Just My Luck(104)

I can’t stand the silence, so I ask Dad, ‘Do you think he did it?’

‘The police obviously do.’

‘Why would he though? Why would he do that to me?’ Patrick isn’t like a great dad to Megan and her brothers, the way my dad is a great dad to me and Logan. He doesn’t make jokes or hot chocolates when she has friends for a sleepover. He doesn’t get up on a Saturday morning and suggest something fun like Go Ape or a trip to London to do some shopping, he doesn’t really sit and talk to her much. My dad does all of this stuff (well, the talking bit is on a temporary pause, but usually!). Patrick was often absent; he left for work before Megan got up, he arrived home late, loosened his tie and asked Carla for a drink in a way that always made any kids that happened to be about – his own or guests – feel we should go into another room, that we were in the way. It seemed he put his work ahead of his family. I know Megan has always thought my dad is better than hers, but Patrick wasn’t like the worst either. He bought her cool stuff, he helped her with her maths homework. He wasn’t like a totally crap dad. Or at least not until now. Kidnapping, false imprisonment, extortion is totally crap. New level crap.

I think Dad has hay fever because his eyes are red and watery. He can’t be actually crying, can he? Why now? I get crying in the hospital, when I was all battered and stuff, but why now when the police have basically solved it, caught the bad guy? He still doesn’t look at me, but he does answer my question. ‘Well, he missed out on a lot of money, a lot, and I think that might have sent him a bit nuts. People do a lot of really bad stuff for the sort of money we won. Really bad stuff.’

I suddenly get nervous when we pull up at Megan’s. I could be mistaken. What if my hunch is wrong and she thinks I’m mental, or what if I’m right and she just doesn’t want to talk about it?

And if I’m right? What if Megan was there with her dad and she was the one who gave me that water, who helped me. Because honestly, at that moment it was so dark that I think her kindness saved me. And I don’t mean dark so I couldn’t see. I mean it was dark in my head and heart. I thought I was going to die. I thought they were going to kill me. I was lying in my own piss and blood. Never more alone or scared in my life.

I remember hearing a car pull up. Voices. Probably she was told to stay in the car. Probably she didn’t know what was going on, but Megan rarely does as she’s told. She’s too nosy to stay in a car when clearly something big was happening. I can just imagine her sneaking out of the car and into the barn wondering who her dad was meeting. She must have been shit scared when she found me. Was she the person who contacted my dad? They haven’t told me all the details about how Dad found me. They said they will but only when I’m ready. I do know that he got a tip-off and acted on it. Didn’t even call the police, just charged in, unconcerned for his own safety, just desperate to get me home. Sadly, the intel on where I was being kept came after he’d paid the cash, but someone sent him a pin drop of where to find me. Someone was trying to help. To save me. Megan loves pin drops. She used to always send me them if we were going somewhere new. I’ve never known anyone who loves a pin drop as much as she does. Who knows what might have happened if she hadn’t done that? Once Patrick had the money secured in his offshore account, might he have instructed those men to kill me? I don’t know, it’s possible. But as Dad arrived, he scared them off. Megan saved my life.

Carla answers the door. She doesn’t seem surprised to see us. She pulls my dad into this big over-the-top hug, like hangs on his neck and then she starts to cry. I am getting a bit bored of everyone crying all the time. I just stand there. After about a year she seems to remember I’m there and says, ‘Megan is in her room.’ Pretty rude, not even a polite enquiry into my health. On the other hand, everyone is treating me so carefully, it’s almost a relief to be treated normally. I don’t wait to be asked twice. I bound up the stairs.

On Megan’s bedroom door there is a tin sign, it says: ‘Megan’s messy room. Enter at your own risk.’ I have one that says the same, but ‘Emily’s messy room’ obviously. We bought them at Camden Market when we were about ten. We’d come to London because the three mums wanted to take all of us to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels. The crowns were flashy, but the best bit of the trip was the market. Ridley sulked that you couldn’t buy the room sign with his name on it. We teased him and said he wasn’t in our club. I don’t know where my sign is anymore; at the back of some wardrobe until we moved, I’d guess, maybe in the loft now, or a bag that ended up at a charity shop. I’ve always thought it was funny that Megan kept her sign up. In so many ways she’s so cool and conscious of being seen as adult but then she’ll just do something funny like keep up a sign that basically advertises her kid status. Megan can do that. She can make something uncool, cool, just by her disregard for caring whether it’s cool or not.

I’ve missed her.

The last time we saw each other she was punching me in a loo.

Or was she feeding me water and chocolate?

I’m still gathering my nerve to knock on the door, or maybe just open it and go in without announcing myself, when Carla shouts up the stairs. ‘Your dad is just going to run me to the shops. With everything that’s been going on, we have nothing in for supper. He says you are staying.’