She looked at me, and then at Sam, her eyes huge and a little fearful.
‘We’ve been looking 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.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
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 dropped in 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 rang 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 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 email 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 email from Nathan asking, Where the hell are you? Have you seen my last email?
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 pyjama bottoms, which I’d washed, and Will’s oversized sweater.
‘Hey,’ I said, walking across the roof towards 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 colour and movement and fragrance to the grey 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 an ear. She was still pale. ‘The nice ones.’
‘Well, I guess you made me think I shouldn’t hide them in boxes any more.’
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 kerbside to a timpanic 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 interrogative. ‘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 hear 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 on herself. And how, for years, she had let that thought colour what she did, where she went and what she thought she was capable of. And how sometimes it 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 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 recognise 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.’
‘We’ve been looking 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.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
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 dropped in 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 rang 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 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 email 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 email from Nathan asking, Where the hell are you? Have you seen my last email?
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 pyjama bottoms, which I’d washed, and Will’s oversized sweater.
‘Hey,’ I said, walking across the roof towards 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 colour and movement and fragrance to the grey 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 an ear. She was still pale. ‘The nice ones.’
‘Well, I guess you made me think I shouldn’t hide them in boxes any more.’
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 kerbside to a timpanic 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 interrogative. ‘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 hear 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 on herself. And how, for years, she had let that thought colour what she did, where she went and what she thought she was capable of. And how sometimes it 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 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 recognise 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.’
