Chapter 59

chapter fifty-nine

Simon Barrington’s breath quickened as he stared at the words on his laptop screen. Was it a coincidence? Was he misremembering the words in Amy’s mother’s text? Did this mean nothing or everything? Had he just accidentally cracked the case of the disappearance of Joy Delaney?

He was sitting at the dining room table. He knew Amy was at home. She’d just walked in the door and given him a silent, stiff wave before running up the stairs to her room.

She was so fragile right now, like a delicate glass version of herself.

‘You knew this wasn’t ever going to be a thing, right?’ she’d told him when they ‘broke up’ a few days ago, although Simon wasn’t sure if there was anything to break. She made it sound as if there were blindingly obvious ethical considerations that prevented them from being together, as if they were married politicians from opposing parties, not flatmates with a larger than conventional age gap. They could have given it a shot.

But he said, ‘Sure, I knew that,’ because he didn’t want anything to be difficult for her right now, and she was looking at him with such desperate entreaty.

‘I’m hard work,’ she told him. ‘I’m hard work even when my mother isn’t missing.’

He could have quoted his dad’s favourite Kris Kristofferson song and told her that loving her was easier than anything he’d ever do again. He could have said, ‘Let me help get you through this.’ He could have said a lot of things, but he just said, mildly, ‘I like hard work. I’m a hard worker.’ Then he felt bad because she’d looked like she was about to cry, so he’d said, ‘It’s fine, Amy. Don’t worry about me. Focus on your mother.’

There were footsteps on the stairs again. Was she going straight back out?

‘Amy?’ he called.

She came into the dining room.

‘Hi,’ she said. She looked pale and tired, but composed. ‘I’m on my way out. My brother is picking me up. He thinks my dad might get arrested today.’ She smiled without it reaching her eyes. ‘Lucky I got in a quick session with my shrink. I’m good to go.’

‘That text message your mother sent,’ said Simon. ‘Did it mention the number twenty-one?’

Amy looked startled. ‘I think it did. But they were just random nonsense words. She did that when she texted without glasses.’

She tapped at her phone and showed him the text message. The wording was exactly as he remembered.

‘Well, this might not be anything,’ said Simon. ‘But I was just thinking about Savannah, and how it turned out she was Harry Haddad’s sister, so then I was Googling Harry, and I was looking at his charity work and I noticed this.’

He moved the laptop around so she could see the words.

She looked at the screen, then at her mother’s text message and back at the screen again.

He saw her catch her breath.