After You, Page 24

  “Did you try the hospitals?” My sister called from college, in her fifteen-minute break between HMRC: The Changing Face of Revenue Collection, and VAT: A European Perspective.

  “Sam says nobody with her name has been admitted to any of the teaching hospitals. He’s got people everywhere looking out for her.” I glanced behind me as I spoke, as if even then I half expected to see Lily walking toward me.

  “How long have you been looking?”

  “A few days.” I didn’t tell her I’d barely slept. “I—er—took time off work.”

  “I knew it! I knew she was going to be trouble. Did your boss mind you taking time off? What happened about that other job, by the way? The one in New York? Did you do the interview? Please don’t say you forgot.”

  It took me a minute to work out what she was referring to. “Oh. That. Yeah—I got it.”

  “You what?”

  “Nathan said they’re going to offer it to me.”

  Westminster was filling up with tourists, lingering at gaudy stalls of Union Jack tat, their mobile phones and expensive cameras held aloft to capture the looming Houses of Parliament. I watched a traffic warden walking toward me and wondered if some antiterrorism legislation prevented me from parking where I’d stopped. I held up a hand, indicating that I was about to leave.

  There was a short silence at the other end of the phone.

  “Hang on—you’re not saying you—”

  “I can’t even think about it right now, Treen. Lily’s missing. I need to find her.”

  “Louisa? You listen a minute. You have to take this job.”

  “What?”

  “This is the opportunity of a lifetime. If you had the faintest clue what I would give for a chance to move to New York . . . with guaranteed employment? A place to live? And you ‘can’t think about it right now’?”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  The traffic warden was definitely walking toward me.

  “Oh, my God. This is it. This is the thing I was trying to talk to you about. Every time you get a chance to move forward, you just hijack your own future. It’s like—it’s like you don’t actually want to.”

  “Lily is missing, Treen.”

  “A sixteen-year-old girl with two parents and at least two grandparents that you barely know has buggered off for a few days like she’s done before. Like teenagers sometimes do. And you’re going to use this to throw away the greatest opportunity you are ever likely to be given? Jeez. You don’t even really want to go, do you?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Far easier for you to just stick with that depressing little job and complain about it. Far easier for you to sit tight and not take a risk and make out that everything that happens to you is something you couldn’t help.”

  “I can’t just up and leave while this is going on.”

  “You’re in charge of your own life, Lou. And yet you act like you’re permanently buffeted by events outside your control. What is this—guilt? Is it that you feel you owe Will something? Is it some kind of penance? Giving up your life because you couldn’t save his?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No. I understand perfectly. I understand you better than you understand yourself. His daughter is not your responsibility. Do you hear me? None of this is your responsibility. And if you don’t go to New York—an opportunity I can’t even talk about because it makes me want to actually kill you—I’ll never talk to you again. Ever.”

  The traffic warden was at my window. I wound it down, pulling the universal face you make when your sister is going off at the other end of your phone and you’re really sorry but you can’t cut her short. He tapped his watch and I nodded reassuringly.

  “That’s it, Lou. Think about it. Lily is not your daughter.”

  I was left staring at my phone. I thanked the traffic warden, then wound up my window. And then a phrase popped into my head: I’m not his daughter.

  • • •

  I drove around the corner, pulled up beside a petrol station, and rifled through the battered old A–Z that lived in the footwell of my car, trying to remember the name of the road Lily had mentioned. Pyemore, Pyecrust, Pyecroft. I traced the distance to St. John’s Wood with my finger—would that take fifteen minutes to walk? It had to be the same place.

  I used my phone and looked up his surname along with the street name, and there it was. Number 56. My gut tightened with excitement. I started the ignition, wrenched the car into gear, and headed out onto the road again.

  • • •

  Although separated by less than a mile, the difference between Lily’s mother’s house and her former stepfather’s house could not have been more pronounced. Where the Houghton-Millers’ street was lined with uniformly grand white stucco or redbrick houses, punctuated by yew topiary and large cars that seemingly never got dirty, Martin Steele’s road appeared resolutely ungentrified, a two-story corner of London where house prices were spiraling but the exteriors refused to reflect it.

  I drove slowly, past cars under canvas and an overturned wheelie bin, and finally found a parking space near a small Victorian terraced house of the kind that existed in identikit lines all over London. I gazed at it, noting the peeling paintwork on the front door, the child’s watering can on the front step. Please let her be here, I prayed. Safe within those walls.

  I climbed out of the car, locked it, and walked up to the front step.

  Inside I could hear a piano, a fractured chord being repeated again and again, muffled voices. I hesitated, just a moment, and then I pressed the doorbell, hearing the music suddenly stop in answer.

  Footsteps in the corridor, and then the door opened. A forty-something man, lumberjack shirt, jeans, and day-old stubble stood there.

  “Yes?”

  “I wondered . . . is Lily here, please?”

  “Lily?”

  I smiled, held out a hand. “You are Martin Steele, yes?”

  He studied me briefly before he answered. “I might be. And who are you?”

  “I’m a friend of Lily’s. I—I’ve been trying to get in contact with her and I understand that she might be staying here? Or that perhaps you might know where she is?”

  He frowned. “Lily? Lily Miller?”

  “Well. Yes.”

  He rubbed his hand against his jaw and glanced behind him toward the hall.

  “Could you wait there a moment, please?” He walked back down the corridor, and I heard him issuing instructions to whoever was at the piano. As he came back to me, a series of scales began playing hesitantly and then with more emphasis.

  Martin Steele half closed the door behind him. He dipped his head for a moment, as if he were trying to make sense of what I had asked him. “I’m sorry. I’m slightly at a loss here. You’re a friend of Lily Miller’s? And you’ve come here why?”

  “Because Lily said she came here to see you. You are—were—her stepfather?”

  “Not technically, but yes. A long time ago.”

  “And you’re a musician? You used to take her to nursery? But you’re still in contact. She told me how close you still were. How much it irritated her mother.”

  Martin squinted at me. “Miss—”

  “Clark. Louisa Clark.”

  “Miss Clark. Louisa. I haven’t seen Lily Miller since she was five years old. Tanya thought it would be better for all of us when we split up if we broke off all contact.”

  I stared at him. “So you’re saying she hasn’t been here?”

  He thought for a moment. “She came once, a few years ago, but it wasn’t great timing. We’d just had a baby and I was trying to teach and, well, to be honest, I couldn’t work out what she really wanted from me.”

  “So you haven’t seen or spoken to her since then?”

  “Apart from that one very brief occasion, no. Is she okay? Is she in some kind of trouble?”

  I started to back down the steps. Inside the piano kept playing
—Do re mi fa sol la ti do. Do ti la sol fa mi re do. Up and down.

  I waved a hand as I reached the bottom step. “No. It’s fine. My mistake. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  • • •

  I spent another evening driving around London, ignoring my sister’s calls and the e-mail from Richard Percival that was marked URGENT and PERSONAL. I drove until my eyes were reddened from the glare of lights. I realized I was now going to places I had already been, and I ran out of cash for petrol.

  I drove home just after midnight, promising myself I would pick up my bank card, drink a cup of tea, rest my eyes for half an hour, then hit the road again. I took off my shoes and made some toast that I couldn’t eat. Instead I swallowed another two painkillers and lay back on the sofa, my mind racing. What was I missing? There must be some clue. My brain buzzed with exhaustion, my stomach now permanently knotted with anxiety. What streets had I missed? Was there a chance she had gone somewhere other than London?

  There was no choice, I decided. We had to let the police know. It was better to be thought stupid and overly dramatic than to risk something actually happening to her. I lay back and closed my eyes for five minutes.

  • • •

  I was woken three hours later by the phone ringing. I lurched upright, temporarily unsure where I was. Then I stared at the flashing screen beside me, and fumbled it up to my ear. “Hello?”

  “We’ve got her.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Sam. We’ve got Lily. Can you come?”

  • • •

  In the evening crush that followed England losing a football match, the ill temper and associated drink-related injuries, nobody had noticed the slight figure sleeping across two chairs in the corner, her hoodie pulled up high over her face. It was only when the triage nurse had gone from person to person to ensure they were meeting waiting targets that someone shook the girl awake and she confessed reluctantly that she was just there because it was warm and dry and safe.

  The nurse was questioning her when Sam, bringing in an old woman with breathing problems, caught sight of her at the desk. He had quietly instructed the nurses there not to let her leave, and hurried out to call me before she could see him. He told me all this as we rushed in from the entrance to A and E. The waiting area had finally started to thin out, the fever-ridden children safely in cubicles with their parents, the drunks sent home to sleep it off. Only RTAs and stabbing victims, at this time of night.

  “They’ve given her some tea. She looks exhausted. I think she’s happy just to sit tight.”

  I must have looked anxious at this point because he added, “It’s okay. They won’t let her leave.”

  I half walked, half ran along the strip-lit corridor, Sam striding along beside me. And there she was, looking somehow smaller than I’d remembered, her hair pulled into a messy plait, a plastic cup of tea held between her thin hands. A nurse sat beside her, working through a pile of folders, and when she registered Sam, she smiled warmly and stood up to leave. Lily’s nails, I noticed, were black with grime.

  “Lily?” I said. Her dark, shadowed eyes met mine, I heard my voice choke on her name. “What—what happened?”

  Her eyes grew huge and a little fearful.

  “We’ve been searching everywhere. We were . . . My God, Lily. Where were you?”

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  I shook my head, trying to tell her that it didn’t matter. That nothing could possibly matter, that the only important thing was that she was safe and she was here.

  I held out my arms. She looked into my eyes, took a step forward, and gently came to rest against me. And I closed my arms tight around her, feeling her silent, shaking sobs become my own. All I could do was thank some unknown god and offer up these silent words: Will—Will—we found her.

  21

  That first night home I put Lily in my bed and she slept for eighteen hours, waking in the evening for some soup and a bath, then crashing out for a further eight. I slept on the sofa, the front door locked, afraid to go out or even to move in case she vanished again. Sam stopped by twice, before and after his shift, to bring milk and to check on how she’d been, and we talked in whispers in the hall, as if we were discussing an invalid.

  I called Tanya Houghton-Miller to tell her that her daughter had turned up safely. “I told you. You wouldn’t listen to me,” she crowed triumphantly, and I put the phone down before she could say anything else. Or I did. I then called Mrs. Traynor, who let out a long, shaking sigh of relief and didn’t speak for some time. “Thank you,” she said finally, and it sounded like it came from somewhere deep in her gut. “When can I come and see her?”

  I finally opened the e-mail from Richard Percival, which informed me that

  As you have been given the requisite three warnings it is considered that, given your poor attendance record and failure to carry out your contractual requirements, your employment at the Shamrock and Clover (Airport) is terminated with immediate effect.

  He asked that I return the uniform (“including wig”) at my earliest convenience

  or you will be charged its full retail value.

  I opened an e-mail from Nathan asking,

  Where the hell are you? Have you seen my last e-mail?

  I thought about Mr. Gopnik’s offer and, with a sigh, closed my computer.

  • • •

  On the third day I woke on the sofa to find Lily missing. My heart lurched reflexively until I saw the open hallway window. I climbed up the fire escape and found her seated on the roof, looking out across the city. She was wearing her pajama bottoms, which I’d washed, and Will’s oversized sweater.

  “Hey,” I said, walking across the roof toward her.

  “You have food in your fridge,” she observed.

  “Ambulance Sam.”

  “And you watered everything.”

  “That was mostly him too.”

  She nodded, as if that were probably to be expected. I took my place on the bench and we sat in companionable silence for a while, breathing in the scent of the lavender, whose purple heads had burst out of their tight green buds. Everything in the little roof garden had now exploded into gaudy life; the petals and whispering leaves bringing color and movement and fragrance to the gray expanse of asphalt.

  “Sorry for hogging your bed.”

  “Your need was greater.”

  “You hung up all your clothes.” She curled her legs neatly under her, tucking her hair behind her ear. She was still pale. “The nice ones.”

  “Well, I guess you made me think I shouldn’t hide them in boxes anymore.”

  She shot me a sideways look and a small, sad smile that somehow made me feel sadder than if she hadn’t smiled at all. The air held the promise of a scorching day; the street sounds muffled as if by the warmth of the sun. You could feel it already seeping through the windows, bleaching the air. Below us a bin lorry clattered and roared its way slowly along the curb to a tympanic accompaniment of beeps and men’s voices.

  “Lily,” I said quietly, when it had finally receded into the distance, “what’s going on?” I tried not to sound too accusatory. “I know I’m not meant to ask you questions and I’m not your actual family or anything, but all I can see is that something’s gone wrong here and I feel . . . I feel like I . . . well, I feel we’re sort of related and I just want you to trust me. I want you to feel you can talk to me.”

  She kept her gaze fixed on her hands.

  “I’m not going to judge you. I’m not going to report anything you say to anyone. I just . . . Well, you have to know that if you tell someone the truth, it will help. I promise. It will make things better.”

  “Says who?”

  “Me. There’s nothing you can’t tell me, Lily. Really.”

  She glanced at me, then looked away. “You won’t understand,” she said softly.

  And then I knew. I knew.

  Below us it had become oddly quiet, or perhaps I could no longer hea
r anything beyond the few inches that separated us. “I’m going to tell you a story,” I said. “Only one person in the whole world knows this story because it was something I didn’t feel I could share for years and years. And telling him changed the whole way I felt about it, and how I felt about myself. So here’s the thing—you don’t have to tell me anything at all, but I’m going to trust you enough to tell you my story anyway, just in case it will help.”

  I waited a moment but Lily didn’t protest, or roll her eyes, or say it was going to be boring. She wrapped her arms around her knees, and she listened. She listened as I told her about the teenage girl who, on a glorious summer evening, had celebrated a little too hard in a place she considered safe, how she had been surrounded by her girlfriends and some nice boys who seemed as if they came from good families and knew the rules, and how much fun it had been, how funny and crazy and wild, until some drinks later she realized nearly all the other girls had drifted away and the laughter had grown hard and the joke, it turned out, had been on her. And I told her, without going into too much detail, how that evening had ended: with a sister silently helping her home, her shoes lost, bruising in secret places, and a big black hole where her recall of those hours should have been, and the memories, fleeting and dark, now hanging over her head to remind her every day that she had been stupid, irresponsible, and had brought it all upon herself. And how, for years, she had let that thought color what she did, where she went, and what she thought she was capable of. And how sometimes you just needed someone to say something as simple as No. It wasn’t your fault. It really wasn’t your fault.

  I finished and Lily was still watching me. Her expression gave no clue to her reaction.

  “I don’t know what was—or is—going on with you, Lily,” I said carefully. “It might be totally unrelated to what I’ve just told you. I just want you to know that there is nothing so bad that you can’t tell me. And there is nothing you could do that would make me close a door on you again.”

  Still she didn’t speak. I gazed out over the roof terrace, deliberately not looking at her.

  “You know, your dad said something to me that I’ve never forgotten: ‘You don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.’”

  “My dad.” She lifted her chin.

  I nodded. “Whatever it is that’s happened, even if you don’t want to tell me, you need to understand that he was right. These last weeks, months, don’t have to be the thing that defines you. Even from the little I know of you, I know absolutely that you are bright and funny and kind and smart, and that if you can get yourself past whatever this is, you have an amazing future ahead.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Because you’re like him.” I added, softly, “You’re even wearing his jumper.”

  She brought her arm slowly to her face, placing the soft wool against her cheek, thinking.

  I sat back on the bench. I wondered if I had pushed it too far, talking about Will.

  But then Lily took a breath and, in a quiet, uncharacteristically flat voice, she told me the truth about where she’d been. She told me about the boy, and about the man, and an image on a mobile phone that haunted her, and the days she had spent as a shadow on the city’s neon-lit streets. As she spoke she started to cry, shrinking into herself, her face crumpling like that of a five-year-old so that I moved across the seat and brought her in close to me, stroking her hair while she kept talking, her words now jumbled, too fast, too full, broken with sobs and hiccups. By the time she got to the last day, she was huddled into me, swallowed by the jumper, swallowed by her own fear and guilt and sadness.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You have nothing,” I said fiercely, as I held her, “nothing to be sorry for.”

  • • •

  Sam came that evening. He was cheerful, sweet, and casual in his dealings with Lily, cooked us pasta with cream, bacon, and mushrooms when she said she didn’t want to go out, and we watched a comedy film about a family who got lost in a jungle, a strange facsimile of a family ourselves. I smiled and laughed and