I didn’t respond. That proves I have resolve, whatever Mina says.
The hall floor is wet, a trail of melted snow leading into the downstairs loo. They’ve finished.
“Pair of softies,” I say as I come into the kitchen. “Couldn’t hack the cold?”
Becca’s sitting on the counter, playing something on her phone. I look around the empty kitchen.
“Where’s Sophia?”
“Outside. I came in to make some hot chocolate.”
The kettle has recently boiled, steam rising from the spout, but there are no mugs on the counter. “You didn’t get very far.” I push my feet into the wellies I keep by the back door.
Our garden is a small rectangle with a padlocked shed in one corner and a sorry huddle of pots where the patio is. Beneath the snow, a concrete path leads to the shed. Neither Mina nor I are great gardeners; it’s a space for Sophia to play, that’s all.
Only she’s not playing now.
The garden is empty.
Sophia’s gone.
EIGHT
PASSENGER 2D
My name is Michael Prendergast, and when I got on Flight 79, I turned left.
Whenever I flew long haul as a child, my parents would be seated in business class, me behind, in economy. Mum and Dad would take it in turns to pop back and check on me, giving me the boxed chocolates from their coffee as a peace offering.
“You don’t need the extra space,” my mother said. “And besides, once you turn left on a plane, you’ll be ruined forever: you’ll never want to turn right again.”
I couldn’t see her point. We had enough money to turn left every time we flew, whether it was a weekend break to Lisbon or the fortnight we spent in Mustique every year, at the villa belonging to one of Dad’s clients. Why slum it when you could travel in style?
Five hours into a trip to Antigua, I snuck in to see them. It was late, and most people were sleeping, and I held my breath as I tiptoed down the aisle to where Mum was stretched out. I was a twelve-year-old beanpole, too big to share seats, but I squeezed in anyway.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Just for a bit.”
She gave me her unopened crisps and a bottle of fizzy water and plugged the headset in so I could watch TV. I flicked through the channels—four times the number I had back in economy—but I hadn’t even had a chance to choose when a shadow loomed large beside us.
“Sorry,” Mum said. She gave an oops—you got me! smile to the air stewardess and pulled the headset off me.
“Come on, you.” The stewardess smiled back at Mum, but her fingernails dug into my shoulders as she walked me back, and my cheeks burned with shame. I hadn’t been hurting anyone. What harm would it have done to leave me there? As for my parents, how dared they treat me like a second-class citizen?
When we landed, I watched the passengers up front disembark first, scrutinizing their clothes and luggage, mentally compiling a list of labels around which I wanted to build my life. My parents had Louis Vuitton; I had a carry-on case that came free with a briefcase Dad bought.
“When you earn your own money,” Dad said, “you can have whatever suitcase you want.” He would bang on and on about understanding the value of money, when a grand is a grand, whichever way you look at it. Pocket money was a fiver here, a tenner there, when some of my mates got twenty quid a week.
“It’s not about the money,” Dad said when I was almost eighteen. I was trying to talk to him about it calmly. Man-to-man. “It’s the principle.”
It so was the money. Once, on a flight to Mustique, there were seats free in business class.
“I see you’re seated separately,” the woman at the desk said. “I could offer you an upgrade today for just three hundred.”
Three hundred pounds! I’d seen Mum spend more than that on a pair of shoes without breaking a sweat. My heart skipped with excitement. It was finally going to happen! I imagined myself stretched out beneath a soft blanket, flicking between films and mainlining Coke.
“He’ll be fine in economy, thank you.”
My mouth fell open. “But—”
Dad glared at me, cutting off my protests before turning back to the check-in woman with a smile. “Kids today, huh? Don’t know they’re born.”
She glanced at me as I sniffed back the tears I knew would only provoke another rant from Dad, then gave him a tight smile. He’s like this all