He ducked his head, embarrassed. “Um. Not sure.”

  I thought about the chronology. “R?”

  His ears were flaming. “Yeah, probably. It stands for…” He trailed off.

  “Tell me. I promise I won’t laugh.”

  “Romeo. It was her idea,” he added quickly as I tried not to smirk. Max was not my idea of a Romeo, but that didn’t matter; Gilly had loved him

  “It makes sense,” I said. “Star-crossed lovers. Did you call her Juliet?”

  “I called her Gilly,” he said, his voice level.

  “In the diary—she seemed scared, Max. Was she scared of you?”

  “I hope not,” he said, but he didn’t say it was impossible. And I remembered the look on his face when he stood outside Mr. Lowell’s classroom waiting for Gilly—that brooding determination—and I wondered.

  “She wouldn’t work with you on the history project.”

  “Yeah, that was a kick in the teeth.” He looked bitter. “I thought we were getting on better, you know? I’d been trying hard to tell her I’d forgiven her, and I thought I’d been making some progress. And then she embarrassed me in front of the whole class, like I was the one who’d cheated on her instead of the other way around. It hurt.”

  “So you thought she would do the project with you.”

  Max shrugged. “Why not? I mean, it was a bit awkward, but we’d have got over that. I still liked her. A lot. I’d have been respectful. We could have worked together.”

  “Did you ever hurt her?”

  “I hurt her feelings. I never laid a finger on her otherwise.”

  “Nessa said she had a black eye after she tried to talk to you about the rumors.”

  He looked outraged. “Yeah, but not from me. Did Nessa say it was from me?”

  “That was her impression.”

  Max leaned back against the sink. “No way. No, no, no. Not me. I would never hit a girl. I didn’t even hit Nessa yesterday when she kneed me in the face, and she barely qualifies as a girl.”

  That was it. I snapped. “Why do you care if Nessa likes girls anyway? Why does it threaten you? Why can’t you just leave her alone and let her get on with her life while you get on with yours?”

  He looked startled. “I just don’t like her.”

  “She doesn’t like you either, and she’s a lot tougher than you are, but that has nothing to do with her sexual preferences.”

  “She’s been telling you all kinds of lies about me. Can’t I defend myself?”

  “You don’t have to call her names to defend yourself.”

  Max folded his arms. “OK, well, you saw her yesterday. She hit me. It was an unprovoked attack too. So who do you think was more likely to hit Gilly, her or me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, being honest. “But I can see why you both want to put the blame on each other. And it doesn’t get us much further with finding Gilly.”

  “I’ve told you what I can.” That sounded like the truth, for once, and I couldn’t think of anything else to ask Max, apart from why he wasn’t a nicer person.

  I stood up and wrote my phone number on a piece of junk mail that was lying by the cooker. “Let me know if you hear from Gilly.”

  “I will.”

  “I think you should talk to Inspector Henderson too. Tell him everything you know about Gilly. Tell him about her mother.”

  “Can’t you do it?” Max shoved his hands in his pockets, obviously uneasy.

  “I think it would be better coming from you,” I said. “It might be better if you didn’t mention me, by the way. I’m not really supposed to be here.”

  “OK.” He still didn’t look happy.

  “Assuming you really want to help Gilly.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then do the right thing,” I said simply.

  “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “Why would you get in trouble?”

  “I watch TV,” he said. “When a girl goes missing, they always look at the boyfriend.”

  “Ex-boyfriend in this case.”

  “That’s even worse.” Max hugged himself. “I don’t want to get mixed up with all this when it’s nothing to do with me. But I do want Gilly to come home.”

  “Then you’d better make the right choice,” I said. “And I hope it works out.”

  As I left the house, I was thinking about Gilly’s diary.

  I was scared before, but now I’m terrified something bad is going to happen.

  She wasn’t the only one.

  12

  My route home took me past Will’s house.

  All right, I planned my route home to take me past Will’s house. I hadn’t seen him all day and it nagged at me that he was so close. I wanted to fall into his arms, to lose myself in his touch.

  Or, you know, say hi.

  But I forgot all about that when I got close enough to see the car that was parked outside, at an angle to the curb that suggested the driver had left it there in a hurry. A blue BMW, past its prime, with a dent in the passenger door. My dad’s car.

  I stopped where I was, then stepped back into the shelter of a bush so I couldn’t be seen so easily. I was trying to get my head around the implications of my father being parked outside the Hendersons’ small, shabby house.

  As I watched, the front door opened and Dad stepped out. For a moment I saw him as others did: fair and handsome in an arrogant way. He turned and said something, and another figure came into view, a dark-haired woman. It took me a second to recognize Karen Henderson, Will’s mother. I’d met her once, but I’d never seen her standing up before. In fact, I’d assumed she was bedridden. I knew she used a wheelchair usually. I hadn’t known it was optional. If I’d cared more, I might have found out about her disease, I thought guiltily. I might have known that walking was a possibility, now and then. But I’d met her, and I hadn’t liked her one little bit. I hadn’t wanted to know about how ill she was, in case it made me sympathetic to her against my will. She didn’t look exactly healthy, standing there. She was painfully thin, and her skin was bleached white from a life spent largely indoors.

  The big question, of course, was what she was doing with my father. I hadn’t even realized they knew one another. She looked up at him and made a comment I couldn’t catch. Her expression was sour. He shook his head, then leaned down to kiss the air near her pale, thin cheeks. There was nothing romantic about the gesture, I thought, grateful for small mercies. It was politeness, nothing more.

  Karen shut the door, and Dad stood there for a moment, putting on his sunglasses. Then he strode down the path toward the car, digging in his pocket for his keys as he went. Before I had even decided what to do, he had unlocked the car and disappeared into it. I was going to have to be fast.

  I shot across the road to the passenger door, getting it open just as the engine hummed into life.

  “What the— Jessica?” Dad sounded completely baffled.

  I climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door, then pulled on my seat belt. “Let’s go,” I said briskly.

  “What—why are you—?”

  “I don’t think now is the best time to start on the whats and whys,” I said. “Not when we’re sitting outside Dan Henderson’s house.”

  Perhaps remembering that Dan was taller, stronger, and more frightening than him, Dad took the hint. He drove away at speed, complete with a screech from his tires.

  “Subtle getaway. I like it.”

  Instead of answering me, he clenched his jaw. He was looking wary and quite flustered, as if he couldn’t work out what to say to me to explain what he’d been doing. Up close he didn’t look so good, with stubble on his jaw and bags under his eyes.

  I let him sit for a minute, then said, brightly, “Where shall we go?”

  “You usually don’t want to go anywhere with me.”

  “And you’re usually keen to persuade me to spend time with you.” I smiled. “Father–daughter time, remember?”

  “What do you want, Jessica?”

  I want to find out what you’re up to.

  “I want to find out how you are. I haven’t spoken to you properly for weeks. The last time I saw you was at the Christmas market when you were trying to talk to Mum.” I paused for a beat. “Why were you talking to Mum?”

  “Never mind.” Dad drove down the hill toward the marina. With every meter he put between himself and Dan Henderson’s house, his mood seemed to improve. “Why don’t you come and see the apartment? You haven’t even been in it since I unpacked.”

  Generally I wasn’t looking for reasons to extend our conversations, but this time I was interested. “I’d love to.”

  The enthusiasm in my voice was so obviously fake I cringed, but he didn’t seem to pick up on it. He looked pleased, even if he was still slightly confused.

  The apartment building where he lived was square, about six stories high, and it completely dominated Port Sentinel’s little marina. In the summer the marina was full of pleasure boats and small yachts riding the swell as the wind rang music from the ropes tapping their masts, but it was winter now. Most of the boats were ashore, raised on blocks in boatyards up and down the coast, waiting for the warm weather. The marina looked bleak, even in the morning sunshine, and the apartment building had a dingy air. Dad swung into the car park and slotted the car into a space.

  “Come on,” he said, switching off the engine. “Come and see the place and then I’ll take you out for lunch.”

  “You don’t have to.” I felt a squirm of alarm. Finding out what Dad had been up to was one thing; spending the day with him was another.

  “It’s no trouble. Anyway, I don’t have any food in the flat. I think the milk’s gone sour so I can’t even make you a cup of tea.”

  “You need to look after yourself better.”

  He sighed. “It’s hard when you live alone, Jess. There’s no one to see. No one to care.”

  Spare me. I tried to think of something nice to say. “I hadn’t thought about that. It must be hard.”

  “Sometimes.” Dad flashed me a grin, looking just handsome enough to make it slightly more believable that Mum had fallen for his dubious charms once upon a time. “Grab your things and come on.”

  It took me a moment to get my bag, which had slid under the seat. I was also playing for time. I wanted to work out what I was going to say to him about Karen before I got out of the car. When I emerged, Dad was leaning on the top of it, looking bored.

  “Finally. You’re so slow. I thought it was just your mother, but maybe it’s all women.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Dad. All women take ages to do everything. We can’t help it. It’s our ovaries slowing us down.”

  He laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve turned into a feminist.”

  “No, I haven’t turned into one.” Because I was one already, as you might have noticed if you ever spoke to me.

  I followed him into the building and up the stairs to the second floor, allowing myself the luxury of wondering, not for the first time, how it was that I got half my genes from him and yet disliked pretty much everything about him.

  “Here we are. Home sweet home.” Dad opened the door of his apartment and stood back to let me go in. I hesitated on the threshold, looking around. The front door opened directly into the open-plan living room and kitchen. Beyond that there were two bedrooms—a small one that was intended for me, though I’d never slept there, and a larger one that Dad used. The living room had a big window that framed the marina, with Port Sentinel behind it, like a postcard. There wasn’t much furniture—a huge leather sofa, a weird modern armchair that looked like a grasshopper and had cost a fortune, a coffee table, and a high-end TV that was on the wall where Mum would have put a painting or a photograph. I recognized most of it from our old house.

  “What do you think?” Dad was watching me.

  “I think it’s weird to see all our London furniture here.”

  “Not all of it.” He patted the back of the sofa. “Just the stuff I got in the divorce.”

  “You got all the good stuff in the divorce.” Leaving us sitting on lumpy third-hand armchairs Mum got from the British Heart Foundation shop. I didn’t miss those armchairs.

  “I got all the good stuff because I paid for it in the first place.”

  “Mum couldn’t afford to pay for things.”

  “No one expected her to. But then you couldn’t expect me to leave everything behind when she kicked me out.”

  “Some men would.” Fathers who cared about their children, for instance.

  “I’m not one of those men,” Dad said, blissfully unaware of what I’d been thinking.

  “No, you’re not,” I agreed.

  “So what do you think?” he said again, and this time he sounded a little anxious and unsure of himself. My opinion really mattered to him, I realized, and I felt horrible.

  “It’s great. Really nice. You’ve done a good job.”

  “Your mother liked it too. I think it surprised her that I was able to make it look nice by myself. She always thought she was the only one with good taste.”

  “Mum was here? When was Mum here?”

  “She’s been here a few times, Jess.” Dad sat down on his enormous sofa, stretching his arms across the back and propping one foot on the opposite knee. He still looked tense, even if he was pretending to be relaxed.

  “Why? I didn’t think she was spending any time with you.” And I didn’t want her spending any time with you, either.

  “You thought wrong.”

  I sat down too, on the end of the grasshopper chair, more because I couldn’t stand up than because I wanted to. Alarm bells were ringing so loudly in my head I was surprised he couldn’t hear them. “What’s going on, Dad? What’s happening with you and Mum?”

  “We’re talking.”

  “Talking?”

  “About the future. You know I want her to come back to work for me.”

  It would be the worst thing for her. “She’d have to give up her job in the gallery.”

  “Yes, well, she’ll never make a salesgirl, as I said to her.” Dad gave me a look that was supposed to be mischievous. “You’re far better at that than she is, aren’t you? I think you get it from me.”

  “Probably,” I said, my voice faint. “Is she considering it?”

  “Working for me? Yes. And I probably shouldn’t say this, but I think it might lead to more.”

  “More?” I croaked. My vocal cords had dried out from sheer terror. “You mean you might get back together?”

  “It’s possible. What do you think about that? Do you want us to get back together?”

  “A world of no,” I said, so appalled I forgot to pretend I was on his side. “That would be the worst thing ever.”

  “Thanks. Thanks for telling me how you feel.” Dad looked out of the window, tapping his fingers on his knee irritably.

  “Seriously, Dad. You and Mum were disastrous together.”

  “That’s not true, Jessica. Things fell apart in the end, but we could put them back together.”

  “Things fell apart because you were putting your things together with a twentysomething dental hygienist. Among others.” I leaned my chin on my hand. “I think that’s how it happened. I’m pretty sure I remember it accurately.”

  “We both made mistakes, Jess.”

  “Uh-huh.” And Mum’s was marrying you in the first place.

  Dad pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes, as if he had a headache. “Anyway, you might change your mind about all that when you consider the alternative.”

  “The alternative?”

  “Your mother and her old boyfriend getting back together. Your boyfriend’s father. That would be a complicated little set-up, wouldn’t it?”

  “She’s not getting back together with Dan,” I said flatly.

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Look.” I refused to be anything other than calm. “Dan is never going to leave Karen. Not when she’s so sick.”

  “Ah. Yes. You’ve got me there.” There was a glint in Dad’s eye that I didn’t trust, though. He knew something that I didn’t.

  “What were you doing with Karen, anyway? I didn’t think you even knew her.”

  “Slightly. We’ve met a couple of times.”

  “So it was just a social call?” I snorted. “You must be joking, Dad. You’re up to something.”

  He held up his hands. “Really, I’m not. The absolute opposite. I want to help your mother. I just can’t decide the best way to do it.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Karen wanted me to help her make sure Molly and Dan don’t get back together. I would say she feels even more strongly about it than I do, and I care very much about your mother’s happiness.”

  I frowned. “But Mum says there’s nothing going on between them.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “Of course,” I said stiffly. “They were together a long time ago—when they were my age. If I had any suspicions that they were sneaking around with one another, I’d tell you. But I don’t.”

  He shook his head slowly, which was irritating.

  “Anyway, why does Karen care? Does she want you to persuade Mum to come back to you so Dan doesn’t get to have her even after Karen—” I checked myself, then said it anyway: “After she’s gone?”

  Dad’s foot was waggling, a sign that he was stressed about something. “There was a little more to it than that, but you get the idea.”

  “She’s got to let that go. She can’t control what happens once she’s dead. And you’ve got to let Mum go.”

  “Jessica, if you would just stop being bitter and immature for a moment and think about what’s best for you, maybe you’d choose the correct side,” Dad snapped.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you want Dan as a stepfather? Then Will would be your stepbrother. Can you imagine playing happy families forever, even if you break up? Or worse, if you don’t?” He started to laugh. “I can’t see you going for a double wedding, but stranger things have happened, I suppose.”

  I stared at him, thinking fast. I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted him to think I’d picked him over Mum. I wanted him to trust me. And I really didn’t want Dan as a stepfather. So I took a deep breath.

 

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