Gone Astray by Michelle Davies

spent the rest of the afternoon and evening consumed by thoughts of what he
must do next. He mustn’t allow complacency to creep in, to assume the outcome would fall into place simply because he wanted it to. The odds had been stacked in his favour so far – the
girl was taken care of, the post box was serendipitously being emptied when he arrived to post his letter, so he knew for sure it had been collected for delivery the next day – but it
didn’t mean they would stay that way.
    He almost didn’t recognize her voice at first, although the number that came up indicated it was her calling. Her voice was barely a whisper and there was a lot of background noise in the
hotel bar that made it even more difficult to hear. Eventually, after twice telling her to speak up, he got the gist.
    She wasn’t asking for an apology for cancelling on her: she was asking if he’d seen the news.
    ‘No, why?’
    ‘Something terrible has happened.’
    He feigned ignorance. ‘What’s happened? Are you okay?’
    ‘It’s not me. It’s—’ She let out a sob.
    ‘You’re scaring me,’ he lied as he reclined on his sofa with his feet up, nursing a Diet Coke.
    ‘You need to turn on the news,’ she said.
    ‘Hang on.’ He pretended to switch channels, but his television was already tuned to the BBC’s rolling news bulletin. The details were sketchy so far but the story was creeping
further up the running order as the minutes ticked by and it was on the ticker at the bottom of the screen.
    ‘Oh my God,’ he breathed. ‘I don’t believe it.’
    ‘What are we going to do?’
    He pretended to stumble over his words before delivering his perfectly rehearsed answer. ‘But it’s nothing to do with us. You’re in Scotland and I’m in London.’ She
thought he lived in a fiat in Clapham South, just off the common, and that the accountancy firm he worked for was based in Euston.
    ‘But what if Mack tells the police about us meeting up? They might think we’re involved.’
    ‘You, you mean.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well, I’ve not spoken to him. He doesn’t even know I exist.’
    ‘Are you trying to drop me in it?’ Her voice grew louder as anger took hold. ‘We’re in this together. You said you’d help me.’
    He took a mental step back. ‘Of course we are, but we haven’t actually done anything wrong. If this was tomorrow and I was at the hotel with you, it might be a different story. But
it’s not, so we don’t need to worry. He’s hardly going to say anything considering what’s been going on between you two.’
    The first time he saw Mack Kinnock with her he could’ve kissed the ground. Instantly he knew she was his trump card, the key to getting what was rightfully his. It was at the end of April,
in Starbucks just off the station concourse at King’s Cross in central London. He’d been trailing Mack as usual one Saturday afternoon when, to his surprise, he’d headed to Haxton
station to catch a train into the city. Figuring Mack was off on another spending spree with
his
money, he followed him to Marylebone, then on the Bakerloo Line one stop to Baker Street,
before changing on to the Metropolitan Line to travel the three stops to King’s Cross. The kiss with which Mack had greeted her left him in no doubt as to the nature of their relationship.
After all those months of waiting and watching it was like
he
had hit the jackpot.
    The atmosphere didn’t stay genial for long though, and after an hour’s heated discussion Mack stormed off and left her crying into her latte, at which point he’d swooped in,
the benevolent stranger reading a newspaper at the next table, to offer her a tissue and a friendly shoulder to cry on. She was too upset to tell him to leave her alone and after some gentle
cajoling he whisked her to a nearby pub and plied her with white wine until the whole sorry saga came tumbling out.
    ‘But I want him to say something,’ she hissed down the phone as he took another