A house like number twenty-three doesn’t militate a high web presence. As far as he knows, he’s the only person who’s ever lived here who owned a computer, though the fact that Hossein seems to write quite regularly for a number of political websites suggests that he must, at the very least, have access to one. Gerard Bright turns up briefly as the star of a few slow-season comic newspaper stories – nothing like a private school music teacher cocking up to make a few gloating headlines in the quality press – but otherwise his viola and he just feature in a few concert programmes so amateur that the organisers never got round to taking them off the web afterwards. In fact, it seems as though he’s playing in a series of low-rent chamber concerts in local venues across the south-east this week, as luck would have it, the last one tonight. God knows what would have happened if he’d been here last night, or if he were here tonight. A whole new outcome flashes briefly across Thomas’s imagination. He dismisses them, hastily. Can’t think about that, he thinks. I have too much to do, too much to organise.
There are few mentions of Vesta Collins, but she pops up in the Northbourne Advertiser at every jubilee, smiling gamely in a party hat. He was surprised to find no signs at all of Cher or Collette, but he’s tracked down Cher, now, or at least the tragic little FIND CHERYL FARRELL Facebook page, set up by social services, that seems to have been the only effort anyone’s made to find her. The page is almost eighteen months old and the sulky twelve-year-old (clearly the most recent photo anybody’s bothered to take) face that stares out from it in school uniform is barely recognisable. Cheryl Farrell was a thickset black kid with frizzy black hair rubber-banded into two bunches like horns on the top of her head. She looks nothing like the leggy, brown-skinned girl with the corkscrew curls who’s slumped on a deckchair in the garden.
He feels that he knows them all better after their shared experiences. He’s certain, now, rather than suspecting, that Collette is on the run from someone, and that all of them are ready to be told what to do, as long as it keeps them off the radar. He watched their faces as he spoke last night, saw the ill-masked gratitude on each of them as he took control, and he knows that they will do anything he wants. I’m their friend now, he thinks. They used to avoid me when they saw me, find reasons why they had to be elsewhere. But now I’m their saviour. After tonight, when it’s all over and everybody’s home and safe and they’re counting their blessings, I’ll be one of them. I’ll be included. The dad of the house, where Vesta is the gran.
I’ve had a lucky escape, really. They’re never going to speak, never going to tell. They’ll clear it all away, and I’ll be more careful, safe again to be with my girls.
He turns back into the room, feeling light-hearted for the first time in what feels like years. He has things to sort out – not least how to dispose of the contents of the freezer, now the blender’s out of the question – but he feels he’s been given his life back once more.
The girls sit side by side on his little sofa, a man-sized gap between them. Nikki’s come out beautifully from her forty days of sleep. A little wrinkled, and her mouth slightly further open than we would ideally like, but otherwise she’s perfect. They sit together peacefully, wide eyes and curled hair and shiny painted nails, and wait for him. He checks his watch: it’s four o’clock, the party’s in full swing and everything downstairs is under control. Tonight, once it’s dark and the guests have gone and the lights are out and the trains are no longer running, there will be work to do, but for now a lazy afternoon rolls itself out before him.
He lowers himself gently on to the sofa between his lovelies, and slips a hand into one of each of theirs. Rests his head against the cushions and looks from one to the other, captivated by their quiet beauty. It’s shaping up to be a wonderful summer.
Chapter Thirty-Three
When they open the boot, the smell – shit and Camembert and nail-varnish remover and toasted durian – explodes from the confined space as though it’s alive. It wraps itself round them like a fog, makes them gasp and choke, hands over their mouths to force the sounds back in. Collette’s eyes blur with tears. She looks wildly round, sees that they are pouring down Hossein’s face, too. Thomas has taken his glasses off, is polishing them, ferociously, on the hem of his shirt. Only Cher remains impassive. Just stands there with something akin to a sneer on her face. She jerks her head impatiently, steps forward and takes hold of the plastic sheet.