Out! Read online

  Mark hesitated, not sure what to say. If David wasn’t over him, he didn’t want to give him false hope by telling him Patrick wasn’t exactly his at the moment—and anyway, what did it matter? What mattered was finding Fen. “I’m still glad you’re here,” he said at last, resting a hand for a moment on David’s thigh without really thinking it through.

  “Um,” David began.

  They were coming up to a T junction. “Turn left here,” Mark told him.

  “Muchas grassy-arse, but that wasn’t actually what I wanted to ask. Your Someone Else. How would you say things are going?”

  Mark stared at him. “Is now really the time?”

  “Um. Possibly. You see, I may have received a phone call from the little moppet yesterday—and by the way, how did you think I knew you were injured? Facebook stalking is a wonderful thing, but it can only get you so far.”

  “David, please, could we get to the point?”

  “Well… She seemed a tad upset about the contretemps between you and a certain Mr. S. Else.”

  Oh God. This was all Mark’s fault. “What did she tell you?”

  “Well, she was asking me too. About your work, specifically.”

  “My work?”

  “Mm. Did you know she went to see your young Monsieur Else last night?”

  “Patrick. His name’s Patrick,” Mark said distractedly, still scanning the pavements and bus shelters as they drove. Then he realised what David had said. “And no, I had no idea. She said she was going to see Lex—that’s a friend she’s made here.”

  “Oh, I know all about Lex. Fen and I had an interesting discussion on employment law, actually.”

  They had? Mark boggled. “But what about Patrick? What did she say about him?”

  “Well, it more or less boiled down to he’s being, like, so stupid.” David’s voice rose into a fair imitation of Fen’s breathy outrage for the last part. “Or, to be brutally accurate, they’re both being so stupid.”

  Mark winced. And then despaired, as they reached the school gates for the second time, having searched two alternative routes and found no sign of Fen. He felt so helpless. She could be anywhere.

  “Have you tried ringing people she might have gone to?” David asked, pulling in to the side of the road.

  Mark struggled to think. Who might Fen have run to? It wasn’t a long list—not that he knew of, anyway. David—who was here, so could be scratched off at once; Lex, who was probably at work anyway—and God, he didn’t even have their number; Ellen—

  Oh God. He was going to have to call Ellen.

  No, wait. If Fen had turned up at Ellen’s, she’d have called, wouldn’t she? Unless of course she was waiting to see how long it’d be before he noticed she’d gone missing, of course.

  Yes. Yes, that was it. Fen was safe with Ellen, who hadn’t called because she wanted to teach him a lesson.

  Heart thumping, Mark made the call.

  “Mark? What is it? Is something wrong with Florence?” Ellen’s voice was sharp. She sounded harried, and there was busy background noise.

  “Are you at work?” Why the hell hadn’t it occurred to him she would be?

  “It’s Monday. Of course I’m at work. What is it?”

  Mark took a deep breath. “Fen didn’t turn up at school today. Do you think she might have gone back to your house?”

  Ellen’s voice rose the predictable two octaves. “What do you mean, she’s not at school? I thought you were looking after her! Don’t you even know where she is?”

  “Of course I don’t!” Mark snapped, his nerves run ragged. “Why do you think I’m ringing you?”

  He stared as David nimbly plucked the phone from his fingers. “Hello, Mrs. Nugent? This is David—you remember we met at the Christmas do? You were in a delightfully retro little frock in pine green. I know, this is all terribly trying, isn’t it? But it really would ease everybody’s minds if you could find some way of checking whether the little moppet has gone back to your house.”

  David listened for a moment. “Oh, goodness me, no. I’m merely here as designated driver, Mark being something of a wounded soldier right now. No, no—just an ankle. Sprained, not broken. Well, hardly even that. Twisted. But don’t worry, he’s got me to mop his fevered— Oh. Right. Silly me. Well, we’ll look forward to hearing from you, then.”

  He hung up. “She’s getting the next train home.”

  “Good.” Mark grabbed his phone back and called Patrick.

  “Yeah?”

  Mark winced. It wasn’t exactly a great to hear from you sort of tone. “Patrick, I’m sorry to bother you, but is Lex at work right now?”

  There was a pause. “Why?”

  “It’s Fen. She never turned up at school this morning, and she’s not answering her phone. I thought maybe she might be with Lex, but I haven’t got their number.”

  There was another, longer pause. “Lex is here. Call you back in a mo, yeah?”

  What the hell did that mean? “Drive back to the village,” Mark instructed David, and busied himself clenching and unclenching his fists while he waited for the phone to ring. When it finally did, he nearly dropped it. “Patrick?”

  “’Ullo, Mr. Nugent. It’s me. Lex.”

  “Do you know where Fen is?”

  “I don’t know, but I got an idea. There’s this boy, see.”

  “A boy?” Why the hell hadn’t he known about this? “From the theatre group?”

  “Nuh. From where she used to live.”

  “From Warton?”

  “Yeah. Ollie. Been having a hard time at school, she was telling me.”

  Did Ellen know about this? “And you think she might have gone to see him? But how would she even get there?”

  There was a pause. “We, um, we sorta looked it up. Yesterday. On our phones. I swear I din’t know she was gonna bunk off school,” Lex added in a rush. “But it’s dead easy, ’cos it’s all commuter lines. You just gotta get the train down to King’s Cross, get on the Tube and then another train out to Warton. Prolly only take ’n hour an’ ’alf.”

  An hour and a half. She could have got off the bus a stop early, and she’d have been right by Bishops Langley station. That would have been at, what, around half past eight? Maybe earlier? And the school hadn’t rung him until nearly eleven. What the hell did they think they were playing at, leaving it so long to call? Fen could have been halfway to Scotland by then!

  Mark looked at his watch. It was eleven forty-five. “What’s his address? This boy. Where does he live?”

  “Dunno. Sorry. But I fort your ex missus might?”

  Ellen. Yes. “Thank you. I’ve got to go now.” He hung up and quickly redialled Ellen.

  She didn’t bother with hello. “Have you found her?”

  “No. Where are you?”

  “On my way home, of course. I’m just about to go down to the Tube. Where are you?”

  “Bishops Langley.” Mark looked out of the car window and saw that was no longer accurate. “Wait a minute.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “David, where are we?”

  “On the way to Warton. Obviously.”

  Right. Yes. That made sense. “We’re on our way. But do you know anything about a boy named Ollie?”

  There was nothing. Damn it. She must be underground, if not on the Underground. Mark looked at his watch again. The journey out from her office in Southwark to Warton wasn’t a quick one—at least, Ellen complained about it often enough—so the chances were they’d beat her there, using the road and cutting across country. Mark had the instinctive feeling that would be best for all concerned. “David, can you drive any faster?”

  “Not without getting you speeding tickets. It’s speed-camera city along here.”

  “Damn the speeding tickets! We need to get there before Ellen does.”

&
nbsp; There was a pause. “Because?”

  Mark’s stomach flipped over painfully. “Because if she gets there first and starts taking over…” He swallowed. “She might want Fen to go back to live with her.”

  “Oh, petal.” David patted his thigh with one elegantly manicured hand. “We won’t let the nasty woman take your daughter away.”

  Mark couldn’t help feeling that was a tad unfair on Ellen.

  He also couldn’t help feeling he really didn’t care right now.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ellen’s house in Warton, which she’d bought following the divorce, was a small, mid-terrace town house with next to no on-street parking nearby. Most of the occupants of the terrace had turned their pocket-sized front gardens into pocket-sized car ports for the first family car, and bagged their little patch of street to park the second. Which was something of a problem, as just as David and Mark drove past it trying to find a space, they passed Patrick’s Micra coming in the opposite direction.

  Mark grabbed his phone and dialled. “Patrick? What are you doing here?”

  “’Ullo, Mr. Nugent. It’s me again. Lex. Patrick’s driving.”

  “What are you doing here? Never mind. Tell Patrick to go down Kenilworth Drive and turn right into Lammermoor Lane—no, left, if he’s coming from that direction—and there should be some parking there.” He hung up. “David, drive back past again and drop me off.”

  “And what? You’ll hop into the house and start laying down the law?”

  “Well, it’s better than hopping three streets, for God’s sake.”

  “I’ve got a better idea. What’s the ex-Mrs. Mark’s house number again?”

  “Twenty-seven. That one, with the Peugeot in the drive.” Ellen didn’t use her car to get to work.

  David swung the car around and shamelessly parked in number twenty-three’s empty drive. “What? They’re almost certainly out, and anyway, I’m going to leave a note.”

  “Look, just stay with the car, all right?” Mark jumped out of the car, winced painfully and hobbled the short way down the road.

  This was madness. Here they were, all converging on Ellen’s house, and for God’s sake, Fen probably wasn’t even there. He’d just hoped Ellen might have the boy’s address or phone number, or at least some clue to where she’d stolen off to. He fumbled his key in the lock with a rush of gratitude to Ellen for giving him one, even if it had been only so he could water her plants when she took Fen on holiday last summer. Calm down, he told himself. She almost certainly isn’t here—

  “Dad?” Fen’s shocked voice and decidedly guilty face greeted him in the hall. She was wearing jeans now, not her school uniform, which proved beyond all doubt that this was premeditated.

  “Young lady,” Mark said sternly, almost reeling with relief. “You are in so much trouble right now.”

  He advanced, and she backed into the living room—where, Mark saw, she wasn’t alone.

  The boy she was with was, to put it bluntly, not the sort of boyfriend Mark would have hoped she’d choose. His ripped jeans were the least objectionable part of his entire outfit. The inevitable hoodie, while intact, was emblazoned with what was presumably some pop culture icon making a rude gesture. Like Fen, he had pierced ears. Unlike Fen, he’d opted for the sort of wince-inducing cylindrical rings that stretched his lobes out so far you could drive a bus through them. He’d also seen fit to have a bar stuck through his left eyebrow, and the edge of a tattoo was just visible at his wrist.

  He could have been used as an illustration for an article on teenage rebellion, although, if you asked Mark, the boy didn’t look rebellious so much as dangerously feral.

  “Is this Ollie?” he snapped.

  Fen shot him a look of utter betrayal. “How do you know about Ollie?” She marched up to Mark, fists clenched at her sides. “Have you been stalking me?”

  What? How the hell was Mark suddenly in the wrong? “Lex told me. And before you get all irate with Lex, this was after I rang up Patrick worried out of my mind because the school told me you hadn’t turned up today. What the hell do you think you’re playing at? And switching off your phone?”

  “I forgot it was off. We always have to switch them off for school or they confiscate them,” Fen said defensively. “And I told Serena to say I was ill,” she added in a much smaller voice.

  “And you really thought they wouldn’t check with me?” Mark drew in a breath, then stopped as the boy—Ollie—stepped forward.

  “Oi, leave ’er alone. ’S my fault.” His voice was slow and thick, and as he walked forward, he seemed to stumble, bracing himself with a hand on the wall.

  Mark couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What—are you drunk?” Furious, he went to grab the boy by the shoulder.

  Fen darted between them. “Don’t touch him!”

  Mark narrowed his eyes at her. Was her face flushed from anger—or alcohol? “Have you been drinking as well?”

  “No. Jesus. He’s not drunk, all right? He’s got CP, so just leave him alone, all right?”

  “CP? Is that some kind of drug?”

  Out of nowhere, Patrick grabbed Mark’s arm. When had he got here? “Uh, Mark…”

  Fen made an inarticulate, high-pitched noise, like an overly exasperated kettle. “Oh, for God’s sake… Cerebral palsy.” She enunciated it loudly, distinctly and with withering contempt: SEH-REH-BRAL PALL-SEE. Duh didn’t even begin to cover it.

  Mark felt simultaneously hot and cold. A nasty little part of him wanted to bluster and rail that how the hell could he have known? A much larger part of him wanted to sink into the ground. He’d been an insensitive idiot. He’d been an insensitive idiot in front of Patrick. “God—I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  The boy shrugged, an awkward, lopsided motion. “’S all right. ’M used to it.”

  The silence was broken by Lex’s cheerful voice. “I’m gonna put the kettle on, yeah? Fink we all need a cuppa.”

  They ended up all perching awkwardly on Ellen’s three-piece suite in her tiny living room, matching mugs of tea in their hands. Well, Mark, Fen, Patrick, Lex and Ollie did. David had tactfully taken his outside, “To keep an eye on the car.” Patrick had asked Mark if he was all right with him staying, which Mark was hoping was a good sign. Lex had just stayed, which suggested they were feeling guilty about grassing Fen up and wanted to make sure Mark wasn’t going to throw the book at her.

  Or maybe Lex just hadn’t discovered tact yet.

  Mark cleared his throat, feeling absurdly self-conscious. “Now, Fen, I know you were upset by Patrick and me having a, ah, disagreement, but there was really no need for you to…” He trailed off at Fen’s increasingly incredulous looks.

  “What? This is not about you, Dad, all right?” She flushed. “I’m sorry I missed school, but it was really important, all right?”

  It wasn’t about him? “What was?”

  “Ollie. See, there’s these kids at school, that’s like my old school, right, you know, Waverley High, and they’re like total bastards to him and it’s not fair, and they’re always calling him spaz and crip and stuff, and—”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mark noticed Ollie’s flinch, barely perceptible before he reverted to hands-in-pockets, am-I-bovvered type. God, poor kid. “Fen! Slow down.” Mark tried to make soothing gestures. “Come on, calm down.”

  “But it’s not fair. And I know what you’re gonna say, right, and it’s just rubbish.”

  Mark looked at her for a couple of beats before speaking. “What’s rubbish?”

  Fen’s chin remained up. “You’re gonna say talk to a teacher, aren’t you?” She waited.

  “That was going to be my advice, yes. Is there any particular reason why you can’t?”

  “You’re not listening. We did, okay? Ages ago. We talked to Mr. Hayes about it, who’s our form teac
her, and he just did, like, nothing, and then we heard him talking to Mr. Smith about Ollie like he’s a problem, and Mr. Smith, he’s the PE teacher, he made this joke about Ollie playing football in games and that’s why we keyed their cars…” Fen’s voice trailed off a bit towards the end, as well it might. Then she rallied. “And now Mr. Smith’s saying Ollie shouldn’t do PE at all, ’cos it’s not fair on the other kids having to make allowances, which is rubbish, and it’s only gonna make his legs worse and make everyone say stupid crap about him even more.”

  Mark glanced at Ollie, whose ears must be burning if their colour was any indication, and bit back a knee-jerk comment about the vandalism. That was in the past. More importantly, if any teacher had disparaged his child like that he’d most likely have been egging the vandals on and handing them a knife so they could slash the tyres as well.

  “Yes, well, there are ways and means to tackle these things,” he said finally.

  Patrick was nodding. “Yeah, mate.” He spoke to Ollie, not Fen. “Can you get your parents, or your guardians or whatever, to make a written complaint? Far as I know, you wanna go to your head teacher first, or if they’re not likely to help, you can go straight to the school governors, then the local authority, and after that there’s the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal. Chances are it won’t get that far, though. Not something like this. The law’s pretty clear on indirect discrimination.”

  Ollie was staring at Patrick. “How’d you know all that?”

  Patrick shrugged. “Work for a charity for the disabled, don’t I? It’s adults, the one I’m with, not kids, but you learn stuff anyway. If you want, I’ll have a word with your mum and dad—will they be at home now?”

  “Nah. They both work. It’ll just be me bruvver there now, less he’s gone out.”

  “No problem. I can come round one night, or at the weekend. Unless you reckon they wouldn’t be interested? Did you try talking to ’em about it, and they didn’t listen?”

  Ollie hung his head. “Nah… ’S just, ’m not a little kid anymore, right? Fed up with everyone treatin’ me like I’m a problem.”

  “You’re not the problem, mate. It’s that git of a teacher who’s the problem. And trust me, even grown-ups need a bit of help sometimes to solve their problems.” Patrick glanced at Mark as he said it. “C’mon. Let’s get you back to your house, yeah? ’Cos chances are your mum and dad are going spare too ’cos the school’s told ’em you never turned up.”