Run Away (10 page)

Chapter 16

July 14, England

“Y
OU KNOW WHEN
you’re abroad, and it’s absolutely scorching?”

Dr. Myers nodded. Kayla was starting not to notice the ever-­present red light that recorded her every word. Perhaps it was the fact she had nobody else to talk to, but opening up to Cassandra was becoming much easier.

“Not just hot. The kind of sweltering heat that invades every pore and orifice in your body, and leaves you feeling suffocated, like there’s no way on earth you can possibly stand it any longer. Like you can’t move, or speak, or think about anything other than how hot it is. Then, just when you reach breaking point, there’s a breeze. And even if it only lasts a few seconds, the relief is incredible. Suddenly, the heat is bearable again, if only for a few more minutes.” Kayla looked away from Cassandra. She still felt embarrassed, discussing her feelings so candidly. “I guess that if losing Gabe was the heat, Sam was the breeze. He just made the overwhelming absence of my brother a little more tolerable, you know? But now . . .” Kayla met Dr. Myers’s eyes. “Now, they’re both gone. And the heat is relentless.”

Dr. Myers was quiet for a moment, as if trying to process what Kayla was saying. After a while, she said, “Do you feel like there’s been any relief, or ‘breeze,’ since you’ve been back home?”

Kayla’s heart sank when she realized there hadn’t. Dr. Myers nodded. She knew what the silence meant. “But in a strange kind of way, the heat has been less intense,” Kayla mused aloud. “It’s more of a dull warmth than all-­consuming grief.” She twirled a strand of hair around in her finger. “I know it must be so frustrating for you that I just can’t seem to connect with what’s going on. I really am trying.”

“Of course not, Kayla. This isn’t about me.”

“Yeah, I know.”
But for some reason, I care what you think
. Kayla leaned back in her chair and started to pluck stray pieces of fluff off her jumper. She couldn’t stop fidgeting. There was something she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how to bring it up. She took a deep breath. “Can I tell you something? And you have to promise not to think I’m crazy?”

Dr. Myers chuckled kindly, like you would to an elderly relative. “Go ahead.”

“Well, I just feel like there’s more to it than everyone thinks. Sam . . . Sam wasn’t a hardcore druggie. He really wasn’t. And I’m not blinded by grief, or love, or whatever else. I genuinely think the police have got it wrong. And it’s . . . unsettling. To think we’re all missing something big. Like, why did none of us hear the commotion if he was dragged out kicking and screaming by brutes? We were all the way out at the lake, but nobody saw or heard a thing. Anywhere. I just think that’s weird. And for there to have been
that
much blood, he must have been in the room for a while before he left. Which doesn’t really line up with the theory.

“I dunno. It probably sounds like I watch too much TV. But the gut feeling I first had when I was sitting in the Thai police station, and they were telling me it was drug-­based . . . I can’t shake it.” Kayla debated telling Cassandra about the dreams, but decided against it. She must have seemed insane enough already. Her therapist’s pixie features were perfectly composed as usual, giving away nothing about what she was thinking. “What do you think?”

“Honestly?” Dr. Myers shrugged. “I’m a little relieved. It’s the first real sign you’ve shown to suggest that you’re beginning the grieving process over Sam. Stage one is, famously, denial. Denial about what’s real, and what . . . isn’t.”

Kayla felt disappointed. She closed her eyes, trying to mask her dismay.

She doesn’t see it.

K
A
Y
L
A
K
N
E
W
T
H
E
R
E
was one person who’d listen to her theories, no matter how outlandish. Not just to humor her, but because Sam meant more to her than he did to anyone else.

Kayla had the house to herself. She was sitting at the breakfast bar—­the kitchen was her favorite room at Berry Hill—­cradling a cup of coffee in her ring-­covered hands. The frothy cappuccino smelled delicious but was too hot to drink immediately. She was staring at the television set mounted on the wall. It was on mute, but she hadn’t even noticed. She was too nervous.

She clambered off the bar stool and wandered across to close the French doors. She’d opened them to allow a bit of fresh air to breeze into the room, but she needed privacy for the phone call she was about to make. Not that the gardener trimming the hedges could hear her over the roar of the machine and the crackling of chopped twigs, but if there was one thing crime dramas had taught her, it’s that you can never be too careful when it comes to making assumptions about who you can trust.

Kayla squinted up at the surveillance cameras nestled in every ceiling corner, and wondered whether they were equipped with sound recording facilities. It was possibly something she should know, as the daughter of a surveillance mogul. She never could understand why her dad had them installed in their own home—­it seemed like an unnecessary security measure, given the wrought-­iron gates and buzzer system that prevented outside access to the property. In any case, their presence made her feel uneasy. Why had she never noticed how claustrophobic they were?

Maybe the garden was a better idea after all. She slid the doors open, grabbing her phone and her coffee off the counter, and made her way to her favorite spot in the world.

At the bottom of their main lawn—­they had several—­there was a rope swing. It was neither a fancy, ornate wooden beauty nor a tatty, childish tire on the end of a fraying length of cord. It was a simple plank of twisted driftwood, secured to the branches of a grand old willow tree with beige rope and intricate knots. When Kayla was little, she’d loved brushing aside the curtains of willow leaves and visiting her special place. The willow made her feel like Pocahontas, and she’d wish the gnarled old trunk would talk back to her as it had in her favorite childhood movie. When she reached the age of twelve, her dad assumed she’d be more into boys and makeup than playing football in the garden with Gabe before fighting over who got to sit on the rope swing first, and she’d seen the gardener taking it down. She burst into tears—­she wasn’t ready to lose such an emblem of her childhood. Her dad had made the gardener put it back up. It had been there ever since.

Resting her cappuccino on the thick grass, Kayla perched gingerly on the swing, unsure if the years of neglect would have weakened it. Despite a few creaks, it seemed sturdy enough. She placed her phone on the ground next to her coffee and gripped the ropes on either side of the wood, but couldn’t bring herself to kick her feet against the earth and start swinging. She weighed significantly more than the last time she’d swung on it, and dreaded the thought of causing the supporting branch above her to crack, taking a wealth of memories tumbling down with it.

As she peered up to examine the tree’s strength, her stomach dropped. Tucked in the corner where the branch met the trunk was the last thing she’d expected to see out there.

Another camera.

It was covered in moss and looked rusty, like it hadn’t been tended to in years. She supposed the lack of a blue light flashing from the tiny bulb meant it no longer contained working batteries. It definitely no longer operated. Still, that wasn’t the point. The hours she’d spent out here as a child suddenly felt violated. She’d felt so free, so unfettered. But she’d been watched the entire time.

From a practical point of view, it made sense. A young girl named Abbie had vanished from her garden in rural Northumberland when Kayla was in primary school, so for her parents to take safety precautions was understandable.

But Kayla couldn’t help wracking her brains for moments she’d thought were only hers but instead had shared with the person on the other side of the camera. The time she’d sat on the swing, dangling legs not yet able to touch the ground, crying hiccupy tears because her mum had barely glanced at the necklace Kayla had made her out of chipped seashells. The time she’d pushed Gabe off the swing in the midst of a childish fight and caused him to fracture his underdeveloped wrist—­an incident they’d both later insisted was an accident. The camera had seen it all. The laughs, the lies, and the tears weren’t a secret after all.

Kayla felt nauseated. How much of her life had been completely transparent? She squirmed, trying to shake off the invisible ants that were crawling up and down her arms and spine. If only as means of distraction, she leaned down, took a big sip of milky coffee, and picked up her phone.

Best get this over with.

K
A
T
H
Y
K
I
N
G
F
I
S
H
E
R
AGREED
to meet with Kayla again.

That was the first hurdle jumped. Now to convince Sam’s mum that she hadn’t completely lost her mind.

The first time Kayla had met Kathy had also been the first time she felt there might be more to Sam’s disappearance that everyone thought. She knew she needed to spend more time with that peculiar sensation to try and translate what it meant. She also trusted Kathy to voice her honest opinions. There were a lot of things Kayla hadn’t told anyone back home that weren’t related, exactly, but were gnawing away at the back of her mind: what had happened with Oliver; the complex emotions between her and Sam; Sam’s growing hostility during the last few weeks in Phuket.

“I was surprised to hear from you again, I must admit.” Kathy took a bite of her marzipan French Fancy cake. They were in Betty’s Tea Room in York—­Kayla had taken the train down to meet her just five days after their last coffee date.

“I know. I’m sorry for phoning you out of the blue. I know you must just want to start getting on with your life, without reminders of Sam’s last few months following you around.”

Kathy shook her head vehemently, spraying cake crumbs everywhere. She swallowed her mouthful. “No, that’s not what I meant. You’re a lovely girl, Kayla, and it’s nice to know that Sam had friends who cared so much about him. I just meant that I thought I might have frightened you off last time, sitting there and crying like that. I am sorry, it must have been very awkward for you.”

“No, not at all,” Kayla lied. “I know how you must be feeling. It’s . . . it’s horrendous, really.”

Kathy nodded, her lips pursed. “So why did you call me? I know you wouldn’t ask to meet a middle-­aged woman a few hours away from home unless you were either really struggling or wanted to know something about her son.” She smiled warmly. “Either is okay, love.”

Kayla sighed, stirring sugar into her Earl Grey tea. “A bit of both, I guess. I’m starting to miss Sam a lot.” Kathy gave her an odd look, cocking her head to the side. Kayla backtracked quickly. “I missed him before, of course. But now that the shock is wearing off, it’s sinking in that there are certain things I’ll never have again. Talking to him about stupid things, laughing at his sarcasm and the way he always deliberately misunderstood me. Silly things, really.” She looked down. How could she tell Kathy the truth? Time to bite the bullet. “The thing is, Kathy, I loved Sam. And I think he loved me too.”

Kathy sat up, straightening her back. The illusion that Kayla and Sam had been nothing more than good friends had just been shattered. “I see. Were you . . . ?”

“Boyfriend and girlfriend? No.”

Silence. Kayla guessed there were a multitude of curiosities zapping through Kathy’s head. Had they slept together? Why had they not taken their relationship to the next level? Did Kayla know more than she was letting on? She waited for Kathy to ask the most burning question of all, but she never did. Kayla took that as her cue to explain everything, romantic or otherwise, that had happened: the uncensored version. How there had been endless almosts, mistakes with others, a rapidly diminishing closeness toward the end. It was important that Kathy knew all the details, though she left out the unsavory details of Oliver’s and Bling’s roles.

That still didn’t mean she was keen to discuss her relationship with Sam further, to open questions to the floor. She launched straight into the next item on her agenda. “I wanted to know whether you’d been in contact with the police over here about the case.”

Kathy looked surprised, her eyebrows jumping into her limp, greasy fringe. “Of course I have. At the beginning, I spoke to them every day. Have they not contacted you?”

“No. Well, sort of. When I first got back, I spoke to Shepherd. Mason Shepherd,” Kayla added. Kathy nodded in recognition. “But he seemed . . . I don’t know. Distracted?”

“Disinterested?” Kathy asked.

“Disinterested.” Kayla gestured exasperatedly. “I thought it was just me. Was he like that with you too?”

“Yes. I found it strange. DI Sadie Winters has been much more engaged.”

Kayla’s ears pricked up. “Winters? I don’t think I’ve met her.” She couldn’t keep the confusion from her voice. There was a whole other police officer working on the case who hadn’t even bothered to contact her? “She’s probably just overlooked me. I guess they all have a fairly strong belief in their drugs theory, so why would they need to talk to his friend twice? The Thai police had already grilled me.” Kayla shrugged. “I dunno. I just think that if I was them, I’d want to check the box then check it again, just to be safe.”
Just to make sure I didn’t kill your son
.

Kathy sat back in her chair, exhaling loudly. “Well, as far as I’m aware the case isn’t being investigated much further over here. The Thai police are on the lookout for the drug dealers Sam had been . . . contacting. But there’s no new evidence, nothing to disprove their theory. Sam is assumed to have been murdered, with a drug conflict as the main motivation behind it.” Kathy’s face crumpled.