Just My Luck(92)

Neither Jake nor I get a wink. I can’t stand the idea of sleep, the passing of the night and a fresh day because I want to halt time. Turn it back, ideally. I want her home now. But it doesn’t matter what I want. Some things can’t be changed. Time trundles on, insisting that now is later and later, further and further away from when I last saw her.

Then and now. An unbridgeable chasm. Then, when she was in my care, when I had choices and chances. Now, this fresh hell.

Jake and I stay upright on the kitchen chairs. A personal penance for being the sort of parents who lose their child at a party. We stare at the ceiling, the table, the walls, we can’t look at each other. If I did look at him what would I see? I wonder. Fear, undoubtedly, but what else? Regret? Accusation? Jake aggressively rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm, as though he wants to scrape them out. The silence sits about us like a storm cloud, dense and heavy. Menacing. Foreboding.

Eventually I force myself to break the impasse. Maybe I want to hear the thunder. ‘I wish I’d never won the lottery.’

‘Well, we did.’

‘But look where it’s brought us.’

‘It will be OK.’

‘You don’t know that.’

Jake stands up and walks towards me with real purpose. For a crazy moment I think he’s going to hit me. This makes no sense as he’s never hurt me physically. It makes much more sense that he puts his arm around me and pulls me close to him. Him doing so doesn’t offer the comfort I imagine he hopes it would. It just underlines the fact he hasn’t touched me since we discovered she’d been kidnapped. I breathe in the smell of his sweat and fear. The smell of human frailty. I could nuzzle into his neck, feel the warmth of him, be eased, but I think of Emily. Wherever she is, she has no one to console or support her. Allowing myself the luxury of being soothed by Jake is a betrayal. I break away.

We sit in silence. Unable to think of a single thing to say to one another. Eventually I say, ‘I’m going to check on Logan.’

I nip upstairs and pop my head around Logan’s bedroom door to reassure myself that he at least is in his bed, sleeping like the proverbial baby. He is. Then I look into her bedroom. It’s crazy but as I edge into the room, a tiny part of me imagines she’s going to be there, curled up, under her brand-new White Company duvet, waiting for me to talk about the party, to discuss costumes (whose was the best, whose was the worst?), to gossip (who had too much to drink, who danced with whom?). Although of course I don’t know the answers to most of these questions because I was at Toma’s party. I was not where I was supposed to be. I was not looking after my family. A wave of shame threatens to knock me over as my eyes scan the teenage girl debris that litters her room: abandoned clothes, glossy magazines, make-up, the cables of her hairdryer and curlers are tangled. The room is chaos even though she’s only lived in it a few days. I nagged her about it this morning. That thought nearly kills me. I can smell her hairspray, body spray and perfumes dawdling in the air. Ghostly.

‘I need to tell you something, Lexi.’

‘Jesus, Ridley, you scared me half to death.’ I jump and turn to him. Actually, he looks scared half to death himself. His face is so pale it is translucent; I can almost see the wall behind him. Normally he’s one of those teens who is forever flush with a dewy tan that shouts hale health and happiness. There are dark clouds under his eyes, which are bloodshot with lack of sleep and crying.

‘Do you think Emily is OK?’ he mumbles.

‘Well, she’s been kidnapped, Ridley,’ I snap. ‘So not exactly, no.’

He looks stricken. ‘I know. I just meant—’

I soften. ‘I know what you meant. Do I think she’s OK under the circumstances?’

‘That’s it. That’s what I meant. Well, do you?’ He stares at me hopefully. He wants me to reassure him, fix things. Take away some of his guilt and torment. I wish I could. I remember when he was a small boy, he was the last of the trio to give up his belief in Father Christmas. How they teased him. He asked me if Santa did indeed exist, or if the others were right. I remember his wide, bright eyes shining up at me and I told him he was right, the others were mistaken, they’d get coal for Christmas. I couldn’t resist his innocence, his need to believe. Now I find I can.

‘No, Emily is not OK. You saw the photo, Ridley. She’s terrified and in danger.’ I know I’m punishing him for standing by when Megan beat her. For abandoning her. ‘We just have to hope we can get her home soon.’

Ridley nods. Looks at the floor. ‘We did talk tonight. I wasn’t, I wasn’t—’ He breaks off.

‘What weren’t you?’ I ask, although I think I know the answer. He wasn’t very nice to her. He didn’t want her.

‘I wasn’t very supportive. Or brave.’

‘Brave?’

He has colour in his cheeks now; he’s flushing, embarrassed, stammering, nervous. ‘She told me something. She wanted my help but I didn’t help her.’

‘What did she tell you? Had she been threatened? Did she tell you something that might be to do with this kidnap, Ridley?’ I’ve grabbed hold of his elbows and I don’t mean to but I’m shaking him as though I’m trying to spill information out of him, like seasoning from a pepper pot.

‘No, nothing to do with that. She told me she’s pregnant.’