnest, the kind of music that made Iona want to set things on fire.
"Don't blame Cam," Ellie said quietly.
Iona's eyebrows shot up. "Sorry, have you met Cam? She brought a journalist into our circle. A music journalist who was literally paid to write about bands."
"She didn't know he would do that."
"She also didn't know he wouldn't. Which is rather the point."
Ellie sighed. "She's lonely, Iona. Under all that chaos, she's just someone looking to be loved. And she really thought she'd found it. She was completely taken in." Her fingers tightened around her bowl. "I watched her face when it all came out. She was devastated. Still is."
Iona thought about Cam, who filled every room she entered, who knew someone everywhere and seemed to collect people like other people collected stamps.
Lonely wasn't a word she would have used.
But then, Cam was good at misdirection. Always had been.
She could make you think a party was happening even when it was just her in a corner with a questionable cocktail and a strong opinion about bass lines.
"I'll think about it," Iona said finally. "That's the best I can do right now."
Ellie nodded. "Fair enough." Then, with the air of someone ripping off a plaster: "So. Maeve."
Iona's heart flipped over in her chest. She set down her own bowl so she wouldn't drop it. "What about her?"
"Have you spoken to her?"
"No." The word came out flatter than she intended. "She's in Scotland. Feeding her horrible sheep and glaring at a loch, presumably."
"From what I’ve heard, the sheep isn't horrible. It's just protective."
"It bit me, Ellie."
"You were a stranger on its territory. I suppose that's what sheep do."
"That is absolutely not what sheep do."
Ellie sighed. "I spoke to her, you know. She rang yesterday. She apologized for how she reacted when everything came out."
"That's… good." Iona wasn't sure if it was good. She wasn't sure of anything anymore.
"She didn’t mention you. Not really. Nor… the other thing."
"The fact that she punched me?"
"That’s the one."
Iona rubbed at her face. "I should have told her," she said. "Years ago. When it happened. When she came back. At any point, really."
"Should you, though?" Ellie's voice was gentle but firm. "What purpose would it have served? She was sick. She didn't know what she was doing. Telling her would have just given her more guilt to carry, and God knows she was carrying enough already."
"She deserved the truth."
"Perhaps." Ellie conceded the point with a small nod. "But not the way it came out. Not from Cam, in the middle of everything else falling apart."
"No," Iona agreed quietly. "Not like that.
" She took a breath. "Shepherd's still working on Lakeside," she said, changing direction because she really didn’t want to talk or think about Maeve anymore, even though Maeve was all she could think about.
"Calling in favors, threatening people with his reputation, the usual. "
"Do you think it'll work?"
"I think he's very stubborn."
Ellie was quiet for a minute. "Do you think Maeve will come back for it? The festival, I mean."
Iona stared at her coffee, which had gone cold while she wasn't paying attention. "I don't know. What did she say when you spoke to her?"
"That she didn't know. That she didn't think so. Then that she didn't know again." Ellie shrugged. "So, about what you'd expect."
"Maybe I should talk to her."
"No." Ellie's voice was firm. "You did it last time. Went all the way to Scotland to drag her back. If anyone should do it, it's Cam. She's the one who caused the final blow-up. Let her fix something for once."
Iona wanted to argue, but she was too tired. "Fine. We'll talk about it Monday. At rehearsal."
"If there's a rehearsal."
"There'll be a rehearsal. Even if we have to hold it in someone's living room while ignoring each other."
Ellie finished her coffee and set the bowl down. "That does sound like us."
IONA CAME HOME to silence.
Which wasn't unusual. Mo had perfected the art of silent contempt over the past few weeks, communicating entirely through closed doors and aggressive headphone usage. But this silence was different. This silence was empty.
"Mo?" Iona called, dropping her keys on the hall table. "I'm back. I got those crisps you like, the ones with the ridiculous amount of salt."
Nothing.
She checked Mo's room. The door was open, which was the first wrong thing. Mo never left her door open. The room itself was a mess of clothes and textbooks and wires, exactly as it always was. But there was no Mo.
The bathroom was empty. The kitchen was empty. The living room, where Iona had left Mo that morning with instructions to do her homework and maybe consider being a human being again, was also empty.
"Mo?" Louder this time. "This isn't funny. Come out."
Still nothing.
Iona's stomach began to tighten. She checked her phone. No messages. She called Mo's number and listened to it ring, ring, ring, then click to voicemail. Mo's recorded voice, bored and slightly annoyed, told her to leave a message after the beep.
She tried again. Same result.
She texted: Where are you? Call me back.
Nothing.
She called Mo's friend Jasmine, who was the only one whose number she had even though the two of them went to different secondary schools now, but she hadn't seen her. She called Bethany, the school counselor, who said she thought Mo had gone home. She stared at her phone and didn’t know who else to call.
The tightening in her stomach had become a fist.
So she called Shepherd.
"Mo's gone," she said when he answered. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. Too calm. Like she was reading lines from a script. "She's not here. She's not answering her phone. None of her friends know where she is."
"Gone gone, or teenage dramatic exit gone?"
"I don't know. There's no note. Her phone goes straight to voicemail now."
A pause. Then Shepherd's voice, sharp and focused, the way it got when he was in crisis mode. "I'll call the school. See if they know anything. You call anyone else you can think of. Teachers, parents of friends, anyone."
"Okay."
"Iona. We'll find her."
She wanted to believe him.
Hours passed. Or maybe it was minutes. Time had stopped making sense. The flat felt enormous and empty, and every second that ticked by was another second where anything could be happening and Iona didn't know where her daughter was.
She made tea she didn't drink. She checked Mo's room again, looking for clues like some sort of desperate amateur detective. Mo's school bag was gone. So was her phone charger. Her favorite hoodie was missing from its usual spot on the floor.
She'd planned this. Whatever this was. Did that make things better or worse?
Shepherd called back.
"Nothing from the school. No one's seen her since the final bell." He hesitated. "Iona, I had a thought."
"What?"
"Could she have gone to Scotland? To Maeve?"
Iona's brain stalled. "What? No. That's ridiculous. She barely knows Maeve."
"She knew enough to like her. She wouldn’t stop talking about that damn stretch Limo jaunt. And she knew Maeve was in Scotland. If she wanted to run away, really run away, somewhere no one would think to look…"
"She doesn't even know the address."
"She's fourteen. She has the internet. And she's smarter than both of us combined."
It was absurd. It was completely absurd. Mo wouldn't take a train to Scotland on her own. Mo couldn't even take the tube without complaining about how long it took. Mo thought anything north of Birmingham was basically the Arctic.
But nothing else made sense. And Mo had been so angry lately, so unreachable, and the last thing Iona had done was scream at her about being a brat. The words felt like glass in her throat now.
"I'll call Maeve," Iona said.
She hung up and found Maeve's number with fingers that didn't want to cooperate. She pressed call and held the phone to her ear, willing Maeve to answer, please answer, just this once answer the bloody phone.
It rang. And rang. And rang.
Then: "This is Maeve. Leave a message or don't, I'm not particularly fussed either way."
The voicemail beeped.
Iona opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She ended the call and stared at the screen, at Maeve's name, at the empty silence of the flat around her.