‘Yes,’ Lily whispered, ‘I am.’ She tipped her head back against the wall, squeezing her eyes shut as tears streamed out of them. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I know where he is. I’ve always known.’

CHRISTMAS

42

Lucas stared through the windscreen wipers clearing and re-clearing the sleet that had been driving horizontally at the car since they’d traded the M40 for the M42 an hour before. The glimpse of the way ahead that kept being snatched away. It felt apt. As if he were lost in some hideous blizzard that had been secretly closing in for years, bringing him to this drawn-out and grisly reckoning. Beside him, Esther, at the wheel, was rigid with concentration. Lily lay in the foetal position on the back seat, supposedly asleep amid the folds of a duvet borrowed from Astrid’s vast walk-in linen cupboard. Her exhaustion was understandable, not just from the food poisoning, but also because of the release of the burden she had been carrying since August. Four months. Honouring a misguided promise. But the foetal position was also about staying under the radar of the rear-view mirror, Lucas guessed, his daughter wary of catching his eye and triggering any more of the follow-up questions and imprecations that had been bursting out of him since he’d stumbled through the ticket barrier at High Wycombe station and into Esther’s car that morning. Esther had had her turn, but he was still several paces behind.

Kidnapped was the word that kept flashing like a siren across his brain. Though it was not a term Esther had used in her frantic message about Lily’s revelation the night before, it was perfectly clear to Lucas that it contained all the truth and terror of what had taken place. Two years of contact, Lily had confessed wretchedly, starting after his and Esther’s split. Two years, then, of wooing, of grooming. Emails. Cheques, that were plain bribes for silence. Biding his time. Targeting Dylan. Naïve, impressionable, lovelorn Dylan. Easy prey. A son for a son.

‘We should stop at these services.’

‘The next.’

‘What, the M5?’

‘Or Droitwich.’

‘That’s too far, surely… Lily…’ Lucas spun round to confront the back seat as a terrible new thought occurred to him. ‘If you have seen fit to tell either of them that we’re coming then my wrath will know no bounds.’

‘I haven’t, Dad, and I wouldn’t,’ she croaked. Anyway, the signal is crap,’ she muttered, her voice half muffled by the bedding.

‘Despite which, the pair of you have been managing to chatter away all these weeks, have you?’

‘No. Just a few messages. I told you, I tried to get him to leave, but he wouldn’t.’ Only Lily’s nose upwards was visible over the bedding now, sharpening Lucas’s determination to prise her out.

‘And claiming not to know about Mei Lin – was that all fabricated too?’