‘Dead,’ Daisy said flatly.
The scenario that Luke had already conjured around Libby Jardine’s origins darkened a shade further.
‘Wasn’t like that,’ said his sister. ‘Why is everyone so set against Gavar? He’s the reason you’re out of Millmoor, Luke.’
Daisy being so brilliant was the reason he was out of Millmoor, and Luke told her so before pulling her into a fierce cuddle. His little sis pummelled him for squeezing her too tightly, but he didn’t mind. He realized that for a while, in the slavetown and then in the van, he had genuinely believed he would never see his family again.
At breakfast on Monday, Jenner turned up and explained that Luke was going to be working as a groundsman. Abi walked into the kitchen while Jenner was there, but on seeing him she stopped short, turned and went back out. Which was peculiar, given that she worked with him.
So Abi’s relationship with Jenner joined Daisy’s friendship with Gavar on the long list of things Luke worried about as he laboured at his new job.
‘Groundsman’ meant that he was some sort of glorified woodcutter under the direction of a miserable old git named Albert. Albert didn’t talk much, which suited Luke just fine. The pair of them worked all over the estate, often miles away from the main house, which also suited Luke fine. It was cold and wet and tiring, and at the end of each day Luke was knackered, just as he had been in Millmoor. That was fine, too, because his body’s exhaustion was the only way of forcing his overloaded brain to shut down each night.
He’d been at Kyneston for nine days when his bag of possessions turned up at the cottage. Did that mean the Overbitch had rubber-stamped his unscheduled departure? Luke tore the bag apart searching for a note or message from the Doc or Renie. Something sewn into the lining, perhaps? Or rolled and stuffed into the handle? But there was nothing.
He looked at the bag’s pathetic contents laid out on his bed. Black socks and grey underpants, a toothbrush, a photo of himself with his classmates on the last day of term that already felt like ancient history. He had nothing to show for his half-year in the slavetown. The only things that mattered – the friendships, everything he’d done and dared, the person he’d become – had all been left behind.
‘How does the post work here?’ he asked Abi a few days later. ‘Could I get a letter to Millmoor?’
When she asked why, he said he wanted to send a ‘thank you’ to a doctor who’d patched him up after an accident.
‘Let him know that I’m doing okay.’
Abi frowned and told him she didn’t think that was a good idea, and besides, the post to Millmoor still wasn’t running.
His second week at Kyneston ended. Then a third. Weeks in which, although surrounded by his family, Luke felt lonelier than he ever had in his life.
Had Jackson and the club forgotten about him already? There’d be no shortage of angry new recruits in Millmoor, so Luke could easily be replaced. But he remembered the games they’d played together: break-ins with Jessica, keeping a lookout for Asif, dangling Renie off the roof. They’d all trusted each other with their lives. You didn’t simply forget about someone after sharing such things.
There were three possibilities, he decided. His friends had been arrested. Or they planned to contact him, but hadn’t been able to yet. Or they believed he was content at Kyneston with his family.
As he set about that morning’s task of chopping down a rotten cherry tree deep in the woods, Luke tested each hypothesis. The first didn’t stand up. If the club’s existence and its role in the riot had been discovered, Luke would have been pulled in for questioning too, whether or not he was at Kyneston. The second possibility was also unlikely. Jackson and Angel could break a man out of Millmoor, so they should have no problem getting a message to him – even here. That left only the third option: that the club now regarded him as out of the picture.
Which was so wrong Luke didn’t know where to start. There was so much he could contribute to the cause from Kyneston. The Jardines were the most powerful family in the land, and he was right in their midst. Several of them paid slaves no more heed than furniture, creating all sorts of opportunities for eavesdropping. His sister worked in the Family Office and had a key. The Third Debate – when the Abolition Proposal would be voted upon – would be happening right here.
Frustrated, Luke whacked his axe against the shattered tree trunk, causing it to rip up out of the ground and keel over. The roots were dry and dead, as if all the life had drained out of them. He turned the stump over and began hacking off the withered tendrils one by one. It was only minimally therapeutic.
Luke had once thought that Jackson intended him to go to Kyneston. ‘The plan is to get you to their estate,’ the Doc had said at that first meeting after they’d liberated Oz.