‘So you didn’t leave because Mum was a whore. You left because Gina wanted you all to herself.’

  His dad nods. ‘Essentially. Yes.’

  Owen pauses to absorb this.

  ‘And you let me leave when I was eighteen because Gina wanted her family to herself?’

  ‘Again, there were other factors at play. But yes. There was some … pressure there.’

  Another silence falls; then Owen says, ‘Dad. What do you think about women? Do you like them?’

  ‘Like them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course I like them! Goodness. Yes. Women are remarkable. And I’ve been blessed that two of them have let me share their lives with them. I mean, look at me …’ He gestures at himself. ‘I’m not exactly catch of the day, am I? I’ve been punching above my weight all my life. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  There’s a sound at the door and Owen turns and there’s Gina. She’s wearing a black satin blouse with dark flowers printed on it and tight blue jeans. Her hair is dyed a shiny mahogany and up in a ponytail. She’s pushing sixty but still looks youthful.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I thought I heard voices. Ricky’ – she looks at Owen’s dad –‘what’s going on?’

  ‘They let him out, Gina. This morning. Dropped all charges. He’s a free man.’

  ‘Oh.’ She clearly doesn’t know what to say. ‘That’s good then?’

  ‘Of course it’s good! It’s wonderful.’

  ‘And everything else?’ she asks, still standing in the doorway. ‘The girls at college? The date-rape drugs …?’

  ‘Gina—’

  ‘No, Ricky. It’s important. Sorry, Owen, but it is. Look. I don’t know you very well, and I’m sorry about that. I’ve – we’ve – had a lot on our plates over the years with Jackson, as you know. But there’s no smoke without fire, Owen. And even if you’ve been cleared of that girl’s disappearance, there is still an awful lot of smoke around you. An awful lot.’

  Owen feels a familiar tug of anger in his chest. But he quells it, breathes in hard. He turns and he engages Gina properly, in a way in which he has rarely engaged a woman, with clear eyes and an open heart and he says, ‘You’re right, Gina. I totally understand what you’re saying. I’ve been far from the best version of myself over the years and I take my share of the blame for everything that’s happened to me. But this, what I’ve just been through, it’s changed me. I don’t want to be that person any more. I’m going to work on myself.’

  He sees a chink in Gina’s defences. A slight tip of her chin. ‘Well, that’s good,’ she says. ‘And you could probably start by apologising to those girls. The ones you made feel uncomfortable at the college disco.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes. I’m going to sort it all out. All of it. I swear.’

  Gina nods and says, ‘Good boy.’ Then she looks serious for a moment. ‘But if it wasn’t you who abducted that girl, then who was it?’

  Owen blinks. He didn’t ask. He’d been so shell-shocked by the unexpected sequence of events that he’d just walked out without even wondering.

  56

  ‘My dad got a Valentine’s card,’ Josh explains to DI Currie. ‘My sister opened it, my mum snatched it away from her, told her it was private and that she wasn’t to open it. And there was a bit of a row between my mum and my sister, my sister telling my mum that she should want to know who was sending Valentine’s cards to my dad. And then my mum hid it away in a drawer. I snuck in when she wasn’t looking and read it. It was from her. The woman. Alicia.’

  ‘And what did it say?’ asks DI Henry.

  ‘Oh, just all this desperate stuff. Like how she needed him and couldn’t live without him.’

  ‘So it looked like he was going to leave your mother for her?’

  Josh shrugs. ‘Yeah, I guess. And I just … I was so angry with my dad when I saw that card, that what he was doing with that woman had somehow found its way into my home. And I ended up confronting him.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘That night. Valentine’s night. He went out for a run and I ran out after him and stopped him on the corner. I had the card in my hand. I said, Dad, what the fuck are you doing? You’re going to kill mum if you do this. You’re going to kill her!

  ‘But then Dad told me he’d taken Alicia out for lunch that day, to tell her that he wasn’t going to leave Mum for her. That their affair was over. And me and Dad hugged and I was crying and he said he was sorry, he was so so sorry. I said, What are we going to do about this card. I said, We can’t get rid of it because Mum knows it’s in the house. If it disappears, she’ll know there was something fishy going on. She’ll know. He said, Leave it with me. I’ll sort it out. Leave it with me. And then he and Mum went out for dinner and me and Georgia were at home and at about eleven o’clock the doorbell rang and I thought it was going to be Mum and Dad, forgotten their keys, but it wasn’t, it was her. It was Alicia. And she was really drunk. Crying, saying, Let me in, let me in. I want to see him. Let me in! And I said, He’s not here. He’s out with Mum. I told her to fuck off. To leave us alone.’

  ‘And where was your sister when all of this was happening?’

  ‘She was in her room, it’s at the other end of the hallway and she was watching a movie with her AirPods in so she didn’t hear anything.’

  DI Currie writes this down and then nods at Josh to continue.

  ‘I called Saffyre then, to tell her what was happening. She said she’d come over.’

  ‘Why did she say that?’

  Josh shrugs. ‘Like I said, we just kind of look out for each other. We’re friends. I was helping her. She was helping me.’ He picks up his water cup and puts it down again. ‘She got to our street at about eleven fifteen. She messaged me to say that she was outside and the coast was clear, no sign of Alicia. She said she’d stay and keep an eye on the place. And then I heard Mum and Dad get back about fifteen minutes later and I thought that was it. That it was all over. But a few minutes later I heard voices outside my bedroom window and I saw Dad in the front garden and then I saw him pulling someone out on to the pavement. Her. Alicia.

  ‘I didn’t know where Saffyre was then. I thought maybe she’d just gone home. A few seconds later I saw Alicia running past our house; she looked like she was crying. And then out of nowhere I saw Saffyre, running behind her. And that was the last time I saw Saffyre. Running after Alicia.’

  Josh clears his throat and takes a sip of his water.

  ‘And where did Saffyre and Alicia go? Do you know?’ asks DI Currie.

  Josh shakes his head. ‘I have no idea. But Saffyre called me later that night, about one in the morning. She said she couldn’t tell me where she was but that she’d done something, something really bad, and that she needed to go into hiding for a while because she was scared. She told me not to tell anyone, not the police, not even her uncle. She turned her phone off after that. I couldn’t contact her. But …’ Josh wrings his hands together, and Cate strokes them. ‘Saffyre was hunting someone. She was hunting a guy who did something to her when she was a child. She’d found out where he lived and had been following him and she was convinced – we were both convinced that he had something to do with all the sex attacks in the area. You know, the guy who’s been grabbing women?’

  DI Currie looks at Josh in surprise. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘OK. And do you have any idea who that might have been?’

  ‘She told me never to tell anyone. She told me not to. But now I’m really worried he’s done something to her. Because she should be back by now. If she was safe, she’d be back, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Who, Joshua? Who do you and Saffyre think has been attacking women in the area?’ DI Currie asks gently.

  Josh sighs and there is a moment of weighty silence while he forms his response.

  Cate stares at him.

  Finally he replies. ‘It’s a guy called Harrison John. He lives on Alfred Road, up the Chalk Farm end. He’s about eighteen. He hurt Saffyre when she was a child and now she thinks he’s hurting other women.’

  The two DIs exchange a look. The male DI leaves the room and DI Currie turns back to Josh. She says, ‘Thank you, Josh. Thank you so much. DI Henry’s going to follow that up right now.’

  ‘But there’s another thing. Just …’ Josh pulls his hands down his face. ‘… one more thing.’ He looks up at DI Currie. ‘I’ve been following him too.’

  He glances at Cate. Cate widens her eyes at him, He hadn’t told her this earlier.

  ‘That was what Saffyre said to me when she called me at one o’clock that night. She said she couldn’t come back until the police had got him, Harrison John. She said she was scared he was going to kill her. She told me to keep watching him until I caught him in the act, until I had some definite evidence that it was him who’d been carrying out the attacks. So I’ve been out at night just following him about. Waiting for him to do something. Anything.’

  Cate swallows hard. She’s overwhelmed by mixed emotions: pride, fear, horror, love; she feels as though she might drown in them all.

  ‘Then a few days ago I heard him on his phone telling someone he was meeting a girl on Sunday afternoon, that he was taking her to the O2 Centre to watch a movie. So I went along and I sat through the movie with them and watched him and he was all over this girl and I could tell she was finding him really annoying, she kept pushing him away, and then they left and I saw him pulling this girl along the road, towards the back end of the cinema and he was trying to make out like he was playfighting with her but I could tell she wasn’t enjoying herself and so I stayed really close. Really really close. Too close. Because he saw me and he got me against a wall like this.’ Josh mimes a fist around a collar. ‘He said he didn’t know who I was or what I wanted but if he saw me hanging around anywhere near him ever again, he’d shank me. He said, I’ve seen your face now, faggot, I’ve seen your face. Next time I see you, you’re dead.’

  Josh pauses. He licks his lips. He turns to Cate. ‘And that was when I wet myself.’

  Cate’s eyes fill with tears. The thought of her beautiful boy being held against a wall. The terrible, inevitable heat of a bladder emptied in fear. His shaking hands forcing the damp, stinking clothes into a carrier bag, shoving it into the corner of his wardrobe.

  ‘I said, What did you do to Saffyre? He said, Don’t mention that whore’s name to me. She’s a dirty little skank. I said, Where is she? Where the fuck is she? He said, I don’t fucking know. Getting whatever’s due to her, I hope. Now fuck off, stalker faggot.’

  Josh’s shoulders slump. Then he looks up at the detective and he says, ‘I never caught him doing anything, Harrison John. I tried so, so hard. But can you get him, anyway? Get him off the streets, please? So that Saffyre can come back. Please.’

  57

  SAFFYRE

  Every muscle in my body went hard, every sinew tensed, every hair stood on end. My heart, which was already thumping, started to race. I could see him closing in on Alicia, his pace picking up.

  I thought, Oh no you don’t, Harrison John, oh no you don’t.

  I stayed back in the shadows waiting for him to pass and then I ran up behind him, hooked my arm around his neck and brought him down on to the floor. His body made a satisfying cracking noise as it hit the pavement. I kept him pinned there for a while with his face ground into the pavement so he couldn’t see me.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said.

  I brought my mouth close to his ear, close enough to smell his aftershave, the lingering aroma of a recently smoked cigarette.

  I hissed into his ear. I said, ‘Want to see something magic, Harrison John?’

  I took off my beanie hat and shoved it in his mouth to muffle his screams. And then I reached down for his hand.

  His right hand.

  I bent it back and brought it up to his face.

  Then very slowly I took each of the three fingers he’d put inside me when I was ten years old and I snapped each one in turn.

  Every time he cried out in pain I said, ‘It only hurts the first time, Harrison. It only hurts the first time. The next time it will be magic.’

  ‘Agh,’ he said, cupping his broken fingers, his face contorted with pain, ‘argh, fuck’s sake. What the fuck!’ He managed to overpower me then. He turned me over and looked straight into my eyes. He raised his arm as if he was going to hit me with it but then his vision blurred and he slumped on top of me in a dead faint.

  I looked up and there was the face of an angel, backlit by a street lamp, a halo of red hair. It was Alicia.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she said. I saw the beginnings of a bruise on the edge of her cheekbone where Roan had hit her.

  I pushed Harrison off me and he started to stir, clutching his broken fingers, moaning.

  I looked at Alicia and said, ‘Are you OK?’

  She looked at me blankly. ‘Who are you?’

  I said, ‘Let’s get out of here. You got Uber?’

  She nodded and pulled her phone out of her bag. Her hands were shaking.

  Harrison was trying to get to his feet. He started to lumber after me but I grabbed Alicia’s hand and together we ran down the hill.

  ‘I’m going to kill you, Saffyre Maddox,’ I heard him yell after me. ‘Next time I see you, you’re fucking dead. Do you fucking hear me? Dead.’

  The Uber took us to Alicia’s flat. I thought about telling her that I’d seen her block before, that I knew she lived on the fourth floor. But I thought, upon reflection, that the night had already been weird enough for both of us without adding that into the mix.

  Her flat was really cute. Mint-green sofas with buttons on the backs and squat wooden feet, funky art in white frames, a lot of plants, a lot of books.

  Alicia made us tea and opened some biscuits. As I picked up my mug I saw that my hands were shaking. I put the mug down again and breathed in hard. In my head I replayed the feeling of Harrison John’s bones snapping, the weird noise they made, like the noise when Angelo crunched his biscuits. And then I pictured him lumbering home to his flat on Alfred Road overlooking the railway track, clutching his broken fingers. I saw him sitting in the A & E department at the Royal Free Hospital and I pictured him leaving a while later with some kind of plastic covering over his hand, splints and bandages and whatnot holding his hand in place while it healed. I thought, How will he explain this to the world? And then I thought, Will he go to the police? I imagined him telling some fresh-faced, straight-out-of-Hendon cop that a girl called Saffyre had felled him in one blow and broken his fingers on a pavement in the dark for no good reason, and I could not see that happening.

  ‘Are you going to tell me who you are now?’ Alicia asked me.

  ‘I’m Saffyre Maddox,’ I said.

  ‘And you used to be a patient of Roan’s?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  I watched everything processing through Alicia’s head, saw her big clever brain trying to compute everything, and failing.

  ‘And that guy?’

  ‘I used to know him. He hurt me. Now I’ve hurt him.’

  ‘He said he was going to kill you if he saw you again.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. And that was the problem. That was why my hands were shaking. I’d finally purged the childhood event that had destroyed me by inflicting pain on the perpetrator, but in doing so I’d opened myself up to yet more pain, more fear, more hurt.

  ‘Have you got anywhere you can stay?’

  I stared at my fingers. ‘I live with my uncle,’ I said.

  ‘Are you safe there?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It’s very close to where that guy lives. My school is just around the corner from his flat.’

  ‘You can stay here tonight, if you want?’

  I glanced up at Alicia. Her eyes were still red from crying and the scuff on her cheek from where Roan had hit her was swelling up now. I thought, She needs me as much as I need her right now. So I nodded and said, ‘Thank you. I really appreciate that.’

  I ended up staying at Alicia’s for a fortnight.

  And for a fortnight I resisted the urge to contact Aaron. I can’t really explain it, how I could have done that to him. To someone who loved me and cared about me the way I knew he did. I knew he would be suffering, but each day that dawned I thought, Not today, not yet, he’ll be OK for a few more hours, I’ll go home soon. Each day I thought would be my last day in hiding. Each day felt like it was the day that Josh would track down Harrison John, that he would be detained by the police and that I would be safe.

  Time didn’t have much form during those days. Without the punctuation of being the version of myself that puts on eyeliner and goes to school every day, I just stayed in a kind of sleep mode. My instincts didn’t work properly: Alicia had to remind me to eat; I would wake up at three in the morning and think it was daytime and that I was blind.

  Alicia called in sick for the first few days and she did her best to keep me safe and sane. In weird, disjointed streams of consciousness I ended up telling her everything, everything I’d never told Roan about the real reasons why I’d been self-harming.

  Alicia was twelve years older than me, but for those days we spent together, she felt more like a friend than a therapist. The sort of friend, I thought, that I’d managed to keep at arms’ length almost my entire life. Then Alicia went back to work and I was in her flat all day by myself. I could barely remember my name sometimes. Shards of my existence flashed through my mind like a psychedelic slideshow; I’d see the fox in the corner of the room sometimes. Other times I’d hear Josh’s voice coming from Alicia’s TV, the mewl of a tiny kitten outside the front door, Jasmin’s mad laugh coming from the flat upstairs. And every time I closed my eyes, there was Harrison John, looming at me from every direction with a claw for a hand, threatening to kill me.