my hands about in frustration. ‘She definitely said the industrial estate? And she meant round here? They weren’t getting any transport, like a train or a bus?’
Victor screwed up his eyes as though he was replaying the conversation in his head. ‘No, it’s near here.’
My brain was racing down the avenue of rusty old machinery falling on them and killing them outright, a gas explosion, police raids, drugs, how many drugs and what sort and who knew what they’d be cut with, never mind what the bloody people supplying them might do.
I pointed ineffectually at his phone. ‘Can you look at Instagram and see if there’s anything to give us a clue? Was it in an old factory? Or some kind of empty unit?’
I was probably forcing him to break all sorts of teenage codes of honour, but if I had to bully it out of him, I would. Victor was hesitating. But I wasn’t in the mood for being messed about.
‘Sorry, but you have to do it. I’ll take full responsibility and I’ll try and keep you out of it.’
Eventually he looked up. ‘The Rising Sun? Is that possible?’
‘Oh my God. That’s a disgusting hovel. It’s always in the local paper for raids and fights.’ I held onto a ray of hope. ‘She wouldn’t have been able to get in without ID, though.’
Victor raised his eyebrows as though I still believed in fairies. ‘Um, most of the sixth formers have fake ID.’
‘How do they get that?’ I flapped my hand at him. ‘Doesn’t matter. I need to get down there.’
I ran downstairs, texting Faye as I went, wishing I had the nimbleness of teenagers rather than my fat old fingers writing a load of gobbledygook.
The response was instant:
I’m on my way.
Patrick leapt up and grabbed his coat, just as Victor came flying down the stairs, fully dressed. ‘Shall I come with you? They might let me in a bit more easily.’
I didn’t stop to think how screwed up all of this was, relying on my husband’s secret son to be the knight in shining armour for our daughter. I shuffled them out to the car and screeched off, with Patrick shouting at me to slow down and not kill us all.
I sped as fast as I dared along the little high street, all but deserted bar the occasional dog walker, and down the narrow lane leading to the industrial estate. I would’ve preferred anger to have the upper hand, but I just felt fear, cold and all-consuming, the headlines of those teenagers who’d tried drugs just the once and died running through my head like a slideshow. And yet, there was still room in my brain to want to get there before Faye, before Georgia had spun her spin, placing the blame firmly on Phoebe.
The industrial estate was pitch black apart from the occasional yellow street light that served to make the whole area look as spooky as hell with its discarded old tyres on patches of wasteland and huge steel doors fronting the warehouses. Thankfully, it wasn’t difficult to find the pub. We followed the noise to a dingy dump sandwiched between a used-car garage and a fancy-dress shop, gaudy clown faces with plastic ginger hair hanging pathetically in the window. A girl was throwing up in-between a Mini and a Kia on the forecourt, the ultimate romantic date for the gangly lad holding her hair back. I bet the garage owners were fed up with jet-washing the effects of too much vodka and coke every morning.
Outside the main door stood a gang of boys and girls, most of them smoking and all looking intimidating in their biker boots and leather jackets. A few were sucking on balloons, which, judging by the little silver cannisters discarded on the floor and glinting in the light, was NOS. I’d found tiny cannisters littered in the flower beds for days after Phoebe’s impromptu party and, as usual, she’d made out I was the ultimate party-pooper, having a fit about nothing. ‘It’s just a bit of fun. You can buy NOS on Amazon! God, it’s just laughing gas. It’s not even illegal.’ When I’d read up on it though, there was a suggestion that large amounts of nitrous oxide could cause damage to the brain, which didn’t seem like a bit of fun. That new and unwelcome knowledge hopped into the queue, number seven hundred and sixty-three, behind the other worries already on my radar.