We drove in silence through north London, to their house in Hertfordshire. It was foggy and damp; the shapes of trees and houses loomed up at us as we passed. They lived just outside a village, in a low white house at the end of a gravel led drive. Ben stopped at the top of it for a few seconds. "I feel completely sick," he said angrily, as if it was my fault. Then he drove on.
Jo's mother was called Pam, and she was a handsome, robust woman with a firm handshake. Her father, though, was skeletally thin and his face was etched with lines. He looked decades older than his wife and when I shook his hand it was like grasping a bundle of bones. We sat in the kitchen and Pam poured us tea and produced some biscuits. "So tell me, Ben, how's everything going? It's been ages since Jo brought you over to see us."
"I've come for a reason," he said abruptly.
She put down her mug and looked at him. "Jo?" she said.
"Yes. I'm worried about her."
"What's wrong with her?"
"We don't know where she is. She's disappeared. You've heard nothing at all?"
"No," she said in a whisper. Then, louder, "But you know how it is with her, she's always gadding off without telling us. She can go weeks without getting in touch."
"I know. But Abbie was sharing her flat and Jo just went missing one day."
"Missing," she repeated.
"You have no idea where she might be?"
"The cottage?" she said, and her face brightened with hope. "She sometimes goes and camps out there."
"We went there."
"Or that boyfriend of hers?"
"No."
"I don't understand," said Jo's father. "How long has she been missing?"
"Since about January the sixteenth," I said. "We think."
"And today's what? February the sixth? That's three weeks!"
Pam stood up. She stared down at us and said, "But we must start looking! At once!"
"I'm going to the police now," said Ben, rising too. "As soon as we leave here. We've already talked to them about this well, Abbie has anyway, but they don't take it seriously for the first week or so. Unless it's a child."
"What shall I do? I can't just sit here. I'll ring round everyone. There'll be a simple explanation. Who have you talked to?"
"It might mean nothing," said Ben helplessly. "She might be fine. People are always going missing then turning up."
"Yes. Of course," said Pam. "Of course that's true. The thing is not to panic'
"We'll go straight to the police now," said Ben. "I'll ring you later. All right?" He put his hands on Pam's shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. She clutched at him briefly then let him go. Jo's father was still sitting at the table. I looked at his parchment skin, the liver spots on his brittle hands.
"Goodbye," I said. I didn't know what else to say. There wasn't anything.
"Ben, this is Detective Inspector Jack Cross. This is Ben Brody. He's a friend of Josephine Hooper, who I told you about last'
"I know. I visited her flat, remember? And you told me about wearing her clothes, and you told me her name's Lauren."
"I'm glad you let Terry go," I said. "Now you know he's not guilty, you must realize there's someone out there who is, and maybe Jo .. ." - "I can't comment on that," Cross said warily.
"Shall we begin by telling Detective Inspector Cross what we actually know for certain, Abbie?"
Cross looked at him with faint surprise. Perhaps he had thought that anyone connected with me was bound to be mad: contamination by association.
Much of it I had told him before, of course, but then the words had sounded like yet more confirmation of my paranoia. They sounded more plausible when it wasn't me saying them.
We went over everything, several times. It was very technical, like filling in a complicated tax return. I wrote down the times and dates that I'd worked out for the missing week, both for myself and for Jo. I handed over Jo's photograph. Ben gave him the telephone numbers for her parents and her ex-boyfriend and told him which companies she regularly worked for.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"I'll consider this," Cross replied. "But I'm not'
"The thing is .. ." I stopped and looked at Ben, then resumed. "The thing is, I'm very scared that if I'm right about Jo being grabbed by the same man as me, then, well, she's very likely, she's probably, you know .. ." I couldn't say the word, not with Ben sitting beside me. I couldn't even remember meeting Jo; he'd known her half his life.
A series of expressions chased across Cross's face. When he had first met me, he had believed my story without hesitation. I was a victim. Then he had been persuaded not to believe me at all, and I had become a victim of my own delusions; an object of pity. Now he was filled with shifting doubts.
"We'll just take it bit by bit," he said. "We'll contact Ms Hooper's parents. Where are you staying?"
"With me," said Ben.
Cross looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded. "All right," he said, standing up. "I'll be in touch."
"He's beginning to believe me, isn't he?"
Ben picked up my hand and twisted the ring on my little finger round. "Do you mean about you or about Jo?"
"Is there a difference?"
"I don't know," he said.
"I'm so sorry about Jo, Ben. I'm really, really sorry. I don't know how to say it."
"Sorry?" he said. "I still hope the phone will ring and it will be her."
"That would be nice," I said.
He poured us both some more wine. "Do you think a lot about the days when you were his prisoner?"
"Sometimes it just feels like a terrible nightmare and then I even think, Maybe I did dream it, after all. But then other times usually in the night, or when I'm on my own and feel especially vulnerable it comes back to me as if I was actually reliving it. As if I was actually in it again, and had never escaped, and all this' - I waved my hand around the brightly lit kitchen, the plates and wine glasses on the table 'was the dream. Everything's jumbled up, what I remember and what I imagine and what I fear. You know when I wake in the early hours, when everything seems grim and sad, what I sometimes think? I think that I'm on a wheel, going round and round. And that I've done all this before because in a way I have, haven't I, searching for Jo, falling in love with you? and I'm about to disappear into the darkness again."
"It'll soon be over now."
"Do you really think so?"
"Yes. The police will deal with it and, God, they'll want to get it right this time. You can just lie low for a few days, here with me, and then the nightmare will be over. I'm sure of it. You'll be off your wheel."
Twenty-four
Ben was at work and I was in his shower in the middle of the morning. That was one of the many good bits about Ben's house. It was modern and technological and things functioned in a way I had hardly even imagined before. The so-called shower at Terry's was like a dripping tap six feet above the bath. You stood under it and it drip-drip-dripped on to you. Even when the water was hot, the drops got cold on the way down. Ben's shower, on the other hand, was a real machine, with an apparently inexhaustible supply of hot water and the power and concentration of a fire hose. And it wasn't in the bath. It had an entire space to itself with a door. I crouched in a corner and I imagined that I was on a planet that was perpetually bombarded with hot rain. Of course, such a planet would have had its disadvantages when you wanted to eat or sleep or read a book, but just then it felt fine. A jet of hot water hitting my head with considerable force was a good way of stopping myself thinking.