Finding Grace(57)

When they load, the screen displays the most recent texts. I fume as I scan the last few, a conversation between Blake and his mother.

Lucie seems so stressed. Is she still leaving the baby with her father all the time?

She’s fine, Mum. The FLO is here to help, she knows Luce is struggling.

I can come over. Somebody needs to clean that house up and I’m concerned about Oscar’s wellbeing.

Thanks, Mum, but it keeps her busy. And stop fretting, Oscar’s fine.

How bloody dare she? What does she expect? Of course I’m worried about Oscar. He might be tiny, but he can sense when things aren’t right. Nadine should also be totally stressed that her granddaughter is missing.

She seems to forget that Dad is Oscar’s grandparent, just the same as she is. She’s so bloody hierarchical, can’t bear to think Dad gets to see him more than she does.

I hear the back door open and slam shut. That’ll be Dad and Oscar back from the garden, so I need to get on with the task in hand.

Focus, Lucie, I tell myself, clicking out of Nadine’s pathetic messages and into the main listing of texts.

There are so many names of people I’ve never heard of here, but then for a councillor, I suppose that’s entirely normal. I click into a couple and predictably they contain meeting details, links to articles online and appointments for Blake’s regular surgery.

I’m trying to work out how to find the text he received yesterday at around 4.30, when he went out to meet Grace. Then I spot that the time and date of the last text received by each person is displayed on the list of names.

I scroll down, past the texts he’s received today, most still unread, to the messages logged as being received yesterday.

There are ten people Blake texted or received texts from yesterday. Straight away, my eyes gravitate to one particular name and I feel my scalp tighten.

I click on it and open the text message that my husband received from Bev at 4.32 p.m. yesterday, the exact time he was distracted by his phone and slipped on the mossy path.

Mike knows. It’s time for us to come clean.

My tongue feels like a dry piece of leather in my mouth as I scroll down with trembling fingers but there is no reply sent from Blake. Probably because he slipped and fell as he read it. Now I can see why he was so distracted when he was supposed to be watching out for our daughter. The utter bastard.

And her, too! Having the bare-faced cheek to come over here, to embrace me this morning, to cry in pretence of feeling my pain.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I knew it. I knew it!

It’s all fitting together. Blake and Bev are obviously having an affair and somehow Mike has found out. No wonder he felt so uncomfortable around me.

I feel sick to my stomach. My friend… our friends. And Bev had the audacity to slap Mike’s face when it’s obviously her who’s playing away.

I start as I hear Dad calling upstairs. ‘Got a little man here who’s filled his nappy!’

‘I’ll be down in two minutes, Dad,’ I call back.

I stare again at the text message that distracted my husband from his parental duty.

The police must already be aware that something is going on between the three of them, hence Fiona drawing a circle around their names with a question mark in her notes.

I think about the note and the photograph Bev showed me. What if she’s trying to push me over the edge? She could’ve faked the note, and she comes around here regularly. What’s to stop her popping upstairs to our bedroom and rifling through my things? That photo could have been one of many I’ve bundled away in my wardrobe. I haven’t looked at them for years.

I’m devastated. Not because they’ve been having an affair, although that’s bad enough, but because of what the consequences were. My daughter, missing because of those two sly, underhand…

‘Luce?’ I jump at Blake’s voice calling up to me as he climbs the stairs. ‘I’ve come back for my phone.’

I stand up and tuck the phone back into my jeans pocket.

Blake pushes the bedroom door open wider.

‘Fiona said she gave it to you.’ He doesn’t sound nervous, but he probably is.

I turn around and take the phone out of my pocket.

‘I just want you to listen without saying anything,’ I say, watching his face. It doesn’t change.

I feel surprisingly calm. It’s surreal. My daughter is missing and my husband is having an affair, and this is what it feels like. A nothingness inside. I’m numb, everywhere.

‘I’ve seen Bev’s text. I know you two are having an affair.’

‘What? No! Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I said listen!’ I raise my voice and he closes his mouth. ‘I’ve sensed the tension between you all, between you and Mike and between Bev and Mike. How long has it been going on?’

He reaches for his phone and I snatch it behind my back.

‘Lucie, you’ve got this all wrong. I swear to God, there’s nothing happening.’ He’s putting on a good act, I’ll give him that.

‘She sent you a fucking text yesterday saying that Mike knows, that it’s time to come clean! I saw it with my own eyes. It’s crystal clear what’s happening, so don’t even try and deny it.’ I swallow back a sob. ‘I don’t care. Do you understand? I don’t care about anything but getting Grace home again, but this text’ – I jab the phone at him – ‘is what distracted you from watching for my daughter. It stopped you keeping her safe. You prioritised your mistress over our beautiful Grace.’ I spit the word ‘mistress’ out like a rancid scrap of food.