‘I’m not going to go home,’ I say. ‘I mean to get further away. If we get on a plane, think how far away we can be by lunchtime.’
‘So you want us to book tickets in our own names and use our passports, too, yeah? Great idea. We’re trying to keep away from where people might spot us. As far as anyone is concerned, the last time we were seen anywhere was at Calais.’
‘What about CCTV and cameras on the roads?’ I ask.
‘Not since we left the motorway by Valenciennes. Anyway, even if they manage to get that far and start looking for the car, they’ll be looking for yours. Not this one.’
This is fucking with my head. ‘So they’re going to start searching the area for my car. And eventually they’ll come here, and they’ll find it.’
‘I doubt that,’ Jess replies. ‘Not if I know Claude. And they’re hardly going to manage that by lunchtime, are they?’
I scratch my head. Just when I thought I’d got it all squared with myself, she goes and throws these spanners in the works, getting me even more worried and confused. ‘What about a train?’ I say.
‘Same problem. We need to stay away from cameras. We should be okay on the roads, as they won’t be looking for this car. If you’re worried, we can stick to the back roads but we won’t get as far in the time we’ve got.’ She looks me in the eye, a moment of deep seriousness. ‘You need to learn that you can’t have it both ways, Dan.’
I swallow, stand and walk over to the Citro?n before opening the car door and looking back at her. ‘Which way’s Switzerland?’
17
We decide to use the main roads, and for the first three hours the car seems to be doing surprisingly well. Considering its age, it’s holding out. I drive the car at a steady speed, keeping up with the bulk of traffic, without trying to stand out in any way. Around the cities, most of the cars seem to be much newer and I worry that we’re going to stick out like a sore thumb, but Jess tells me I’m worrying too much.
At the end of the day, we’re on French roads in a French car, and no-one has any reason to think there’s anything suspicious about that. With the probability being that no-one will yet have realised Lisa’s been killed, we have the added advantage of being on the run from people who don’t yet know they’re meant to be chasing us.
As we come within touching distance of Dijon, though, the car starts to become noisy and I convince myself I can smell burning. Jess tells me she can’t smell anything, but I pull over at the next service station, sure something’s wrong. We were going to need some petrol at some point soon, anyway.
I drive up and let the car sit idling for a while.
‘It probably just needs to rest for a bit. It’s an old car,’ Jess says. ‘It’s probably not been used for a while. Certainly not on long runs like this.’
‘Judging by the layer of dust on it last night, it’s not left the barn in the best part of a decade,’ I reply.
‘I know Claude. He will have made sure it was in good shape. He wouldn’t let me down.’
‘You put a lot of faith in Claude,’ I say, after a few seconds of silence. She doesn’t respond. I decide that if we’re going to be spending God knows how much time in each other’s company, and if we’re going to be essentially beholden to this Claude guy, I need to know what the deal is. ‘Tell me what happened with him. I need to know.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it enough to take my word for it that he’s a good guy?’
‘I’m not being funny, Jess, but I don’t know him and I barely know you. Do you actually realise what you’re asking me to do? What you’ve already had me do?’
‘Do I look like I’m an idiot?’ she asks, quite curtly.
‘Jess, this isn’t a fucking game. This is my life. My marriage. My—’
‘Your marriage is over. Your wife is dead.’
I look at her coldly. It’s because of her that I’m here, in a petrol station in France, filling up a car belonging to some bloke I don’t know, with a girl I met only a few days ago, about to become the most wanted man in Europe. I’m angry at Jess for taking advantage of the situation, I’m angry at myself and I’m fucking furious at whoever’s done this to me. ‘She’s not the only one, it seems. Is there any spark of emotion inside you at all?’
‘Dan, I didn’t leave my wife’s dead body in a bathtub, then run away to France with the hotel receptionist I’d been screwing for the past few days. Don’t talk to me about morals, alright?’
I can’t help but laugh. ‘So now you’re trying to take the moral high ground here? You think you’re completely blameless?’
She shakes her head. ‘Believe me, I’m far from blameless.’
There’s a good minute of silence before I speak again. ‘Tell me.’
She seems to be mulling this over in her mind. Just as I think she’s not going to say anything, she decides it’s in her best interests to open up.
‘I lived here for a while. In France. I was brought up in England but my family had a holiday home here. When I was fourteen, they let me come over on my own for the first time in the summer holidays. I did some work on Claude’s farm, helping him out. They lived about half a mile away, but he was still their closest neighbour.’ I want to ask her why the hell her parents let a fourteen-year-old girl travel to France on her own, but I don’t want to interrupt her. It’s taken long enough to get her to open up this much. ‘They came out to stay as well. They came to surprise me. It was nearly my birthday.’
There’s a couple of seconds of silence before she speaks again. ‘They got to their holiday home, and I wasn’t there. I was at Claude’s. They came to find me, to find out if I was there, but Claude said I was staying with a friend and would be back home the next morning. That night, their holiday home burned down with them inside it.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I say, almost involuntarily. ‘That’s . . . I’m sorry. That’s horrible. I can’t imagine what that would feel like.’ She doesn’t respond, so I ask the obvious question. ‘Why did he tell your parents you weren’t there?’
Jess lets out a deep sigh. ‘Because earlier that evening I’d panicked when I heard they were coming to visit. Claude realised something wasn’t right and I couldn’t bottle it up any longer. I told him everything. About my parents and how they’d abused me.’
‘Abused you?’
She nods slowly. ‘My dad wasn’t my real dad. Mum never knew who my real dad was. This was my stepfather. Ever since I can remember, he used to . . . Look, I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’ I can see the tears forming in her eyes. The first time I’ve seen any sense of emotion from her.
‘And your mum?’ I ask.
‘She knew it was going on. I never told her, but she knew. You don’t have a mother–daughter relationship and not know everything that’s unspoken as well as everything that’s spoken. That night, Claude protected me. He promised me that everything was going to be alright. That we’d find a way to make sure they couldn’t hurt me again. I looked him in the eyes, and I knew I could trust him.’
‘And that night they . . .’