“No. The cops asked Chad at the time. She left it on her bedside table, but that was normal. She always left it there when she went to work, in case it got lost or fell in the hash browns or whatever. It wasn’t a big fancy rock or anything. Chad’s the bassist in a grunge band called Man From Nantucket, and they have yet to get their big break, so he makes a living as a carpenter. He’s skint.”
My notes were scrawly and went at a funny angle, on account of the light and the tree, but I could just about read them. “Then what?”
"On the twelfth of September she and Chad bought a PlayStation on their joint credit, which I suppose is as good a statement of commitment as any, these days. On the eighteenth, she sold her car, an ’86 Ford, for six hundred bucks-she told Chad she wanted to get something a little less beat-up, now that she had the extra money from the raise. On the twenty-seventh, she went to her doctor with an ear infection, probably contracted from swimming; he gave her antibiotics and it cleared up. And on the tenth of October, she’s gone. Is that what you were looking for?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly the kind of stuff I had in mind. Thanks, Frank. You’re a gem.”
“I’m thinking,” he said, “something happened between the twelfth and the eighteenth of September. Up through the twelfth, everything says she’s planning on staying put: she’s getting engaged, she’s meeting the parents, she and Chad are buying stuff as a couple. But on the eighteenth she sells her car, which tells me she’s getting together the money to split. That the way you’re thinking?”
“Makes sense,” I said, but I knew Frank was wrong. That shifting pattern had slid into focus with a soft, final click, and I knew why Lexie had taken off running from North Carolina; knew it as clear as if she were sitting weightless on a branch beside me, swinging her legs in the moonlight and whispering in my ear. And I knew why she had been about to take off running from Whitethorn House. Someone had tried to hold her.
“I’ll try and find out more about that week, maybe get someone to re-interview poor old Chad. If we can figure out what changed her plans, we should be able to put our finger on the mystery man.”
“Sounds good. Thanks, Frank. Let me know how you get on.”
“Don’t do anyone I wouldn’t do,” he said, and hung up.
I angled the screen of my mobile towards the page, so I could read over my notes. The PlayStation meant nothing; it’s easy to buy on credit with no plans to pay it off, no plans to be anywhere within reach. The last solid thing that said she intended to stay put was the phone-provider switch, back in August. You don’t care about cheaper minutes unless you’re going to be around to use them. On August 16, she had been tucked snugly into her May-Ruth life and going nowhere.
And then, less than two weeks later, poor grunge Chad had proposed. After that, not one thing said Lexie was staying. She had said yes, smiled and bided her time till she got the money together, and then run as far and as fast as she could and never once looked behind. It hadn’t been Frank’s mystery stalker after all, it hadn’t been some masked menace slinking out of the shadows with a glinting blade. It had been as simple as a cheap ring.
And this time, there had been the baby: a lifelong tie to some man, somewhere. She could have got rid of it, just like she could have turned Chad down, but that had been beside the point. Just the thought of that tie had sent her slamming off the walls, frantic as a trapped bird.
The missed period and the flight prices; and, somewhere in there, N. N was either the trap trying to hold her here or, in some way I needed to find, her way out.
The others were sprawled on the sitting-room floor in front of the fire, like kids, rummaging through a wrecked traveling case that Justin had found somewhere. Rafe had his legs flung companionably across Abby’s-they had apparently made up their fight from that morning. The rug was strewn with mugs and a plate of ginger biscuits and a medley of small battered things: pockmarked marbles, tin soldiers, half of a clay pipe. “Cool,” I said, dropping my jacket on the sofa and flopping down between Daniel and Justin. “What’ve we got?”
“Odd oddments,” Rafe said. “Here. For you.” He wound up a moth-eaten clockwork mouse and sent it ticking along the floor towards me. It ground to a halt halfway, with a depressed scraping sound.
“Have one of these instead,” Justin said, stretching to pull the biscuits across to us. “Tastier.”
I got a biscuit in one hand, dipped the other into the traveling case and found something hard and heavy. I came up holding what looked like a beaten-up wooden box; the lid had said “EM” once upon a time, in mother-of-pearl inlay, but there were only a few bits left. “Ah, excellent,” I said, opening the lid. “This is like the world’s best lucky dip.”
