Was this how an alcoholic felt? I wondered. It’s okay if I have a beer—a beer’s not vodka. It’s okay if it’s a half—a half’s not a pint. It’s okay if I’m with friends, if it’s after five, if the day has a Y in it…
I emptied my pocket on the counter, not meeting the cashier’s eye in case he saw right through me, and I sat in my car, thirty miles from home, scratching the silver foil from seven worthless cards. The first step is acknowledging you have a problem, everyone says. Only no one tells you what the second step is.
If I’d gone straight home, I’d have missed her. But I sat in the car for a minute or two, fighting the sweat that prickled my skin, the guilt, the shame, the desire for more. I found a quid in the glove box, a bunch of twenty-pence pieces in the defunct ashtray, waiting for a parking meter. Cobbling together enough for two more cards, I got out of the car, hating myself but doing it anyway. I’d get different ones this time. The Match 3 Tripler ones. I’d judge the queues, try and get a different cashier. If I got the same one, I’d give a rueful smile. The missus said I got the wrong ones, I’d say. Let him think I was henpecked. Better that than the truth. I passed Becca on my way in. She was looking at her phone, walking toward a car parked in the disabled bay. The woman in the driver’s seat had the same neat nose, the same curve in her top lip. Sister, I thought at first, then I clocked the gray roots above the blond, the lines around the mouth. I looked away, not wanting to get into conversation, not wanting to do anything but win something, anything, to justify my actions.
“What are you talking about?” Becca says now, but it’s too late. Her pause told me everything. I close my eyes, put myself back in that covered walkway that runs from the store into the car park. Becca didn’t see me—wasn’t looking—and she walked right past me and into her mum’s car. I wasn’t concentrating—didn’t care, only cared about the scratch cards, about how if I won a fiver on Match 3 Tripler, I’d only be four quid down—but a bit of me was still in work mode. A bit of me is always in work mode. I remember her hair was tied back—she’d worn it loose the couple of times she’d sat for us—and she had a zip-up hoodie with some kind of logo on the breast. Dark jeans.
No—not jeans. Trousers. Navy-blue trousers. What kind of teenager wears navy-blue trousers? Something slots into place. Becca calling Mina out of the blue; Mina being so grateful, she didn’t question it.
She’s a friend of Katya’s—they used to work together. Apparently Katya told her we might be looking for someone to take care of Sophia after school.
“You work at Tesco,” I say.
If I’m wrong, I’ve lost. No more upper hand, no more bargaining power.
She says nothing.
I’m right.
“So even if you’ve given them a false name and address, it’ll be a simple matter for me to request the CCTV from the supermarket and get your mum’s registration number. I expect you’ll be on the electoral roll there, won’t you?” I keep talking, faster and faster, gaining in confidence, falling back into the job I do day in, day out. “That’ll give us your full name and date of birth. Oh, and of course, we’ll have a record of when you’ve been in our property, so I’ll get our broadband supplier to provide me with the details of all devices logged in at the relevant times.”
It fits me like a second skin. Investigator. Father. The two halves of my self merging in the most awful way but in the most perfect way too. And in that second, I know that we’ll get out of here, and I’ll track down Becca—whoever she really is—and I’ll make her pay. Not with the fists that itch to be used but with the bread and butter of my working life.
The sound of running feet interrupts my thoughts.
“Becca?”
There’s a sound from inside the house now. I see a flicker of shadow across the strip of light beneath the cellar door as she passes it—one way, then back again. I call her name, over and over, knowing I’ve pushed