“And no one knew you were there?”

“No.”

“You haven’t seen a soul?”

“No.”

“Funny that,” said Ted. “Because there were fresh tire marks on the gravel up at the cottage there.”

“Were there?”

“Mercedes-type tire marks, if I’m not mistaken.”

“How can you tell-” began Israel.

“I don’t know who that could have been…” said Lyndsay.

“No?” said Ted. “Who do we know who drives a Mercedes?”

“Lots of people,” said Lyndsay.

“Including your da?”

“Well…”

“Hold on,” said Israel. “Do you mean Maurice Morris has already been down here looking for her?”

“No,” said Ted.

“No!” agreed Lyndsay.

“I don’t think he’s been down here looking for her,” said Ted.

“Right,” said Israel, confused.

“Because he wouldn’t need to look for her, would he? He knew full well that she was here all along. Didn’t he, Lyndsay?

Israel looked into the rearview mirror and could see that Lyndsay was looking shamefaced.

“No?” said Israel.

Lyndsay wiped away a tear.

“Steady on,” said Israel. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that our little Miss Runaway here was in caboots-”

“Cahoots?”

“Exactly. With her father.”

“No!” said Israel. “That’s ridiculous. That can’t be right. That’s not right, is it?”

“Yes,” said Lyndsay, from the children’s book trough. “It’s true. I’m sorry…”

“But you told me you’d run away!” Israel protested.

“Do you believe everything everyone tells you?” said Ted.

“No,” said Israel. “But…if he knew she was here, why didn’t he bring her back?”

“I think we’d best ask Lyndsay that one, hadn’t we?”

“Lyndsay?” said Israel, turning round to face her.

“Sorry,” she said between sobs.

“Best to tell the truth,” said Ted.

“Yes!” said Israel rather more forcefully than was necessary. “Tell us the truth!”

Ted slapped him round the head.

“We’re not the KGT.”

“KGB,” said Israel.

“Or them,” agreed Ted. “In your own time, my dear.”

Lyndsay wiped her eyes.

“My dad asked me to come down here,” she said.

“Why?” said Israel.

“He wanted the publicity.”

“What?”

“He thought it would get him the sympathy vote. In the election. After the way he’d treated Mum, everyone hated him. And he’d gone from being Mr. Popular to being…”

“A total scumbag,” said Ted.

“Yes.”

“Did your mum know about it as well?”

“No, no,” said Lyndsay. “She didn’t know. They don’t really get on anymore. They just argue at home. But I thought if Dad got elected again, things might-” And she started sobbing again.

“That’s all right, darling,” said Ted.

All three of them sat in silence as they drove through Ballynahinch.

“Well, now what?” said Israel.

“Please,” said Lyndsay, “you mustn’t tell anyone. If people find out-”

“If people find out yer da put you up to it, he’ll not be able to show his face in Tumdrum again,” said Ted. “And he’d lose the election, for sure.”

“Which wouldn’t be such a bad-” began Israel. “Sorry, Lyndsay.”

“It’s all right. I wouldn’t vote for him anyway,” said Lyndsay.

“But you were prepared to do all…this for him.”

“He’s my dad,” said Lyndsay.

“Well,” said Israel. “That’s…”

“Let’s listen to some Harry Potter, shall we?” said Ted.

“Which one is it?” said Lyndsay.

“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” said Ted.

“Oh great.”

“Oh no,” said Israel.

“And we’ll have a little think for a bit,” said Ted.

Lyndsay eventually dozed off to Stephen Fry’s susurrations. And they were finally back on the coast road up to Tumdrum.

“She’s asleep,” said Ted.

“Seems to be,” said Israel. “And we’re nearly back.”

“We’ve a decision to make, then,” said Ted.

“Yes.”

“What about your journalist friend?”

“What about her?”

“If you tell her, it’d be fate accomplished.”

“Fait accompli,” said Israel.

“Be in all the papers. The big fella’ll be finished. Divorce of the wife, I wouldn’t wonder.”

“God. So what if we don’t tell anyone?”

“Yon Lyndsay’s just a runaway, then, who’s happily reunited with her parents.”

“And Maurice Morris gets the sympathy vote.”

“He thinks,” said Ted.

“A moral dilemma, isn’t it?” said Israel.

“That it is,” said Ted.

“Between public and private,” said Israel.

“Probably,” said Ted.

“E. M. Forster again,” said Israel.

“Who?” said Ted.

“E. M. Forster.”

“He play for Chelsea?”

“No! He’s a famous writer.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know him if he offered me a sausage sandwich,” said Ted.

“He’s dead,” said Israel. “So it’s not likely.”

“Aye.”

“Anyway, he famously said that if offered the choice between betraying a friend and betraying his country he hoped he’d have the courage to betray his country.”

“Hmm,” said Ted.

“What?”

“I don’t know about that.”

The sign up ahead said Welcome to Tumdrum.

“Decision time,” said Ted.

23

Maurice Morris was not a bad man as such. He’d gone into politics for the same reason that everyone else goes into politics-to make a difference and to do good. And he believed that he had done good. He had nothing whatsoever to reproach himself with.

Which is why, on the morning of the election, he was able to look himself fair and square in the eye in the bathroom mirror and find nothing amiss. If he said so himself-and he did say so, Maurice believed in articulating his own self-worth-he was looking pretty good. “Looking pretty good,” he said. He had a radiance about him. He wasn’t only blessed with good looks and with good luck, he was pretty damn smart too. He knew he must be smart because he didn’t know anyone else who’d grown up on the Shankill Road in Belfast and gone to Campbell College, a private school for boys, even though his father was only a postman, and then gone on to found Northern Ireland’s most successful independent financial advisers, and then gone on to become an MLA in the local assembly, and who had lost his seat, but who was now about to be gloriously reelected. He had achieved far and away above what might have been expected of him. His life had a trajectory, a story.

And he had pulled off quite a coup. His daughter had been reunited with him the night before the election-graciously returned by the librarians-and in enough time for the six o’clock news to cover it. And for the papers to have it for their headline. If that didn’t win him votes, then nothing would.

He looked good in his plain black suit. He should wear black suits more often: he was usually inclined toward pinstripes, with statement linings. Frank Sinatra wore plain black suits, of course, and Frank was one of his great heroes, the epitome of fifties cool. He was lucky enough to have seen Sinatra sing with Tony Bennett in Vegas, late 1980s. The voice was gone, but Frank was still soldiering on. Still in the tux. “My Way.” “Luck Be a Lady.” “Come Fly with Me.” When people said Sinatra was a crook, what they didn’t understand was where he was coming from-born the son of immigrants, worked as a young man as a riveter in the shipyard. This was someone who had made himself what he was. And that took courage and bravado and commitment. That’s just what it took.

His wife called from downstairs.

“It’s time to go!”

He winked at himself in the mirror and intoned his current favorite motivational slogan: “Winners do things differently.”

At the Devines’ farm, meanwhile, Israel Armstrong splashed some cold water on his face, dried himself off, and forced himself to eat a spoonful of peanut butter. He already had his migraine, which had started, as usual, with a sort of headache just over his left eye, a piercing pain, and then he’d started feeling nauseous, as though on the verge of vomiting. He still had the prescription in his pocket for the SSRIs from Dr. Withers. He hadn’t yet decided: drugs, counseling? Maybe he just needed to get away from here.