‘Liam.’
Connor continued to watch the back of his son’s head, knowing the boy had heard him. The click-clicking of the computer keyboard was grating on his last nerve.
‘Liam!’
The boy turned slowly on his swivel chair, meeting his father’s eye with indifference. ‘What?’
‘Fancy a game of football after dinner?’
Connor didn’t know why he was wasting his time. He was more likely to get a game of football from the baby than he was from Liam; if nothing else, the baby would have been a more willing opponent. His son wasn’t interested in spending time with him. He didn’t really seem interested in anything beyond the bloody computer.
Liam pulled a face and made a noise that sounded too much like a teenager for Connor’s liking before turning back to the screen. Connor knew he wasn’t supposed to feel it, but he didn’t really like his own son. He wasn’t sure whether he liked the baby either.
The problem was, Connor didn’t much like anyone, least of all himself.
Liam had been conceived when Connor had been home on leave from Afghanistan. His family was under the impression that his ‘issues’ – as they ambiguously liked to name them – had started upon his later return, but they had begun much earlier. Under duress, he had attended counselling. Under even greater duress, he had agreed to complete a short course that would allow him to run his own support group. He’d never had any intention of actually doing so, but once he’d met Tim Cole there he was railroaded into it, going along with the other man’s plans in the hope that it would get him out of the house. The truth was, he hated listening to people drone on about their problems. I’m lonely, I’m exhausted, I’m fat… God, they got on his nerves. Still, he needed the group as a much-needed excuse for a night off once a week; the only time he didn’t feel crippled by the weight of parental responsibility and supposed marital bliss.
The news of Jen’s second pregnancy had been met with plenty of enthusiasm and excitement, but unfortunately for her little of that had been generated from Connor. Afghanistan changed everything. He didn’t want this domesticated life he was living. In the kitchen, Jen was grappling a heavy load of wet washing. The baby was sitting in its highchair, red-faced and wailing.
All he heard was noise, but Connor realised these sounds went way past his family and ran far beyond the four walls of this house he was supposed to acknowledge as home. They consumed him, filling the space around him like the air he breathed. The memory of war tormented him yet, with a perverseness that left him questioning his own sanity; a part of him longed to be back there. There he had served some sort of purpose. Here he wasn’t doing anything. What was the sense in any of this?
There was a clatter from the corner as Liam dropped something on to the floor. He cursed, the word he muttered audible enough to be heard by his mother in the kitchen, who appeared in the doorway of the living room with a face as red as the baby’s and a wet bedsheet tangled around her arm.
‘Liam! Naughty!’
Connor took his mobile from the pocket of his jeans and pretended to read an imaginary email he’d received just as his wife entered the room.
‘You can turn that off now,’ she scolded. ‘Your dinner’s almost ready.’
For a moment, Connor thought she was speaking to him.
He tried to remind himself the boy was only eight, but sometimes Connor felt his son was testing them both, and that his wife would pass this initiation with straight A*s while he was destined to be leaving at the end of the term.
Running away had certainly seemed an appealing option, on more than one occasion.
‘Do you want anything?’
It took a moment for Connor to realise that this time she was in fact talking to him. ‘What? Uh… no.’
She said nothing and returned to the kitchen. Connor watched his son traipse out into the kitchen, the boy ignoring his father’s presence as he passed.
He reached for the television remote and switched channels, watching aimlessly as a panel of famous sports stars answered trivia questions in order to win money for charity. On the table beside the sofa, his mobile phone vibrated with a text message. He leaned over and swiped a finger across the screen before typing in his four digit passcode. A number he didn’t recognise came up.
Tell your wife or I will.
Connor read the message twice. He glanced to the opened kitchen door, spying like an outsider on his family’s dinnertime. He looked back at the phone, locked it, and went into the kitchen to feign happy domesticity.
Chapter Twelve
Ethan Thompson had proven easy to find. He was working in a bar called The Lizard in Cardiff city centre and was bottling up the beer fridges when Alex arrived. A flyer for his band had been found during a search of Lola’s bedroom at her grandmother’s house, and April recalled Lola having said something about knowing the lead singer. ‘Knowing’ him turned out to mean she had been having regular sex with him, although Ethan was quick to point out that he hadn’t been in a relationship with Lola.
Alex had acknowledged what April Evans had told her – that her granddaughter was very much a free spirit who didn’t take too well to having to explain her whereabouts to anyone – but the fact that so many of those who were allegedly closest to her had little knowledge she’d even been missing let alone anything worse was something Alex was struggling to get to grips with. Had it just been that everyone had assumed she was with somebody else?
She had encountered a few missing children cases in which similar scenarios had unfolded, with both parents thinking the child was safely with the other. Alex realised mistakes could easily be made, but whenever there was a child involved she found it difficult to be sympathetic with a parent whose attention had been distracted. Her own childlessness made it easy to judge the inadequacies of others and believe she would do better. She would never allow a child to leave her sight. No harm would come to anyone in her care.
She followed Ethan Thompson to a table in the corner of the bar. This was completely different, she thought. Lola Evans was a young woman, not a child. Perhaps it hadn’t been anyone else’s business where she was or who she was with.
Or had it?
Ethan Thompson sat and Alex took a seat opposite him. He looked like a model from the pages of some alternative fashion magazine, she thought: that skinny, anaemic look young people seemed to prefer these days. His ears had huge holes in them filled with thick black coins of plastic that stretched his lobes like a spaniel’s. Alex was pretty sure he was wearing eyeliner.
His dark eyes fixed themselves on her, and it was only then that Alex noticed how enlarged his pupils were.