“Carry me upstairs,” she says, putting her hands around his neck and putting on her Helpless Hannah face. She loves it when he carries her. She’s small enough.

“I can’t. My shoulder’s killing me.”

“Well, don’t be too long. Come up soon.”

Leonard doesn’t go up soon. It’s cruel to have to stay downstairs. Life is playing tricks on him. Francine has made it clear — isn’t it so? — that she does not want him to pull out and flatten the futon tonight, that he will be more than welcome on her side of the bed. Everything she has done since his return is telling him she is ready, hoping even, to make love. It’s what he’s wanted for the past few weeks but has not dared to initiate. At last a window opens in their life. But Leonard cannot attend to his wife or even satisfy himself just yet. His mind is fixed elsewhere.

Leonard has to hunt to find the remote console pushed into the folds of the futon. It’s behind the still-warm cushions where Francine has been sitting. His hand is shaking even more than when he loaded Maxie’s photograph the previous evening. He has been aroused by Francine’s attention, the warmth and smell of her, his love for her too infrequently expressed. That’s cause enough to make him shake. But he is shaken by the lies he’s told as well. And by the stupid criminality he’s felt, the guilt, of coming back to his wife stinking of Lucy’s roll-ups. But most of all he’s shaken by the phone call he must make. He’ll do it now and go upstairs for his reward. Do it, do it, do it now, ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum. He’ll phone. Yes, he will phone.

Leonard clicks an on-screen toolbar and, half watching for updates in the headlines window that is minimized in the corner of the screen, opens Utilities and scrolls through the options until his arrow locates TelecomUK. He specifies Domestic and Residential, types in Lucy’s full name, and identifies her hometown, not expecting any luck and not getting any. Cell phone numbers are always hard to find with so little information. He presumes her mother will have a registered home address, though. What isn’t registered these days? He tries again, with “Emmerson, Nadia.” But gets nothing other than “This person could not be found. Check your data.” Maybe she has changed her name, he thinks. Or has a married name. Or has adopted a more exciting title: Red Nadia, Nadia Firebrand, Ms. Sofa Emmerson. He simplifies his search, her surname only. The engine offers seventy results, only four of which have N as their opening initial. He highlights and strikes out the rest, and then strikes out “Nigel Emmerson.” He’s narrowed it to three. He writes the numbers and addresses next to the initials N. H., N., and N. T. T. on a scrap of card torn from the cover of Francine’s Florentine box. He’ll have to try them all until he strikes lucky. But Leonard cannot risk calling the numbers from the house — there is an extension next to the bed that always Morses its own erratic commentary when the terrestrial line is in use — and so he puts his shoes back on and, hoping that Francine is too fast asleep by now to hear the chime of the front door, goes out into the street and to the parking bay to try these numbers from the van, even though he knows it’s almost ten o’clock and late in the day to be calling strangers.

N. H. Emmerson, or at least the person who answers the phone, is female and not quite British. Canadian, perhaps. She sounds anxious, not used to evening calls.

“Is Lucy there?” he asks.

“Lucy who?”

“Lucy Emmerson.”

“We are Emmersons, but we haven’t got a Lucy here.”

“Do you have a Lucy in your family?”

“Who is this speaking, please?”

Leonard ends the call rather than answer, rather than be ill-mannered and not reply. He knows he has mishandled it. This time, with N. T. T., he’ll be more subtle. But there is no need. “Lucy’s living with her mum these days,” an older man volunteers at once.

“Is that with Nadia?”

“Correct.”

“Can I check her phone number with you?” Leonard reads out the last remaining number on his list.

“Correct,” the man says again. “Is it Lucy that you want? Say hi from Grandpa Norman, will you, when you speak? Do you take messages?”

“I can.”

“You can tell her that I’m sorry about her bicycle. Some people’ll help themselves to anything these days.”

“Somebody stole her bicycle?”

“Correct.”

Leonard cannot phone at once. His heart is beating and his mouth is dry. He drains the last few drops of now cold tea from the neck of his flask and clears his throat. If it weren’t for Francine, perhaps awake indoors, and maybe even calling out his name to no reply before coming downstairs in her bare feet, hoping to find her husband safe and deaf to the world between his iPod earphones rather than dead on the carpet, he’d leave this final call for fifteen minutes or so. Enough time for a fortifying shot of rum, if they still have any rum. Enough time for deep breaths and embouchures. He dares not risk the fifteen minutes, though. He keys the number at once and lets it ring. He will allow ten tones and then give up. A second and maybe better possibility would be showing up tomorrow at the Zone as agreed and talking then and there to Lucy, explaining to her face to face why her genius is flawed. Yes, that would be less cowardly and less immediate. But Nadia Emmerson answers her house phone at once. Her voice is still familiar and unnervingly attractive, though any trace of adopted Texan has gone.

“Has anybody at this number lost a bike?” Leonard asks, unable to stop himself from disguising his own voice.

“Good heavens, yes. My daughter has. Who’s talking, please?”

Leonard can hear a background voice, the television possibly, except that Nadia is shushing it. “It’s a man about your bike,” she says, off-mike, and to the phone, “Hold on. She’s coming now.” And here is Lucy on the line, teenage-husky and familiar. “Hey,” she says.

“Lucy, listen to me, this is Leonard Lessing,” he whispers. “Pretend to Nadia that someone’s found your bike, okay? Then redial me on this number in the morning, at nine o’clock. Exactly nine o’clock. We have to talk. Tomorrow morning, then. Don’t let me down.”

Leonard lets himself again into a lightless house and undresses in the hall, wincing off his sweater and his shirt. He stows his shoes on the shelf and carries his used clothes upstairs with him for the laundry pile. The floorboards wheeze beneath his feet. It is the second time today that he has stepped naked into the bedroom. Now that his troubles seem at least partially resolved, he is in a celebratory mood. Francine will leave for work tomorrow by half past eight, and by half past nine Leonard will have rescued himself from the madness that has trapped him briefly. He has been tired — the driving and the stress, the alcohol, the lies — but unexpectedly he now feels wide awake and optimistic rather than defeated. Francine has offered him an olive leaf. She’s coiled her fingers round his fingers. She has said “Kiss-kiss.” Perhaps she’s surfacing at last from the hollow of her missing girl, he thinks. I’m here to help, I’m here to cherish her. So he does not put on his snooza shorts but slides under the duvet undressed. He puts his hand on Francine’s hip. She’s not asleep. “Too late,” she says.

5

THERE’S TIME TO KILL. It’s Friday morning, hardly light, and Francine is already out of bed and showered. Leonard, woken by the jerk and flap of her towels and then the bluster of a hair dryer, watches her get dressed, side-lit through the gap in the partly drawn curtains. She’s always businesslike and practical on working days: her dyed auburn hair gathered at the nape of her neck in a grip, uncomplicated makeup, and what she calls her regimentals — trousers, cardigan, flat shoes, fabrics and colors that will not show dirt or mark too noticeably with scuffs from children’s shoes or paintbrushes. His wife of nine years now is at her most striking when she isn’t trying, in Leonard’s view. The less trouble she takes, the more beguiling she seems. He recognizes her daughter, Celandine, in her, in the girlish part: the unguardedly expressive wide mouth and the forward chin now lifted for the mirror — which, though Francine is forty-eight years old, suggest a dauntless spirit and an adolescent impudence and temper.