Matthew had made the call up. He had found out the information on Sam and he had used it to get Robin to help. Why him? Maybe because it was easy. Maybe because he had the opportunity, so he took it. But after all the anger—and there was plenty—Robin came back to a couple of questions: How did Matthew know that Robin would be able to get him out of prison? And how did he know that he would be able to escape?

And that only added to even more questions: Why were the Standedge Five attending the Ascend group at the church? What were they hiding from Matthew, forcing him to feel dangerously exiled? And the big one, the glorious one-million-pound question—how did he do it?

Robin closed Sam’s folder and settled into the chair. He opened his web browser and made the scan of all the usual news outlets, conspiracy sites and forums. Nothing new of note, just another ridiculous theory about mirrors and refracting light. A load of rubbish.

He rubbed his eyes and made the rounds again, looking at all the sites that even slightly referenced the Standedge Five and then looking at all the records of the sightings of Matthew McConnell, scanning all the comments sections to see if anyone had any new information. This process was absolutely exhausting and he wasn’t surprised when he looked at the clock and saw that three hours had gone by.

Three hours and nothing.

Zero.

Zilch.

Just the same old shit. Over and over again. Robin ate his long-cold Pot Noodle and looked around the room. This was insanity—he had found absolutely nothing. Maybe it was time to give up. Maybe it was time to lock the door on this room for good.

Maybe Emma was right. He had to start to move on.

Let them go.

Let her go.

Robin found himself going to the Five’s Facebook pages. They were still up and running, basically a digital memorial at this point. He went to their About pages and went down to quotes. Maybe one of the Five had something inspirational to say to send him on his way.

All Robin found were cheesy one-liners, in the vein of “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Quotes that a teenager—someone who saw the world and thought they understood it perfectly—would find deep and poetic. But really they were just awful.

Robin stopped at Tim Claypath’s page last, and his eyes wandered to the box that showed his friends. He had comparatively fewer friends than the other members of the Five. Robin had just chalked that up to Tim liking to pick and choose, but it could have been what Benny had said—he was weird. Whatever it was, it didn’t really matter anymore.