The Family Remains(13)

‘Yes,’ says Lucy. ‘These ones.’

Stella gasps slightly at the sight of the pinks and the blues. ‘Can I have one?’

‘Yes, but we have to pay for it.’

‘How much?’

Lucy turns to the woman in the headscarf. ‘How much do we charge?’ she asks.

‘For those?’ She gestures at Lucy’s cakes. ‘Fifty p?’

There are twelve cakes. That’s six pounds. She thinks about how far six pounds would go in a school like this where 90 per cent of the children are on a pupil premium and she unzips her wallet, pulls out a twenty-pound note and surreptitiously slides it into the money box before handing Stella a fairy cake.

The cake sale passes in a blur of outstretched fingers and sticky coins and suddenly there are no cakes left and it’s nearly 4 p.m. and the caretaker is helping to put away the trestle tables. Lucy holds open a black bin bag and Stella fills it with litter and used paper napkins. There is a sense of camaraderie as the mothers file from the playground and on to the pavement. Lucy finds herself chatting in French to a woman from the Ivory Coast about the maths homework that had been set the week before which appeared to have a number missing. She manages to sound as though she cares, but she really doesn’t.

The mothers disperse in four directions and Lucy takes Stella’s hand and they are about to turn to head home when she feels her phone buzz in her handbag and a sixth sense makes her stop and pull it out.

And there it is, as she’d expected.

A message from Henry.

It’s a photo of him on an aeroplane clutching a small glass of champagne and the words:

Sayonara, little sister. I’m off to Phinland!!

Lucy feels a cold slick of dread pass through her. Henry’s tone is light-hearted, but his intent, she knows with a terrible certainty, may be anything but.





12





I have booked myself a double room in the best hotel in the Northalsted district of Chicago. I chose it mainly at random but also with a sprinkling of logic. Northalsted used to be known as Boystown and is the most inclusive LGBT district in the whole of the USA. I have no idea if Phin is actually gay; he never said that he was. But I have always assumed that he was and although he may not live in this specific area, he or people who know him may frequent it.

I lie down on my lovely hotel bed and look at my phone. There’s a message from Lucy. In fact, there are multiple messages from Lucy and I realise with a kick of anxiety that at some point during the nine-hour flight, I had drunkenly sent her a text telling her what I was doing and it must have sent automatically when I switched on my phone at O’Hare.

Where are you going?

Do you know where he is??

Henry? Where are you? Please talk to me before you talk to Phin.

Henry. WTF are you up to????

I sigh. Sober Henry would not have let Drunk Henry send that message for precisely this reason. This mild hysteria. This idea that I am up to no good. I can’t possibly deal with Lucy now. This has nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. I block her number with a flourishing hand gesture and go instead to my camera roll, where I click on the only photo I have of Phin, the one I downloaded from the safari website.

I had been quite taken aback when I saw this photo for the first time last week. Phin had been so immaculate when we lived together. The slick of blond hair that always hung just so, slightly over one eye. The clear, poreless skin. The tightly defined cheekbones, smooth jawline, softly sculpted lips. That was the face I had been chasing my whole life; with every visit to every cosmetic surgeon, with every beauty treatment, that was what I’d been hoping to recreate. But Phin was not that person any more. Phin has not remained, like me, a creepy boy-child, just on the cusp of curdling, he has embraced his adulthood, his manhood, allowed his soft skin to crisp in the African sun, allowed lines to etch themselves into his features, and hidden over half of his beauty with a large sandy beard.

I shower and re-dress and make myself smell good and look approachable. I exit the foyer of the hotel and wander towards a strip of trendy bare-brick bars and teal-velvet brasseries and chichi restaurants with one syllable names. It’s 6 p.m. and the warm night air is full of anticipation, possibility, sex.

I’m following my instincts here, entirely. I don’t have a game plan. I don’t have any kind of plan really. I push open the door of a bar called The Gray Area and I go to the bar and order a shot of Mezcal, for my nerves, and a glass of Pinot Gris, for something to hold on to. And then I approach a group of men, who look to be in their late thirties to early forties, and I ramp up the English accent to the max and I say, ‘Sorry to be so rude. My name is Joshua Harris and I’m looking for an old friend who might have gone missing. His name is Phin. Phin Thomsen.’

Their heads dip together towards the image on my phone. One of them uses his fingers to draw the image closer. They shake their heads and apologise.

I repeat this a dozen times, and a dozen times I get shaken heads and apologies. I move to the bar next door; this one is a little rougher and has a bearded DJ on a graffitied platform playing the sort of music that I cannot bear. I order myself a second glass of Pinot Gris and ask the girl behind the bar if she has ever seen Phin Thomsen, the man in the photo on my phone. She says no. I take my wine glass and I tour the bar, interrupting conversations here and there, having to shout somewhat now to be heard over the music. I see another bartender appear and head back to the bar to show him the photo. I show the DJ the photo. I leave this bar and head to another bar. I stay out until 3 a.m., I show Phin’s photo to a hundred, maybe two hundred people. Nobody knows him. Nobody has ever seen him before. It’s fine. I don’t know what else I could have expected, really. And tomorrow is another day.