When she got too tired she begged favours. She spent one night at her friend Nina’s, but Nina asked too many questions and the sound of her chatting downstairs to her parents while Lily lay, soaking the grime out of her hair in the bath, made her feel like the loneliest person on earth. She left after breakfast, even though Nina’s mum said she was welcome to stay another night, gazing at her with concerned maternal eyes. She spent two nights on the sofa of a girl she had met while clubbing, but there were three men sharing the flat, and she didn’t feel relaxed enough to sleep and sat fully clothed, hugging her knees, watching television with the sound turned off until dawn. She spent one night at a Salvation Army hostel, listening to two girls argue in the next-door cubicle, her bag clutched to her chest under the blanket. They said she could have a shower, but she didn’t like to leave her bag in the lockers while she got wet. She drank the free soup and left. But mostly she walked, spending the last of her cash on cheap coffee and Egg McMuffins and growing more and more tired and hungry until it was hard to think straight, hard to react quickly when the men in doorways said disgusting things or the staff in the café told her she’d made that one cup of tea last long enough, young lady, and it was time to move on.

And all the while she wondered what her parents were saying at that moment, and what Mr Garside would say about her when he showed them the pictures. She could see her mother’s shocked face, Francis’s slow shake of the head, as if this new Lily was of no surprise to him whatsoever.

She had been so stupid.

She should have stolen the phone.

She should have stamped on it.

She should have stamped on him.

She shouldn’t have gone to that boy’s stupid flat and behaved like a stupid idiot and broken her own stupid life, and that was usually the point at which she would start crying again and pull her hood further up around her face and –

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘She’s what?’

In Mrs Traynor’s silence I heard disbelief, and perhaps (maybe I was being oversensitive) a faint echo of the last thing of hers I had failed to keep safe.

‘And you’ve tried to call?’

‘She’s not picking up.’

‘And she hasn’t been in touch with her parents?’

I closed my eyes. I had been dreading this conversation. ‘She’s done this before, apparently. Mrs Houghton-Miller is convinced Lily will turn up any minute.’

Mrs Traynor digested this. ‘But you aren’t.’

‘Something’s not right, Mrs Traynor. I know I’m not a parent, but I just …’ My words tailed away. ‘Anyway. I’d rather be doing something than nothing, so I’m going to get back out walking the streets to find her. I just wanted you to know the truth about what was going on.’

Mrs Traynor was silent for a moment. And then she said, her voice measured but oddly determined, ‘Louisa, before you go, would you mind giving me Mrs Houghton-Miller’s telephone number?’

I called in sick, noting fleetingly that Richard Percival’s cold ‘I see,’ was actually more ominous than his previous blustering protests. I printed off photographs – one of Lily’s Facebook profile photographs, and one of the selfies she’d taken of the two of us. I spent the morning driving around central London. I parked on kerbs, leaving the hazard lights flashing, as I nipped into pubs, fast-food joints, nightclubs where the cleaners, working in the stale, dim air, peered up at me with suspicious eyes.

– Have you seen this girl?

– Who wants to know?

– Have you seen this girl?

– Are you police? I don’t want no trouble.

Some people evidently thought it amusing to string me along for a bit – Oh, that girl! Brown hair? Yeah, what was her name? … Nah. Never seen her before. Nobody seemed to have seen her. And the further I travelled, the more hopeless it felt. What better place to disappear than London? A teeming metropolis where you could slide into a million doorways, mingle with crowds that never ended. I would gaze up at the tower blocks and wonder whether even now she was lying on someone’s sofa in her pyjamas. Lily picked up people with ease, and had no fear of asking for anything – she could be with anyone.

And yet.

I wasn’t entirely sure what drove me to keep going. Perhaps it was my cold fury at Tanya Houghton-Miller’s semi-detached parenting; perhaps it was my guilt at having failed to do the thing I was criticizing Tanya for not doing. Perhaps it was just that I knew only too well how vulnerable a young girl could be.

Mostly, though, it was Will. I walked and drove and questioned and walked and held endless internal conversations with him as my hip began to ache, and I paused in my car, chewing stale sandwiches and garage chocolate and choking down painkillers to keep me going.

Where would she go, Will?

What would you do?

And – yet again – I’m sorry. I let you down.

Any news? I texted Sam. It felt odd speaking to him while having concurrent conversations with Will in my head, a strange infidelity. I just wasn’t quite sure who I was being unfaithful to.

Nope. I’ve called every ER department in London. How about you?

Bit tired.

Hip?

Nothing chewing a few Nurofen won’t fix.

Want me to stop by after my shift?

I think I just need to keep looking.