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 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 at the desk not to let her leave, and hurried out to call me before she could see him. He told me all this as we rushed into 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 beside me. And there she was, looking somehow smaller than she had done, her hair pulled into a messy plait, a plastic cup held between her thin hands. A nurse sat beside her, working through a pile of folders, and when she saw me and 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. ‘What – what happened?’
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.