Lock Me In

I opened the breadbin. ‘He wasn’t going away.’ The breadbin was empty.

‘And I use up everything in my fridge,’ he said, as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘and give it a good clean.’

I pushed past him, cursing the lack of space, the fact that there is nowhere to go on a stupid tiny boat, nowhere to escape to. ‘I’ve said he wasn’t going away.’ I dropped onto the sofa and drew my hands over my face. I wanted my mum.

‘Ellie.’

When I opened my eyes, he was looking at my neck. I pulled my chin down fast, but it was too late.

Slowly, he asked, ‘What happened there, then?’

He wouldn’t have asked about the scar. He meant the bruises. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘No. It’s not.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘No?’ Mae came round and sat next to me, the other end of the sofa. ‘Doesn’t look like nothing.’

I let all my breath out at once. ‘Well, it is.’

Leaning forward, he said, ‘Was it Matt? Did he hurt you, Ellie?’

‘No! God, no! He would never. He’s not like that. No.’

Mae looked away, placed his hands on his knees. ‘Someone reports someone missing, we need to look at everything that might be suspicious. And to be honest,’ he said, indicating my neck with a nod, ‘mystery bruising might look a bit suspicious.’

I stared down at my feet. ‘It’s not mystery bruising.’

‘OK.’ He waited.

‘I was … sleepwalking. Mum tried to steer me back to bed. I was agitated. She had to be … forceful.’

‘And this was, when? Last night?’

I nodded, my heart hammering. Mae inclined his head to get another look.

‘Looks like she fought pretty hard.’

‘I was just confused,’ I mumbled.

‘Confused. OK.’ There was a pause. ‘See. Ellie, I get confused all the time. Sometimes I can’t remember if I’ve left the oven on. Or I lose my car, or, you know, I annoy someone and I get confused about what I might have said to upset them. But I can’t remember a time when confusion has ever ended up in me being held by the throat.’

‘I’m telling you it wasn’t him.’

Mae stayed where he was for a moment. Then he got to his feet, steadied himself against the motion of the boat under his feet, and turned to me.

‘So for now, we’re classing this as a low-risk case—’

‘Low risk. What does that mean?’

‘It means that we wait and see what happens. This is still very early days. To be honest it’s only because I saw your name on the information that it’s me dealing with this and not just a bobby making a couple of calls. But look, you have to realize that everything we have here is pointing to Matt having just gone away somewhere.’ He tucked everything into his bag. ‘It’s a dynamic thing, though. If anything changes—’

‘But what does it mean you will do?’ I interrupted. ‘You have to do something.’

He pressed his lips between his teeth for a moment, measuring his words. ‘Look. Men are weak. Sometimes they are really shitty. I’m sure he’s been great to you, and break-ups can be awful but—’

‘No. It’s not a break-up. He is the most honest, the most grounded person you’ll ever meet. He is a good man, and I can rely on him. I can. You’re making a mistake.’

He watched me for a second, like he was trying to find something in my face. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got a hundred other jobs stacking up and this is just,’ he gestured around the boat, to me. The whole thing. ‘It’s just not a police matter,’ he finished at last. ‘I’ve already done more than I am supposed to.’

‘Fine. Then go.’ I turned away. He would not see me cry.

On the deck, he crouched and turned back to me. ‘This isn’t about you, you know. Men are shits. He didn’t deserve you.’

I watched him swing himself down onto the pontoon, and I thought about how much Matt had given me. How bottomless his patience was, how hard he’d tried to help me believe in myself.

Mae was right. Matt didn’t deserve me. He really, truly did not.

17. (#ulink_ce9dc421-bf73-5dc3-bc3f-012cef1c2c2d)

Mae (#ulink_ce9dc421-bf73-5dc3-bc3f-012cef1c2c2d)

Mae had just swung his leg back over the crossbar when he heard the blip-blip greeting of the siren. Kit, in a squad car, a heavy shade of pissed-off darkening her face.

‘You planning to answer your phone any time soon?’ The window was wound all the way down and her shirt sleeve was rolled all the way up. The pointed toe of the 1950’s pinup girl tattooed on her bicep peeked out just above her elbow.

He dug his phone out, failed to wake it, showed her the screen. ‘Dead. Sorry.’

‘No deader than you are.’

He unsnapped the fastener under his chin and took the helmet off, leaning an elbow on the roof of the car. ‘How do you mean?’

Kit turned to speak into the radio clipped onto her lapel. ‘Got him,’ she told it, then, ‘I’ll deal with it, Ma’am.’ To him, she said, ‘Get in.’

‘That’ll be, “get in, Sarge”,’ he corrected, then gestured to the bike, opened his mouth to argue that he couldn’t, but she cut him off.

‘Get in the car, Sarge, right now. You forgot to collect your daughter, and she’s gone missing.’

18. (#ulink_799e6d4e-de3a-5406-9a34-5d5ba1e0e492)

Ellie (#ulink_799e6d4e-de3a-5406-9a34-5d5ba1e0e492)

I sat still for a long time on Matt’s sofa, listening to the boats bump and creak. Thinking about the list. I’d looked for all the things on it, ticked them off one by one. Every single one of them was gone.

My phone rang: it was the hospital.

I didn’t even say my name when I answered. ‘Have you found him?’