by K. L. Slater
He slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. The heat of his body both stimulated and soothed her, and she nestled into his strength.
She’d looked up then and seen several of the other girls watching with poorly disguised envy. She pulled away from his embrace and sat up straight. She could see what it looked like, but it had been a pure, natural emotion between them. Nothing more.
Now she broke away from the flow of students and took the path across the grass that led directly to the entrance of the library.
She did feel guilty about abandoning her study plans that evening, and even worse about the fact that she wouldn’t be able to speak to her dad. But she also felt a building excitement about her evening out. She had a proper student lifestyle now!
She really liked Stefan and she valued his friendship, but that was all it was.
She wanted to give this degree her best shot, and that meant keeping life simple. She didn’t want the complication of getting into a relationship with an older man, who, although well-meaning, had the potential to really throw her off track when it came to her study plans.
There were plenty of girls who’d do anything to date Stefan O’Hara.
Lucie told herself she wasn’t one of them.
Thirty-Seven
Lucie
Monday morning
Blake and I sit and stare at an uncomfortable-looking DI Pearlman.
‘So you’re telling us there’s nothing at all? You’re no further forward in finding Grace,’ Blake states bluntly.
‘It feels as though she’s just disappeared off the face of the earth,’ I say faintly, still feeling a little vague from having taken one of my tablets after Bev left.
‘As I said, we’ve interviewed Mrs Charterhouse, who is adamant she did see Grace. Unfortunately, she has nothing to add to the information already given. Grace was in her sight for a matter of seconds.’
I can’t bear to think that if the Charterhouses had stopped the car and asked Grace if she was all right, this whole terrible situation could have been avoided.
‘We launched another door-to-door on Abbey Road, where Grace was sighted, but all inquiries in the area have drawn a blank so far,’ the detective continues. ‘One or two people think they may have seen her walking up Violet Road, but they can’t swear to it. Infuriatingly, it just seems to be a small pocket of time when everyone was busy doing something else.’
From where I sit, I can see Grace’s slippers, tucked under the sideboard next to the television. They’re too small for her now, but she loves the sparkly pink and silver design so much she’s just flattened down the fabric heels and continues to wear them like mules.
‘CCTV, hospitals, train stations, airports… nothing?’ Blake says, incredulously.
DI Pearlman shakes his head. He looks pale and tired around the eyes. He’s wearing the same suit and shirt as yesterday and I suspect he’s been working around the clock to find Grace one way or another.
‘We’ve circulated a full description around all points of exit from the country. There’s no CCTV anywhere near Violet Road or the surrounding area, and we’re currently in the process of checking with nearby houses if anything has been caught on a residential security camera. A further complication is that we don’t know what car we’re looking for – if indeed a car is involved – making it extremely difficult to trace a vehicle at this stage.’
‘We’re also putting out an urgent plea for drivers in the area to check their dash-cam footage,’ DS Paige adds.
‘We’re very grateful for everything you’re doing,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry if we come across as the opposite.’
‘No need to apologise, Lucie. I simply can’t imagine what you’re both going through,’ the detective says. ‘Believe me, we’re doing everything we can to find Grace, and we will continue to do so. In cases like these, a breakthrough can literally come at any moment, so we must all stay positive. We just need one person to come forward with something solid we can follow up on and we’ll be straight on it.’
There are a couple of moments of silence, then DI Pearlman speaks again.
‘There is something we’d like to run by you, something powerful that you could both do to give a real boost to the investigation.’
‘Anything,’ Blake says quickly. ‘We’ll do anything at all.’
‘A live television appeal. Tomorrow morning?’ The detective looks at each of us in turn. ‘Hopefully Grace will be back and we won’t need to go through with it, but if you’re willing, we could get the wheels turning right away.’
The note Bev received flashes into my mind. What if the person who sent it watches the appeal? Gets off on me looking desperate and upset? I push the thought aside.
‘Of course we’ll do it,’ I say as Blake eagerly nods his agreement. ‘We’ll do anything and everything in our power, to bring Grace back home.’
Thirty-Eight
Sixteen years earlier
The night at the Quayside with Stefan and the others was without doubt the best night out of her life so far. They had so much fun and best of all, she didn’t have to spend a penny of her own money!
Lucie was gratified that they stuck together as one big group as they visited pub after pub. Each establishment they stopped at seemed to have a happy hour, when drinks were ridiculously cheap, and what was more, each discounted beverage came with a free shot.
Stefan refused to let anyone pay for their own drinks all night. He was obviously the sort of person who was incredibly generous to his friends.
She got to know everyone a little better and warmed to one or two people in particular. Gregg, the red-headed guy who’d been sitting next to Stefan the day she’d first met them in the café, was funny, and Lucie found he had a self-deprecating sense of humour that she couldn’t fail to warm to.
‘Has Stefan got a good job?’ she asked Gregg, the alcohol warming her blood.
He blinked. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘He’s paying for everyone’s drinks and I thought students were all supposed to be skint.’
‘Oh, right. See what you mean.’ Gregg laughed. ‘Let’s just say he makes enough to live a comfortable life.’
He nudged her playfully and she grinned.
Lucie squinted and tried to focus on a figure to her right. She’d noticed it before, someone standing in the shadows of the bar, seemingly merging back into the crowd when she tried to get a better look.
A flash of cropped blonde hair and high heels confirmed that it was Rhonda. The girl who’d been staring at Stefan the first time she’d met the group.
Lucie’s housemate, Angela, came over and Rhonda followed her.
‘Remember Rhonda?’ Angela introduced her. ‘She’s studying business and finance, so you two should have stuff in common.’ Angela stood on her tiptoes and looked across the room, her eyes searching something or someone out. ‘Stuff to do. Catch you later.’
Lucie and Rhonda sat together for a while, chatting inanely about their respective courses in a hesitant, polite way at first. Rhonda reached for her handbag and Lucie recognised it as a Gucci latest design from a fashion magazine she’d picked up in the library.
‘So, did you know Stefan before university?’ Rhonda ventured. It was pretty obvious to Lucie the other girl had waited until she could bring the conversation around to Stefan.
‘No, not at all. You?’
‘Oh, me and Stefan, we go back a long way.’ She smirked cryptically. She raised a hand to flick her hair back and a large ruby flashed under the lights in a ring on her right hand. ‘You and him are just friends, yeah?’
‘Of course!’ Lucie was beginning to resent Rhonda’s rather bold questioning. Despite her annoying manner, Lucie had to admit she was very attractive in a gamine, understated kind of way.
‘I just wondered if he’d asked you yet…’ She shook her head and laughed. ‘Ignore me. None of my business.’
Lucie didn’t respond. She thought Rhonda wanted to know if Stefa
n had asked Lucie out on a date or something. He hadn’t but that was none of her business.
‘You’re not talking shop, surely?’ Stefan appeared, bearing fresh drinks for both girls. ‘There’s really no hope for you. Enough, I say!’
A look passed between Stefan and Rhonda, so quickly, Lucie thought she might have imagined it.
He sat down with them, and before Lucie knew it, she was holding court, telling Stefan and Rhonda about her dream of starting her own accountancy practice in Nottingham after graduating. They hadn’t eaten yet, and her head seemed to swim with the lights of the bar and Stefan’s loud laughter as he gently poked fun of her in that harmless way he had. She put down her drink and he pushed another shot towards her.
‘Come on, drink up.’ Rhonda threw back her head and laughed. ‘We don’t allow lightweights in our inner circle, you know.’
A shiver of warning travelled down Lucie’s spine. Something inside was trying to tell her she’d had way too much to drink already, but she wanted to show Stefan she was more than just a naïve little daddy’s girl, and she picked up the shot and knocked it back in one.
A flurry of applause rose up around her. It sounded like a slowed-down record in Lucie’s ears. She felt clever, powerful even, when she realised the others were watching her impressive display.
Yes, she was a bit queasy, but that was to be expected, as she wasn’t used to drinking. But she pushed the feeling away and, to the cheers of what seemed to her to be the entire bar, banged on the table for yet another shot.
She woke to a tap-tapping on her bedroom door.
She forced her crusty eyelids open and groaned as a jackhammer started up in her head.
Snatches of last night’s drinking marathon flashed in and out of her mind in glorious, fractured Technicolor. Knocking back shots, singing, and a wisp of an unwelcome memory of clambering on a nearby table to dance, aided and abetted by the whooping laughter around her.
She swallowed and wished she hadn’t. Her throat felt like sandpaper.
That tapping noise again… it could only be Angela enquiring how she was, but her efforts were making Lucie’s headache worse.
‘Go away,’ she groaned, turning her head to the wall and closing her eyes again.
Tap, tap, tap. Now a more insistent knocking.
‘Lucie? Open up, it’s me.’
Stefan!
She sat bolt upright in bed and held both temples in an effort to relieve the agonising pounding as her poor swollen brain registered its objections to the rapid movement.
‘Lucie?’
‘Coming,’ she called out as loudly as she could bear. Little more than a croak emerged from her mouth.
Impatient knocking at the door now.
She gingerly swung her legs out of bed, pressing the soles of her feet on to the cold tiled floor. She stood up and waited a beat, trying to decide if she was likely to be sick again.
She dreaded to estimate how long she’d sat hunched over the toilet bowl last night, vomiting up the contents of her overindulgence. It had been long enough for her to start falling asleep on the bathroom floor, only roused by her jaw hitting the loo seat. So gross.
‘Lucie, come on! I’m getting cold out here.’
She pulled on her robe and crossed shakily to the door, reaching out a trembling hand to twist the latch. The door opened.
‘At last! I thought you were… Oh dear.’ Stefan’s eyes took in the state of her. ‘I think it’s definitely going to be a bad-hair day. I’d skip your first lecture if I were you.’
He looked fresh and eager, standing there in the doorway, fit and lean in his jeans and clean white T-shirt. Lucie caught a faint strain of sandalwood soap and her stomach roiled.
He pushed a brown paper bag into her hands.
‘I brought you coffee and a croissant. Are you going to invite me in, or do I have to stand out here in the corridor?’
‘Sorry. Sorry, come in. I’m afraid I’m a bit disorganised.’ She looked around at her small space, littered as it was with last night’s leggings and dress, the contents of her handbag where she’d obviously turned it upside down, and, she was mortified to see, her lacy knickers and bra.
Stefan’s eyes flickered over the garments. ‘Hmm. You did get yourself in a bit of a state.’
‘I know. Sorry.’ She opened the brown bag, extracted the beaker of coffee and placed the croissant on her desk.
Stefan pulled out the desk chair and sat down.
‘No need to apologise. We all had a good night, just like I told you we would.’
‘You also said we’d be back home by ten,’ Lucie reminded him.
She opened the lid of the cardboard cup and inspected the frothy latte within. She swallowed down a sudden sickly taste in her mouth and set the cup back on the desk, untouched.
Stefan laughed. ‘Oh dear, is it that bad? If coffee won’t help, you must be suffering.’
‘I feel so, so ill,’ Lucie said gravely.
‘You’re not ill, you’ve got a hangover.’ Stefan shrugged. ‘Are you seriously telling me you’ve never had a hangover before?’
‘Not like this.’ Lucie shook her head, slowly and carefully in an effort to avoid more pain.
‘Aww, my little hangover virgin!’ Stefan said gleefully.
Her face flushed with heat and she hung her head, mortified.
‘Oh come on, it’s not that bad. You’re living life at last, look at it that way.’
Her father’s disapproving face floated into her mind. The narrowed eyes, the lips pressing into grim disapproval. Thank God he wasn’t here now, to witness her downfall.
‘I can’t remember much about last night, just awful flashes. I can’t even recall how I got back here.’
‘Oh, I can help you with that, doll. I brought you back. I stopped you falling into the bushes and carried you the last few yards.’
She was going to throw up again. Stefan had brought her back here? But she was naked when she woke up this morning; how had…
‘Don’t look so worried. Rhonda came with us and got you safely tucked up in bed. I retreated like the perfect gentleman I am.’ He grinned wolfishly.
‘Thanks,’ Lucie whispered. ‘For looking after me.’
‘Hey, no problem. Don’t take it so seriously. You had too much to drink, nobody died.’
Not yet, Lucie thought grimly. It felt exactly like she was on the cusp of dying. And now she was bothered by what Stefan had said about Rhonda getting her tucked up in bed. Why didn’t she leave her fully clothed? That was what you’d do if someone was drunk. You’d just pull a cover over them and leave them to sleep it off.
How creepy that she’d been naked this morning.
Still, Stefan had proved himself to be a gentleman, despite her dad’s colourful warnings about the drink and drugs and wild hedonistic parties one encountered at university.
Oh shit! She had completely forgotten about cancelling the call last night with her dad.
She reached for her phone to find the screen covered in missed call and text message notifications, every one of them from her father.
Thirty-Nine
Lucie
Monday morning
I feed Oscar and then Dad pulls his little coat on. ‘I might not be able to take him out for a walk with those wolves at the door’ – he nods at the press – ‘but we can get some fresh air in the back garden at least.’
I nod distractedly as Dad reaches for Oscar’s mittens.
‘Are you taking your medication, love?’ He gives me a long look. ‘Blake tells me you’re not so good.’
‘Is it any wonder?’ I stare at him. ‘My daughter’s still missing, so no, I’m not feeling on top of the world, Dad.’
‘I’m only worried about you, Lucie.’ He seems subdued, a little jumpy.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Don’t worry about me, I’m just a silly old fool who can sort himself out.’ He’s always struggled to accept concern from other people. ‘Focus on gett
ing yourself straight.’
When Dad’s gone outside, I clear up Oscar’s lunch tray. Our kitchen is now the Family Liaison Officer’s HQ central, it seems. Of course, I can go in there any time I like, and sometimes I’m forced to. But under Fiona’s watchful gaze, I feel my anxiety ramping up twofold, so I avoid it when I can. Particularly after Bev brought around that note and photograph.
The last thing I need is them digging around in my past.
I can hear Fiona on the phone in there, but I can’t wait until she’s finished. I’m going to wrap up myself and have five minutes outside with Dad and Oscar. I could use a breath of fresh air.
In my old life, I used to make a weekly batch of fresh purees and freeze them in ice cube trays, rather than buy expensive and less healthy baby food from the supermarket. Or was that for Grace? When I try and think back to Oscar’s early months, they feel impenetrable, like cotton wool in my head.
I need to pull myself together and get my thoughts in order.
I pull open the freezer drawer and take out a tray, noting that my reserves are depleting fast. Fiona raises her hand by way of acknowledging me when I turn around then turns back to watch Dad and Oscar in the garden.
Jeffery is out there too – in our garden! When he sees me at the window he rushes up to the kitchen door. I open it an inch.
‘Lucie, can I possibly have a word? I’ve been watching the house and—’
‘You’ve been what?’ I look at Fiona aghast, but she is busy with her phone conversation.
‘I’ve been keeping an eye on everything,’ Jeffery babbles. ‘I need to speak to you about a possible new strand of investigation. There’s been a—’
‘Please stop watching us,’ I tell him, forcing myself not to be really rude. ‘Let the police do their job, Jeffery. You are not a detective, remember that.’
‘But—’
I close the door against his nonsense and go back to sorting out Oscar’s frozen food cubes, resolving to ask Blake to warn Jeffery off.