Someone Is Lying
Author: Heidi Perks
Date: 2025-02-27 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Thriller; Mystery; Crime
Description: How do you find your daughter when no one believes she is missing? Single mother Jess and her daughter Issie have always shared an unbreakable bond. For the last seven years, it's been just the two of them. That is, until Issie meets Dylan. When the pair announce their plans to go travelling, Jess is devastated. Issie is only seventeen after all, and Jess doesn’t trust her daughter’s new boyfriend. And when she stops hearing from her altogether, she's terrified. With Dylan refusing to talk and the police unwilling to help, Jess is faced with a mother's worst nightmare. Can she find her daughte
Publisher: Penguin

About the Author

Heidi Perks is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Now You See Her, which was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick, Come Back for Me, Three Perfect Liars, The Whispers, The Other Guest and The Last Resort. Someone is Lying is her seventh novel. Heidi is a voracious reader of crime and thrillers and is fascinated by the darker side of our closest relationships. Heidi lives in Bournemouth with her husband and two children.

Praise for Heidi Perks

‘Slick, gripping and compelling’ Lisa Jewell

‘Gripping’ Claire Douglas

‘Kept me up late into the night …’ Lucy Clarke

‘Reads like Liane Moriarty at her Big Little Lies best’ Tony Parsons

‘I was knocked for six by the twist in this book’ Rosamund Lupton

‘Terrifically suspenseful and intriguing’ Liz Nugent

‘Whip-smart twists’ Chris Whitaker

‘Beautifully written’ Gilly Macmillan

Also by Heidi Perks

Now You See Her

Come Back for Me

Three Perfect Liars

The Whispers

The Other Guest

The Last Resort

Heidi Perks

SOMEONE IS LYING

For Chris Bradford

Thank you – I could not have written any of my books without you

Prologue

12 July

The body isn’t found for eight days. Or at least this is the conclusion Inspector Santos Melo and his team come to. They estimate she has been lying in the undergrowth for over a week, although probably not as long as two. And all because no one had been looking for her.

Melo shakes his head in dismay, pulling back and straightening up. Beside him, on the roadside, the new young lad whose name he can’t remember looks pale, as if he is about to throw up at any moment. He’s been thrown in at the deep end on his first day, much like Melo had been twenty-odd years back. This will be a case the youngster won’t forget in a hurry, and Melo wonders how he will process it. Whether this young woman’s face will claw its way into the boy’s head at night so that she’s the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes.

Melo walks away. He can’t think of the lad right now, he has his own nightmares to consider. He’ll have to answer how she’s been here all this time, right under their noses.

He glances around at the tape that is being strung up, cordoning off the area into a crime scene. It makes the job easier when they are on a track like this that barely attracts any traffic or passers-by. Not one other vehicle has passed since they got here, even though they are only a stone’s throw from the bustle of Lisbon’s centre. But, then again, this is also the reason she hadn’t been found sooner.

In other circumstances he’d think it most likely the job of someone who knows the area, a local, someone they might even already have on their list. But not today. His mind is racing ahead to what they have missed, what he had missed.

‘Achas que ela foi movida?’ he asks. Do you think she has been moved?

‘Sim. Talvez não muito longe.’ Yes. Maybe not far though.

So she had likely been killed nearby, possibly dragged into the hedgerow, hidden under foliage that wasn’t completely covering her. He isn’t sure whether time gradually destroyed a shallow grave or if she was dumped here in a hurry.

Melo pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps onto his recent calls, pausing when he comes to the English woman he had last spoken to the day before and each one before that since she walked into his station in Lisbon’s city centre last week.

He pulls in a tight breath and hesitates before pressing on her number. It rings twice before she answers. He can tell by the way she speaks, by the crack in her voice as she says Hello? that she knows it is him on the other end of the line. She’s probably programmed his number in. She’s been waiting for this call. For the inevitable.

An image of his own teenage daughter flashes in Melo’s head. His sweet Ana. As soon as he comes off this call, he is going to ring her, check she is okay and that she is where she’s supposed to be, at her friend’s house. His heart strains at the thought of Ana’s eyes, blue and alive, the way she’d laughed at breakfast as she read him a joke someone had sent her. They had lit up in the starkest of contrasts to those of the young dead girl lying only feet from him, whose glassy stare is still visible.

He does not want to have this conversation with the English woman who had been pestering him to find her daughter only a week ago. He saw her pain the moment he met her, it was so palpably raw. She had lived through loss already, her daughter was her life – or at least these were the things he surmised.

Now he cannot bear to consider how he brushed off her worries and told her she had nothing to be concerned about. Where had his head been at? Because it certainly was not on his job. If he had been doing it properly, he would have started a search seven days ago.

People’s lives can change, flick out like a light in an instant. He has seen it too many times to count in his line of work he thinks as he reluctantly starts the conversation. ‘Mrs Adams …?’ he begins.

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 105: THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING

PART ONE

Hi, listeners, I’m Lucy Hawes. Welcome to another session of GONE, my true crime podcast.

Today’s episode is a little different, for reasons that will become clear. I don’t usually delve into cases that are so recent, but this is the story of the two British teenagers who disappeared while travelling in Europe at the beginning of this summer, less than two months ago.

There are a number of reasons why I’ve chosen to cover the disappearance of Issie Adams and Dylan Whiting. These range from the strange circumstances in which they vanished, to the police’s handling of the case, and, as we’ll come onto, how the teenagers’ mothers dealt with the situation.

The couple’s disappearance generated very little media attention when they were first reported missing. That, in itself, felt strange. These are two British, good-looking, young people who went off for a summer of travelling and then simply disappeared.

But maybe not so unlikely when we consider the fact that, in the UK alone, someone is reported missing every ninety seconds. Pretty astonishing, isn’t it? That, in the time it takes to listen to my podcast, around forty new missing person cases will have been reported.

It’s probably heartening to point out that many of these people will be found alive, and pretty quickly. But there are more than six hundred people from around the world who vanish every day without trace. Who aren’t found. Whose loved ones might never know what happened to them.

Let’s take a look at what happened to Issie and Dylan. From the day Issie was reported missing to where we are now, it is a case that has thrown out twist after twist, and will leave you asking: what actually happened in Portugal this summer?

On the fifteenth of June, seventeen-year-old Issie Adams and her boyfriend of ten months, Dylan Whiting, aged nineteen, took a flight from London Gatwick to Madrid. The couple set off on their adventure with a vague itinerary but no concrete plans of where they were heading, or for how long, evident by the fact they had no return flights or hotels pre-booked.

Over the next three weeks they travelled west towards the coast of Spain, before heading south through Vigo, and making their way into Portugal, where they stopped briefly in Porto, finally arriving in Lisbon on the third of July.

It isn’t known why they chose to take this route. It isn’t necessarily a natural trek for backpackers through Europe, and, because they hadn’t laid out any plans, no one knows where they were intending to go after Lisbon.

But Issie had promised to let her mother, Jess Adams, know every time they arrived in a new place, and had been doing so up until the point this story begins. At six fifteen on the evening of the third of July, Issie Adams messaged her mum to say they had arrived in Lisbon and intended to spend a few nights there.

That afternoon, she posted a handful of pictures on her Instagram account, commenting that she and Dylan were having a wonderful time. Her final post showed them standing in front of the Belém Tower, on the bank of the Tagus River. Issie wrote: Here in Lisbon. Beautiful city with my gorgeous boyfriend. So lucky. Can’t wait to celebrate my eighteenth birthday with him the day after tomorrow … eek!

A happy moment in time captured on social media before the pair seemingly vanished into thin air, and her earlier message to her mother was to be the last time Jess Adams heard from her daughter.

After this Jess was unable to make contact with Issie, despite a series of texts and phone calls, making her instantly concerned when, as Issie had stated in her post, she turned eighteen two days later. Despite numerous attempts to make contact with Issie on the fifth of July to wish her a happy birthday, she was unable to. And, it appeared, neither could anyone else. Issie’s phone was switched off.

With Issie not responding to any birthday texts or calls, Jess Adams understood something had to be gravely wrong. And as the next forty-eight hours unfolded, things were only set to worsen.

Part One

Jess

CHAPTER ONE

4 July

Issie’s birthday – 5 July – had always fallen in the school term, or at least it had when it wasn’t a year of GCSEs or A levels. We used to joke when she was younger that if she lived in the States where her dad was from, everyone would be celebrating the eve of her birthday with fireworks and parties. The joke didn’t last. After Scott, her father, moved back there, I never brought it up again. That was the year Issie turned ten. It’s hard to believe it has been eight years since Scott left us but then it’s even harder to remember a time when we lived together.

Once he had gone I avoided conversations that involved America, which was no mean feat when Issie’s television viewing mostly centred around American high schools and she dropped in words like ‘trash’ and ‘sidewalk’ like they were the norm.

The year she turned sixteen and had taken her GCSEs she wasn’t in school for her birthday and so Issie and I had flown to Crete for a week in the sun to celebrate. We made it back home the day before so she could spend it with friends. That was perfect. We were happy, tanned, and full of expectation for the long, lazy days of summer ahead of us.

Every year they were changing – the holidays never stayed the same as Issie grew older. I’d feared the teenage years and yet ended up loving them. Picnics, and buckets and spades, had been swapped for bodyboards. Digging holes in the sand soon made way for shivering in cold water up to my thighs as she attempted to stand on a surfboard. I was the mother who did everything with her because there was no other option. Scott had chosen to live the other side of the Atlantic, there was no one else. So I dived into it head first, soaking up the memories. Not regretting a single moment of being there for her.

The summer she turned fifteen I fretted I was losing Issie to her friends. Knowing I needed to let her go didn’t make it easier. I told myself I was grateful I’d held onto her for as long as I had. But, again, my worries didn’t come to fruition. We still hung out together, we still chatted and laughed and watched movies together.

People always told me how lucky I was that Issie and I were so close. ‘It must be lovely, just the two of you,’ someone once said. ‘My house is so full, I’ll never have that with my daughter.’

Lucky? Could anyone really think that? Did this woman standing in front of me in a queue at parents evening, who I barely knew, really believe I was fortunate my husband walked out on us to live another life in America? She had no clue that every decision I made had to be second-guessed because I had no one to run it by, or that feelings of inadequacy rippled through my everyday life.

The questions burned into me: why wasn’t I enough? Why wasn’t Issie enough? Scott’s betrayal sat in my core in ways I couldn’t comprehend for a long time.

I could replay the moment he told me he was leaving in slow motion, unwinding it in all its technicolour horror. It was a bleak, dark Monday evening in January when he walked in the door from work announcing he had something to tell me. I barely looked up from the steaks I was searing on the hob, his words had been so bland. When I eventually turned to him, I noticed there was a contorted expression on his face I couldn’t read. I switched the hob off and faced him, my mind running over what might be coming.

He hadn’t been happy at work lately. He was angry with colleagues, furious with a boss who had apparently thrown him under a bus. Scott had worked his way up to a high position. He complained he wasn’t going to get the next promotion anytime soon. He was back and forth to Boston a lot too, to where he grew up, and I knew it was taking a toll on him.

‘Sit down, Jess,’ he’d said, dropping his jacket over the back of a chair as he pulled out a seat for himself, though he didn’t sit on it.

I had thought it was going to be one of two things: he wanted to leave his job without having found another, and we would have to cut back for a while; or he wanted us to move to Boston. I hoped it would be the first option. That I could cope with. I was enjoying the nice holidays we’d been having but I didn’t need them. I could easily cut back on spending. It was only lately I’d started treating myself to designer bags and a camel coat that cost more than my first wage. But please not America. This was my home, here in England. I didn’t want to uproot our family.

‘There’s a job for me in Boston,’ he started, as a slow sinking feeling crept dread-like into my gut. ‘And I’m taking it,’ Scott was saying. ‘I’m moving back there—’ He had broken off and was staring at me with a look in his eyes that I couldn’t immediately place, but that felt like panic mixed with something else: determination.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, eventually. ‘How have you already made that decision? We haven’t even discussed it.’ But even then I knew there was more, something not right. Something he hadn’t yet told me, but was about to.

‘I’m sorry, Jess.’ Scott was shaking his head, and he did look very sorry in that moment. ‘I’m moving in with Rita.’

‘Rita?’ The name sucked the air from the room, like it always did whenever I heard it. Rita: my husband’s first wife, the woman who came before me. The woman I would still have been jealous of at that point if we didn’t live three thousand miles apart, because I always knew deep, deep in my heart that Scott had never stopped loving her.

Scott and Rita had split up six months before we met, when I was working as a marketing assistant at a large investment company, and he’d been flown in as a trouble-shooting operations director at a young age of thirty. He was only four years older than me, but a lifetime away on the career ladder.

I’d known that, despite his denial, he was still raw from the break-up and that possibly I shouldn’t be barrelling into a relationship with a man I was clearly falling for. But I couldn’t help myself, and time had proven Rita wasn’t a threat. She was moving on, meeting someone else. Soon they’d had a daughter together.

On the other side of the Atlantic Scott proposed to me after a year, we were making wedding plans and getting married and then having our own daughter. I left my job to become a full-time mum.

Of course Rita wasn’t a problem, we were happy. Scott and I still laughed every day, and planned trips together, and we had a child we both adored. Not for one moment did I think none of that was enough for him and that he would be able to give it all up so easily.

‘No.’ I shook my head, refusing to believe him. It was impossible. ‘How—’

You love me, I wanted to say. We’d been so happy over Christmas. We’d got drunk together, we’d had sex more than once over the holidays. This truly was not something I’d seen coming.

‘I still love you, Jess,’ he had told me.

I laughed at that. ‘You can’t still love me.’

‘I do. It’s just—’ He flapped an arm in the air. ‘It’s just that it’s Rita.’

And clearly I was never going to compare with her.

He was gone within the month. Everything already lined up: his job; Rita’s home that her ex had already left. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said a number of times over those four weeks. ‘Rita and I, we’re …’

‘Soul mates? Childhood sweethearts?’ I’d asked bitterly. ‘You should never have married me, Scott. I think you always knew one day you were going to hurt me.’

It tore my world apart. The kind of destruction that took me four years to slowly rebuild. Eight years on and I don’t love him any more. I don’t feel anything when I see him on Issie’s odd FaceTime call. But then there are times, when things aren’t so good, that his absence hits me most. Those are the times when I start questioning how his neglect might have affected us. Because it must have, surely? Issie can’t sail through life without feeling the impact of his abandonment. I am certain it is this that led her to choose a man like Dylan.

I flick my eyes over the swathes of fabric covering my desk. I need to arrange them onto a mood board for a new client, Polly, who I am seeing in two days’ time. I pick up some swatches of green velvet and attach them to the corner of the board.

Polly briefed me that she likes gold and greens. She showed me photos on Pinterest and then the antique chairs she wants upholstered for her boutique shop. She found me after reading my interview in a local home magazine, all about how I started my small business Coastal Design two years ago, and liked what she saw.

I was honest in the interview, about how hard it was studying again at the age of forty-six, but that a year of evening classes in Textiles meant I could start getting paid for doing what I love. Coastal Designs evolved from a project a friend of a friend had asked for help with and now I’m working almost full-time, upcycling furniture for clients and delivering small interior design briefs.

The intention was to give me something to focus on by the time Issie left home, but today my mind isn’t on it. With Issie’s eighteenth birthday tomorrow, I find myself reliving my daughter’s past birthdays. Her seventeenth feels like nothing more than weeks ago. I can so easily hear her shriek with laughter as I stuck my head around the door at 7.30 a.m., seventeen candles miraculously ablaze on top of a jam doughnut. Even if she were here this year, I know I wouldn’t get the same reaction.

My breath tugs as I inhale tightly. I hate that she is celebrating her eighteenth in another country, with no one but Dylan. In my head I’d been preparing for her leaving in September. She has wanted to go to Central St Martins to study art for as long as I can remember, and I was thrilled when she was offered an unconditional place. Even in Year 12, her report from the grammar school she attended said it was no surprise.

Issie was predicted two As and a B. She got 8s and 9s in all her GCSEs. I think she could have done anything she put her mind to, but it was only ever about art.

I was so proud of Issie. She might have got her creative streak from me but had easily surpassed any talent I had. ‘We’re lucky,’ I would often tell her. ‘To be able to do something you’re passionate about is unique. Hold on to that, Iz.’ I always felt the need to ensure she knew how lucky she was. She didn’t have the same upbringing as I had because she’d never had to watch her parents worry over money. I needed her to appreciate this and never take it for granted.

My phone rings, breaking me from my thoughts. I glance over at it, my best friend’s name is flashing on the screen. ‘Hey, Lois,’ I say, pressing loudspeaker.

‘What are you up to? Are you working?’ Her toddler, Teddy, is crying in the background. Lois’s third child, all of them are under nine. Our friendship spans forty-five years next month, though we are now in such different life stages.

‘I’m working on the project for that lovely boutique in the New Forest,’ I tell her.

‘Shame. I was heading out to the garden centre. I wondered if you wanted to come with. I’m bored. I want company,’ she groans.

‘You have company, you’ve got Teddy.’

‘Adult company – you know what I mean. And I want your advice on what I can plant in my tubs that I’m not going to kill.’

I laugh. ‘You’ll kill whatever you plant,’ I joke. ‘But I can’t, I’m sorry. I’d love to, but I have to get on with this. I’m seeing the client in two days’ time.’ I stand up and wander to the open doors of my little office that I had built at the end of my garden. ‘I’ll come with you if you go later?’ I say, but I already know she won’t. Lois’s days don’t run like mine. She has school pick-up at three, and her evenings are taken up with her children’s clubs, and mum’s taxi service, and making lots of different meals. She doesn’t have the luxury of time, as she tells me, though she knows I would swap places in a heartbeat to have those days back.

‘Gavin’s having the kids tomorrow,’ she says, seemingly ignoring me. ‘He’s leaving work early and I am coming over at five o’clock sharp. Does that still work for you?’

‘It does.’

‘Do you want to do anything? I was thinking we could get a boat up the river, take a bottle of wine with us. We could have dinner on the beach at the other end,’ she suggests.

‘That sounds perfect.’

‘Then let’s do it. I’ll make the booking.’

‘Thanks, Lois.’

‘Of course.’ She pauses. ‘How are you doing? Are you okay?’

‘Yeah. I’m fine, I just miss her. I wish to God she wasn’t away on her eighteenth.’

‘I know. It’s crap.’

Tears unexpectedly prick at my eyes. It is crap. I am forty-nine, I have been single for eight years and it feels like my only child has already left home. I have never felt more lonely, but I am so grateful Lois is spending Issie’s birthday evening with me. I would have hated being on my own.

When I hang up the call, I wander across the garden and into the house to make a coffee. It’s amazing how it takes so little for me to procrastinate. As the coffee machine kicks into action I scroll through Instagram, as I’m doing more often of late, flicking open Issie’s account, though there are no new posts since the one she added yesterday: Issie and Dylan with Lisbon’s Belém Tower in the background.

I stare at the pictures of them, their faces squished up close to the camera in one of them. ‘Are you really that happy, Iz?’ I murmur as I look at her eyes and that fixed smile. I cannot tell any more, not like I once could. The last ten months, since she met Dylan, my daughter has changed so much that sometimes it feels like I am looking at a stranger instead of my girl.

I take my coffee and head back to my office, stopping in the doorway to take a photo of the garden, blurring the back of my house so I can post it on my own business Instagram account. This view never fails to inspire me, I caption it, pulling a face as I do so. It all feels so fake and yet I upload it anyway.

Issie told me eighteen months ago I needed to do more to promote myself. ‘People like looking at pretty pictures,’ she’d said, poring over others’ social media accounts. ‘Look, see, like this. I can do it for you, if you like?’

‘You’d do that?’

‘Of course I would, Mum!’ she’d laughed. But I also signed up for a Social Media for Business course, just to see what she meant and if she was right. Issie lost interest in helping at some point over the last year, so I was lucky I did; but she was right about people wanting to see beautiful pictures. The course taught me they want to live in my creative shoes – whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean – if only for the two or three seconds it takes before they move on to the next post.

It still jars with me but I snap another photo of the inside of my office, pinboards and colour everywhere, figuring I’ll use that one tomorrow.

‘You really are living the dream, aren’t you?’ an old school friend said to me a few months back when I bumped into her after years of no contact. She’d seen the same interview Polly had and then apparently trawled through my posts. ‘Lovely big house, a garden like something out of a magazine, and a job you’re passionate about.’

Yeah, living the dream, I think as I toss my phone to the side and sip my too-hot coffee. Maybe I would have reminded her you couldn’t believe everything you saw on Instagram if I hadn’t disliked her so much all those years ago. Let her think I am living it, isn’t that what it’s all about anyway?

By five o’clock I am done. I literally cannot think straight any more. I close my laptop and lock up the office, noticing the branches of the apple tree are hanging precariously low over its roof and wondering if I should get them cut back.

Scott had once threatened to take the tree down because it soaked up so much of the evening sun, but I couldn’t bear to think of getting rid of it. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have plenty of places to sit of an evening, we were hardly short of space, despite the extension I’d finally got round to having built three years ago. But that was Scott, he always wanted more of everything.

If he were here now he’d be chopping the branches off himself, making a hash of it. I could never tell him he didn’t know what he was doing. No one could tell Scott he didn’t excel at everything he put his hand to, though that wasn’t the man I married. He became something else over the fifteen years we were together, someone I didn’t recognise, only it happened so stealthily that I didn’t spot it.

Our life wasn’t supposed to arc in the way it has, but then I guess that’s the thing with life, it rarely pans out as you expect it to. I soon learned to accept that change is inevitable and often out of our hands.

I remember looking at Issie one day as she sat curled up on the sofa next to me. She had resorted to sucking her thumb again at the age of eleven and I blamed it on Scott’s rejection, as I did most things, but knew, with a defiance I didn’t realise myself capable of, that I would do whatever it took to make sure she didn’t suffer from his leaving. I would show her how to be strong and resilient, and that nothing needed to keep us down. We would take back control of what had been done to us.

I sigh as I let myself into the house. Control is something I haven’t felt in a long while, especially when my seventeen-year-old daughter is travelling around Europe with a man I do not trust.

CHAPTER TWO

5 July

It is true I do not trust Dylan and neither do I like him. My daughter knows this, though I’ve tried not to admit it out loud to her. Dylan knows it too, though he looks at me with the same contempt I have for him.

This, however, is not the first thing I think of as I wake today, although it does run a close second. Instead, it is the realisation it is my daughter’s eighteenth birthday and she is not here, and that the best I can hope for is to speak to her on the phone. Despising Dylan is my second thought, because he is to blame for her absence.

I leave it until 9 a.m. to ring her. They are in Lisbon, and have been for two days. There is no time difference between Portugal and the UK, but still I know it is early and so I am not surprised when her phone goes straight to answerphone.

I leave her a message: ‘Happy birthday, darling, I hope you’re having a lovely morning. I’ll try you again later.’ I send her a WhatsApp saying the same thing, littering it with birthday cake emojis and hearts.

By 11 a.m. I still haven’t heard back from her and so I try once more. The phone is still switched off and so I leave another voicemail. ‘Hey, just trying you again. Did you have a big night out? Maybe you’re sleeping? I’ll call again later. Happy birthday, honey.’

I have finished the mood boards for Polly and so I plan to spend the rest of the day until Lois comes at five doing some accounts. It’s the job I hate most, but having something to look forward to at the end of it helps.

At midday Issie still hasn’t called or messaged me back. I check WhatsApp. The message I sent this morning has one grey tick next to it, meaning she hasn’t even turned her phone on. I call again anyway but, as I expected, the phone rings out. I hang up this time without speaking.

Another hour ticks by and I am checking my phone every five or so minutes to see if she has read my message, though the grey tick remains stubbornly apparent. I open up her Instagram but it hasn’t been updated since her last post two days ago.

Still, there is nothing to worry about, I remind myself, because teenagers sleep in, it’s what they do. Only not Issie, she never has been one to lie in; even after a late night she has always woken early. And it’s her birthday, she must be wanting to check her phone to see who has messaged her. At home she is never off it.

I think back again to how she was on her birthday last year. Issie had blown out the candles on her doughnut and eaten it in bed. Half an hour later her best friend, Carla, had turned up with two silver metallic balloons in the shapes of a one and a seven.

Issie had bounded into the kitchen, almost tripping in her excitement. ‘Mum, look!’ she’d laughed as she struggled in with the balloons.

I’d smiled at the girls, listening to them chatter and take selfies as I heated croissants for breakfast. Issie always did have a good appetite. We sat outside to eat before they left for school together and Issie had stopped at the end of the driveaway. ‘Thanks for my presents, Mum,’ she’d yelled behind her. ‘Love ’oo!’

‘I love you too, Iz,’ I’d called back, smiling at her lack of embarrassment in front of Carla, or any of her friends for that matter.

That night the others came over too: Katia and Leah – the four of them had been inseparable for the last year. They had watched a movie together and eaten pizza. It was almost the party of a thirteen-year-old and yet it was all Issie had wanted to do on her actual birthday. I had been part of it, hovering on the sidelines, not wanting to intrude, and yet the girls all told me I needed to join them for pizza. ‘You’re not going to sit out in the kitchen on your own, Jess,’ Carla had scolded me.

That was before Dylan. Seven weeks before Dylan, to be precise. He came into our lives last year in the third week of August and never left.

At 1.30 p.m. I try again but hear nothing. At 2 p.m. I try once more.

‘Lois, I can’t get hold of Issie,’ I say, ringing her when I still can’t get through to my daughter’s phone.

There is a fluttering of panic I can’t ignore now, though my head keeps telling me there is nothing to worry about. It feels like a flapping of tiny wings in the pit of my belly, but I can still breathe through it if I choose to. I’m still able to talk away the concern Issie hasn’t answered any of my calls with a number of reasons.

But as I wait for Lois to respond, I notice how the flapping won’t go away and it’s making my heart faintly heavier as it beats, which shortens my breath. The whole physiological cycle means any rational explanations seem to fizzle out before they can take hold. And if I let them do that I am left with nothing but a deep pitted dread.

‘What do you mean you can’t get hold of her?’ Lois asks calmly.

I try shaking every negative feeling out of my body by telling myself I am being stupid and paranoid. ‘I tried calling to wish her a happy birthday but I can’t get through. I’ve rung loads of times already and her phone is switched off.’

‘Jess,’ Lois replies, ‘you know what teenagers are like.’

‘I know.’ I have indeed been learning this over the last year. ‘But it’s two o’clock. Issie doesn’t sleep in, she never has. Even if she went to bed late last night, she’d be up by now for sure.’

‘She could be doing anything, they could be out for the day.’

‘But it’s her birthday. Her eighteenth birthday.’ And there it comes again, a flash of panic that sweeps over me without warning, like the hot flushes I have been starting to get. I can talk away the myriad reasons she hasn’t turned on her phone but the fact remains, whatever way I say it, Issie should have switched it on and answered by now. She will know how much I want to speak to her, she wouldn’t ignore that, and surely she wants to speak to me too.

‘I know. And I know you’re missing her,’ Lois is saying.

‘What if something’s happened to her?’ There. The thought is out in the open now.

‘Jess!’ Lois laughs. ‘Of course nothing’s happened to her. It’s barely gone lunchtime and you’re working yourself up over nothing. I mean, what time even is it in Lisbon?’

‘The same as here.’

‘Okay, but still … her phone is probably dead. She hasn’t charged it. She’s woken up with no battery, or signal or—’ Lois breaks off. ‘I promise you, Jess. You are worrying over nothing.’

‘Okay.’ I nod. ‘Okay, yes, maybe you’re right.’ I know I am, really. Issie is seventeen – eighteen now, I correct myself. She is capable of looking after herself. She isn’t the nine-year-old I lost in the park one time.

That particular memory still haunts me like it happened only yesterday. How I had suddenly realised I hadn’t seen her for a couple of minutes as I scanned the area for a flash of the orange T-shirt she was wearing. My body can still recall the fear, how it sliced through me like a knife. I spotted her little friend balancing on a log with her arms outstretched on the other side of the park, which made it worse because Issie wasn’t with her.

I’d rushed over to her, trying to stay calm, wanting to shake the girl who didn’t seem to care less that she didn’t know where Issie was.

Of course I found her. She was hiding inside a log, crying because her friend had been mean. She had been there all the time, only I couldn’t see her.

It makes me think now I should maybe call Dylan if I am really that worried about Issie. And if she was with anyone else, I probably already would have.

‘She’ll call back soon,’ Lois is saying. ‘When did you last hear from her?’

‘The day before yesterday. I had a message when they’d got to Lisbon.’

‘Well then you know she’s fine.’

Do I? I think. How does this mean she’s fine? That was two nights ago. Anything could have happened.

‘And that’s all that matters,’ Lois continues. ‘They’ll have likely done something to celebrate her birthday last night and she’s probably too hungover to even switch her phone on, or she’s out and busy and hasn’t even bothered checking it.’

‘Teenagers are always checking their phones,’ I mutter. ‘But I’m sure you’re right, honestly, don’t worry. I’m panicking. I’ve got nothing else to do,’ I joke.

‘You’re desperate to speak to her. I get it,’ Lois says. ‘It’s annoying, but it’s not anything to panic about.’

Lois arrives at 5 p.m. sharp. I open the door to find her on the doorstep, waving a chilled bottle of Sauvignon in the air. ‘What is it?’ she says when she sees me. ‘You’ve still not heard anything?’

I shake my head and Lois frowns. ‘Do you still want to go out?’ she asks.

‘Not really. I don’t see how I’ll enjoy it when I’m waiting for news.’

‘That’s fine. I can cancel the booking and we can order in and sit in your garden. We can get in the hot tub, is it on?’

I smile. ‘Sorry I stopped heating it when Issie left,’ I say as Lois follows me through to the kitchen. ‘It felt too sad to think of sitting in there on my own with the neighbours peering at me out their bedroom window. I tried calling her again but it keeps going straight to voicemail.’ I tap my fingers on the kitchen island as I stare at my blank phone screen. ‘I think maybe I should call Dylan.’

‘You should. Do it now while I pour this.’

‘No, I need the wine first.’

Lois smiles and waits for me to get two glasses and pour a healthy slug of wine into each.

Issie had given me Dylan’s number in the early weeks of their relationship, back when she didn’t question everything I said to her like I was her enemy, when she complied and didn’t argue the toss in every sentence.

I imagine his reaction when he sees my name appear on his phone. How his eyes will roll in disdain, and, if Issie is with him, what he might say to her when he shows her I am calling. Your mum is tracking you down, Issie. Can’t she even let us have some time together? She’s got issues. She’s too clingy.

I know he would say it, because he has said it about me before and Issie has parroted his words back to me. ‘You suffocate me,’ she threw at me one night a couple of months ago, when I was telling her she shouldn’t be going out late on a school night when her A levels were around the corner. I was worrying she hadn’t been revising as much as I expected her to, given the effort she put into her GCSEs. And yet she was telling me she had been studying at school. ‘Maybe you don’t have enough to do,’ she’d added.

I had glared at her, hurt. ‘That’s Dylan talking,’ I shot back.

‘No.’ She denied it, but there had been a beat that was long enough to tell me that this had come from him.

I did the wrong thing and retaliated. I should have kept silent like the books told me to, but the books aren’t written in the heat of the moment, they don’t account for the fury that springs from nowhere. ‘Can’t you even think for yourself now, Issie?’ I said. ‘Or do you just spout his words? Come on, what else does he say about me?’

The look on her face was thunderous and I didn’t know what was going to come out next. ‘That you don’t want me to grow up,’ she said eventually. ‘You want me to stay your little girl forever.’ There were tears in her eyes by then, but they were angry ones she brushed away.

At the time I was too angry myself to think straight. What she was saying wasn’t true. A year ago, I had been the one wanting her to go out more. I thought it strange she and her friends hung around each other’s houses instead of going out, or that sometimes she wasn’t even fussed about seeing them at all. It wasn’t anything like the heady days of freedom I’d craved when I was her age. I’d even wanted Issie to find a boyfriend, only not the one she eventually brought home.

Her words were full of venom as she spat: ‘That Dad probably left because you didn’t have any time for him. Because you’re always so wrapped up in me.’ She reached a crescendo, almost out of breath when she finished.

My hand tingled at my side. How I wanted to do something I had never done and reach out and slap her. Make her take her words back. Dylan was twisting our past for his own benefit. He was taking the very things that had hurt us the most, and making her believe it was my doing.

Only I didn’t have anything in me. No words, no fight. She had left me empty and speechless and so I could only stand there and stare at her until eventually she turned and walked out of the room.

Dylan was distorting my relationship with my daughter. I realised then how envious he was of us. He hated the relationship I had with her. He was jealous, the same way I was jealous of him. We both wanted Issie. I wanted her to be the daughter I’d had for seventeen years, and he – well, he just wanted her.

I take a large gulp of the wine I have poured and stare at my phone, wondering if he would even tell Issie I am trying to get hold of her if I were to phone him now.

‘Go on, do it, Jess,’ Lois says. ‘You have no choice.’

I take a deep breath, hating how I have allowed a nineteen-year-old to make me feel this way. I have often wondered why Issie was drawn to a man like him, but maybe she is too similar to me in the kind of people we fall for.

Finally I force myself to press his number, waiting for it to connect. It rings and rings until it eventually cuts out, taking me to his voicemail. Lois nods at me to leave a message and so I do. ‘Hi, Dylan, it’s Jess.’ I clear my throat, which has dried up. ‘Umm. I’m trying to get hold of Issie, can you ask her to ring me as soon as possible, please?’

Lois smiles thinly as I hang up. ‘At least his phone was on,’ she says as she tops up my glass.

‘Yes,’ I say, though I feel no relief. I cannot shake the feeling that if something has happened to Issie and I have a right to be worried, the person I fear the most is the one I have just called.

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 105: THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING

PART ONE

But was Issie Adams actually missing? This was a debate that would play out in the days that followed, because while Jess reported she was, she was about to come up against suggestions that maybe the teens had simply ‘gone off-grid’.

Jess was certain something had happened to her daughter. I’m not a mother myself, but I have friends who are, and they tell me that sometimes a mother just knows. They have an instinct, and can sense when a child’s behaviour is out of character.

From the outset Jess Adams pointed the finger at Dylan. As far as she was concerned, her daughter had disappeared and he was to blame.

Jess had noticed troubling changes in Issie’s behaviour in the months leading up to them travelling through Europe: Issie had started worrying over what she wore and whether she was exposing too much flesh, which she knew Dylan didn’t like. She became cautious over what she posted on social media, she stopped doing things she loved like going to the gym and seeing her friends.

But was he the evil manipulator Jess was making out? Or was Issie’s behaviour simply part of being a teenager infatuated with her first boyfriend?

Issie’s Instagram posts portrayed a picture of happiness. During their travels, she posted multiple times every day, various photos of European sights, and shots of her and Dylan smiling happily at the camera.

There was nothing to substantiate any of Jess’s claims. There was no history or experience of Dylan ever harming Issie, and he had no criminal record.

In fact the people Dylan worked with spoke very highly of him, saying he was a genuinely nice man, both reliable and fun. It seemed no one other than Jess thought him capable of doing anything to hurt his girlfriend.

So was Jess’s view of Dylan distorted because she simply didn’t like him? After all, it seemed her own relationship with Issie had changed in the last ten months since the teenagers had been dating. And there were things about Issie she didn’t know, which would only become apparent after her daughter’s disappearance.

Because, despite high hopes from teachers, and the fact Issie had always been a star student, Issie flunked her A levels – as her results that came out in August, one month after she disappeared, would show. This was a huge shock to both her parents and teachers who had expected much more from her.

Perhaps even more surprising was the news that two days before she left for Europe, Issie had rejected her place at Central St Martins. She hadn’t even deferred it, but categorically told the university she wouldn’t be enrolling, a decision she had kept hidden from both her parents and her art teachers.

So what made her change her mind about her future? And what was Issie planning to do instead when she was due to return from Europe at the end of the summer? Were they ever planning to return?

CHAPTER THREE

6 July

Light splinters the room at just gone 6 a.m. My mouth feels dry. Last night I drank more than I intended and it takes a moment for me to remember why, how the alcohol helped numb the fear that something was wrong, while the conversation with Lois tried to make sense of why my daughter still hadn’t called me back.

I sit up with a start now, heart beating rapidly as I reach for my phone, only to be faced with a blank screen. No messages, no missed calls. The one grey tick still sits beside my unread message from yesterday morning, as well as the others I sent last night.

This is not right. There is no getting away from it now. Yes, she is a teenager; yes, she is travelling, but her eighteenth birthday has come and gone, and I know my daughter. She would not ignore me, especially not on her birthday.

I get up and brush my teeth, the slow rhythmic motion of it calming me only slightly. I had gone to bed last night with Lois’s words ringing in my ears, that I was bound to have heard from Issie during the night. Only I haven’t. And I should have.

I jump in the shower, get dressed and go downstairs to make breakfast, forcing a slice of toast down.

I have four hours before I am due to meet Polly at eleven to discuss the designs I have for her boutique but I cannot concentrate on that.

She hasn’t called, I text Lois. She is always up early with Teddy and so I wait by my phone for her to reply.

Nothing at all? comes back.

Do I go to the police? I tap out. It seems ridiculous to be asking this question but the lines are so blurred. How many hours must pass before you report someone missing?

It isn’t like when they’re young and if they’re out of your sight for ten minutes, you know something is wrong. Or when they’re thirteen and haven’t come home from school when they should. If I go running to the police and then hear from Issie this afternoon, telling me her phone was dead, I will lose her a little bit more. I let her travel this summer, not only because I didn’t really have a choice, but because I was already losing my daughter and I wanted her to come back to me. If I had put my foot down she would not only leave the day she turned eighteen but her resentment towards me would build so high, I might never be able to break it down.

I hoped she might see Dylan for the person he really is. With enough time away from me, and just the two of them together, she might see what I see.

‘He’s too clever,’ I had hissed at Lois once. I didn’t mean academically. I meant that Dylan knew exactly what he was doing. He was moulding my daughter, sculpting her into what he wanted her to be, how he wanted her to think. Perhaps she was susceptible to it, like I had been. Could I blame her when I, a grown woman, hadn’t seen what Scott had become?

The first time I saw it with Dylan was in November last year, two months into their relationship. Issie was frowning as she examined a picture on her phone, enlarging it and studying it carefully.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked her.

‘Nothing,’ Issie said quickly, her thumb deftly swiping upwards, removing the picture from the screen.

‘Iz? What’s going on?’

She shrugged and then sighed. ‘Dylan’s upset over a photo I put on Instagram,’ she said eventually. ‘I was just looking at it.’ This was back in the days when she still told me things, when she let me into her world.

‘Show me,’ I said. Given the times we had spoken about posting online and how things could be misconstrued, I always considered it might only be a matter of time before something blew up and I was ready to help her navigate whatever she might have done to upset him.

Issie pulled up the picture on Instagram and handed me her phone, but the photo I was looking at was nothing like I expected. Issie was showing off her new trainers, and had written a caption next to it saying she’d bought a new pair of Nikes.

‘What’s he upset about?’ I asked, confused.

Issie enlarged it again and pointed to a jean-clad leg next to her. ‘That guy is sitting really close to me. I don’t even remember who it was, and I didn’t even realise he was there until Dylan pointed it out.’ Her words tripped over themselves.

‘He’s upset because you’re sitting next to a boy?’ I laughed.

‘Yes,’ she snapped and took the phone off me. ‘Don’t make fun of him. He’s got a right to ask me who I’m with, and I told him I didn’t know the guy, because I didn’t. He just happened to be next to me on the bench.’

‘Right. And Dylan must realise it’s nothing to worry about?’

She had shrugged again.

‘Issie?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

‘It does if you’re upset.’

‘He doesn’t believe me, I guess,’ she replied. ‘He thinks I was with the guy or something.’

‘Oh, Issie, you’re joking, aren’t you? You know that’s ridiculous. It’s only a leg! How did he even see it, unless he’s scrutinising your pictures?’ I was enraged on her behalf. ‘Don’t stand for that,’ I began as she stood up and paced towards the door.

I wanted to remind Issie she shouldn’t let any man treat her in any way that wasn’t totally respectful. I needed her not to make the same mistakes I had.

The truth was I had lots of words lined up, all well meaning, all based on my own experiences for when the time was right. I hadn’t counted on her not wanting to listen to them.

‘And anyway, what about that ex-girlfriend you told me about?’ I pointed out instead.

‘What?’ she snapped, the look on her face almost venomous.

‘You said he’d been to see his ex-girlfriend, that girl called Hannah?’ I reminded her, although I immediately regretted bringing it up. It was something she’d confided in me a month earlier, how upset she was that he’d met up with his ex without her. ‘I’m only saying he doesn’t have the right …’ My words fizzled out.

‘Forget it, Mum,’ she’d yelled at me as she walked out of the room and the door slammed behind her, leaving me wondering what Dylan Whiting was really like.

Flashes of Scott came into my head. Lois had noticed how he had changed, even when I hadn’t. She told me after he left that, in the last couple of years, she hadn’t liked my husband one bit.

I’m scared, Lois, I type out now. I’m getting really bloody scared at the thought that something has happened to Issie. I never did find out for sure if anything happened with Dylan and his ex-girlfriend, Hannah. But the moment Issie told me about her was the first moment I got a sense I did not trust him.

My phone starts ringing, Lois is calling. I pick it up and she tells me, gently, ‘You have to do something then. I think you need to call the police.’

‘Oh God,’ I say, feeling the life suck out of me. Hearing Lois tell me what I already know makes it all the more real.

I don’t go the police straight away. On the phone to Lois, we agree I would contact Issie’s tight circle of friends first. They’ll know more than me. There comes a point in a teenager’s life when the friends always do. Maybe they can even see where Issie is on their phones, a privilege I lost at some point over the last few months.

At 8 a.m., when it feels a more reasonable hour to call them, I pick out the only friend I have a number for: Carla. She and Issie have been inseparable since they met on the first day of grammar school. They both knew no one else and were drawn together despite the fact they had so little in common. Carla, who can be so quiet, versus my full-of-beans Issie. She’d always preferred to be reading and playing the piano but would get dragged outside to kick a football when my daughter required her to, horrified but always compliant. Then, in return, Issie would sit on the piano stool next to her friend and turn the pages of the music as she practised for whatever high grade she was achieving next.

Carla seems surprised to hear from me. ‘Hi, Jess?’ she says as she answers. It comes across as a question.

‘Carla, how are you?’ I ask, but don’t wait for a response. ‘Listen, I know this may seem out of the blue to you, but I can’t get hold of Issie and I wondered if you’d heard anything from her lately?’

A pause before she answers, ‘Isn’t she travelling?’

‘Well yes,’ I say, wrong-footed by the question and the uncertainty on Carla’s part, because of course she must know this is what her best friend is doing. ‘She is. Have you heard from her since she’s been out there?’ Did you not contact her on her birthday?

‘No. To be honest – well …’ She stumbles, failing to finish her sentence.

‘Carla?’ I prompt.

‘I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t really spoken to Iz in a while. Is there a problem?’

I inhale a tight breath. Yes, there must be a problem if the two of them haven’t spoken, but I say, ‘I don’t know. I hope not, but I can’t get hold of her and she hasn’t updated any posts for three days and …’ I trail off. ‘When did you last speak to her?’

There’s a beat before Carla answers. ‘I don’t know. A while back. A couple of months maybe.’

‘A couple of months?’ I gasp. I knew Issie was spending all her time with Dylan, but to not speak to her best friend in a couple of months … ‘What happened?’

Carla lets out a nervous laugh. ‘Oh you know—’ She breaks off.

‘No, I don’t know, Carla. Was it to do with Dylan?’

‘I’m sorry, Jess, I’ve got to go,’ she says. ‘Mum’s waiting for me in the car. We’re going to Westquay, shopping.’

‘Carla, wait! Please tell me what happened.’

‘There were— I don’t know. Issie wanted to spend all her time with him rather than us. There were some disagreements. It was nothing major.’

‘It sounds pretty major if you haven’t spoken to her. You know it was her eighteenth yesterday.’

‘I know.’

Of course she knows. Their birthdays are ingrained in each other’s brains. They should have been celebrating together, this special milestone, the way they have celebrated every one of them together since they turned twelve.

‘And you didn’t message her?’ I don’t mean to lay this on Carla, but I can’t get my head around the fact these two have fallen out and I hadn’t even realised.

‘No.’ Carla pauses. ‘I thought about it but …’ She trails off.

It breaks my heart that her best friend didn’t even try to get in touch with her. I wonder how many of her friends did. If anyone managed to get hold of her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, though I am not particularly apologising to Carla. I am just so bloody sorry things have turned out this way. I am sorry I wasn’t making my daughter a birthday cake like I have every other year, that I didn’t give her a breakfast doughnut as I sang Happy Birthday at the top of my voice, and that Carla wasn’t turning up on the doorstep with huge silver balloons as she has done for the last three years.

I am sorry I let her go travelling at all.

‘Water under the bridge,’ Carla says softly, and tears begin to silently drip down my cheeks. She makes it all sound so final.

I wipe them away. ‘Before you go, can you tell me if you follow Issie on any other social media? Can you still see where she is on Snapchat or anything like that?’ I think back to the day Issie showed me the app, enlarging it so I could see all the little caricatures of her three friends and where they were. I couldn’t believe anything could be so intrusive and yet now I pray she can track Issie’s phone.

‘No. She blocked me,’ Carla says bluntly.

I close my eyes and try to quell the sickness that comes from realising how little I know of my daughter any more, how much I knew she was changing and yet I didn’t see the half of it. ‘Okay,’ I say quietly. ‘Thanks anyway. Can you send me the others’ numbers? Katia and Leah.’

‘Sure.’ I hear her tapping on the other end of the line and a ping a moment later suggests she has already done it.

‘I’m sorry you aren’t still friends,’ I tell her sadly, and I mean it. I really am.

‘Yeah. Me too,’ Carla says before hanging up.

I open up the contacts she has sent me and save them onto my phone, though I don’t know what more they will tell me that Carla hasn’t said. Leah, who had flitted in and out of Issie’s friendship groups since Year 8, but who had become a close friend two years ago, and Katia, who only joined in the sixth form and is the girl I know least out of all of them. But they were all so close. The type of friends you want for your child, the ones who you know will always be there for them – and yet it turns out they aren’t.

I press call on Leah’s number. Leah is a sassy girl, supposedly into boys from the off. Out of anyone, I always thought Leah would be the one to watch, the one who might go off with a boy too young or get into trouble. But, despite her sometimes reckless behaviour, Leah had always made me laugh, so straight and bluntly sarcastic.

Her phone rings and rings until it eventually clicks onto voicemail and so I leave her a message and ask her to call me back. And then I try Katia.

‘Hello?’ she questions when she answers the phone.

‘Hi, is that Katia? It’s Jess here, Issie’s mum,’ I say. ‘I know me calling is a bit strange, but have you got a minute to speak?’

‘Sure.’

‘I was wondering if you had heard anything from Issie lately? You probably know she’s travelling, but have you spoken to her since she’s been gone, or heard from her at all?’

Katia laughs softly. ‘Er, no. Sorry, Mrs Adams, but I think I’d be one of the last people Issie contacted.’

‘Call me Jess, please,’ I say, sighing. ‘What happened between you girls?’

‘It was months ago,’ she says. ‘Why do you want to know now?’

My heart skips a beat. What had I missed at the time? ‘I’m trying to get hold of her,’ I tell her. ‘And I can’t. So I wondered whether any of you girls had heard from her?’

‘Sorry. No.’

‘Do you still follow her on Instagram?’

‘No.’

‘Or can you see where she is on Snapchat or anything like that?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t looked lately.’

‘Could you?’ I persist.

‘Hold on …’ After a minute she says, ‘No. She’s changed her settings so I can’t see her. I’m not surprised: we all did the same with her.’

‘Thanks anyway,’ I say, a swell of hopelessness washing over me. But I push once more, ‘What happened, Katia?’

‘Iz changed,’ she says. ‘She pulled away from us.’

‘Carla says there were some disagreements.’

‘Yes, there were, but I don’t think they’re my stories to tell.’

‘Whose stories are they then?’ I say. ‘Because I can’t ask my daughter.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Adams. I hope you find her though,’ she adds, and then finishes the call.

CHAPTER FOUR

At 9.20 a.m. I send a text message to my client, Polly, apologising that a family emergency has come up and I need to rearrange our meeting. Fabric swatches and her grandmother’s French dresser can wait. Everything else becomes meaningless when it is overridden by a fear that something awful has happened to my daughter.

I pick up my handbag, keys and phone, and pull the front door locked behind me. I no longer see what option I have other than driving to the police station and asking for help in tracking Issie down. I choose the option of going in person rather than speaking to a 999 operator, in the hope I can talk directly to an officer.

As I drive, I think of Scott, of how I should tell him Issie is missing. I have barely turned to him for anything over the last eight years, at least not to do with his daughter. Our battle of a divorce finalised a twelve-year marriage with a sum of money I would easily survive on until Issie turned eighteen, and an agreement for Issie to spend time with him during holidays, though I always knew this wasn’t going to be his priority.

The beauty of him living in another country, and with Issie being in her late teens, means I don’t have to speak to him regularly. It’s no longer like the early weeks and months after he left, when friends told me that at least I didn’t have the chance of bumping into him and Rita. But despite this, I couldn’t bear the distance between us. Having an ocean divide us made our lives so impossibly separate, knowing there was no chance of us ever getting back together. In many ways it felt like we had never been. The idea of him and his ex-wife and her child living as a family, starting afresh, while I was barely keeping myself sane, and living only for Issie.

You don’t stop loving someone because they walk out on you and your daughter. I hated him with every fibre of my being, but I still loved him too. Only she had him again. The first wife. The one before me. Did it mean she’d always had a stake in him? Did it mean more that they had been married first?

The thought of talking to him now fills me with nerves and I hate how pathetic it is that the sound of his voice can interrupt all the healing I have done over the last eight years. Besides, I know without giving it much thought it is only 4.20 a.m. in Boston. Scott will be in bed, lying next to his first wife, for at least another hour before he gets up and drives himself to his shiny glass-walled office in Boston with its view of the harbour and the courthouse docks. Does he still buy himself a caramel frappuccino en route? A drink that never quite fit with the masculine power-crazed persona he exudes.

No. I decide I cannot speak to him yet. I may even need to use Lois as a sounding board before I do. Instead, as I make my way to the police station, I tune in to Radio Solent, my thoughts on Issie and what happens now. Finally I pull up on the other side of the road to the station where a space has just come free. Turning off the engine I stare at the building for a moment, until I find the courage to get out of the car and cross over.

Inside, a woman sits behind a desk, pushing her glasses up her nose, tapping away at her keyboard as she reads what is on the screen of her computer. She only looks at me when I am right up at her window, peering over her glasses before she eventually takes them off and asks how she can help.

‘I’m worried about my daughter,’ I tell her. ‘I think she might be missing.’

‘Okay. You’ll need to file a missing person’s report,’ she replies, looking at me like she is trying to sum me up. Maybe I look too calm, but I am trying my best to hold it together. I didn’t want to fly in here in a panic, I wanted to keep my composure as I give them everything I know. I want them to tell me I have nothing to worry about.

But then what if she’s thinking this is something my daughter does every other week, running off, getting mixed up with the wrong people? They’ll be used to that happening. They might think she’s just another errant teenager.

Issie isn’t like that. We aren’t like that, I want to tell her. And all of this – it isn’t right.

‘Let me take some details from you,’ she says, and I realise I’ve had a whole conversation in my head. She leans back in her swivel chair and grabs a stack of papers, so casually, so oblivious to the fact my world is caving in.

‘Thank you,’ I tell her, pleasantly. I must keep her onside.

She nods as she places a page of A4 on the desk in front of her. She has the look of someone who has done this countless times, maybe already this week. I am nothing more than a number, a process she needs to go through, rather than someone who is falling apart.

‘Okay, let’s start with all the basic information,’ she says, and so I give her everything: Issie’s full name and her date of birth, mine, her father’s and both our addresses. I give her a description of what Issie looks like, and she asks me for a photo. I tell her when I last heard from her and that as far as I know she is currently in Lisbon.

The woman pauses and looks up at me. ‘Lisbon?’ she repeats.

‘Yes. She went travelling. She got to Lisbon three days ago.’

‘She’s not in the UK?’

‘No, like I say, I think she is in Lisbon, that’s where she was when I last heard from her.’

The woman frowns.

‘What is it?’ I demand.

‘If she’s not in the UK, then there’s little we can do for you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can carry on taking down your details and log that she’s missing, but it’s out of our jurisdiction.’

‘But I think she’s in trouble,’ I persist. ‘I haven’t heard from her in three days, and she’s only a child.’

She glances down at her notepad. ‘She’s eighteen,’ she says simply. ‘So she’s an adult. Legally, an adult has the right to disappear, go off-grid, whatever you want to call it, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘But there has to be something you can do about it,’ I say, desperate now, my frustration rising. This isn’t the response I expected. I might have hoped she would assure me that I didn’t have anything to worry about, but I didn’t want her telling me there was nothing they could do. ‘Can’t you get in touch with the police in Portugal?’

‘We could send an international letter of request to the Portuguese police, but … she’s not a minor.’

‘A letter of request?’ I repeat. ‘Where’s the urgency in that? There must be numbers to report a crime—’

‘But, as far as we know, no crime has been committed,’ she says, as though I am stupid to be getting everything so wrong.

‘Yet!’ I say. ‘So, what, we just hang around and wait until it’s too late?’

‘Your daughter is eighteen. I’m sorry, but little will be done about it.’

‘I don’t get it. I don’t get what you’re saying. You’re telling me if she was a child you could help, but now she’s eighteen you can’t?’

‘That makes it sound very black and white—’

‘But that’s what it is!’ I cry. ‘If she was seventeen still, would you be doing something then?’

She stares back at me blankly, her silence enough to tell me that of course they would.

‘What about her boyfriend? Can you at least look into him?’ I plead.

‘How do you mean, look into him?’

‘I mean find him somehow. He has his phone on – can it be tracked?’ I look up at the sound of murmured voices. A man in a shirt and pressed trousers seems to be watching me from a doorway as he juggles his mobile in his hand.

‘I’m afraid we can’t do that. Not unless he’s under suspicion – and right now he isn’t.’

‘But I suspect him,’ I say, feeling desperate. ‘I think he might have done something to her. His name is Dylan Whiting and I hardly know anything about him, but I do know he controls her. He manipulates her, he’s been doing it over the last ten months and yet she doesn’t see it.’ Tears fill my eyes. ‘He’s clever and he makes her think all these things about herself that aren’t true.

‘She’s changed the way she dresses because of him,’ I go on, begging this woman to understand. ‘He didn’t like her going to the gym, so she stopped. He’s been slowly destroying my little girl.’ I slam my hands on the desk in front of her. ‘I know he’s done something.’

The woman frowns and I wonder if I have finally caught her attention. ‘When did you last see her?’ she asks.

‘The fifteenth of June. That’s when they left. I took them to the airport.’

Now she looks incredulous. ‘You drove them to the airport? Your daughter and this man you’re telling me controls her?’

‘Yes.’ I pause. ‘I know how it sounds, but she was going anyway. What was I supposed to do?’

In fact Issie hadn’t wanted me to take them. Dylan said they could get a coach to Gatwick, but I insisted. It made no sense to do that when I could drive. Issie had looked at me with seeming contempt for my generous offer of a four-hour round trip, a look that bored right through my skin. Only later would I think about that look and wonder if it wasn’t contempt but rather fear at the idea of having to tell Dylan.

I wanted to drive her there, I wanted to be with her right until the last minute. In case she changed her mind.

I was hoping she would, even at the point she walked through the gate to security, when she looked back and held up her hand in a wave, the thinnest of smiles creeping onto her lips while her eyes remained as blank as they had been so often lately.

I’d imagined her turning to me and saying, ‘Mum, I’m not ready to go.’ I’d rehearsed how I wouldn’t say anything, but take her back to the car and bring her home. No questions asked, just a silent understanding between us.

Even in the car on the way there I thought I might get the chance to ask her if this was what she really wanted, and she’d admit she wasn’t sure, and I’d tell her she had all the time in the world ahead of her to travel and be with boyfriends. But this wasn’t it. He wasn’t it.

I hadn’t prepared myself for the inevitability of it. Of course she was going to go. Dylan had fast become the only person in Issie’s world she wanted anything to do with. And my daughter was fast becoming stuck in the middle, pulled in opposing directions.

While Dylan was fighting me for possession, I was fighting him. I had wondered as I drove off from our house that morning, heading for the airport, if maybe the best thing I could do for Issie would be to let him have her. Just for now. Wouldn’t that make it easier for her? For the summer, I would let them be. Hopefully, by the end of it, she would see what I so blatantly saw.

The memories of that journey seem like a lifetime ago. I’d picked Dylan up from the large Tesco, not from his house which I’d never seen. There had been no suggestion that his mother, whom I had never met, might want to wave him off.

I knew he lived in Hampshire, in a small seaside town called Milford on Sea. It was a twenty-five-minute drive from our house in Christchurch, but there was no hint of me detouring there, and I had no clue how he’d found his way to a Tesco in Bournemouth.

A sinking dread washed over me when I saw him pick up the large rucksack by his feet and swing it over his shoulder, climbing into the back of the car behind Issie so a strong waft of his musky aftershave filled my nostrils.

‘Hey,’ he said to Issie nonchalantly as he leaned forward and clasped a hand onto her shoulder. She reached up her own to place over it, but didn’t say anything. I had taken to watching them closely as the months passed, with increasing scrutiny. This boy, who turned out to be only nineteen but who came across as so much older. Who swept in and stole my daughter from me so efficiently and without any warning.

‘Hello, Dylan,’ I’d said and in the rear-view mirror I watched as he slowly turned to me and nodded.

‘Jess,’ he replied as he sank back into the seat and pulled his seat belt across. I was the first one to look away.

As I pulled off and trailed the Tesco car park so I could circle round it and get back out again, all the things I still wanted to say to my daughter were stacked on top of each other.

Don’t go, Issie. He’s not right for you. He’s going to hurt you. You’re too young to be doing this. But most of the journey was spent in silence, Issie and Dylan both absorbed in their phones. I glanced at him every so often and at one point he looked up and caught my eye, raising his eyebrows in a gesture I couldn’t fathom, but that made me shudder. I hated how I felt frightened of the teenager sitting in the back seat of my car – but I did, because of how easily he had come into Issie’s life and how he was slowly destroying it. And because there was not one damn thing I could do about it.

Many nights I had lain awake and imagined what I could do to get Dylan out of our lives. But, by the time I watched my daughter walk through the gates at Gatwick and disappear with him, I realised I had failed to save her from him.

Maybe I hadn’t done enough to warn her against controlling men like him, I’d been so busy trying to gloss over the fact I had once been blinded by someone similar because I didn’t want her seeing how badly her father had wrecked me. So it was partly my own fault.

The woman behind the police desk appears to think it is my fault too. ‘Mrs Adams, your daughter isn’t in the country. So, like I say, I can carry on taking the details …’ She taps her pen on the pad as if she is losing patience with me.

I stare at her, my breaths coming short and fast. If I hadn’t driven them to the airport I could profess my daughter had run away with him at the age of seventeen without my permission. But I did what every mother would surely do, and how was I supposed to see something like this happening?

I don’t tell the woman I made it even worse for Issie at the airport. As we approached the terminal, Dylan leaned forward and told me, ‘You can pull over and drop us outside the doors.’

‘No. It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m going to park in short stay.’

‘There’s no need,’ he replied, an edge of irritation in those three short words.

I ignored him and parked up, following them inside as Dylan strode ahead, desperate to shake me off. Time was ticking and with each minute that passed my heart sank deeper into my stomach, twisting with nerves that made me feel like I might puke. Any second and she would be gone.

As Dylan approached the check-in desks I took a chance and grabbed Issie’s arm, making her stop in her tracks. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ I hissed at her so he couldn’t hear me. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind.’

She turned and stared at me, and for a moment I thought she might be considering the question. My heart pounded in anticipation as I waited. Please, Issie. Don’t go. How could I explain to her I had a bad feeling about this trip, when anyone would think it was because I didn’t like Dylan?

He chose that moment to look back and, presumably seeing us stopped a way behind him, called out her name.

Issie snapped her attention to him. ‘Why would I change my mind?’ she said as she picked up her steps again. ‘This is what I want to do.’

‘I’m only saying, if you’re having second thoughts …’

‘I’m not.’

‘Issie, wait.’ I caught up with her, desperate, making her stop again. ‘This doesn’t feel right,’ I told her, my voice low. ‘Nothing about it is right. I don’t want you going. Please.’ Tears sprang into my eyes, I couldn’t help them now.

‘Mum. Oh my God,’ Issie hissed. ‘What are you doing? Don’t you dare start crying.’

‘I’m not crying,’ I gulped.

‘Yes you are, and you’re making a scene – like I knew you would.’ Her eyes flashed over to Dylan. ‘That’s why I didn’t want you coming,’ she snapped as she glared at me, turning on her heel and catching up with her boyfriend, who had joined a queue of people waiting to check in for their flights.

I lingered at the edge of the line, my eyes now dry but raw from where I had roughly wiped my hands over them. Where had those days gone when I could tell her what to do? Or later, when she would still listen to me if I wasn’t happy about something? I’d been blessed with them for so long, but not any more.

Issie refused to look back, and I knew there was nothing I could do but let her go. Physically, she was within my reach. And yet, emotionally, I had lost her.

Can your heart actually break? Is it possible to feel it crack in two and tear itself into tiny pieces? Because in that moment I swear I felt it.

Issie and Dylan checked in and I followed them to the barriers where they would go through to security. I held it together as much as I could. There was nothing more I could do now apart from say goodbye.

She turned to me at the last moment, unsure what to say. I nodded as if to convey that whatever she wanted was fine by me. But then she took a step towards me and fell into me and so I wrapped my arms around her as tightly as I could, pressing her into my chest and whispering into her ear, ‘Just stay safe, Issie.’

I didn’t want to let her go. But I also didn’t want her to stay in one place as I had always done, tethered to one town, while a husband, the one love of my life, came and then went again.

‘What do you think she was last wearing?’ The woman’s voice breaks me from my thoughts.

‘What? I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a clue. But I can tell you what she had on on Monday.’ I pull up a picture of Issie’s Instagram post and reel off the denim shorts, a ribbed, red, cropped vest top and white pumps. ‘But that was three days ago.’

She writes it down regardless. ‘And what was your daughter’s state of mind when you last spoke to her?’

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘It was fine.’

‘Was there anything in her message that worried you?’ she goes on.

‘No. Nothing.’

‘And nothing gave you any clue as to what she was doing, or if they’d met anyone else? Anything about where they might be staying?’

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t know any of it. It was only a short text and I didn’t follow it up because I figured I’d be speaking to her on her birthday.’

‘And where was she staying?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit.

‘Does she know anyone else in Portugal?’

‘No. Not that I know of. I’m certain something has happened,’ I say, imploring her to do more when I already know she isn’t going to. ‘I know it has,’ I repeat, and I do. Deep in my gut. In the place where mothers just know. Something is wrong, because I would have heard from Issie by now.

She finishes asking her pointless questions and I have no choice but to leave. I am walking towards the door when a voice behind stops me. I turn to see the man who had been watching me from the doorway. ‘DI Harrow,’ he introduces himself as he opens the door and we step outside. He reaches into his pocket for a packet of cigarettes, offering me one though I decline.

‘There is little we can do,’ he says, but in a nice way, like he realises what I must be going through, and I feel so grateful for this that I almost start crying again. ‘She’s classed as an adult now.’

‘Then I’m a day too late,’ I say, and the thought hits me, how coincidental the timing is. ‘He must have known,’ I go on. ‘Dylan knew that as soon as she was eighteen there would be nothing we could do about it.’

He frowns as he pokes a cigarette into his mouth and lights it. I have no clue what he is thinking but I know I must be right. I know Dylan Whiting better than he does. Better than Issie thinks she does. ‘Tell me what would have happened if she was still seventeen.’

‘It’s irrelevant.’

‘Please, tell me.’

‘How old is her boyfriend?’

‘Nineteen,’ I say.

‘In basic terms it would have been classed as child abduction,’ he says.

‘Oh my God.’

‘But that isn’t the case. They are both adults.’

‘By a day,’ I cry. ‘Is there really nothing you can do?’

He cocks his head with a glimmer of a shake but says, ‘You would be best off contacting the Portuguese police yourself. That’ll be a lot quicker than anything we can do. If you believe your daughter was last in Lisbon, go straight to the local police. From what you’ve told me—’ He stops as if considering how best to word this. ‘Your daughter is an adult, and as far as you know she hasn’t come to any harm, but calling the Lisbon police is a good starting point.’

‘Thank you.’ I tell him, grateful for his kindness, though I still wish they could do more to help. ‘Do you have kids?’ I ask.

‘Two grown-up sons.’

‘What would you do if you thought one of them was in danger but you couldn’t prove it?’ I say, pounding my hand against my chest. ‘But you knew something was wrong. What would you do in my situation?’

‘Honestly?’ He pauses. ‘I’d probably get myself a ticket to Lisbon. And if you really want to kick it up, get the media involved.’

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 105: THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING

PART ONE

On the sixth of July, the day after her daughter’s eighteenth birthday, having not had any contact from Issie in three days, Jess Adams reported her daughter as missing to the British police.

I should note here that the handling of the teenagers’ disappearance by the police has been retrospectively pulled apart by the press. The suggestion is that, if they had taken Jess seriously from the start, then things could have turned out very differently.

Jess started the fight with an uphill struggle. The British police had no jurisdiction because the teenagers were believed to be in Portugal. And, as Jess was about to experience, the Portuguese police were confident the pair had simply continued travelling and didn’t want to have any contact with their families in England.

No one was looking for Issie Adams.

At the time Issie left the country, back on the fifteenth of June, it did seem that her relationship with her mum had been fraught. By her own admission, Jess didn’t like Dylan and Issie knew this. And, as we know, Issie had already been hiding things from her mother – especially her decision to turn down a place at the esteemed London art school she had aspired to attend since she was twelve.

So what was this young girl’s state of mind when she left for Europe three weeks earlier? Why hadn’t she discussed her future plans with anyone, including her mum? And did she have any plans for when they returned?

Were they planning to return, or was there something more sinister occurring between this young, supposedly besotted couple to suggest they never intended to come back at all?

Up until the third of July, Issie and her mum had been in constant contact, swapping messages, speaking on the phone. Why, when there had been no disagreement between them, would Issie suddenly disappear off the radar – unless, as Jess suspected, something was wrong?

Despite Jess’s concerns, this case did not trigger the sort of media circus you might expect. There were no Missing White Woman Syndrome headlines in those early days, generating the sort of public interest that could very likely have been utilised in the hunt for Issie Adams. She was a pretty, petite, blond, fresh-faced teenager who had seemingly vanished into thin air.

If you remember Amy Bradley, whose disappearance I covered in a previous podcast, and Natalee Holloway, who went missing in 2005, the media played a huge part in the search for the truth. So why was Issie Adams not all over our screens? Why hadn’t Jess used the media to her advantage as, we later found out, the police advised her to do?

As I said at the start, this is a case that threw out twist after twist: one missing person reported, soon another, and shortly interest did begin to grow. Because, as we are about to find out, things took an interesting turn in the sudden disappearance of Issie Adams and Dylan Whiting.

CHAPTER FIVE

I talk to Lois again before I can bring myself to pick up the phone to Scott. Of course he has to know I am concerned our daughter is missing, he is her father. And yet the thought of how our conversation will play out fuels the simmering of disquiet I have at the mention of his name. I know there is no one else to blame in this situation but me. I am the one who has dropped the ball.

Lois tells me it doesn’t matter what he says. All that’s important is Issie. She tells me I am strong enough to suck up any of his accusations and that I just need to give him the facts.

Scott picks up on the third ring with a smooth, ‘Hey, Jess.’

‘I haven’t been able to get hold of Issie,’ I tell him with all the resolve I have. The words strangle me as they come out and I update him on the three days since I last heard from her. I tell him I have been to the police but they say there is nothing they can do.

‘Did you call her yesterday?’ I ask him. ‘For her birthday?’ I add, in case he hadn’t remembered.

‘Yeah, of course I called her. And sent her a message.’

‘And you didn’t hear back?’

‘No, but—’

‘But what?’ I ask when he doesn’t finish.

‘I don’t expect to. I don’t always hear from her. Sometimes we go back and forth with our texts and others I don’t hear from her for a couple of days.’

I’m not surprised he didn’t think any more of it; their relationship hasn’t been good since he left.

‘And is it out of the ordinary that you haven’t heard?’ he asks.

‘Yes, it is,’ I say. ‘I should have by now.’ I tell him how I left a message for Dylan, but that I don’t know if he would even tell her I’d been in contact.

‘You don’t trust him?’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘Then why did you let her go with him?’

There it is. The blame I have been expecting. ‘And how do you think I could have stopped her?’ I say. ‘Besides, you gave her the money to go.’

‘Which I wouldn’t have done if I’d known the boyfriend was dodgy.’

‘You have a step-daughter the same age. Do you really think you could stop her going away with her boyfriend if she wanted to?’

Scott lets out a laugh and eventually says, ‘Of course I could if I wanted to.’

I bite my lip. There is no point going there. ‘Issie would have gone even if I told her not to,’ I tell him firmly. ‘And I wanted her to leave knowing I love her and that she could call me if she needed to. And besides, none of this is important. The important part is finding her and making sure she is safe.’

He pauses for a moment before saying, ‘And you think she would call you if she needed to?’

‘Of course she would,’ I cry, but even as the words leave my mouth I don’t know how much truth is in them any longer. Issie didn’t turn to me when she fell out with her friends – she didn’t even mention it to me. She’s spent the last two months taking her A levels and not speaking to any of them. How has she gone through all of that and not come to me? Surely it must have broken her heart?

But I refuse to tell Scott any of this. I do not need to hear from him that her falling out with her friends is my fault too when I am already considering that somehow it must be.

‘So what’s this Dylan kid like then?’ he asks.

‘He’s a man, not a kid,’ I say. I realised that the moment he walked into my home for the first time. I’d seen a photo of him beforehand, taken at the beach where they had met. I’d said I liked how he looked with his wavy dark hair that sat messily on top of his head, pushed back with sunglasses that were attached to a band around the back of his neck. His bare shoulders were on show, he looked like he had been out on a surfboard and his skin was tanned with a splattering of freckles on his nose.

She hadn’t shown any interest in boys before she met him. Her focus was solely on art, her friends, her plans for her future that were so mapped out: finish her A levels, go to London to study at Central St Martins. Issie always knew what she wanted.

But then he walked into my kitchen and my first thought was how much older than her he looked. How much older than his photo too.

Dylan filled the doorway with his broad shoulders, wearing a white T-shirt and grey jersey shorts, white socks that came up to his mid-calves and black sliders on his feet. He must have been about five foot eleven, but next to Issie with her petite frame he looked so much bigger. On his right arm a tattoo snaked around his biceps in a tangle of interwoven patterns. He looked so much more than I was expecting, in a way that was hard to articulate. Older? Bigger? Maybe just more real.

I was so caught up in the thought that my little girl couldn’t possibly be dating a man, that Issie had to prompt a response by repeating her introduction: ‘Mum? This is Dylan.’

‘Dylan.’ I smiled and pulled myself together. ‘I’m Jess. It’s lovely to meet you.’ I held out a hand for him to shake, which he took with a strong grip and a hand that swallowed my own. He was the same size as Scott and it felt like having him back in the house again.

‘I like your house,’ Dylan told me, his eyes trailing the kitchen. I’d finally installed the dream units and worktops I’d wanted for years only the summer before. It was a deep navy and I did recognise it looked like something out of a home magazine.

Dylan was a carpenter, not at school like I’d imagined Issie’s first boyfriend would be. I wondered whether he was appraising my kitchen with a chippy’s eye, or comparing it to his own home. I was curious to know what he was thinking as his gaze drifted over my Shaker-style cabinets and marble worktops.

Did he really like it or was he making assumptions about us, like I was desperately trying to avoid doing with him? Was this anything like the house he lived in, or was it more than he had?

Over time I understood how different our lives are, how much more Issie’s got than he’s ever had. Was it this that made him so bitter towards me, or would he have been that way anyhow?

What Dylan would never understand is how much love I put into our house to make it a home. How, at first, I had put it on the market after Scott left, watching couples and families trample through it, pointing out what they didn’t like and what they would change. In the end I turned down three offers, holding out for the asking price, but all the time hoping I didn’t get it because I didn’t want to move.

The truth was, at the start I quite liked Dylan. He was charming and polite, and gave me no reason to dislike him. He told me he was nervous meeting me, which came as a surprise because he didn’t look remotely intimidated.

But over time it changed. She changed. I watched her closely as she went from being happy and carefree to someone attached to her phone, waiting for him to call or to turn up and collect her for a date: always on his terms, his timescales, telling me she was fine when I could see her anxiety as she stood by the window waiting ten minutes, fifteen, before he eventually pulled up and beeped his horn and she ran out to him.

These are all little things I don’t tell Scott, but he is asking me, ‘And the police won’t do anything?’

‘No.’ The word chokes out in a whisper. She will go mad at me if she suddenly has the police looking for her, and they find her in some hotel with Dylan, totally fine with an uncharged phone. But I don’t tell Scott this either. Besides, I don’t care if that’s the case. I want that to be the case. All I want is for her to be safe.

‘She seemed to really like Dylan,’ he tells me now.

‘Did she talk to you about him?’ I don’t know why I am surprised she did.

‘Yes. A fair bit, I suppose.’

‘A fair bit?’

‘We talk a fair bit about stuff.’

I’m about to say I didn’t know that. I didn’t realise that they spoke often, but that’s something else I refuse to give him the satisfaction of.

Scott is silent for a moment until he eventually says, ‘I’ll get a flight over—’

‘No.’ I cut him off. ‘There’s no need, not yet.’

That is the last thing I want. Besides, I’ve been thinking about what the DI said to me at the station. That what he would do is get straight on a plane to Lisbon.

CHAPTER SIX

I don’t want to contemplate the idea of flying to Portugal to search for my daughter, for no other reason than I do not want this to be my reality. But, as the hours tick by, and with Issie’s phone still off, I don’t know what else to do but look for her myself.

Still the questions torment me: am I being stupid, flying overseas, hunting down my daughter like some crazed over-protective mother? Dare I risk not?

I check out flights, and book one that leaves from Heathrow tomorrow afternoon that I can cancel if I need to. I pray I don’t end up needing it and that I will have heard from her by then. If not, it will have been three days without contact.

In the meantime I search for numbers for the Portuguese police. If I want to report a crime I need to call the national number. But, as I was bluntly told by the woman in the station, as far as I know no crime has been committed. At least not that I can prove.

Instead I find a number for the Polícia Judiciária in Lisbon and make the call. ‘Do you speak English?’ I ask when a woman answers in Portuguese.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I’m calling from England,’ I tell her. ‘My daughter is in Lisbon, or at least I know she arrived there three days ago, but I believe she is missing. I don’t know what to do.’

‘Okay. Let me take some details, please,’ she says, and asks me the questions I have already answered today.

I give her everything I know, this time forcing the point that Issie would have called and that nothing about her disappearance is right. I make sure she doesn’t think I am worrying over nothing. I make her realise my daughter has vanished in their city.

I am asked for more information – do I have her passport number and travel insurance details? I give her everything. Can I send a recent photo of her and of Dylan? I tell her I’ll email what I have as soon as I end the call.

Can any of Dylan’s family give me any more information? I admit I don’t know who they are. It is fast becoming obvious how little I do know about Dylan when I don’t even have his mother’s details to share with the police. In fact I have nothing more than bare facts, a skeleton of who he is.

He lives with his mum in Milford on Sea, an area I’m only familiar with from occasional walks to Hurst Castle or along the Solent Way to Lymington. I know his mum works in a café and that he has a younger half-brother called Billy.

I have never been to his house, or ever dropped Issie off there. Even from the start of their relationship, he insisted on driving to ours to take her out. In the beginning I thought this meant he was taking responsibility and looking after her, and in the early days he was always punctual. I could set my watch by Dylan’s arrival. I thought it said a lot about him, that he did what he said.

Then, over time, I wondered whether it was his way of keeping track of Issie. His punctuality became slightly obsessive, a chance for him to get shitty with Issie if she wasn’t ready. And then, after some months, he would arrive late, leaving her waiting for him.

Other than where he lives and what his mum does for work, I know Dylan’s father left them when Dylan was five. Billy’s father isn’t on the scene either. I know Dylan is employed by a family-run building firm somewhere in Hampshire, where he has been working for three years. He plays football once a week without fail, and yet Issie has stopped going to the gym because he doesn’t like the way men ogle her.

Yes, I did intervene on this point. I told her it was ridiculous, and she shouldn’t see it as a compliment. It wasn’t cute that her boyfriend was jealous, it was obsessive. Issie snapped that it had nothing to do with me and she wasn’t stopping because of him. I simply pointed out that she’s always loved it.

‘You have no idea what I love,’ she’d shouted at me. ‘And stop listening to our conversations.’

‘This isn’t right,’ I called out again after she stormed out of the room and stomped up the stairs. ‘Nothing about this is healthy.’ But what could I do? Pressure her into going? Take her myself and force her to lift weights? I already knew by then I was losing the battle.

The only other thing I know about Dylan is that he has friends called Russ and Ashley, who I assume are a couple. Issie went to their flat at the beginning of her relationship and came home to tell me there was someone sleeping in the communal hallway. I hadn’t wanted her going there again but, back then, she’d told me she didn’t want to anyway. I have no idea if she ever returned.

This pitiful list makes it all the more obvious and frightening I know so little about the man my daughter has left the country with. Dylan feels like a ghost, a figment of my imagination, who has whipped Issie from under my feet.

When I come off the phone to the Portuguese police I don’t feel better, I feel worse. Because now I have made it official and reported my daughter as missing and, in doing so, I have made the impossible a reality.

By evening I have scoured Google for cafés in Milford on Sea, in the hope I might be able to find Dylan’s mother, and at least make her a reality. A handful come up, clustered around the green and on the small high street, with another one on the clifftop. It wouldn’t take long to work my way around them and so I make the decision to do it first thing in the morning. Surely Dylan’s mother is my best bet for now, a first port of call for tracking our children down?

I sleep fitfully, and at 2 a.m. I pick up my phone and open Issie’s Instagram. I switch my lamp on and plump the pillows behind me so I can sit up in bed.

Maybe there is something I have missed, some clues peppered about that I hadn’t been looking for. I trawl through her scattered posts over the last three weeks, pulling up the names of people who have liked them, though none of them I recognise.

I start again and scroll backwards.

The post before her last one, where she was standing in front of the Belém Tower, has a photo of her and Dylan sitting at a bistro table outside a café in what otherwise looks like a residential street. They are leaning in, heads not quite pressed together. Dylan’s sunglasses cover his eyes, he has a smile that is barely there.

Travel life is great it reads. An abundance of hashtags follow. #Lisboa #citycouple #travelwithmylove and plenty more, all spelling out the message Issie seems to want the world to see.

The one before that is a picture of the two of them holding hands standing on a wall overlooking the city below. They must have asked someone to take the photo for them. In the background is an expanse of rooftops and, in the distance, water.

Tuk-tuk tours bring you to the best places reads the caption. When you scroll across there is a selfie of them huddled into the back of a mint-green tuk-tuk. A plethora of hashtags follow and, as I work my way back through the posts, I notice how similar they all are.

Two days earlier there is one of her and Dylan supposedly in Porto, although you couldn’t tell because it is a close-up of their faces, squashed together. His arm snakes around her neck, his hand balled into a fist at the front of her chin. Dylan isn’t smiling in the picture, rather staring at the camera in a pose. Issie’s eyes are wide open, the corners of her mouth tweaked up into what I suppose is meant to be a smile. Love is all the caption reads, an emoji of a red heart next to it.

I flick back through the selfies she has posted where, in each one, her expression is the same. She has replicated it in the way she smiles thinly with closed lips, the way her head hangs to one side in all of them. It is like she has stuck on a smile and a pretence for the camera.

I clutch the phone to my chest. My daughter’s face burns into my eyes as she looks back at me.

If he has done anything to hurt her …

‘Where are you, Issie?’ I whisper. She keeps looking back at me and, the more I look at her, the more I realise I’m seeing someone I don’t know any more.

CHAPTER SEVEN

7 July

By 7 a.m. I have packed a small suitcase with little more than a couple of T-shirts, a few pairs of shorts, a dress and a pair of jeans. All thrown in without much thought, but enough to see me through a few days. I stare at the state of it, wondering if I have everything.

Mum, your case is a mess, Issie would have once laughed if she could see it now.

I know, Iz, but I really don’t care.

You should care. What’s the point in ironing your tops if you’re just going to chuck them in!

She would be joking, taking the mickey out of me for the number of times I have said that to her. But it unnerves me how I can hear her ghost-like voice as if she is standing right beside me.

By 8 a.m. I am in my car and have tapped Milford on Sea into the satnav. The thought that I should let Scott know I am flying to Lisbon snaps at me. It isn’t what he will say that stops me but the fear he might fly over too. I do not need him. I have not needed him for eight years, and Issie hasn’t either.

I am struck by the memory of Issie at twelve, when the realisation hit her that her dad lived with someone else’s daughter now. She had come home from school with a frown as she dropped her bag on the table and said, ‘Do you think Dad picks Lottie up?’

I knew the name Lottie, of course I did when she was his step-daughter, but it wasn’t one we spoke often.

‘Do you think Dad picks her up from school?’ she’d gone on. ‘And goes to her sports matches at the weekends?’ It was a thought that had haunted me many times but, as far as I was aware, it was the first time Issie had imagined her father might be cheering Rita’s child on from the sidelines, or giving her a sneaky wink when her mum was being too strict. An image that made my heart break; I couldn’t bear it doing the same to hers.

‘Oh, I doubt it,’ I said. ‘You know your dad, he’s too busy working.’ I watched her carefully, not knowing what her reaction would be, but she simply nodded and changed the subject.

I don’t know how much thought Issie gives to Lottie any more. The last time she stayed with her dad was a year ago, and she had barely mentioned the other girl, or much at all about his home life, but then I hadn’t pushed for it. I didn’t want to hear about his perfect family life, I was happy for Issie to tell me about the fancy restaurants they went to and show me the make-up and clothes he’d bought her instead.

Along with these thoughts, my efforts to remain positive about why Issie isn’t returning my calls have ebbed, replaced by competing ideas that have nothing to do with her phone being broken or out of battery:

She has been in an accident

She is hiding from Dylan

Someone has hurt her

My daughter is dead.

As I reach the end of this list every breath leaves my body, a hole opening up so deep and raw that I scream out loud.

Don’t let it be that, God. Please do not let it be that.

Rush-hour traffic means it takes thirty-five minutes to get to Milford on Sea. When I reach the town I pull off the coast road and head left towards the high street, parking in a space by the green. There is a café opposite and, I know from my Google search, a few more around.

A handful of messages have sprung into action on my phone during the drive, all WhatsApps from old mum friends arranging a catch-up for the weekend. Usually I would be all over it. But today I ignore them as I get out of the car, cross the road and head into the first café.

A young woman with her hair piled high on top of her head is bending over behind the counter, loading drinks into a small fridge. ‘Hey! How can I help you?’ she asks in an Australian accent, as she wipes her hands down her apron, closes the fridge door and stands up.

‘This is going to sound odd, but I’m looking for a woman whose name I don’t know,’ I tell her. ‘Although I assume her surname is Whiting.’

The waitress smiles and cocks her head as she says, ‘Well I don’t know many people by surname.’

‘I know she works in a café,’ I go on, omitting the part that I don’t actually know for sure it is in Milford on Sea, ‘and she has a son called Dylan who’s away travelling at the moment.’

‘Sorry,’ she says with a smile. ‘Don’t think I can help you there. What does she look like?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit. This is the hard bit. I am searching for a woman I have never seen.

‘You don’t know?’

I shake my head.

‘Well, good luck finding her.’

‘Yes, thanks,’ I say flatly and turn to go.

‘Hey, everything okay?’

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘No it’s not. My daughter’s missing and I’m hoping this woman can help me.’

‘Oh.’ Her smile drops then. ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry. Shit. That’s dreadful.’

‘If you think of anything, maybe you could call me,’ I say.

‘Yeah sure.’ She nods and then, ‘Here. Write your number on that.’ She hands me a pad and pen and I write it down. I ask her if I can use the paper to jot down my number a few more times to pass out in other places.

I have no luck at the next two cafés, but I get into my stride, telling each of them how important it is that I speak to this woman I am searching for. People’s desire to help is triggered by a crisis, yet by the end of the high street I’ve gained no new information to add to what I started with this morning. With nothing more than pity, I head back to the car.

I thought I would have found Dylan’s mum by now, I realise as I start the engine. And yet how stupid a thought was that when I’m searching so blindly.

But there is still one more in the area, the Little Blue Café, which sits on the coast road. I passed it as I drove here.

I pull into the car park beside the café at quarter past ten. If I am to get my flight I need to be on the road to Heathrow in an hour.

I stop a young waitress with a name badge that reads Paige and ask if she has a minute as she carries a tray of hot drinks towards the door. She nods. ‘I’ll just do these,’ she says, and I wait for her to deliver the coffees to a table of four sitting outside in the sun. When she comes back, she stares at me with large brown eyes, uncertain of what I want to talk about and seemingly not going to ask. So I begin again, telling her I’m urgently looking for someone who might be able to help me find my daughter.

‘Dylan?’ she repeats when I mention his name. ‘Kay has a son called Dylan.’

‘Kay?’ I ask. ‘And she works here?’

‘Yeah. She’s due in at eleven.’

That’s in forty-five minutes. I calculate I have just about enough time to wait but it won’t give me much more when she’s here. I ask the waitress, ‘Could you give me her number?’

‘Oh. Well, I’m not sure.’

‘Can you ask someone? Maybe the manager?’

‘Yeah, I suppose,’ she says hesitantly. ‘Hold on.’ She leaves me again as she heads through a door that looks like it leads to a kitchen.

A moment later, a man in his mid-fifties appears. He has a greying beard, and a matching T-shirt tucked into shorts. At first glance, he looks scruffy. But, beyond that, he has piercing blue eyes that catch the daylight.

The young girl is following him, pointing in my direction. ‘Can I help you?’ he asks, his brow furrowing as he approaches me.

‘I’m looking for Kay and I believe she works here,’ I say. ‘Only I need to talk to her urgently and I’ve got a flight to catch. I can’t risk waiting for her to turn up for her shift so I’d be grateful if you could give me her number.’ The words tumble out and I have to wait for him to catch up with me.

He reaches a hand to his beard and runs his fingers through it as he looks at me. His T-shirt is slightly grubby, and I can’t help but glance at it. ‘No I can’t do that,’ he says. ‘Best you can do is wait for her.’

‘But, like I’ve said, I’m going to miss my flight if I do that.’

He shrugs and purses his lips. ‘Sorry, love. That’s a chance you’ll have to take.’

‘Well, could you try calling her for me instead?’ I persist. ‘Please? Ask her to come in earlier.’

The man laughs. ‘Listen, I don’t know what’s going on but you’re going to have to wait here if you want to see her.’

‘My daughter is missing,’ I tell him. ‘That’s what’s going on.’

He nods slowly, his face otherwise blank. ‘I’m sorry.’ His voice is gentler now. ‘I can get you a coffee and you can wait for her here. She’ll probably be ten minutes early anyway,’ he says. ‘She usually is. Take the lady’s order, Paige.’ He turns to the girl who is still hovering behind him before disappearing back through the door he came out of.

If Kay gets here on time, or a little before, I can speak to her straight away. I can tell her what I know and she can call her son, and I will still make the flight. Barely.

I ask Paige for a decaf cappuccino and sit at one of the many vacant tables by an open window. Despite its location, the café isn’t busy. Perhaps the boutique coffee shops on the high street have stolen its trade. There are only a few customers, who are either ordering take-away drinks, or bacon sandwiches that come out greasy and oozing ketchup. As Paige puts my coffee in front of me, I notice a smudge of brown sauce on the table and take a serviette out of the holder to wipe it myself. If she notices, she doesn’t react.

At ten to eleven a woman walks in and purposefully heads straight to the counter, saying hello to a couple of customers on her way. I shift forward in my seat apprehensively when she disappears through the kitchen door.

Two minutes later the door swings open again and she stares straight in my direction before walking over, a look of confusion plastered on her face.

‘You’re here to see me?’ she asks.

‘Kay?’ I say, and go to stand but she slides onto the chair opposite me.

Kay has dark hair that is scraped back into a knot at the nape of her neck. There are only a few grey strands around her ears and along her hairline. Her cheeks are flushed and ruddy but the fact she has few lines around her eyes makes me think she could easily be in her late thirties, and therefore ten years younger than me.

Yet, despite the lack of ageing lines, her eyes look tired. She isn’t wearing make-up and, when she reaches one hand up to her mouth, it’s impossible to ignore her bitten-down nails and the raw skin around them.

‘I’m Jess, Issie’s mum,’ I introduce myself.

She nods again as she drops her hand to the table. ‘Paige said as much,’ she replies, though she doesn’t smile as she regards me curiously; I assume Paige has also told her why I am here.

‘Have you heard from Dylan?’ I ask her outright, a tight knot of breath catching in my throat, making it feel like a struggle to breathe.

‘I heard from him …’ she pauses, thinking about it, ‘maybe a week ago?’ She continues to stare at me, weighing me up as she no doubt thinks I am doing to her. Her eyes bore into mine, uncannily like Dylan’s do. They are the exact same shape and colour as his and, for a moment, it feels like I am looking at him. They are a stark reminder that I am sitting opposite the mother of the man I do not trust with my daughter.

‘And that’s it, nothing after that?’

‘No,’ she says coldly. ‘We don’t talk every day. He’s nineteen, he’s on holiday.’

I shouldn’t be surprised we have got off on the wrong foot. I wonder how much he has told her about me and whether she knows I don’t like him. What stories he has made up. Perhaps he has told her I drove Scott away, like he suggested to Issie I did, and they laughed about how awful I must be. But, then again, she’s had two men in her life who have given her a child and not stuck around. Maybe we aren’t so different if we overlook the obvious dissimilarities.

Did he tell her the kind of house we live in and what car I drive? Has she already made a judgement about the kind of person I am?

I’ve always cared too much what people think of me. I play down my house and my car and the money Scott used to make when we were together. I don’t tell anyone the amount that, up until now, has appeared in my account on a monthly basis.

I need Kay to realise I am just a mother who is scared for her daughter, and so I soften my voice as I say, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that. But I haven’t heard from Issie in four days – which might not sound much,’ I add, ‘but it’s not like her not to contact me. I’ve tried calling her, but her phone is switched off even though it was her eighteenth birthday the day before yesterday.’ I pause at this. ‘I think something is wrong.’

Kay frowns as she takes in what I am telling her.

‘I’m sorry we haven’t met before now,’ I go on. ‘I’m sorry this is our first conversation, but I’d really appreciate your help. If you know anything about where they are, or if you could try calling Dylan for me?’

She pauses, looks at me uncertainly and then reaches into a front pocket in her sweatshirt and pulls out a mobile. ‘I don’t know where they are,’ she says. ‘But yes, of course I can call him.’

‘Thank you,’ I say, with a hint of relief. ‘I have tried but he hasn’t answered. I’ve left a message for him to call me back but—’ I break off as she makes the call and looks up at me again as she waits for it to connect.

I can hear the ringtone kick in. Kay gazes out of the window as she waits for him to answer. He doesn’t. His phone keeps on ringing and then switches to voicemail and Kay leaves a message for him. ‘Dylan?’ she asks as she catches my eye. ‘It’s me, Mum. Can you call me as soon as you can, please? It’s nothing to—’ She stops abruptly. ‘Well, anyway, can you call me?’ she adds before she pulls the phone away from her ear and ends the call. She places it on the table in front of her and I see the image on her screen of a young boy at the beach, his head rocking back in laughter. It could be a younger Dylan, but I think it is probably his brother. ‘He’ll think something is up,’ she says.

‘Something is up,’ I tell her.

‘I’m sure everything’s okay,’ she replies, but I’m not certain she believes it, and I realise that, whatever I think about Dylan, she is his mother, and I’ve told her his girlfriend is missing. Surely she must see a connection, a way this might be going. Is that why I see a hint of panic in her eyes?

‘I’m flying out there today,’ I tell her.

‘Oh?’ She is taken aback.

‘I spoke to the police yesterday and they said I should.’

She parts her mouth to say something, concern flashing across her face. ‘You’ve spoken to the police?’

‘Yes. This isn’t like Issie at all and, like I say, it was her eighteenth birthday two days ago. I should have heard from her by now …’

‘I’m sure everything is fine,’ she tells me again, as though she is trying to convince herself it is.

‘So everyone keeps saying.’

‘They’re together, Dylan wouldn’t let anything happen to her.’

I inhale a tight breath that Kay must notice as she scrutinises my expression. I wait for her to realise my thoughts on Dylan looking after her, but if she does she doesn’t let on. She cocks her head to one side instead. Would it be the last thing she’d consider that my worst fear is her son, or is there a side to him she’s already aware of?

But she has dropped her head and turned her attention back to her phone, which she has picked up and is now turning over and over in her hands as if expecting, or hoping, it will ring any minute and put us both out of our misery.

I check my own and see it’s eleven fifteen. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I say, but make no move to get up. There is so much more I want to ask her, only I don’t think I would get answers. I want to know if she truly thinks Dylan would look after my daughter at all costs. And if her son is likely to call her back any time soon. I want to know all the things I doubt any mother would tell a stranger who she must suspect is worried about what her child is capable of.

‘Can we swap numbers? Can you call me when you hear from him?’ I say finally.

‘Yes. Sure.’ She seems to shake herself out of whatever trance she’s fallen into as she opens her phone again and I reel off my number. I get Kay to text me so that hers flashes on my screen and I immediately save it into my contacts.

‘I am sorry we didn’t get to meet sooner,’ I tell her again.

Kay nods. ‘I hope you hear from Issie. I really do think everything will be fine,’ she says, though she must know her reassurances mean nothing.

CHAPTER EIGHT

7 July

I disembark the plane at Lisbon airport, the late afternoon heat hitting me as soon as I descend the steps onto the tarmac. I strip off my jumper and make my way through the arrivals hall, hailing a taxi as soon as I am outside the terminal, and give the driver the name of the hotel I booked while I was waiting at Heathrow.

The taxi eases its way through slow traffic, up and down countless narrow streets. I open the window a crack to let the air in, pressing my hand on the beading of the seat in front of me as we take a corner too quickly.

Everything about this city feels alien. I have never visited Lisbon before so I know nothing about it, and it takes longer than I imagined to work our way towards its centre. The further we go, the more oppressive the heat of the taxi feels. I wind the window down further.

When we come to a standstill, I stare out and wonder how the hell to start looking for my daughter. The thought churns inside of me. It was never going to be easy, yet, now I am here, it feels impossible.

We pull away again and I search for a flash of her as if she might suddenly appear from nowhere. I see Issie in the backs of girls walking into shop doorways, blond hair in the distance, in the crop tops and denim shorts they wear like she would. But it’s never her.

The driver drops me on a cobbled road and points to a double-door entrance I might otherwise have walked straight past, the name of the hotel written in cream lettering on the deep green canopy above it. The hotel marketed itself as small and personal, but is beautiful and ornate. A waft of jasmine strikes me as I push open the double doors and step inside the foyer.

It is an imposing entrance with a small floor space but above me an emptiness reaches to the tip of the winding staircase at least three floors tall.

A woman is waiting at the reception desk for me, intent on welcoming me by name. She has nine rooms, she advises, and supposedly I am staying in her favourite. Despite my reticence to get into conversation I smile politely as she insists on walking me up the staircase to the second floor and showing me into the room. She is in no rush to leave as I throw my suitcase on the bed and wander over to the window to look out on the street below. There are cafés dotted along the cobbled lane outside, and a low hum of laughter rises. It feels astounding that normal life can continue while mine is cracking into pieces.

I barely hear the woman’s instructions on how to use the air conditioner but say thank you as she eventually leaves, closing the door behind her. When she is gone, I open my case but don’t unpack. It feels wrong being in a foreign country on my own and I realise it’s something I have never done before.

Back downstairs I ask the woman for a map on my way out. I am a Luddite when it comes to Google Maps. For whatever reason I still find maps easier to follow on paper.

‘Of course.’ She whisks one out of a drawer. ‘Where would you like to go?’

‘Where are the main bars?’ I ask. ‘The main areas to go out in the evening?’ I want to see the places my daughter might be, or may have gone. Is this to be my starting point? I blindly figure it’s as good a place as any.

‘Let me show you,’ she says, circling clusters of streets with a pen, telling me about the various places I could visit. By the end of her speech, there are markings all over the map.

‘And where’s the Belém Tower?’ I ask, thinking back to the last place I know Issie was. ‘Can I walk there?’

‘Oh no, you cannot walk there, but you can take a train from here,’ she says, putting an asterisk on the map. ‘Or a tram from here,’ she continues before unfolding it again and indicating the tower, much further down the coast. ‘Some people hire an e-scooter and travel this way, if you like this kind of thing?’

I shake my head. I would not like that kind of thing at all and yet it is exactly what Issie would be encouraging us to do if she were here with me. Come on, Mum, it’ll be an adventure. Never mind the likelihood of me falling off; it would be something to make us both laugh.

But the city is so much bigger than I realised. It makes the idea of finding her even more impossible.

‘And can you tell me where the nearest Polícia Judiciária station is located?’ I ask the woman now, my pronunciation likely wrong.

‘Oh?’ She looks at me questioningly but I don’t oblige, and so she points again on the map. ‘It is here,’ she says.

‘And I can walk there?’

‘Oh yes, ten minutes. No more than that.’

I thank her again, and take the map, folding it into my crossover bag as I walk out of the hotel. Outside, the cobbled street curves around corners, disappearing in both directions as it snakes out of view. It is not even 6 p.m. and yet the street cafés are bustling. I swerve out of the way of a tuk-tuk that veers around the corner, four women laughing in the back of it.

I head towards the police station first. The journey takes me up and down more winding roads with tiny pavements, tram lines running alongside me. Each time I take another corner I am met with another hill, another set of steps. A labyrinth I could so easily get lost in, like I am playing a game of cat and mouse. I could go down one street while Issie is coming up another. I will never find my daughter by scouring the streets, that much is obvious.

The heat is still harsh. I am sweating as I climb steps and walk inclines, my T-shirt clinging to my body. There is a buzz of life around me, couples chattering, snatches of conversations as I walk past them. I glance into doorways of bars and restaurants, but by the time I reach the police station, my mission already feels hopeless.

The station is a grand stone building with a beautiful arched door and windows, so perfectly in keeping with the rest of the city. Inside a man with slick black hair sits behind the desk, leaning back in his chair, talking on a phone in Portuguese. When he finishes he looks up and speaks to me in words I don’t understand.

‘I’m English,’ I tell him.

He nods. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I spoke to someone yesterday. My daughter was here in Lisbon but she is missing.’ I give him Issie’s name and mine, and he takes down the details and brings up the log of the call I made.

‘Is there any news?’ I ask him.

‘No, nothing I am afraid at the moment.’

‘I haven’t spoken to her in four days,’ I say. ‘As far as I know no one has spoken to her since then. Has anyone looked for her boyfriend?’ I persist. ‘Dylan Whiting. I gave your colleague his name and number. I don’t know where they are staying.’

‘I am sure someone has spoken to him, yes,’ the man tells me dismissively, like he isn’t sure in the slightest.

‘And? What did he say?’

‘I cannot tell you. I am afraid I do not have the details of this.’

‘So they might not have?’ I ask. ‘No one might have spoken to him and asked him where my daughter is?’

‘I think maybe you could come back in the morning? I will see what I can find out for you.’

I feel the flapping of wings inside me; they haven’t left me since Issie’s birthday morning, but right now, right here, standing in the middle of a Portuguese police station, they feel more urgent.

I will the tears not to well up as they are threatening to do, but the rush of desperation is overwhelming. Is no one interested that Issie has disappeared? Do they need to find her body before they care she is in danger?

‘If she were seventeen, you’d be looking for her,’ I say to him, trying to push thoughts of the Madeleine McCann case out of my head, and of how we were led to believe so little was done even then.

My breaths are short and sharp as I walk back out of the station onto the street and I try to slow them down. Lois had asked me if I wanted her to come with me to Portugal, but we both knew how difficult it would be for her. I think she was relieved when I told her I would be fine. Scott would be here if I gave him the nod, but it hasn’t come to the point where I need support so much to call on the very last person I want by my side. Yet.

I let out the deep breath I have been holding, and with it a cry of anguish. If no one believes my daughter is missing, I have no choice but to find her myself. Someone in this city must have seen her, someone must know something. But where do I start? There are bars, restaurants and outdoor cafés down every little street where she could have been.

I pull out the map again, studying the areas that have been flagged. I am not far from the Praça do Comércio where the woman in the hotel told me there were plenty of restaurants set around a square. All I need do is follow the main street towards it, and so I do this, passing shops that are still open in the early hours of the evening, restaurant tables that run along the centre of a pedestrianised walkway.

You cannot miss the square, its entrance an imposing white-columned archway but beyond it there’s a huge expanse of nothingness in its centre. It is only along either side that restaurants line its edges.

But here – these are exactly the places I can imagine Issie people-watching, whiling away the hours in the way we always would on city breaks. I can see her here now in one of the restaurants, poring over a tapas menu, making plans for the rest of the evening as she carefully selects the dishes she wants to share with me, with him.

Where shall we go for dinner, Mum? she’d have asked as we waited for our lunch to arrive. She always wanted to know what we were doing next, to make a plan and stick to it.

Issie! Let’s do one meal at a time.

I’m excited, she’d laugh. I like to know what the day has in store for me. She never wanted to miss anything, life for Issie was more fun if she planned it out. She has never thrived on spontaneity which is another aspect of their trip that jars with me. That they didn’t know where they were going from one place to the next. This is one more decision that strikes me as Dylan’s influence – and I cannot fathom how easily Issie could have gone along with it.

Now, I take out my phone and bring up a picture of her onto my screen, and head into the first restaurant on the left side of the square, an Italian serving oversized wood-fired pizza.

I hover until a waitress comes over and when she asks if I would like a table, menu in hand, I tell her, ‘Actually, I wonder if you can help. I am looking for my daughter.’ I show her the photo on my phone and wait for her to look.

‘Sorry, no.’

‘You don’t recognise her?’ I persist.

She shakes her head.

‘Would you mind asking anyone else who works here?’ I say, offering my phone out to her. ‘It’s important. She’s missing.’

The waitress frowns, still clutching the menu to her chest until she eventually takes the phone off me. ‘Okay. Wait here,’ she says.

I do as I am told, a small gathering beginning to congregate behind me, including an English family with two small children who are complaining they are hungry and whose youngest son keeps bumping into the back of me. I step forward, out of his way, and eventually the waitress returns and hands me back my phone. ‘I am sorry, no one has seen her.’

I nod and thank her anyway. I didn’t expect to be so lucky on my first try, but I am determined to be meticulous, and visit every restaurant. Only I get the same answers everywhere, and no one recognises Issie or the photo of Dylan I show them.

When I have exhausted one side of the square I cross over to the other, using the same patter, reiterating how urgent it is that I find her.

By the last, I have not only come to a dead end, but a sense of despair engulfs me that sucks every last bit of energy I have. I feel light-headed as heat swells through my body.

‘Madam?’ a waiter asks as his hand clutches onto my elbow and steers me to a nearby seat. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’ I hold up a hand and try to wave him away, though I don’t particularly feel fine. I feel nauseous and wonder when it was I last ate properly, picking my way through a packet of crisps on the plane aside.

‘Wait here and I will get you a glass of water,’ he tells me, and returns with that plus a glass of Coke. ‘You need sugar maybe?’

‘Thank you,’ I say, so grateful for his kindness that I find tears filling my eyes.

‘I can get you something to eat?’

I nod, mumbling another thank you as he brings me over a menu and tells me the sardines are fresh in today. ‘Can I have some bread for now, please?’

‘Yes, of course. I will leave the menu with you. I am sorry, though, I overhear you say you are looking for your daughter?’

‘Yes.’ I shrug. ‘She’s only just turned eighteen. I don’t know where she is.’

‘And she has come here, to this restaurant?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know where she has visited. I’m trying to find her.’

‘Eighteen and British,’ he says.

‘Yes. And with her boyfriend.’

‘Then she wouldn’t come here, maybe. It is very …’ he waves a hand, looking for a translation and settles on ‘… touristy. It is very pricey.’

I look around me. I didn’t think paying four euros for a Coke was pricey, but then Issie and Dylan are on a budget. I had told her if she needed anything, if she ran out of money, she only had to tell me. ‘I’m not going to keep running to you, Mum,’ she’d said in return. ‘I can do this.’ Only she couldn’t do it on her own, not entirely. Her father gave her the money for the trip. The only spending money she had was what she’d been saving from past birthday and Christmas presents. I didn’t know how much she had in her account any more and neither would she tell me, but I was certain it couldn’t be enough for the whole trip. Had she asked Scott for more without me knowing? I make a note to ask him when we next speak.

I realise the waiter is right. They probably can’t afford to sit around in restaurants like this. And it hits me that I have been looking at it from my own and Issie’s point of view. This is a place she would love to have come with me, but if it isn’t her making the decisions, then isn’t it more likely Dylan chooses where they eat and drink?

‘Where would they go?’ I ask the waiter.

He raises his eyes. ‘You have a map?’

I nod and pull it out of my bag, laying it flat on the table in front of me.

He bends forward and prods his finger onto a point and grimaces as he says, ‘Here. You should go to Rua da Barroca. Lots of English bars. Lots of hen and stag nights.’

‘Right, yes,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’ I glance down again to where his finger is pointing. Rua da Barroca is only a handful of streets away from my hotel. I decide to eat first and then head there.

Rua da Barroca feels like a different city entirely to the Lisbon I’ve seen so far. The stench of cleaning fluid hits me as I approach one end and a mop sloshes water onto the street. It is 9 p.m. and the bars are predominantly empty, though there are a few groups of Englishmen drinking pints and talking loudly as they linger in doorways.

I cannot imagine Issie here. I don’t see my daughter drinking two-for-one violent blue cocktails, sitting under neon flashing signs on bar stools where people-watching consists of eyeing staggering passers-by, singing as they zigzag on to the next bar. In Crete she’d raised her eyes, pulling me out of the way of a girl stumbling drunk from an Irish bar, and shaken her head mockingly. ‘What a dick!’ she’d laughed.

The Issie I know would not want to spend time here, and yet what do I know of her any more? If their priority is cheap drinks, there is every chance this is where they would come.

I take a breath and venture into the first place, walking straight up to the bar where a woman leans over it, tapping into her phone.

I feel so out of place, touching fifty as I am, and think back to the last time I was somewhere like this over twenty years ago. Memories of my own youth flash up – my friends and me sipping through straws from a goldfish bowl of whatever cocktail was on offer. Of course Issie and Dylan would come here. It’s all I used to do at their age, and yet this would never have been my daughter’s world. Not before he came along.

I used to ask her where they would go together when she came home from seeing him, quietly turning her key in the lock as if, at 11 p.m., I would be fast asleep and not waiting for her to come in, though I might have pretended this was the case.

‘Have you had a good night?’ I would say, quickly followed by, ‘What did you get up to?’

At the beginning of their relationship, she would tell me details of their dates. They’d stopped by a pizza restaurant or grabbed a milkshake. Dylan never drank and drove, she would assure me.

Later, she was sketchier on the details but she still gave me names of places; some I knew, others I didn’t. Later there would be times when he wouldn’t turn up to collect her but she would meet him out, and would come home later still, smelling of alcohol and slightly swaying, though never full-out drunk as far as I could tell.

I say to the girl behind the bar, ‘Do you speak English?’

She smiles at me. ‘Yes, I am English.’

‘Oh,’ I say, feeling an inordinate sense of relief for some reason. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for my daughter.’ I pass my phone over the bar and she leans forward to study the picture I have pulled up. It’s the same one I have shown everyone so far.

She squints harder at it and I say, ‘Have you seen her?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I might have done.’ She enlarges the picture with her fingers. I hold my breath as I wait for her to answer and when she eventually does she says, ‘Yeah, I think I do recognise her. I think she was here the other night.’

‘Really?’ I ask eagerly. ‘When?’

She pauses. ‘I’m not sure. A few nights ago?’ She shakes her head, making her high ponytail swing behind her. ‘I don’t know, it definitely wasn’t last night, and I wasn’t working the night before that, so maybe Monday?’

Monday. The fourth of July, the night before Issie’s eighteenth birthday and the day after I last heard from her, when I didn’t yet know there was anything to worry about.

‘It was definitely that night?’ I ask.

‘That was the last night I was working here so, yeah, I think so and …’ She pauses. ‘Hold on, yeah, it was. I was outside getting a delivery, that’s when I saw her. She was on her phone.’ The girl looks up at me.

‘What?’ I ask, I can see in her face she’s remembered something.

‘She looked upset,’ she tells me. ‘I don’t know what about.’

‘Upset? Do you think something might have happened?’

‘I guess it had, but then she came in. I saw her when I was back behind the bar, she sat up at that table there.’ She points to a high table with bar stools near the door. ‘There was a bloke waiting for her, and they started having a bit of an argument, but it seemed to die down. You get it here all the time, young kids drinking too much.’

‘This man she was with, was it him?’ I take my phone back and scroll through the saved pictures before passing it to her.

She cocks her head. ‘Maybe. I didn’t see his face properly because he was facing away from me, looking out the window and waiting for her. I remember that much because I’d put the two of them together in my head before she came in. Him sitting there alone, and her being outside on her phone.’

I nod, trying to take in what she’s telling me, trying to work out if it means anything. ‘So she was outside messaging someone, which means it can’t have been him,’ I say.

The girl shrugs. ‘I guess not.’

‘And she didn’t want him to know?’ I don’t expect an answer and neither do I get one. Instead I am trying to fathom who she might have messaged if she was upset, because it wasn’t me, or any of her close girlfriends as far as I know. And if she didn’t text from the table, then was she reaching out to someone because of Dylan?

‘It’s your daughter?’ she clarifies.

‘Yes. I haven’t heard from her since Sunday.’

‘And you think something’s happened to her?’

‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ I say.

‘I’m so sorry. I wish I could be more helpful, but I don’t know what happened after that. They weren’t here long and it was early in the night. I’m guessing they finished their drinks and left. But I don’t remember.’

‘Thank you anyway. At least it’s something,’ I tell her.

I leave the bar and head back on to the street where the warm air hits me away from the coldness of the air conditioning. I try all the other bars along the road, but learn nothing more, no one else recognises Issie or Dylan.

It is gone 10 p.m. when I finally walk back to the hotel. In my room I text Kay, asking if she has heard anything from Dylan. My phone pings with a reply from her a minute later.

No, sorry, he hasn’t called me back yet, it reads. I sigh, tossing my phone onto the bed before heading into the en suite to brush my teeth and put my pyjamas on, a wave of exhaustion sweeping over me.

But an hour later and I cannot sleep, so I open Instagram again and flick onto Issie’s page.

In my anticipation of seeing the Belém Tower, the picture I know so well at the top, it takes me a moment to register that a new post has been added.

I sit bolt upright, my breath catching in my throat as I switch the light on and press on the picture. Serra de São Mamede, the caption reads. Been here for four glorious days.

The picture is one of a waterfall, oak trees lining a river. Neither Issie nor Dylan are in the photo, it shows nothing but scenery. I check the time it was posted: 3.30 p.m. this afternoon. Nothing has been added since, no other photo. No more comments. None of the hashtags Issie usually uses.

My heart races as I scroll back and forth, re-reading the short post and enlarging the photo. Issie has posted on her account. My daughter has uploaded a new picture. She must be okay. She has to be alive.

And yet something doesn’t feel right. In each of her other photos there are close-ups of her and Dylan, but this one is different. There is no proof my daughter is actually there.

And maybe I could have put that aside for a moment and taken some relief by virtue of the fact Issie has posted on Instagram this afternoon. But I know they can’t have been there for four days, when I have just been told they were seen in Lisbon three nights ago.

CHAPTER NINE

8 July

I wake early as the sun enters my room through a gap in the shutters. Too early for breakfast in the hotel, which doesn’t start for another hour, and so I have a shower, get dressed and walk out onto the streets that are empty at this hour of the morning, heading back to the police station with a renewed sense of purpose, determined I will not allow them to deflect me this time.

‘I reported my daughter as missing two days ago,’ I tell a different man to yesterday who sits behind the desk. ‘Issie Adams. My name is Jess Adams.’

He glances up, his face shrouded in a greying beard and nods as he clicks on his keyboard and flicks his attention to the screen in front of him. ‘Yes, I have it here.’

‘I came in yesterday and was told someone had spoken to her boyfriend, Dylan Whiting. Is this true?’

He frowns as he looks at the screen, shaking his head. ‘Maybe they have, I do not have the details here.’

‘Then I doubt it. I doubt anyone has even been looking for them. My daughter has only just turned eighteen and I know she was here on the fourth of July because someone saw her and Dylan. But she isn’t returning my calls or messages, and I know something is wrong. Then yesterday, this happens.’ I show him my phone with Issie’s supposed last post on it. ‘It says they have been here, in Serra de São Mamede, for four days. But clearly that isn’t true. And this isn’t anything like her other pictures,’ I say, tapping on the screen. ‘You can see that. This isn’t her. Someone else has posted on her page.’

He looks at me with interest, his eyebrows peaked. I shove the phone further towards him and eventually he takes it.

‘To me it looks like this is where they are?’ he says.

‘No, they are not,’ I object.

Last night I had looked up Serra de São Mamede and its national park, a mountain region over 140 miles north-east of Lisbon. It makes no sense that they would be there. Not only is it an area Issie has never shown an interest in, but why arrive in Lisbon, intending to spend a few days, then, after only one night, head so far away and spend four nights somewhere else entirely with no indication of returning? But more than any of this, why not get in touch with me?

‘I don’t think it was her who posted this,’ I tell him. ‘I tried calling her again, but her phone is still switched off and she hasn’t read any of my messages. I think someone posted this photo to make it look like she’s okay. So please,’ I beg him. ‘Can you get someone to help me? Because I am going out of my mind.’

‘Okay.’ He holds his hands up. ‘Please. Take a seat over there and I will get someone to come and speak to you, yes?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ I do as he says and wait on a chair until a man appears in the doorway.

‘Mrs Adams? I am Inspector Santos Melo,’ he says. ‘Would you like to come through so we can have a chat?’

I nod and follow him, past the bearded man and his desk and into a small room at the back of the station where there is a table and four chairs in its centre, and a sideboard with a water jug and glasses. Santos Melo pours me a glass of water which he hands to me without asking if I want it, gesturing for me to sit in one of the chairs as he pulls one out for himself opposite.

The inspector has short dark hair, shaved closely to his head and looks to be in his late forties, like me. He is tall and needs to lean back in his chair to cross one long leg over the other. ‘Do you want to tell me everything you know about your daughter?’ he says. With relief that it appears someone is finally listening I relay everything that has happened over the last few days, and sketch out our life before that, including how it has changed since Dylan appeared on the scene.

When I finish, I collapse back into my hard chair and drink the rest of the water as I wait for him to tell me what he is going to do.

But he says, ‘I think it sounds like your daughter and her boyfriend have gone travelling for a few days and there is nothing for you to worry about.’

Every last shred of hope drains out of me. ‘No,’ I beg. ‘No, don’t do this. Please. I need you to believe me. You have to take this seriously. Have you not heard what I said? I think Dylan has hurt her, I think he has done something to her.’

‘We do not know this, we do not know that anything bad has happened to your daughter, Mrs Adams, and you need to hold on to this. It is probably the case that they are happy as her Instagram shows, and they do not want to be in touch. You say Dylan’s mother has not heard from her son either, yes?’

‘Yes. But that doesn’t mean anything. This is my daughter I am worried about, she is always in contact with me. She was until Monday, and then she suddenly stopped.’

‘Okay, well here’s what I will do. I will see if I can get hold of Dylan myself, and we will look into this for you. And I will contact you later today with an update. Okay?’ he asks me, like he is promising to keep me informed of a lost parcel and not my daughter. ‘I will do this myself,’ he reiterates. ‘You have my word.’

I let out a sigh. ‘Okay,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll be back later. I’ll come in again this afternoon if I haven’t heard anything from you.’

‘That is fine,’ he says. ‘And try not to worry. We see this all the time, these young people travelling, having fun. They do not worry about their parents. I think this is what has happened to your daughter and her boyfriend. They forget about home when they are away. We are all young once, aren’t we?’ He smiles.

‘Issie would have called me,’ I say bluntly. ‘My daughter would not have forgotten to do that, and definitely not on her eighteenth birthday.’

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 105: THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING

PART ONE

The Portuguese police maintained that Issie Adams was fine and, in fact, not missing at all. Nobody, it seemed, was listening to Jess Adams’s desperate plea that her daughter was missing or taking her concerns seriously. Why Inspector Santos Melo and his team hadn’t acted sooner is a question Melo will no doubt be having to answer.

But any search for Issie Adams was about to be hindered by Dylan Whiting’s mother, Kay.

Let’s have a look at Kay Whiting in more detail.

A hard-working waitress at the Little Blue Café in Milford on Sea in Hampshire, Kay lives in the same small coastal town with her two sons and is said to be a friendly, dedicated mother to her boys. According to those who know her, she lives a solitary life but would do anything for anybody.

However, she has an interesting family background. Kay’s mother died when she was only fifteen, and at nineteen she fell pregnant with Dylan. Her dad, a devout Christian, encouraged her to marry the father, Neil Whiting, which she did in a quick and small ceremony in Manchester, the city where she and Neil had grown up.

Two years later her beloved father died, and three years after that, Kay separated from Neil and moved to Hampshire. Neither she nor Dylan saw Neil again, a man who subsequently served three years in prison for fraud.

In 2015, Kay gave birth to her second son, Billy, whose father is unknown.

But Kay’s lifestyle now is one that goes under the radar. She doesn’t own a car, lives in a semi-detached rented house and works long hours to provide for her family.

Much has been made of Kay Whiting as momentum for the case around Issie and Dylan has built.

Because on the eighth of July, Dylan’s mother stepped forward and actively refuted that anyone was missing, professing she knew the teenagers were safe because she had spoken with them both herself.

While Jess had stated she feared for Issie’s life because of Dylan, according to Kay, Issie was taking some time out, and she was certain the young girl would contact her mother when she was ready. As Kay pointed out, Jess did allow ‘her child’, as Issie legally was at the time, to leave the UK with Dylan three weeks prior to her disappearance and even insisted on driving them to the airport herself. Are these the actions of a mother who never trusted the man her daughter was going away with? If she feared Dylan was dangerous or, at the very least manipulative, then why allow her seventeen-year-old to leave the country with him?

But the biggest question remained: where was Issie?

Jess Adams refused to believe Kay Whiting was telling the truth. So was Kay lying? And, if she was, then why? Was she covering up for her son as people would go on to accuse her of?

Kay

CHAPTER TEN

7 July

Kay watches as Jess climbs into her Range Rover Sport and drives out of the car park next to the Little Blue Café. She can’t pull herself away from the doorway even though Jess is now out of sight. She never expected them to meet, there was never a need, or any suggestion from Issie that her mum wanted to. Kay hadn’t asked either, she supposes. Why was that? She hadn’t met any of Dylan’s other girlfriends’ parents, so for her it wasn’t a ‘thing’. But then she had known from the start Issie was different. Dylan was different with her.

Maybe it was that she knew they’d have nothing in common, and this morning has proved her right on that. Jess Adams was everything she’d expected. She made Kay feel everything she feared she would too.

‘You working today or not?’ Mike says, appearing at her side with his hands stuffed into the pocket of his grubby sweatshirt. She wishes he wouldn’t come out where the customers can see him looking like that but he seems clueless with regard to his scruffy appearance.

‘Yes, sorry,’ she mutters. ‘I’m coming.’

He nods in the direction of the car park, though there is no one left for them to see. ‘That woman,’ he says. ‘Not a friend of yours then?’

‘No, I’ve not met her before. She’s Dylan’s girlfriend’s mum.’

He lets out a snort. ‘Fancy one. Wouldn’t stop going on about missing her flight.’

‘Hmm. Issie’s nice though.’ She defends the girl because she has always liked Issie. She has never made her feel anything like her mum managed to do in the last fifteen minutes.

‘She said her girl was missing,’ Mike muses. She can feel him looking at her so she spins around and heads back into the café.

‘She hasn’t been able to get hold of her for a couple of days. I just tried calling Dylan, so I’m hoping he’ll ring me back.’ Her hand reaches for the phone in her pocket where she wraps her fingers around it. Mike doesn’t like them having their phones on them when they’re working. But today, thinks Kay, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

‘A couple of days!’ Mike laughs. ‘Jeez, I used to go off for weeks at that age and my mum wouldn’t have a clue where I was.’

‘Really?’ she murmurs, though she wonders if this is true. Mike is prone to exaggeration, but she doesn’t tell him so. She likes listening to his stupid stories most of the time, even on the days she’s not feeling quite herself. She doesn’t know what she’d do without this job, and that’s not just because of the money, though that is an obvious factor. Some days, after she has dropped Billy at school, especially if they’ve had a hospital appointment first thing, it is Mike who cheers her up and makes her laugh. It’s as if he knows she needs it.

She heads into the kitchen and unravels her apron, tying it around her waist. When Paige told her Jess was waiting for her, she knew it had to be the woman with the glossy highlighted hair that hung in beach-curled waves to her shoulders. Her shiny gelled nails were tapping on the Formica table in front of her, making Kay shove her own chewed ones out of sight into her pockets. She’d watched her from the small round window of the kitchen door for a moment beforehand, well aware of her own brown drab hair tied in a scruffy bun.

If Dylan had ever wanted her to meet Jess, Kay had planned to buy herself something new to wear. Her neighbour Cath told her she could always borrow something from her wardrobe as they joked about what such an occasion might entail, but Cath was at least three sizes bigger than Kay. And now she’s had no choice but to step out in front of Jess in her clothes from Primark, and her ugly but comfortable shoes.

‘I’d choose you any day of the week,’ Mike leans in and says to her now with a wink before nodding towards the doors, a signal for her to get to work. She smiles at him. There is nothing leery about Mike in the slightest. It’s as she says, he somehow knows what she needs to hear, even if she doesn’t believe him.

The morning passes and Kay is relatively busy. On a day like today, when the sun is shining, the café slowly fills with dog walkers and friends meeting for one of Mike’s bacon sarnies. They are greasy but taste divine. It means Kay doesn’t think about Dylan calling back, not until gone 2 p.m. when she has a chance to take a break herself.

Paige joins her outside on one of the picnic benches. They’ve both got a tuna and sweetcorn sub. One more perk of working in a café, she doesn’t have to think about buying lunch.

Paige is only twenty-two, a skinny little thing with fingers dripping in rings and ankles covered in tattoos, not that Kay has anything against them. She hated Dylan coming home with one when he was seventeen but has grown to like it.

‘So does Dylan know where his girlfriend is?’ Paige asks, always blunt and to the point.

‘I can’t get hold of him yet,’ Kay says, as she takes her phone out and puts it on the table between them.

Paige nods. Her mouth is bulging with her sandwich. Kay’s pretty certain she’s always had a thing for Dylan, even though he’s three years younger than her. But then Kay can see why. Her son is a catch, handsome like his father. She wasn’t surprised when she saw Issie for the first time, wearing a skinny white vest top, and deep grey combat trousers with white oversized pumps that had little gold tags attached to the laces. Her hair was so pretty as it hung smoothly below her shoulders. Kay has never understood how anyone manages to get it so sleek when her own always looks so dull and fluffy.

Issie’s eyes were such a bright green that she didn’t need any make-up to make them look bigger. Physically they looked great together, even though Dylan engulfed her as she was so petite. But then, when Kay looked closer at her clothes and spent an hour or so talking to Issie and finding out about her, she had thought, This girl is too much for you, Dylan. She didn’t mean too good for him, just too much. Like she was going places and had big dreams. She was clever and would do well at school. Issie would want so much more out of life than Dylan, despite the years Kay had put into encouraging him to have dreams himself. Plus, the girl’s family clearly had money.

Maybe other parents might have thought, She is going to break your heart, son. But actually what Kay was thinking was, I hope you don’t break hers. Because she knew Dylan must see the differences between them, and Kay understood that he likely wouldn’t be able to handle them.

Kay hadn’t expected their relationship to last this long, with Issie still at school in her final year of A levels when they met. Dylan had told Kay Issie would be going to London in September, although he’d said it dismissively, making Kay wonder if he was trying to make out he wasn’t bothered, or whether he thought she might not go.

Last Christmas he’d showed her some of Issie’s artwork online and Kay told him she was very talented.

‘She is.’ He had nodded and, as he stared at the iPad, she wondered what was going through her son’s mind. Did he know he was already deeply in love with her? Did he think about the fact that, even if they made it to September, she would ultimately leave him to follow her dreams? And did he realise that, if she went, he might not be able to cope with a long-distance relationship with a girl whose future looked very different to his?

‘Where are they now?’ Paige asks her.

‘Lisbon, apparently.’

Paige nods. ‘Where’s that?’

‘Portugal,’ Kay says, trying not to roll her eyes. ‘It’s the capital.’

Paige shrugs and Kay thinks back to when Dylan was younger and she’d turned learning capital cities into a fun game. She’d show him maps of all the different countries to encourage an interest, and talk about what she knew of them, and they’d imagine what it would be like to visit. They lived in a world of their imagination, because it was all they could afford. She still does it with Billy.

‘Remember all those places you wanted to see in the world?’ she’d said to Dylan a couple of years back. When he left school she hoped he might do something different with his life, live a bigger one than she ever had.

‘Not really,’ he’d muttered, and she found herself wondering what had happened. You know, what really happened. The bit that was more than growing up into a surly teenager who wasn’t interested in anything other than gaming and girls. Was there one moment that changed him from being a happy, dreamy boy? Or was it a culmination of many things?

Travelling this summer had to be Issie’s influence. Her son was besotted with her. He would do anything for Issie, she knew that from the start. She’d seen Dylan with other girls, and, though there had been others he had liked, there was something about Issie that affected him differently. He couldn’t seem to be without her.

‘I didn’t like her,’ Paige says now. ‘When I met her. There’s something about her.’

Kay looks up at her and suppresses a smile. She’s sure the reason Paige doesn’t like her is because she is Dylan’s girlfriend.

‘I didn’t like the way she would constantly watch him,’ Paige goes on. ‘Out of the corner of her eye.’

Actually, there is nothing to dislike about Issie. Kay would chat to her a lot when she visited Dylan. Issie seemed interested that Kay used to paint. And she would sit on the floor and play Lego with Billy. She preferred Issie’s company to any of the mothers at Billy’s school who would make her feel unworthy without uttering a single word. That was the way she felt when Jess left. Like nothing more than a waitress and a bad mother.

But maybe she was guilty of having preconceptions too. It’s hard not to when your son tells you his girlfriend’s mother cannot stand him. When he says, ‘If Jess had her way, Issie wouldn’t be with me.’

At three o’clock her shift ends. Kay rolls her apron into her drawstring shopping bag and says goodbye to Paige and the others, who will be here for another couple of hours. She has fifteen minutes to walk to school to meet Billy as he comes out.

‘See you tomorrow,’ Mike calls.

‘You will,’ Kay says. ‘I may be a little later than usual. I’ll try and get here on time though.’

‘Hospital?’ he asks.

‘Yes. Sorry. Last one for a while, I hope.’

He waves a hand through the air, a gesture that means it’s not a problem. His flexibility is yet another reason she is so grateful for her job. Serving other people their coffee was not her aspiration but, as she often tells the boys, it is a necessity.

She always hoped they would do whatever they wanted if they put their minds to it. She’d always thought Dylan might be a vet from the way he has always loved animals, but that idea never went anywhere. Though, as Kay realises all too well, it is never as easy for people like them.

At the school gates Kay peers towards the classroom door, waiting for a glimpse of Billy, wondering what kind of day he’s had. She worries about him more than she ever did with Dylan, but then she supposes that’s what happens when you give birth to a baby who starts losing weight at two weeks old and is deemed a ‘failure to thrive’.

At three weeks old, the midwife referred Billy back to Paediatrics and, multiple tests later, they found out he was allergic to Kay’s milk. At first she was relieved to have an answer, but what she didn’t understand then, was how Billy would begin to develop allergies to what seemed like everything. It wasn’t just about her cutting out foods while she was breastfeeding, or even about him cutting them out when he was weaned. It became about hovering over him at playdates and watching everything he put in his mouth, packing him up a special lunch box when he got invited to parties and hanging around to make sure he wasn’t given a slice of the birthday cake by mistake.

Finally, she sees him come out of the classroom. She stretches to get a better view, her heart overflowing with love when she sees his wide eyes searching for her. He lifts up his hand in a small wave. She wants to pull him into her arms and cocoon him. She knows what is coming.

‘How was your day?’ she asks.

‘S’okay,’ he mutters.

‘Billy?’ she presses.

Her little boy shrugs and she bends down so she is at eye level with him. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing much.’

‘Did you play anything nice at lunchtime?’ she asks, ever hopeful.

Billy drops his head.

Kay forces her lips into a smile, trying to convey it’s fine he didn’t play with anyone, and it doesn’t matter every other kid has grouped off and has no interest in playing with her son. ‘Who wants chicken nuggets for tea?’ she says.

‘Me.’ He jumps in the air as they start walking, with a surge of happiness that almost breaks her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

8 July

Kay’s alarm goes off at six fifteen. She showers, scrapes the end of the instant coffee granules out of the jar and into a mug, adds coffee to her shopping list, gets Billy up, dressed and fed, and out the door by eight.

To reach the hospital means catching a bus to New Milton, walking to the station for the train to Southampton Central and then boarding another bus. They make the journey fun by playing I spy and making up funny stories about the other passengers. Billy never seems to mind these appointments, which mean missing two hours of school.

In the waiting room she thinks about the fact Dylan hasn’t called her back overnight. She hadn’t been too worried last night, she expected he would get back to her at some point, and she hadn’t left an urgent message on his phone. But now she wonders whether she should be doing more to track him down. Whether she should be worried.

Jess is in Lisbon now, she got there yesterday. When Jess told her she was going, Kay had been shocked and thought it over-the-top protective.

She told Cath about it over the fence last night as her neighbour dragged on a cigarette and Kay cradled a cup of tea. ‘She’s gone to the police?’ her neighbour laughed. ‘That sounds ridiculous.’

Kay agreed it was. But then she has a son whose contact with her is sporadic at the best of times. Dylan has been working for three years, he’s independent, he’s been coming and going as he pleases since he got his driving licence and saved up enough for a car. A car he had to sell in order to go on this trip.

Kay was sad to see it go. She felt like it meant something bigger than it probably did. It was the first thing Dylan had been responsible for, and it had felt like the end of an era when a dad and his twenty-year-old daughter came to pick it up.

She hoped Dylan knew what he was doing, what he was giving up for a few weeks with Issie. ‘Son, are you sure this is what you want?’ she’d asked him.

‘Of course it is,’ he’d told her, but she wasn’t certain she believed him. More likely Issie was going with or without him, and he couldn’t bear to be apart from her for so many weeks over the summer. She didn’t think it right that he give up his life for Issie’s dreams, and Kay also feared for how she would cope without his rent, though there was no way she would let that stop him. And besides, maybe he should be frittering his money away on adventures while he was still young and carefree. Wasn’t that all she had ever wanted for her boys? To live a full life and see things she never had?

A doctor appears, calling Billy’s name. It is a young woman who Kay hasn’t seen before. She looks like she’s in her mid-twenties, is that even possible?

The doctor smiles at them uncertainly and Kay knows she is going to have to go over all of Billy’s history with her again, but she does it uncomplaining, making sure she tells her everything.

They are back at Billy’s school by quarter to eleven. Kay drops him in the office as Billy’s teacher is coming out. ‘Oh Billy.’ She smiles, beaming at Kay’s son. ‘All okay?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer before saying, ‘You’re in time for break – why don’t you leave me your bag and you can run out into the playground.’

Billy holds out his rucksack and Kay leans down to kiss him on the head and waits for him to amble out.

‘I’m glad I caught you actually, Mrs Whiting,’ she says. ‘I wanted to speak to you yesterday but I didn’t get a chance.’

‘Oh? Has something happened?’ she asks.

‘Boys being silly, hopefully, but Billy got into a bit of scuffle yesterday at lunchtime.’

Kay frowns and wonders why this is the first she has heard of it. ‘He didn’t say.’

‘Luckily I was there and broke it up quickly. He got angry with one of the other boys who was saying something unkind to him. I did hear it. Sometimes you don’t and it’s always awkward when you hear one thing from one and then—’

‘What did the boy say?’ Kay interrupts.

The teacher scrunches up her mouth, contorting it into a shape that looks peculiar. ‘He was taunting Billy about not having a dad,’ she says eventually.

Kay’s heart sinks and she looks towards the playground from the window of the office. Why didn’t Billy tell her about this?

‘Billy got angry, and he took a fistful of this boy’s shirt and, well, that’s when I stepped in,’ she says. ‘Thankfully nothing more happened.’

‘That doesn’t sound like Billy,’ Kay defends him, because it doesn’t. Not her mild-mannered boy.

‘We had a chat and he knows he mustn’t do that again to his classmates.’

‘And does his classmate know he shouldn’t say cruel things in the first place?’ Kay says.

‘We had a chat about using nice words in the classroom yesterday.’

Kay tries her best not to roll her eyes. ‘I’ll speak to him tonight,’ she says. ‘It won’t happen again.’

The teacher smiles and Kay turns to walk out with the threat of tears. The door slams behind her as she contemplates how she is trapped in a cycle she can’t see a way out of. Billy misses so much school with his hospital appointments. The kids see him as an outcast because he’s either not there or he has so many special requirements at lunch and on trips, and, at the age of seven, being out of the ordinary isn’t something to celebrate. If she could home-school him she would do it in a heartbeat but she doesn’t have the luxury of time or money.

She is surprised at Billy’s reaction to this boy’s cruel comments. Not only because of how he handled the situation, but because of how much it seemed to affect him. He hasn’t ever shown himself to be bothered by the fact he doesn’t have a dad around.

But that’s the thing with this school and their perfect two-point-four-children families. A lovely local Church of England primary in a small coastal town on the south coast means you don’t get the normal mix of families, and instead you rub up against more than Kay’s quota of yummy mummies.

That’s why she keeps to herself in the playground. The fact she has two broken relationships in her wake and two sons from different fathers is no one’s business. They don’t know her story and they don’t need to. Not even Dylan knows the whole truth, so she isn’t going to share it with women she has no time for.

Dylan believes his father left them when he was five. It felt like an easier pill for him to swallow than the truth. Her son thought his dad had important business in Scotland, and they would be better moving to the south coast of England where the sun is always shining and they could live by the beach.

He didn’t talk about his dad who had swooped in and out of his life for five years and Kay never questioned it. It was easier all round to forget about Neil.

Years later Dylan did ask why his dad had walked out and why he didn’t want him. He was eleven by then, and Kay had recently met Billy’s father, Carl. Perhaps Dylan was wondering what another man was doing in his place. A nicer, kinder man who ended up getting his mum pregnant, and was seemingly overjoyed to become part of the family Dylan’s father had never taken care of.

Kay carried on fabricating a bit more of the story. His dad was ill, he couldn’t cope with family life. She didn’t want her son to know that walking out on Neil was the most terrifying thing she’d ever done. Not because she didn’t know how they were going to afford to live, but in case he ever came looking for them.

But then she walked into a one-bed rental flat in Hampshire and a calmness she hadn’t experienced in all the years of knowing Neil came over her. She didn’t have to fear what mood he would be in when he came home from work, or count empty beer cans as she stashed them in the bin the next morning. She wouldn’t have to lie in bed at night and wait for the sound of his feet plodding up the stairs, coming for her.

Carl wasn’t supposed to hurt them. He didn’t, at least not in the same way Neil had, but in some ways he managed to cause even more pain.

He was everything her husband wasn’t. Not handsome like Neil but, just by looking at him, you knew he was kind with his round face and curly hair, and eyes that when he smiled would narrow and light up.

He didn’t touch alcohol, and never raised his voice. He went to church every Sunday morning. He got Kay pregnant. It wasn’t planned but neither had they been particularly careful. She had thought they were happy.

She’d hoped now Carl would move in permanently instead of coming and going as he had been doing. They could be a proper family. Only he didn’t move in and less than a month later she found out Carl already had all the family he needed. Carl the churchgoer and all-round do-gooder with the happy face, was married with two young boys of his own. And, as soon as he saw his new son, he realised he couldn’t handle the lies any longer. He hadn’t ever thought it would come to this.

His not thinking led him to walk away, leaving her with a twelve-year-old who, as far as Dylan believed, had now been abandoned by a second father in his life, a new-born baby, and the knowledge she would never ever trust another man again.

Kay works a four-hour shift at the café that’s even less busy than the day before, when Jess Adams had shown up. There is a chance of rain that is keeping the fair-weather walkers away. Regardless, the time passes quickly and she is starving by 2 p.m. when she sits down with a coffee and a bagel.

Mike comes out and sits opposite her – his expression is grave, his brow furrowed – and it makes Kay stop mid-bite. ‘What?’ she says. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘The café hasn’t been doing so well lately.’ He dips his eyes to his hands that are curling around each other on the table in front of him. Mike is a nail biter like her but his are chewed so low it makes her wince.

‘No, Mike, don’t say it—’ Kay pleads as she drops her bagel onto the plate, wiping away the crumbs she can feel gathering in the corner of her mouth. She knows what is coming because it isn’t hard to see that the café isn’t as busy as it should be.

‘Kay, I don’t know what to do. There’s no way I can keep paying everyone and—’

‘I’ve been here for years, Mike,’ she pleads. ‘You can’t let go of me.’

‘I don’t want to,’ he says, lowering his voice as his gaze sweeps around them. ‘But the money I’m paying the younger girls …’ He trails off without finishing. She knows he pays her more than he does the ones who only work for a few months at a time before moving on to university or something better in an office.

‘Mike, please, I need this job. This – it’s everything I have. I can’t lose it.’ Panic rises inside her.

He dips his eyes.

‘Please, don’t do anything rash,’ she goes on. ‘Can you just think about it some more? Give it a bit more time, and I’ll see what I can come up with too.’

‘Like what?’ he asks hopefully, but Kay doesn’t have an answer. ‘You can’t take a pay cut,’ Mike points out. ‘And that’s what I need right now.’

She wants to tell him maybe she could, but they both know she wouldn’t survive on any less. She barely gets by on her wage as it is. ‘I don’t know,’ she says in the end. ‘Just – please not right now.’ Not with Dylan away, she wants to add.

Mike sighs and throws out his hands. ‘You know the last thing I want to do is let you go, Kay, but I don’t see what’s going to change.’

‘I know,’ she says as she reaches out and takes hold of his hands. ‘But there has to be something.’ They both know she is playing for time but the thought of walking out of here today without a job isn’t something she can handle right now.

‘Fine,’ he murmurs. ‘When’s that boy of yours coming back?’ he asks as he gets up from the table. Mike knows how reliant she is on Dylan’s money too.

‘I don’t know,’ she admits. ‘He never told me exactly.’

Mike nods. ‘I’ll see you on Monday, Kay. It’s quiet now so you might as well get off when you’re done.’ He nods at her half-eaten bagel. ‘Monday at nine?’

She says she will be there as her phone begins to ring. She looks down, thinking it might be Dylan, but it is an international number that appears on the screen. As Mike leaves she answers it.

‘Is this Mrs Whiting?’ a man’s voice asks in a European accent.

‘It is.’

‘Mrs Whiting, this is Inspector Santos Melo, calling from Lisbon police.’

‘Oh,’ is all she says as she feels a tug on her insides so deep it feels as if they are being pulled out of her. Something has happened. Jess was right. And all the time Kay hasn’t been worrying about Dylan, because her attention’s been on Billy and his appointment, and his stupid little fight that wasn’t even a fight, and then on work. But now something awful has happened. Her son has been in an accident, she thinks.

‘Have you heard from your son, Dylan?’ he is asking her.

‘No. No I haven’t heard from him in a week,’ she admits.

‘He is in Portugal travelling with his girlfriend, is this right?’

‘Issie, yes,’ she replies, and it dawns on her that this isn’t about an accident. It is because Jess has spoken to them.

‘That’s it, Issie Adams,’ he replies.

‘Has something—’ She doesn’t know what to say and so she decides not to say anything.

‘Issie’s mother has reported her daughter missing. Do you know where they are?’

‘I don’t, I don’t know where they are at the moment, but they’re together, I’m sure.’ She finds herself waffling. ‘I mean, surely nothing has happened to them, has it? We would have known if there had been an accident or something.’ If something had happened to her son she would have felt it, surely?

‘I am certain it is nothing to worry about, Mrs Whiting. They have maybe gone off-grid, and don’t want to be in contact. This is what I have told Mrs Adams, but please, if you speak to your son, could you ask him to contact us? To let us know they are okay?’

‘Yes, yes, of course I will,’ she says. ‘I’ll do that. I’ll try him again now,’ Kay tells the detective, and she hangs up the phone with some relief that the police are not particularly worried. Yet, despite this, a dawning apprehension that she hadn’t earlier experienced starts to build within her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kay calls Dylan, but he doesn’t answer. She leaves him another message, this time more urgent. ‘It’s Mum. Can you call me? I’m worried, Dylan, has something happened? The police have called me and they want to know you’re okay.’

She hangs up and stares out at the sea in front of her. Grey turns into a deep blue before it hits the horizon and the pale sky, streaked with lines of clouds. It reminds her of a painting she once did with watercolours and brush lines swept across the landscape. It is strange to think of her son so far away in the distance, so much further than she can possibly see.

Jess had been worried yesterday, enough to come and find Kay, and then to fly to Lisbon to look for Issie. It has been over twenty-four hours since they’d spoken, and all Kay has done is tried to call Dylan twice.

She bites at the corner of a thumbnail, an uneasy guilt extending through her body that she hasn’t done more. But what more could she have done? And besides, she didn’t think there was anything to worry about. The detective wasn’t worried either. Dylan is nineteen, he can look after himself and take care of Issie. He has been caught up in a fight once that she knows of, standing up for a mate as he told her. She has never been worried about anything like that, but then it must be so very different when you have a daughter. You have different worries, other things to consider.

‘You still here?’ Mike calls from where he is watching her in the doorway to the café.

She turns to him. ‘The police have called me,’ she says. Is it odd Mike is one of the very few people she feels she can trust in her life? ‘From Lisbon. They wanted to know if I’ve spoken to Dylan.’

Mike frowns. ‘And have you?’

‘No. But they say they aren’t worried about them. I mean, I would have heard if they’d had an accident, wouldn’t I?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Mike tells her. ‘Someone would have found them.’

‘Exactly,’ she says, trying to convince herself. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘What are you going to do?’ he asks.

‘What can I do?’ There isn’t anything other than to keep calling, wait for Dylan to reply, wait for someone else to tell her what is going on. It isn’t as if she has the luxury of being able to drop her life and hop on a plane.

Eventually she says goodbye to Mike again and gets up to leave, though she isn’t sure what to do before picking Billy up. She feels helpless and stuck and too far away from her eldest son right now.

She wanders away from the café and along the cliff edge, trying to put thoughts of accidents out of her head, but when she does that all she can see is the accusing look on Jess’s face. How could anyone hate her son as much as Dylan tells her Jess does? Isn’t it bad enough that Billy’s being singled out by kids without an adult doing it to Dylan?

She is almost at the school gates when her phone rings. Kay’s heart leaps at the sound of it. She plucks it out of her bag and almost cries with relief when she sees his name on the screen.

‘Dylan?’

‘Hey. Mum?’

‘Yes. My God. How are you? Is everything all right? I’ve been trying to get hold of you, did you get my messages? Are you okay?’ She laughs aloud at how happy she is to hear his voice.

‘I’m okay.’

‘Oh thank God, Dylan. I didn’t think anything had happened but still, you know—’ She breaks off. ‘And Issie? She’s all right?’

There is a pause. A beat before he answers, only a short one but enough to make the simmer of unease return instantly. ‘Yes,’ he says eventually. ‘Issie’s fine.’

‘Okay, that’s good,’ she says, but she knows her tone has changed. There is something he isn’t telling her. She waits for him to say more, and when he doesn’t, she says, ‘Dylan, the police have called me. They want you to get in touch with them and tell them you’re both okay.’ She waits for him to say something in return. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Right,’ he says eventually.

‘You will do that, won’t you? Call the police? Tell them you’re both fine?’

‘Sure.’

Kay nods as if to placate herself that her son will do as he says, but she can’t help feeling that, for some reason, he won’t.

‘Is everything really okay?’ she asks.

‘Mum, something’s happened,’ he says. Only three words but they drown her in a wave of fear.

‘Tell me,’ she demands. Whatever it is, she needs to hear it. She needs to know what her son has done. This is the first thought that springs into her head.

‘I need you to do me a favour,’ he says.

Always. That’s what Kay says whenever either of her boys asks her for something. She will do whatever it is they need from her.

This time however she asks him first, ‘What is it, Dylan?’ There is a quake in her voice in anticipation of an answer she’s not sure she wants to hear. ‘What do you need me to do?’

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 105: THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING

PART ONE

What makes a mother stand by their child regardless of what they might have done?

Let’s remind ourselves of the case of Gabby Petito, which I covered in a podcast two months ago. Gabby vanished while travelling in the States in 2021 with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, and if you haven’t listened to my pod yet, do look it up and, in particular, the involvement of Laundrie’s mother.

We know there are parents who will defend their children no matter their age, or behaviour. I am sure all parents have an instinctive desire to protect their offspring, and yet of course it wasn’t known for sure this is what happened with Kay Whiting.

But on the evening of the eighth of July Kay told the police in Lisbon she had spoken with her son and with Issie, and that both the teenagers were safe and well.

Phone records indicate that she did indeed take a call from Dylan that afternoon. However, what cannot be determined is whether or not she had any conversation with Issie Adams as she later claimed.

According to Kay, they discussed how Dylan and Issie had left Lisbon for an area called Serra de São Mamede, a mountain region 228km away from the city. They had been staying here for a few nights to hunker down somewhere remote.

Unlike Issie, Dylan didn’t regularly update his mother on their travels. In fact, since he left for Europe on the fifteenth of June, they had only spoken twice, and there were fewer than ten text messages between them over what was, at the point of Issie’s disappearance, over three weeks.

Later, Kay would admit that Dylan was worried about Jess going to the police and subsequently flying out to Lisbon to look for a daughter she thought was missing. Kay told the police she and her son were discussing how Jess was overly protective and potentially interfering in the young couple’s relationship.

Jess Adams, however, upon learning that Kay had reported having spoken to Issie, told a different story. In her mind there was no doubt Kay was protecting her son: she was certain Dylan had done something to Issie, and Kay Whiting was lying to cover it up.

Kay’s report had a detrimental impact on any search for the teenagers. After all, if Dylan’s mother was saying she had spoken to them, then there was no need for Inspector Santos Melo and his team to investigate, because as far as he was concerned, there was no suspicious disappearance. Although, as would later become apparent, this was not the case.

But whatever the truth, as far as Jess Adams was concerned, her daughter was missing. And Kay was covering for her son. Many believe she has been protecting him from the start, and still is to this day. Because sadly, the case has turned from a missing person enquiry to a murder investigation.

Kay

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

8 July

She would do anything for her boys, that’s what she had said since the day each of them was born. She would stand by them, believe them, believe in them.

But until now she has never been asked to lie for them, and certainly not to the police.

‘I need you to do me a favour,’ Dylan says.

‘What is it? What do you want me to do?’

‘I want you to tell them that we’re fine, say you’ve spoken to us. Say …’ he pauses. ‘I don’t know, Mum, make something up.’

‘Make something up?’ she repeats. ‘You mean you’re not fine?’

‘No, we are, but … Please, Mum. Can you do that for me?’

‘For you?’ she questions, but he doesn’t seem to notice what she infers. Not for us, she realises, but for him.

‘Yes,’ he answers.

‘Can I speak to Issie?’ Her voice sounds unusually high.

‘No, she’s—’ he answers quickly, but then doesn’t appear to know what to say next. ‘No. She … well, she doesn’t know I’m calling you.’

‘And she would be cross to find out you are?’ Kay questions. She doesn’t know whether she sounds like she is holding it together – inside she is doing anything but.

Dylan doesn’t speak for a moment. When he does, he says, ‘Yeah. I don’t know. Please, Mum, can you do this one thing for me?’

‘I can tell them I’ve spoken to you,’ she says, ‘but if you won’t let me talk to Issie, then …’ Kay doesn’t know how to finish. Then what? She will refuse to do what he asks of her? And what does that say about her? That she does not trust her son when he is telling her Issie is fine but he needs her help?

‘Look.’ He says this sharply and it takes her back. He is getting frustrated and she doesn’t want to lose him. She doesn’t want him hanging up the phone and then not be able to get hold of him again. ‘We had a fight, that’s all. It’s nothing. We want to sort it out between us and we need a bit of time. Mum?’ His voice is softer again now.

‘You had a fight?’ She tries to sound genuine and sympathetic but she doesn’t know how much her voice gives her away when she is fraught with tension and fear. ‘What did you fight about?’

‘Not a fight,’ he corrects himself. ‘A disagreement. It’s nothing, but we need some time. She doesn’t want to speak to her mum. I’m telling you this so you don’t worry,’ he says.

She inhales a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

‘Mum? Can you do this one thing for me?’ he asks.

Kay has reached the school gates where she sees Billy coming out of his classroom. ‘Dylan, I need to go,’ she tells him.

‘Mum? Will you do it?’ he pleads.

‘I don’t know,’ she says in a whisper. ‘I – I’m sorry I have to go.’

Billy ambles across the playground towards her, telling her he doesn’t feel well. He has a tummy ache. She asks him if anything more has happened during the day. She tells him she knows one of the kids taunted him about not having a dad, but Billy shrugs it off like yesterday’s memory is a world away from today.

Kay is relieved it is Friday night and the start of the weekend, which means she doesn’t have to work for two days and Billy doesn’t need to go to school. She walks him home as quickly as his tired legs will take him and tells him to lie on the sofa as she covers him with a blanket, leaving a top window open to let in air. She isn’t sure if his stomach ache is real or not but she will never take a chance, and he is asleep within ten minutes. Kay finds herself sitting on the other sofa, watching him, wondering how nice it must be to have someone scoop you up, wrap you up and watch over you. Wondering what it would be like, just for once, to have someone take care of her.

But who is going to do that? She doesn’t let anyone close to her any more. Not after Neil and Carl. She realises how sad it is that the closest people to her are Mike and her neighbour, Cath, who, at fifty-eight, is twenty years older and while they talk over the fence and she has been inside Cath’s kitchen, she doesn’t know her any better than that.

Kay doesn’t share her problems with anyone, but she often listens to others – especially mothers in the playground complaining about their husbands not cleaning up after themselves or never offering to do a load of washing. Kay wants to scream that they need to see how lucky they are. Don’t they ever look at their lives and realise they have everything?

There were a couple of times when she heard it from Issie too. ‘Mum always wants to drive me everywhere,’ she’d moaned to Dylan. ‘Like she doesn’t trust me.’

Maybe Kay would drive Dylan everywhere too if she had a car. She didn’t say as much as she wasn’t supposed to be listening in to their conversation, but girls like Issie would never know what it was like to have to catch multiple buses across town for an appointment. Or to count out change in an emergency to call a cab, while wondering whether she was doing the right thing. All Issie needed to do was ask her mother to be there at whatever time and Jess could sit in her car and wait for her.

‘I couldn’t wear the jumper I wanted because the tumble dryer broke down,’ Issie had once said, rolling her eyes.

A tumble dryer was a luxury. Many a winter Kay has taken in her boys’ school shirts from the line and had to thaw them out, their arms frozen into balloon shapes, and still they always had a clean shirt to wear the next morning.

Kay watches Billy as thoughts of her other son flood her head. His desperation on the phone for her to help him.

She isn’t able to fly over to Portugal for her child. All she can do is wonder whether to do the one thing he is asking her for. Whether she can bring herself to when it means lying.

Thoughts oscillate back and forth.

Maybe Jess is too smothering of Issie. According to Dylan, she had encouraged Issie to end their relationship. She came to the café and silently accused him. Kay saw it in her eyes, she didn’t miss the look of contempt. Jess insinuated Dylan had done something to hurt Issie, but knew better than to say it aloud.

Kay has always trusted her son and she does not owe Jess anything. Besides, she would at least put Jess’s mind at rest if she says she has spoken to them.

But then it is wrong. So wrong. Kay knows that, she isn’t stupid or blind to what she may or may not do. Lying to the police is not right, even though she has her son’s word everything is okay.

Thoughts tumble over and over until Kay believes she will never come to a decision. And then, half an hour later, Jess’s name flashes up on her phone. Kay stares at the screen for a moment. It must be about to go to voicemail when she finally picks up.

‘I have just spoken to Inspector Melo and he says he spoke to you earlier,’ Jess says. Any pleasantries, which Kay supposes had been fake anyway, have clearly dissipated.

‘He has.’

‘You still haven’t heard anything then?’

Kay’s fingers play with the piping of a cushion that sits on her lap. She knows how concerned Jess is and yet if she tells her she has spoken to Dylan it will have consequences and lead to plenty more questions. She needs to make a decision as to what to say and she needs to make it quickly.

‘Don’t you think that’s strange?’ Jess is pressing. ‘That he hasn’t called you back yet? It’s been over twenty-four hours.’

‘I don’t know,’ Kay tells her. Then, ‘I’m still sure everything is okay. They’re together. No harm is going to come to them.’

Jess makes a noise Kay tries to decipher. The woman is sure that harm has already come to her daughter, and she thinks Dylan has caused it.

‘Dylan loves Issie very much, despite what you think. He would never hurt her,’ Kay insists.

There is a moment of silence before Jess speaks. ‘Can you be certain about that?’

‘What?’ Kay says. ‘Are you really asking me this?’

‘I want to know what has happened to my daughter.’ Her desperation cracks her words apart. ‘I want someone to help me,’ Jess says. ‘I want to know where they are, and, in answer to your question, then yes, I am asking you that. Because, despite you telling me there is nothing to worry about, both our children have disappeared. And to be frank I can’t believe you’re not as anxious as I am about it. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all,’ she goes on. ‘So either you are worried, but for whatever reason you’re making out you’re not, or you know more than I do.’

Kay can’t tell her the truth now. Jess has made it impossible. Or rather, Kay has made it impossible for herself by not coming clean up front, and all she can do now is to keep pretending. ‘I don’t know anything,’ she lies. She raises her eyes to the ceiling, to a God she was taught to pray to every week at Sunday school, hoping he knows she is begging his forgiveness.

‘Then you need to start asking some questions, Kay,’ Jess cries. ‘About where they are and why he isn’t answering your calls. Because whether you think your son is missing or not, my daughter is. And if you don’t believe Dylan is, then I think he knows more than you’re making out. You know he’s hiding for a reason.’

‘Don’t,’ Kay says. ‘Don’t say that. You don’t know Dylan—’

‘Oh I know him, all right,’ Jess spits. ‘I know exactly what he’s like – I’ve seen the way he is with Issie. The way he controls her. I can’t believe you’re not aware. You must know the kind of man your son is.’

‘None of that’s true. He doesn’t control your daughter.’ Kay lets out a laugh. The thought of her son doing such a thing! Has Jess not seen the two of them together, like she makes out she has?

It’s clear Jess doesn’t know him in the way she professes to. The woman made up her mind about Dylan way back. He has never been what she wanted for Issie, never good enough for her precious daughter because of his job, and the fact he didn’t go to a grammar school or university.

‘Of course it is,’ she is shouting down the phone. ‘Of course it’s true. I’m not blind. I’ve seen it. She shouldn’t have gone away with him, but she has. She trusted him, and now—’ Jess breaks off. ‘And now he’s hurt her. For all I know, my daughter is dead,’ she cries, ‘and you’re standing by, not doing a damn thing about it. Is that what you are? Are you one of those mothers who will stand by him regardless?’

Kay feels the anger rising inside her, building slowly until it takes over. How dare she. How dare she suggest her son could have killed the girl he loves. He is not a murderer. The thought would be laughable if it wasn’t so frightening, because at the same time she can see now that this is what people will think soon enough. If they don’t reappear soon, everyone will start accusing her son of something awful, something so horrendous that will stick to him forever more.

Kay ends the call before she says something she will regret. There is no point talking to someone who doesn’t want to listen and who has already decided her son is guilty of an unthinkable crime.

Her heart is thumping in her chest. Her fingers have curled around the edge of the cushion so tightly that she has scrunched the velvet into a ball. She would scream if it wasn’t for Billy sleeping soundly opposite her.

There is of course something she can do to stop this madness from spiralling too quickly, and perhaps she just has to do it instead of dithering all night. Before it is too late.

She goes to the recent call list on her phone, her finger hovering over a number which she eventually presses. When Inspector Melo answers, she tells him, ‘I have spoken to my son and Issie Adams today.’

Jess

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

8 July

I had all but forgotten about Leah Martin calling me back, when a message popped up on my phone earlier from the only one of Issie’s friendship group I hadn’t spoken to.

Sorry I didn’t answer your call. I’m back home now it read.

I had just stepped out of the police station after meeting Inspector Melo this morning, my head filled with how they weren’t concerned in the slightest that Issie might be in danger. I couldn’t see how Leah could help me, the details of their fight weren’t conducive to finding Issie, but I called her anyway.

‘Hi, Leah,’ I said when she answered. ‘I got your message.’

‘Sorry I didn’t pick up your call sooner but I was on holiday.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t know if the other girls have told you, but I’m trying to find Issie. I don’t know where she is. I spoke to Katia and she said something had happened between you all. She said it wasn’t her story to tell.’ I paused. ‘Is it yours, Leah?’

‘Yeah, I guess it is,’ she laughed sadly.

‘What happened?’

‘We had a huge fight,’ she told me. ‘Issie became someone really different over the last year. She didn’t want to hang around with us, she only ever wanted to be with Dylan. She acted like she was more mature than us, and all because she had an older boyfriend. Like we were the idiots because we wanted to work hard and not be out driving round town in that pathetic GTI like she was. She said things that were really cutting and I was the one who called her out on it.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered. I saw the changes myself but I never knew they had spread so far. ‘But why have a go at you for working hard. Wasn’t she?’

‘I don’t know. Like I say, she spent all her time with him. I don’t know what she saw in him,’ Leah said. ‘I mean, he’s a waster. I told her as much and she didn’t like that either. We stopped talking after that, but it had been a long time coming. She told us we were all clones of each other who couldn’t think for ourselves!’ Leah laughed again.

‘Dylan must have said that,’ I mused.

‘She became impossible to be around,’ Leah said bluntly.

‘I’m so sorry she fell out with you girls. I was hoping she’d come to her senses and realise she was blinded by him, but right now I’m really worried about her. I haven’t heard from her in five days and it was her birthday and—’ I broke off, choking up. ‘I’m sorry,’ I sobbed. ‘I just want to know where she is. And no one is helping me.’

I started crying properly then, not noticing at first that Leah wasn’t speaking. She likely didn’t know what to do with her ex-friend’s mother sobbing down the phone to her. Finally I said, ‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘I heard from her,’ Leah replied, seemingly out of the blue when of course this should have been the question I asked at the outset. Only, given the others hadn’t heard from her in months, I hadn’t anticipated Leah would have.

‘You heard from her? When?’

‘I don’t know, it was …’ She paused, no doubt checking her phone. ‘The day before her birthday. I had a snap from her.’

‘What did it say?’

Leah read it out: ‘I’m sorry about what happened between us. I was wrong.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Did you get back to her?’

‘No.’ She paused. ‘I was going to …’

I closed my eyes. They stung from tears that were beginning to subside. Issie had held out an olive branch and Leah hadn’t responded. None of them were in touch with her over her eighteenth birthday and I couldn’t imagine how that would have made her feel.

But something must have happened to make her realise she was wrong for the way she’d treated her friends. To make her apologise for it. Was it Leah she was messaging outside the bar?

I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that no one has seen her since.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, I call Kay again. I cannot believe she hasn’t heard from Dylan and yet she tells me she hasn’t, and that she still believes there is nothing to worry about.

I don’t believe her. How can a mother not fear for the safety of her child if they are unable to speak to them? I don’t mean to say the things I do, but I can’t help it when she tells me I don’t know her son.

I do. I know exactly the type of person he is. He is controlling and manipulative, and either she’s too blind to see it or doesn’t want to. Perhaps she knows what I’m saying is true but will never admit it.

Is that it, Kay? ‘Are you one of those mothers who will stand by him regardless?’ I say. She hangs up when I add that my daughter may be dead.

It is not even an hour later when I receive a call from Inspector Melo. I have programmed his number in, I know who it is before I answer. ‘I have some good news for you,’ he tells me. ‘I have spoken with Dylan’s mother and she tells me she has heard from her son, and that she has spoken with Issie too. Your daughter is safe. The kids are just taking some time out.’

‘What?’ I choke, incredulous, a flash of initial relief too quickly superseded by disbelief. ‘No, she can’t have.’

‘She tells me she has. Her son called her today and she spoke to them both.’

‘She’s lying,’ I tell him. ‘I spoke to her. She said she hadn’t heard from him. She would have called me back if she had.’

Wouldn’t she? I think. Wouldn’t Kay still call me even after I accused her son of being a murderer?

‘I have no reason to think this is the case,’ Melo is saying.

‘Why isn’t Issie calling me then? There’s no way my daughter would ignore my messages.’

The inspector lets out what sounds like a sigh. ‘As I say I think your daughter maybe needs a little time away, Mrs Adams,’ he says like I am an overbearing parent.

Is this all he thinks I am? Perhaps the fact I have flown to Lisbon to look for her makes me into a woman who refuses to let her child grow up. Did he and Kay agree on this over the phone as they discussed why my daughter won’t talk to me?

Shit, I think. Is it true?

‘Mrs Adams? Please do call me again if you need to, but I am sure you will hear from your daughter very soon.’

‘Wait!’ I say. ‘When did Kay Whiting call you?’

This time he makes no attempt to cover up a sigh. ‘Four fifteen p.m.,’ he eventually tells me.

‘But I’d only just spoken to her,’ I say. ‘So she can’t be telling the truth. She must have called you as soon as she spoke to me because I called her at four o’clock.’

I put the inspector on speaker and pull up my phone log. ‘And the call lasted six minutes. So she must have called you as soon as she had spoken to me and—’

‘Mrs Adams—’

‘She’s lying,’ I cry. ‘I am telling you, she is.’

‘Maybe she did not want to tell you what Issie spoke to her about,’ he suggests. ‘Maybe this is what it is. It is difficult to hear.’

‘Or maybe,’ I emphasise, ‘she is lying. I know she is, and I don’t know how you can ignore it.’

Scott calls me as soon as Melo finishes the conversation, the sight of his name on my screen siphoning what last reserve I have in me. The only thing keeping me going is the knowledge that I am all Issie has. No one else will find her. No one else is looking for her.

‘Yes?’ I snap.

‘Jess? It’s me,’ he says, like I might not know. ‘What’s happening? Have you heard anything?’

‘Dylan’s mother says she’s spoken to Issie,’ I say, keeping to the facts.

‘Oh? God,’ he replies and I hear the relief in his voice. ‘That’s fantastic news. So she’s okay?’

‘Kay’s lying,’ I say bluntly.

‘What?’ He lets out what sounds like a laugh. I recoil with anger at the sound.

How dare he make me feel the need to explain myself to him when he has shown with one simple question how evident it is he does not know his daughter at all, or he would not need to ask. Because why would Issie speak to Kay and not me? There is no way.

‘She’s protecting her son,’ I say.

‘Protecting him?’ he repeats. I hear him blow out a breath. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes, I am sure. Only the police seem to believe her and not me.’

‘I’m coming over,’ he says. ‘I’ll meet you in Lisbon, I can get a flight direct.’

‘No,’ I reply quickly, my stomach coiling at the thought. I do not want him here. The idea of it feels worse. And besides, it wouldn’t help find Issie. ‘You don’t need to come,’ I add, softer.

‘She’s my daughter too.’

‘I know,’ I reply, though there are so many things I could add right now. Yes, she is his daughter, but that didn’t matter one bit to him when he abandoned her to live in another country, with another family. He hasn’t been a father to Issie in eight years. It takes all the strength I have not to bite.

‘I can fly out tomorrow night,’ he tells me, ‘and be in Lisbon in the early hours of the tenth.’

‘I don’t need you to, Scott,’ I say. ‘There’s no need. It’s too far for you to come.’ Already it feels like he is taking over.

‘Fine,’ he sighs eventually. ‘Keep me updated then,’ he adds firmly, and I wonder how much he really wanted to fly over anyway, or how easy it would have been for him. If Scott wants to be here, nothing I say would make any difference. But, relieved, I agree to keep him in the loop.

‘And—’ he starts, but then breaks off.

‘And what?’

‘And there was definitely no argument between you two, or a disagreement?’ he asks. ‘Nothing that—’

‘I told you,’ I insist. ‘There was nothing.’

‘You’re not going to find her walking the streets of Lisbon,’ he mutters. ‘More needs to be done if the police aren’t helping. We need to go bigger. Get the media involved. It’s the only chance we have of making anyone take notice.’

The detective back in England had told me this is what he would do too, only I hadn’t wanted to then. It felt too soon to be creating a media storm. But time has passed, and Scott is right. Only now I fear it might be too late.

‘I’m going to the British press,’ he says decisively.

I don’t tell him not to, though as we finish the call I find myself wondering whether Kay isn’t lying after all. What if Issie did speak to her and, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to contact me?

With my phone still clutched in my hand I tap on Leah’s number. I wouldn’t have turned to her in the past but she’s the only one of Issie’s friendship group who is talking to me about what happened between them.

‘Do you know what Issie thought of Dylan’s mum?’ I ask when she picks up, no doubt surprised to hear from me again so soon.

‘His mum?’ she repeats. ‘I don’t know. She never really talked about her.’

‘She didn’t have some close relationship with her I don’t know about?’

‘I don’t think so. Not before we all fell out anyway. Why?’

‘Dylan’s mum told the police she’s spoken to Issie.’

‘Really? But Issie’s still not spoken to you?’

‘Apparently she doesn’t want to. She needs some time out from me. I don’t think I believe it,’ I say, though what if it’s more that I don’t want to believe it?

‘I don’t either,’ Leah answers. ‘There’s no way she wouldn’t talk to you. You were like the closest person to her. We all thought she was so lucky to have you as her mum.’

‘Oh, Leah,’ I say, my eyes welling up. ‘I don’t know if Issie thought that recently.’

‘I do. She loves you, Jess. That wouldn’t change.’

I wipe the tears that are pooling down my cheeks. My heart burns at the thought of it. That my daughter still loves me the way she always has, when over the last year the signs that she does have become fewer and fewer.

‘She wouldn’t disappear and not call you. I know she wouldn’t do that to you.’

‘I know.’ The words come out in a whisper. It is what I have said all along. I know my daughter. Whatever happened between us, and whatever is happening to her now, there is no way she would let me worry.

‘Sorry,’ Leah adds. ‘It’s probably not what you want to hear though, is it? If his mum is lying then—’

‘I know,’ I say. She doesn’t need to say it. If Kay is lying then the reason doesn’t bear thinking about.

At seven o’clock in the evening I find a seat in one of the restaurants outside my hotel. I take a table at the edge of the pavement and order chorizo and a basket of bread. I don’t feel like eating but my stomach growls with emptiness and I am starting to feel sick again.

The waiter brings me a bottle of mineral water and, at the last minute, I ask him for a large glass of wine to take the edge off my thoughts.

My food hasn’t even arrived before a WhatsApp alert pings on my phone. I glance down and freeze at the sight of Issie’s name. I rush to open it, pressing a wrong digit on my passcode, which makes it shake in denial as a wave of fear passes over me that her message won’t be there if I don’t read it quick enough. Or that I have got it wrong, that my eyes have deceived me, and the text isn’t from her at all.

Once in, I click onto the message until it fills my screen.

Hi, Mum. Off travelling. Barely any signal but I am fine. Don’t worry about me. Issie x

My fingers tremble as I press on her number straight away to make a call. It takes me directly to her voicemail. I try again. And again. Each time it does the same.

‘Issie, call me,’ I tell her urgently, but her phone is switched off again. Like an apparition, she is no longer there and I no longer believe she ever was. This isn’t her messaging me. I am certain it is someone else.

Kay

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

8 July

Kay has always wondered about the mothers you see on the news. The ones who stand outside courthouses, telling journalists that their child has not committed the crime they have been accused of, attempting to convince the world that they have done nothing wrong. She wonders if they realise everyone watching knows they are lying as they remain stoically adamant their child is innocent. And whether they truly believe they are, or if they are just doing what they have to to protect their child. Isn’t that what every parent would do?

Either way she has always known they are wrong, and stupid, and she, along with everyone else, hates them for what they are doing.

Jess had accused her of being like these mothers on the phone and now she really has become one of them – lying because her child has asked her to, even as a sliver of doubt threatens to creep in.

Her hands shake as she gets up, stumbles into the kitchen and clutches onto the sides of the sink.

This is one of those times when she wonders what it must be like to drink. To drown her thoughts in a tumbler of gin. Does it really make you forget everything?

Kay throws a hand over her mouth. She feels like she will be sick. What happens now? Jess isn’t going to let this go. So what happens when Kay is found out, as she is surely bound to be?

She needs to convince her son that he and Issie should stop hiding. Stop doing whatever it is they are doing.

If that is all they are doing, of course.

There. There it is. That sliver of doubt again. Yes, she has it. She cannot deny it. Or at least she will to everyone else, but not in her head. In the thoughts no one else can see and that will not hurt any of them.

Here she has to ask the question: does she believe her son?

As soon as Issie’s disappearance hits the news, as Jess will most likely make sure it does, she knows Dylan will be pulled apart.

A picture of Issie with her long blond hair and tiny frame beside Dylan, masculine, tattooed. Everyone will quickly see how overpowering he might be. Someone like Issie wouldn’t physically stand a chance against him.

Kay can see it herself, and she knows them both. She knows this is not the case, but understands how this will play out, even before the media start to dissect their differing backgrounds.

The press will dig their fingers into it, exaggerating the divides in their families. The middle-class mother who has been wronged by a family living on the breadline, and who therefore must surely have no morals.

It’s clear whose side people will take. She would probably do the same if she was a spectator. The odds aren’t in her favour.

Kay has made a choice to protect her son because she has chosen to believe him. But she cannot help wondering: what if?

What if Jess is right? What if Dylan has flipped? Is he capable of it?

She would say he isn’t, not the boy she grew inside of her, who she loves with all her heart and who looks out for her and his brother. The boy who she believes has always taken care of Issie.

But then she looks at his father, and what Neil was capable of. She lets herself remember the feel of his hand tight around her throat as he held her against a cupboard door. And how she’d gone to her dad’s funeral in sunglasses, letting people think it was because she was crying.

Can you ever make sure the apple falls far away enough from the tree? Did she do enough?

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 105: THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING

PART ONE

Despite Santos Melo’s early reluctance to believe he had an investigation on his hands, he was soon proved wrong. Only this case was about to become so much more than a mysterious disappearance. Because on the ninth of July, six days after anyone had spoken to or heard from Issie Adams for certain, the case would take a whole different path.

Up until now, the police in Portugal had not been interested in Jess Adams and her insistence her daughter was in danger. Santos Melo had denied the teenagers had done anything other than gone off of their own volition.

On the morning of the ninth of July, Issie’s father, Scott Adams, contacted the British press and told them his story. Headlines were beginning to run online:

British Teenage Girl Missing in Portugal/

Portuguese police refusing to investigate

What has happened to Issie Adams?

Any consideration for getting Kay Whiting’s side of the story went out of the window. Everyone, it appeared, had made up their minds about what had happened and were focused on Dylan Whiting. Had he killed his girlfriend? Did that mean he was on the run? Was Dylan hiding or had he killed himself too?

But like I said, things were about to change. Because only a matter of hours after the press reported on the teens, a young woman stumbled out in front of a tram in the streets of Lisbon, claiming her name was Issie Adams.

Part Two

Jess

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

9 July

Scott warns me not to read the headlines. He tells me I will not want to see them, but this, in itself, draws me to them like a moth to a flame.

Has Dylan Whiting killed his girlfriend? I read as I sit on my hotel room bed. Everyone assumes Issie must be dead.

But I can’t go there. I refuse to believe it. I hold on to a small hope the message I received last night was truly from her.

And then, at 3.21 p.m., Santos Melo calls me. I have turned my phone to silent, but it vibrates in my hand. I feel a sickening dread as it pulses. Is this the moment he will confirm my worst fears?

‘Yes?’ I say. My body goes into autopilot, freezing as it prepares itself.

‘It is Inspector Santos Melo of Lisbon police.’

‘Yes?’ I say again.

‘I’m calling because …’ He pauses before continuing. ‘A young woman stepped out in front of a tram in the city centre this afternoon. She is not hurt, as far as I know. But she says her name is Issie Adams.’

‘What?’ I manage with disbelief. ‘Oh my God. Issie?’ I cry. ‘It’s actually her? Have you seen her?’

‘Not yet. She has been taken to the Hospital de São José.’

I am struggling to catch my breath, which comes hard and fast as I try to absorb what he’s telling me. Issie is safe? Can this be true?

A thought flashes through my head: But what if it isn’t? It could be a sick joke some young girl is playing now my daughter’s name is out there. Things like this must happen.

‘I can meet you there, Mrs Adams,’ he is telling me.

‘Yes. God, yes of course.’ My hands shake as I grab for my bag and find my shoes to slip on, already running for the door of the hotel room.

‘Can you get there?’ he is asking.

‘Yes, I’ll get a cab.’ I race down the stairs, my bag swinging in my hand as the phone falls out of my grasp and lands on the stone steps. ‘Hello?’ I call, as I bend down to pick it up, checking the screen for cracks. Miraculously there are none but the call has been cut.

‘I need a taxi,’ I say to the receptionist. I am out of breath by the time I reach the bottom. ‘As soon as possible. Is there somewhere I can get one from?’

‘This is no problem,’ she tells me. ‘I can ring you one now—’

‘Okay, but can you make sure it gets here as soon as it can.’

‘Where are you going to?’ she calls behind me as I head for the main doors to wait outside.

‘The hospital,’ I shout back as I dial Scott’s number.

‘She’s back,’ I cry when he answers. ‘Issie’s back. I don’t know what’s happened, I don’t know if she’s okay, but she’s talking. She’s been taken to hospital.’ I hold out a hand in front of me. ‘I’m shaking,’ I tell him. I can hardly get the words out.

‘Oh my God,’ he is saying. ‘Jess? I thought she was dead.’ His relief is palpable. I can reach out and feel it. I start to laugh with a surge of relief that our daughter is safe, and he does too, and for this one moment our past does not matter.

‘I’m going there now. I’ll call you when I’ve seen her.’

‘Okay. Okay,’ he repeats. ‘And Jess?’ Scott pauses and when he speaks again it’s with an emotion I had forgotten he had. ‘Tell her I love her.’

I nod, numbly, as a taxi pulls up to the side of the road and I lean through the window. ‘The hospital, please,’ I tell him. ‘São José?’

The driver nods and turns back to his screen that sits on the dashboard as he taps in an address. I get in and call Lois. ‘She’s back,’ I cry. ‘Lois, Issie is alive. I didn’t think I was ever going to see her again.’ And it hits me now, how I truly didn’t.

I cannot get through the maze of hospital corridors quickly enough. I have not seen Issie in nearly a month. I don’t know what state she will be in. I don’t know what to expect as I finally find the ward she is in. Whether it will definitely be her.

Adrenaline surges through me as I crash through the doors, and a nurse stops to speak to me in rushed Portuguese. ‘My daughter,’ I say, breathless. ‘Issie Adams, I’m looking for my daughter.’

She holds up a hand, gesturing me to wait, but I am looking into wards and peering through windows. In some ways I still expect the worst and am preparing to be shown into a room to find a stranger, some other girl who says she is Issie for whatever sick reason. But there is a greater part of me that believes my daughter is here and I will be reunited with her.

When the nurse returns she seamlessly reverts to English as she tells me. ‘She is this way.’

‘Is she okay?’ I ask as I am whisked around the corner and up another corridor.

‘Yes,’ she tells me. ‘Apparently she collapsed. I think she has maybe not eaten in a while. But we have given her checks, taken her blood pressure. It all seems to be fine. But—’ She stops outside a door. ‘She is not talking to us, you should know. She says she is not in pain, and we do not have reason to believe she is, but … she will not say any more.’

I want to ask, Is it definitely her? But of course the nurse will not know and so instead I say nothing and follow as she heads into the ward and hovers by a doorway.

I scan the room briefly before I see her. She is sitting on a hospital bed two down on the right-hand side, her legs hanging over one edge. Her arms shake as they hold on to the bed either side of her.

‘Issie?’ I throw a hand to my mouth, trying to stem tears I know will come anyway. She looks up at me, her eyes wide and her expression otherwise blank, but she takes a deep breath and blows it out through lips that are pressed together.

‘Issie!’ I run over, almost throwing myself at her as I wrap my arms around her. I press my face against her head, crying into her hair, breathing in her smell and, though it’s alien to me, this is still my daughter.

But beneath me she recoils, her limbs stiff and immobile. I pull back, frightened I might have hurt her and instead I crouch in front of her, holding on to her arms, wondering if they felt as thin as this before she left four weeks ago, and realising I couldn’t say for sure.

My gaze drifts over her face and down her body. ‘Are you hurt?’ I ask.

She shakes her head. ‘No.’

‘They said you stepped out in front of a tram?’

‘It didn’t hit me,’ she answers with a slight shrug.

‘But you collapsed?’

‘I don’t know,’ she murmurs, her voice trailing off. ‘I felt dizzy, that was all.’

‘But you’re not hurt – otherwise?’ I ask tentatively. I mean before that, I mean by Dylan, but right now I need to tread carefully.

‘I’m fine.’

She is anything but fine. My daughter. My baby. My adult child now. I reach up and take a tendril of her hair. It slips through my fingers before they catch on a knot. ‘Where have you been?’ I ask in a whisper. Where have you been to get like this?

Her skin looks dirty. A streak of dried mud runs down the front of her shin, a giveaway that she has fallen over. Had she been running from something? From him? Her denim shorts are stained, I don’t recognise the black vest top she is wearing.

Issie’s eyes stare back at me, heavy with tiredness although I can see a glimmer of tears in them too.

She doesn’t answer me at first but then whispers back, ‘I want to go.’

I nod. ‘Of course.’ I stand up, still holding on to her. I cannot take my eyes off her. To think I have been imagining I may never see her again and yet here she is, sitting in front of me. I would have taken anything, I was willing to deal with whatever was thrown at me, as long as she was alive. But now, when I look at her, I see something else. Something that resembles terror, and I’m already moving onto what I fear most: what has happened to my daughter in the last week to bring her back like this?

‘Let me go and speak to the doctors and check we can go,’ I say, eventually letting go of her as I turn and find the nurse at the door to the ward chattering furiously to another.

I wait patiently for a moment, until she sees me. ‘I want to take my daughter back to my hotel,’ I tell her. ‘Is that okay?’

‘Yes, I am sure,’ she says. ‘I will find out for you.’

‘There are no other tests you think she might need?’ I ask. Tests that could tell me what has happened to her.

‘I don’t think this is necessary. We do all the tests we need and everything seems to be fine.’

I nod. That word fine again. I am loath to take her from the hospital if Dylan has hurt her in any way. But then, if there’s nothing physically wrong with her, she isn’t going to tell me here.

‘Wait here a minute, please,’ the nurse says.

I do as I am told, looking up to see Inspector Melo coming along the corridor. I had forgotten he said he would meet me here. ‘How is your daughter?’ he asks when he is near. I look for a trace of mockery that I have caused a scene in declaring Issie as missing, and now she is suddenly back like he said she would be. Or even anger that my ex-husband spoke to the press only this morning, making an accusation that Melo and his team have done nothing to help. But I find neither. Instead he looks grave as he comes to stand by me. He frowns, his lips pressed together and there is nothing but concern.

‘I think she is physically okay so I’m waiting for the nurse to tell me whether I can take her back to my hotel. Do you know what happened? You said she stepped in front of a tram?’

‘I do not think she saw it coming,’ he says, ‘from what the driver says. One minute there is no one in front of him and the next she is stepping out. Like her mind is somewhere else entirely, maybe?’

He goes on, ‘She collapsed then at the side of the road. Maybe she fainted. I am pleased she is okay, but I wonder where she has been if she is not in a good way. Has she said anything to you?’

‘No. Not yet. All she wants is to go back to my hotel.’ I don’t know which of us is in the wrong. If he was right and my daughter went off on her own accord, or if he should have listened to me because it could have turned out so much worse. Somehow I am certain it is the latter, but I need to talk to her to find out.

‘I would like to speak with her,’ he says. ‘Before you go anywhere.’

‘Okay. She’s tired though.’ I find myself excusing her for the fact she isn’t acting herself. I think of how she felt so stiff and fragile beneath my arms and how the nurse said she wasn’t speaking to anyone.

‘It will not take long,’ he assures me, looking over my shoulder and into the ward.

‘I’m worried about her,’ I confide in him, pulling him out of the doorway and around the corner, lowering my voice so no one nearby hears me. ‘Maybe not physically, but she looks awful, and I can tell something bad has happened. I think she’s too frightened to speak right now.’

Melo turns his attention back to me but doesn’t respond.

‘Hopefully she’ll tell you,’ I go on. ‘But—’ I flick a hand through the air. ‘I don’t know. I guess seeing her again after all this time isn’t how I imagined it would be,’ I admit. Perhaps I’d expected some joyful reunion, though is that too much to ask?

I move back to the ward and go to point Issie out to the inspector, but I am staring at an empty bed. Where Issie was sitting only moments ago, there is now no one, the ruffled sheets the only giveaway she had ever been there.

‘Issie?’ I say as I step back in, looking for her across the half-dozen beds as if she might be hiding in here. But there is no sign of her. ‘She must have slipped past me.’ I look one way then the other up the corridor. My heart starts to hammer, the thought that she has vanished so quickly after I have only just got her back. I start to run down the corridor, my feet picking up pace as I go, turning corners one way and then the other, Melo at my heels.

I push through the glass revolving doors, outside into the sun that beats down heavily still. It is late afternoon and the sunlight blinds me as we step out. I put up a hand to shield my eyes as I strain to look for her.

I see her then, halfway across the car park. She is walking, not fast, more staggering away from the hospital. ‘Issie!’ I call after her as I chase her down. It doesn’t take long to reach her. I grab her wrist and make her stop and am grateful when she doesn’t try to get away.

‘What are you doing? Why didn’t you wait?’ My eyes flick over her face. I am desperate for anything, for her to tell me what is going on behind her glassy stare.

‘I want to go home,’ she says in hushed words.

Melo has caught up with us again and I feel her flinch and pull her hand out of my grip.

‘Can this wait?’ I say to him because, for whatever reason, I know she doesn’t want to speak to him. ‘Please? I just want to get her back to the hotel so she can shower and eat.’

He tells me it can but only after he has taken the name of the hotel where I am staying. He says he will call me this evening and then, with relief, he finally leaves us.

I don’t say anything more as I steer Issie back towards the hospital and park her on a bench out of the sun as I call for an Uber. I wonder if it is because of Santos Melo that she left the ward, and assume it likely is.

I don’t want my daughter to be a victim who doesn’t speak out and yet I can also understand it. Sometimes we do anything to protect ourselves.

But I will not let her protect Dylan, I think, as we wait in interminable silence for the Uber to arrive. I sit close to her so I can feel her beside me, my leg pressed up against hers. I reach out an arm and wrap it around her shoulders, waiting for her to eventually fall against me. Only once she does do I let myself breathe.

The woman is sitting at her desk in the reception of the hotel as we go in. She looks up with horrified interest at the sight of Issie. ‘My daughter,’ I say. ‘We’re going up to my room.’

She begins to speak but I push Issie past her, up the ornately winding staircase to the second floor where I open the door to my room and gently nudge her in.

She looks around but doesn’t say anything. ‘I’ll run a bath,’ I tell her, and don’t wait for the response I won’t likely get as I turn on the taps and sluice a foaming gel under the running water.

I stand in the bathroom and keep the door open so I can see her in the bedroom, in case she suddenly gets up and walks out. Maybe she won’t now we are on our own, but I won’t take any chances. I track her shadow through the crack in the bathroom door as she moves towards the windows. I edge back so I can peer around and see her better. I have a view of her back as she stands motionless, looking out onto the street below.

I have had so many visions of what might happen if she called me or suddenly returned and yet none of them were this. In all of them, we were both full of relief and joy, hugging each other and holding on like we couldn’t let go. I never once saw her pulling away from me, silently, like she is doing.

What the hell has happened to you, Issie? I think as I watch her. Something has for sure. Something she does not want to talk about. Something that made her run when Santos Melo arrived at the hospital.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When Issie has been in the bath for an hour, I call through and ask if she is all right.

‘I’m coming out,’ she says and I hear the water start to gurgle down the drain.

I wait on the bed until she appears, watching her move around the room like a ghost. I have made her a cup of tea and opened a complimentary packet of biscuits. ‘You must be hungry. We can get something to eat in one of the restaurants below,’ I suggest, gesturing out of the window.

Issie takes the tea, sipping at it before shoving a biscuit into her mouth. I pat the bed next to me and she comes over to sit down. ‘Issie, what happened?’ I ask softly. ‘I haven’t heard from you in six days. I thought you might be dead,’ I add, my words straining.

‘I’m sorry,’ she tells me, looking at the tea as she swirls the cup in her hand. Tears swell in the corner of her eyes. Her face is etched in pain and I reach out to hold her.

‘You don’t have to apologise,’ I say. ‘All I want is to know that you’re okay.’

She starts crying now, tears that turn into sobs, and I hold her, shaking against me, resting my chin on top of her head, thoughts of what might have happened swarming like sharks.

I haven’t held her like this in a long time, I think, though I had never forgotten the way it feels. The warmth of her body against mine, knowing that right now in this moment, nothing else matters. Issie is here with me, and I swear on my life I will never let anything happen to her again. A promise I have been making since the day she was born. Yet somehow, I made a mistake. I allowed something to hurt her. I allowed someone to.

‘I want to go home,’ she whispers. ‘Can we get a flight tonight?’

‘I’ll look into getting one tomorrow. You need to have a good night’s sleep first.’

She doesn’t reply and eventually pulls away.

‘Where’s Dylan?’ I ask her.

Issie gets off the bed and wanders over to the window, staring out of it in silence.

‘Do you know?’

‘No,’ she murmurs.

‘Issie? What happened?’ I say softly.

‘I can’t talk about it right now.’

I frown. I want to talk. I need her to talk. Only, isn’t it enough that she’s here with me, I ask myself. She is safe. I will keep her safe. We can talk when she is ready.

So I drop the subject for now, mindful not to keep pushing when she feels so frightened, so fragile. I don’t know how much space she will need, though I am aware she will have to talk soon because Inspector Melo will be calling and we can’t keep fobbing him off. Not when there are headlines out there, shouting about Issie, and what Dylan might have done to her. All the terrible possibilities I put into Scott’s head which he, in turn, fed to the media.

I updated Scott while Issie was in the bath, telling him she wasn’t hurt, but that I still didn’t know what had happened to make her disappear for five days. I wonder how he will handle the media, how he will stop everyone thinking my daughter is missing or dead. Hopefully he is already setting the story straight in a way I have no doubt Scott can.

Issie is still wrapped in a towel, and it hits me that, apart from the small bag she has by her feet, she doesn’t have any of her things. ‘Where are all your clothes?’ I ask her.

‘In the hostel. Near here.’

‘In Lisbon?’

Issie nods.

‘Let’s go and get them,’ I say. ‘You can borrow something of mine for now.’

‘No.’ She shakes her head adamantly. Then, ‘I can go later.’

‘Why not now? Let me go for you if you can’t face it. You don’t have to leave the room,’ I tell her, although, as soon as I say it, I feel unsure about leaving her alone.

‘You don’t need to do that.’

‘Do you think Dylan could be there?’ I ask.

She looks at me, wide-eyed, before turning away. Surely this thought must have crossed her mind. ‘I can get my stuff some other time. There’s really no rush.’

I nod, letting this go too. Of course there is every chance Dylan is in the hostel. But what I also consider is that if all her clothes and belongings are still in Lisbon, and all she has is a small bag with her, then there was clearly no way they arranged this little trip to the mountains for a few nights. The post on her Instagram was a lie. It wasn’t a mini trip. Whatever this was – it was not planned, at least not by Issie.

‘Was it you who messaged me last night?’ I ask her as I open up another packet of biscuits and pass them to her. I wish I had more food to give her but we will have to go out for that.

Issie nods. ‘You were worried.’ She gulps. ‘I know you must have been and I didn’t want you to be scared.’ She glances up at me now and catches my eye. ‘That’s the last thing I wanted. I’m so sorry.’ I can see by the agony in her eyes she means this. ‘But I couldn’t—’ She stops abruptly, as if a memory has taken over her thoughts.

‘Issie—’ I stop her again. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I tell her. ‘Was it?’ I prompt.

‘Of course not.’

‘Well then. Please don’t apologise to me.’ I purse my lips as she curls up on the bed, still wrapped in the towel, digging herself beneath the covers that she pulls up to her chin. ‘Iz, don’t lie there wet like that,’ I say gently. ‘Put this on.’ I grab a towelling dressing gown that hangs in the wardrobe and pass it to her. She puts it on and I take the towel from her.

I watch as she closes her eyes. She is nothing more than a shadow. It feels as though, if I reached out for her, she wouldn’t be there. But then, ‘Mum?’ she says.

‘Yes, my love?’

‘I wanted to come home.’

Those five words take me back to a time when she was almost eleven. It was the first time she had stayed with Scott after he left us. He’d come to England and stayed in a hotel in the New Forest and I had pushed Issie to spend the weekend with him, though she hadn’t particularly wanted to. Sunday night when she was back, I was saying goodnight as she lay in bed, curled up on one side and she uttered those exact words to me. They had broken me then as much as they do now.

Issie is squeezing her eyes tighter shut, clamping them up. ‘I didn’t want to be here any more. I wanted to be back at home before any of this—’ She stops abruptly.

‘Oh, Iz,’ I say, and remember how she had messaged Leah with an apology on the night before her birthday. Something happened to make her do that. But then something, or someone, stopped her. ‘We’re going to get through this,’ I tell her. ‘Whatever has happened. Whatever he has done,’ I add, my voice dropping a level.

She reaches a hand out from under the covers and grabs hold of mine, squeezing it hard. ‘You promise?’

‘Issie,’ I say firmly, ‘I promise.’

It isn’t long before sleep drags her in, her breathing begins to slow and I relax a little myself. At least she is safe here. It feels like she knows that.

Santos Melo calls ten minutes later when I am lying on the bed next to Issie, staring at the ornate ceiling above my head as my mind races through a myriad of scenarios my daughter might have been through in the last week. My phone tells me it is six thirty in the evening. I have no idea if Issie will sleep through the night or not, but I don’t want to wake her when she’s so exhausted.

‘Hold on,’ I tell him as I creep out of the room, softly shutting the door behind me as I hover the other side of it on the hotel landing. ‘She’s asleep,’ I explain. ‘I really don’t want to wake her.’

‘Okay. Well then please call me if there is anything more I can do,’ he says.

‘Wait, you don’t want to talk to her?’

‘Not if she does not want to. As far as we know, there is no crime, no? Maybe she and her boyfriend had a fight.’

‘No. It’s more than that,’ I say, adamant. Now he’s said he doesn’t need to speak to Issie, I realise how much I want him to. I hoped he’d be able to get out of her whatever she isn’t telling me. I need him to try. ‘She’s frightened of her boyfriend,’ I go on. ‘She’s petrified. She doesn’t want to go back to where they were staying. And besides, she would never have stayed away and had no contact with me just because they had an argument.’

He listens before saying, ‘But until your daughter tells us there is more, I cannot do anything.’ I know he is right and that I need to get Issie to talk. I need to dig further. ‘I am sorry, Mrs Adams. I have a teenage daughter also. They are a worry, yes?’

‘They are,’ I agree, grateful at least for his empathy.

‘Sometimes we have to let them come to us when they are ready,’ he adds.

‘Yes. You’re probably right,’ I say. ‘But if there is anything—’ I stop. ‘Could you maybe do a check on Dylan Whiting? Or speak to anyone who may have seen them at this national park where they were supposed to be staying. Is there anything you can do?’

I hear him blow out a breath. ‘I will see what I can find for you, Mrs Adams. But, please, do not hold your breath, as you might say.’

When Issie opens her eyes again it is quarter past eight. ‘Are you hungry?’ I ask.

She nods. ‘I don’t want to go out though.’

‘I can get something and bring it up?’

‘Please.’

I reach out and brush a strand of her hair off her face. ‘You don’t need to tell me tonight,’ I say, though I don’t know how long I can wait like the inspector suggests. Not when it is something that’s affecting every fibre of her being.

‘Do you remember the time we went to Palma?’ Issie asks, apropos of nothing.

‘Yes, of course I remember it. Why?’

‘I don’t know. I think this place reminds me of it. They had those huge whirlpool baths in the bathroom, didn’t they?’ She smiles and I want to laugh out loud that I am seeing a flash of my daughter: the Issie of a year ago. The one I haven’t seen in such a long time. I want to cling on to this moment and not let it go.

But then her expression changes and her smile fades as quickly as it appeared, our happy memory replaced by a darker one. She frowns and looks away from me.

‘I never should have gone travelling,’ she says eventually. At this, tears well in her eyes again and she pushes herself back against the headboard so she is sitting against it.

This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to know there is something haunting her but not be able to do anything about it? ‘Please tell me something about what happened,’ I urge her. ‘Where were you? Were you in the place on your Instagram post? Serra de São Mamede?’

Issie nods.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know, he drove us there.’

‘He had a car?’

She nods again. ‘He hired one.’

‘Why? To take you there?’

‘No. No I don’t think so. He said he had a surprise for my birthday.’

‘And do you think this was it? Taking you to this place?’

Issie doesn’t reply and so I say, ‘You didn’t answer any of your calls. You must have known I’d called you on your birthday, Iz.’

‘I couldn’t—’ She says it so quietly, so hoarsely, that I can barely hear her words.

‘You couldn’t?’ I prompt when she doesn’t finish.

She looks down at her hands before clasping them together and shoving them underneath her. She looks absolutely terrified, her face as white as a sheet, her eyes as hollowed as they had been when I saw her at the hospital. It is as if the flashes of her I have seen again have been taken away and replaced with a shell of my daughter.

‘Did he hurt you, Issie?’

‘Not like you think.’

‘Then how?’ I press.

‘Mum, I can’t do this,’ she sobs.

I blow out a breath, stare up at the ceiling. I thought I was getting so close. Beside me Issie pulls herself up and I can feel her stiffen. When I look over she is staring ahead of her, her eyes fixed on a point on the wall.

‘You were right about him,’ she says. ‘You always said he was in control and I didn’t believe you.’

I nod, too scared to speak for fear I will say the wrong thing and she will stop again.

‘Dylan wouldn’t let me speak to you,’ she says, her gaze still forward like she cannot look at me. She blinks, slowly, her eyes shut for a moment longer than I’d expect, like she is either holding the memories there, or trying to disassociate herself from them. I cannot tell which it is.

‘How did you get away?’ I say when she hasn’t spoken again.

‘Bus. I got a bus this morning.’

‘On your own?’

She nods, non-committal.

‘Does he know where you are?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So he isn’t in Lisbon, as far as you know?’

Issie shrugs. ‘I don’t know where he is.’

‘How did you get away from him?’ I ask as I reach out and hold her arm. She flinches and I know I have done the wrong thing as she swings her legs off the bed.

‘Issie?’

‘Can we not?’ she says. ‘I told you I didn’t want to.’

‘I know but—’ I go to say that I’m sure she was the one who had started talking about it, but the way she is looking at me, so desperate for me to stop, makes me hold my hands up in surrender instead. ‘Okay. Okay. Not tonight.’ I smile, getting up too and walking around the bed, stopping to hold her and kissing her lightly on the top of her head as I pass.

The conversation has been closed and so I put the kettle on again and tinker with things for the sake of doing something, refolding the clothes I had thrown over a chair and putting them back in the wardrobe. Every so often I glance over at her. She is a million miles away, staring at a point in the corner of the ceiling now. Her expression tortured, like she is trying to process whatever memories she has.

‘He can’t hurt you any more, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ I find myself saying. ‘You’re away from him. You’re safe. I can make sure you’re safe.’

I reach out and touch her and this time she doesn’t try to move away.

‘No,’ she says quietly. ‘I am anything but safe.’

I hurriedly get pizzas from a restaurant across the road so I am not away from her for long. We eat them on the bed, our conversation drifting back and forth over mostly safe ground. At ten past ten Issie falls asleep again.

I find myself playing her words over in my mind. I consider how she told me Dylan stopped her contacting me, how he didn’t hurt her as I think he did, how he controls her like I had always warned her. All of this runs over and over until it becomes too much to pick apart. In the end, I creep out of the room, closing the door behind me. I need to get away for a bit. I need some air to breathe and think. Just for one moment I don’t want to look at my daughter in pain and not know what to do to help her.

The street below is still busy. I won’t go far, but head to a bar opposite the hotel and sit at a table where I can see both our window and the front door leading to reception. If she leaves, I will see her. If anyone enters, I will see them.

I order a glass of wine and call Lois. She picks up quickly, her voice low. ‘Hey, how’s Issie?’ she asks.

‘Is it too late?’ I say. ‘Were you in bed?’

‘No. I’m going downstairs so I don’t wake the kids, but of course it isn’t too late. Tell me what’s happened.’

I relay what little I have gleaned from Issie, how she was almost trance-like when she relived the few memories she did and how scary it was hearing her tell me she was anything but safe.

‘I don’t know what he’s done but I’ve never seen fear like it,’ I say to Lois. Despite the heat I shudder, glancing up the cobbled street, expecting to see him in the shadows, lurking, watching us.

‘Shit, I should go,’ I mutter. I leave ten euros under my glass and rush back over the road to the hotel. I shouldn’t have left her alone.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

10 July

Issie is still asleep in the bed beside me when the phone rings at eight the next morning. Surprisingly it is Inspector Melo calling and so I pick up immediately.

‘This is interesting,’ he says as I slide out of bed and creep into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me.

‘What is?’ I ask in a low voice.

‘I have another link to Dylan Whiting, but I do not know what this boy has done. Has your daughter told you anything more?’

I hesitate before telling him what Issie said last night because she hadn’t wanted to speak to Melo for whatever reason. I don’t like the thought I am going behind her back but, if he is prepared to help me, then he deserves my honesty.

I tell him Dylan had kept her against her will and wouldn’t let her contact me, and that she somehow left him and got a bus back to Lisbon yesterday morning. ‘But you said you had another link to him,’ I continue.

‘Yes. Dylan Whiting rented a car on the fourth of July,’ he tells me.

‘Oh yes, Issie mentioned that.’

‘Did she say what happened to it?’

‘No,’ I tell him.

‘Well he rented it for two nights and so it was due back on the sixth. But he has not returned it. There is no tracker on the car, but this place he got it from – it is a very, how do you say it – backstreet operation. I think the owner did not want to come to me. I think maybe this is why it took him so long to talk. The insurance will not pay if they do not report the car stolen.’

‘So Dylan’s stolen it.’

‘He has not returned it. Who knows what he has done with it.’

‘Can you track it down?’ I ask.

‘We will try. It seems your daughter was with him when they collected the car, or at least a young woman matching her description. I would like to talk to her. Could you bring her to the station, Mrs Adams?’

‘Yes, I can do that,’ I tell him, pleased for the excuse to go as it’s a reason to make Issie confront whatever Dylan did. ‘I don’t know what you will get out of her though,’ I add. I worry she will clam up in front of Melo, or refuse to go at all.

‘Her name might not be on the rental agreement, but she was with a man who has stolen a car. Maybe you can remind her of this?’

‘I will.’

‘I think we will find out what happened,’ he assures me. ‘I know you are worried.’ It feels like he is on my side and that, despite his early reluctance to believe me, he has Issie’s best interests at heart.

I ease the bathroom door open and wonder how she will take the news when she is so adamant she doesn’t want to talk to Melo, and when she will barely talk to me. She is stirring in bed, twisting over until she is facing me. Her eyes pop open and she looks over at me. I say goodbye to Santos Melo and hang up the phone as I head into the room.

‘Who was that?’ she asks.

I smile and hover at the side of the bed. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

‘Who was it?’

‘The police officer who was at the hospital yesterday. Inspector Melo.’

‘What does he want?’ Issie shifts herself up until she is propped against the pillow, drawing her knees into her she hugs her arms around them.

I frown at the movement, and at how defensive it makes her seem.

‘I thought you said he wasn’t going to call again,’ Issie points out.

‘He wasn’t. But he phoned for a reason. He wants to talk to you. A car has been reported stolen. The one Dylan hired on Monday night.’

She straightens her back and carries on regarding me.

‘He says it was supposed to be returned on the sixth,’ I say. ‘But it hasn’t been. Do you know what happened to it?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Dylan arranged it. I didn’t know anything about it until he picked it up.’

‘He didn’t say anything about taking it back?’ I question.

‘I told you that,’ she says.

‘Do you know where it is now?’

‘No. Why are you looking at me like that?’ she accuses.

‘No reason, love,’ I say, but the truth is I am finding myself scrutinising everything she tells me because there is so little to glean. All I want is for her to tell me the whole story so I can stop trying to fill in the blanks.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, making her shift backwards to accommodate me. ‘Have you heard from him?’ I ask.

‘No.’

‘I was wondering whether he’d tried to make contact with you after you left him. He must want to know where you went.’

She dips her eyes and for the first time I think she might be lying to me. ‘So he hasn’t tried getting hold of you at all?’ I press.

‘No,’ she answers bluntly. I cock my head, trying to fathom what she isn’t telling me.

‘You would tell me if he did?’ I persist.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning. I have no idea where he is. Mum? You don’t believe me?’

I open my mouth to go to tell her I do, and yet the words don’t come out. Sensing my hesitation, she cries out, ‘I left him, Mum. I ran away from him. You have to believe me, because if you don’t then who’s going to?’

The fear has returned. I see it again now. It had gone, but it is back. My daughter is truly scared of something. ‘I do believe you,’ I tell her, ‘but it’s hard for me when I don’t know the whole story.’

Her hands are trembling as she flings back the duvet and I reach out for one, trying to still it. ‘Issie, you need to talk,’ I urge.

‘We had a fight the night before my birthday,’ she says. ‘Dylan found out I wanted to go home. I—’ She pauses. ‘I realised what our relationship had become and that you’re right. I didn’t want to be with him any more and I think maybe he knew this.’

I nod, willing her to go on.

‘If I could have called you, I would have done,’ she says. ‘You know I would never want you to worry, but Dylan stopped me. He wouldn’t let me have contact with anyone. He took me to this place in the middle of nowhere and—’ She breaks off as my phone rings again. It is Lois, but I hit the button to reject the call.

‘I guess we need to go to the station,’ Issie says.

‘Iz, I want you to tell me the rest.’

‘Mum?’ she begs.

‘You not telling me – it feels like you’re covering for him,’ I say softly. ‘And I don’t understand why. I get that you’re scared, but you don’t have to let him get away with whatever he did.’

She turns and glares at me, holding her gaze for a moment longer than feels comfortable. ‘No, Mum, you actually have no idea how scared I am.’

I ask Issie to tell me why, tell her I can’t do anything to help unless I understand but she clams up again and so eventually I relent and mutter that we might as well go and speak to Inspector Melo.

We don’t eat in the hotel but pick up a coffee and a pastry from a shop on the corner of the street. I tell her the police station is only ten minutes away. She is reluctant to walk it and begs me to get a cab, but I refuse when it’s so close and so we set off down the cobbled lanes.

I keep my eye on her, though, conscious of the way her gaze flicks around her, how she holds back at corners. It hits me then that it isn’t that she didn’t want to walk because she is lazy, but because she is frightened of bumping into Dylan. She is looking out for him down every street.

‘You think he wants to find you,’ I say. ‘Nothing can happen to you, not here in the middle of a city, and not when I’m with you.’ I hope this is true and am relieved when we get to the police station and I can lead her inside, but I don’t sense any relief from Issie. If anything, she is more tense as I ask for Inspector Melo and we wait for him to come out.

I want answers as much as Melo does, although I don’t care about the car. All I am hoping is Issie will say something, anything, to help me glean a part of the story.

Santos Melo keeps us waiting for a quarter of an hour. By the time he appears, I am certain Issie is about to hop out of her seat and leave. ‘Come through,’ he tells us, and leads us back into the room I sat in with him only two days earlier when I was begging him to look for my daughter. If someone told me then that I would be here with her so soon, I don’t know I would have believed them. It reminds me I should be grateful for everything I have: my daughter here in one piece.

Melo repeats what he has told me – that he is aware the car was rented on 4 July and that it hasn’t been returned. He wants to know what Issie can tell him. ‘Did you know Dylan agreed to return it two days later?’

‘No,’ she says.

‘You were with him when he collected it, this is true?’

‘Yes,’ she answers this time.

‘The owner says you had been arguing? When you picked the car up, he thinks you were upset?’

Issie inhales a tight breath which she doesn’t seem to let go of. ‘Yes, we were arguing,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want to go anywhere.’

‘Where did you go?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know exactly.’

‘Where did he leave the car?’ he persists.

‘I don’t know the name of the place.’

‘It was somewhere near Lisbon?’

‘No. It was a long way away. He drove for a while, maybe an hour or so. But I don’t know where he left it. I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘None of this had anything to do with me. Dylan hired the car. Yes, I was with him and, yes, he drove us somewhere. We ended up in Serra de São Mamede, as my mum knows and I’m sure you do too,’ she says. ‘But what happened to the car after that I don’t know.’

Melo nods slowly, his gaze never leaving her. ‘Why did Dylan rent it?’ he asks now.

‘He said he had a surprise for my birthday.’

‘And what was this surprise?’

‘I don’t know. It never happened. We ended up having an argument and that was when he drove us out to the middle of nowhere.’

‘Serra de São Mamede?’ he questions, and Issie nods.

‘You had an argument in the car?’

Issie hesitates. ‘Yes,’ she says eventually. ‘Do you think you will find the car?’ As if this is the thing to be worried about.

‘We will find it, Miss Adams,’ Melo says, and I am taken aback by his sudden formality and the way he is looking at her strangely until she looks away and pulls out of my grip, grabbing her bag from the floor.

‘Can I go now?’ she asks, her voice a whisper.

I look to him for confirmation. He is still staring at her curiously, and it makes me wonder if he believes what my daughter has told him. By the way he is regarding her, it doesn’t appear that he does.

‘You can. If you think of anything more, please let me know,’ he says and nods towards the door, giving us permission to leave.

We both get up, but before we have left the room he asks her, ‘How did you get back to Lisbon, Issie?’

‘Bus,’ she tells him, like he already knows.

‘That must have taken a couple of hours?’

She nods and pushes the door open, leaving the room as I quietly follow. I look back as we head into the reception area, to see Santos still watching us. I want to ask him what he’s thinking because there is definitely something on his mind. Does he know more than he says? He has unnerved me and now I think I have been too trusting of him.

‘I want to go and get my stuff from the hostel,’ Issie tells me, and I snap my attention back to her as we walk outside.

‘Okay. I can come with you.’

‘You don’t need to.’

‘I want to, Issie. Let me help.’

‘Mum, let me do this. I need some space. I want to get my head round things.’

‘Okay,’ I say uncertainly. ‘If that’s what you need, then of course. Shall I meet you somewhere? I can wait around here in a café?’

‘Yes, that sounds good.’ She smiles at me now as if to convey everything is fine, although it feels anything but. I gesture to a place over the road with outside bistro tables and a chalkboard advertising a range of coffees.

When she makes no move to go I tell her I’ll see her soon and cross over the road. On the other side I look behind me, but she is already gone.

In an instant, fear drives through me like a knife. It comes from nowhere and even though I try telling myself it is unnecessary, it is there. A feeling of dread that maybe she will disappear again.

I step forward, searching her out among the bustle, until I see her retreating into the distance and about to turn the corner. A flash of the night I arrived in Lisbon hits me hard. I had felt so hopeless as I arrived in this unfamiliar city with its labyrinthine streets and alleys, knowing deep in my heart I had no chance of finding her by scouring them for her.

She is out of sight again and it feels as if she has evaporated. I don’t know where the hostel is, and I am not secure in the thought that she will return. I barely think about what I am doing before I start to walk, quickly, in the direction in which she has gone. Living up to my part as the overbearing mother, I follow Issie, picking up my pace into a slow run, barely looking as I cross the road, and turning the corner as she had.

Relief smacks me as I glimpse her ahead of me. It is so like the days when she was a small child and I would scan the beach for her when she was momentarily out of my sight. The wonder of the moment you catch them, and don’t have to worry about them any longer.

I keep my distance from her now. She must not notice me following her. Am I really doing right by her when I do not trust her to go to her hostel on her own? Maybe, maybe not. But I daren’t take the risk because all I want is to keep her safe. I cannot let her go again when I have only just got her back.

I dip behind people as she ambles up a narrow cobbled street, for fear of her turning and seeing me. What would become of our relationship if she does? I can’t imagine, though I am certain she would clam up even more than she has been doing.

But Issie doesn’t look back as she turns another corner onto a street that looks more industrial than the Lisbon I am used to. The buildings are still imposing white structures but they are not as beautiful as the ones near our hotel. Graffiti is scrawled across wide expanses of wall on the other side of the street to where Issie has now stopped. Within a moment she disappears into a doorway.

I scurry up the pavement until I reach the spot where I last saw her. There is nothing but a black-doored entrance and a sign above it that reads Selena Guest House.

So this is where they had been staying. Tall black window frames on an ochre-painted building. I recognise the little café on its right from one of Issie’s last Instagram posts before she went missing. She and Dylan had been sitting outside it and had taken a selfie. I remember scrutinising his lack of a smile.

I hover for a minute before turning away and crossing the road where I wait in a doorway until she comes out. Just to be sure she does. Just to be sure she is safe.

She is in there for ten minutes before she reappears on the street, her backpack slung over her shoulder. I feel a flush of guilt now that I hadn’t trusted her to do what she said she was doing, but still I don’t race back to the café where we said we would meet. Instead, I wait for her to start walking so I can follow her back.

She is hesitating on the pavement and looks up the street the other way. I feel my heart thumping again at the prospect of why she isn’t walking this way. She turns in my direction but remains where she is.

I edge back though she cannot see me where I am hiding. What are you doing? I hiss to myself.

Now Issie spins around again until she is facing the guest house. She lifts up her free hand in a gesture and I realise she is talking to someone. She steps back as another figure emerges into the daylight.

Dylan.

My breaths come harder as he moves towards her, but Issie carries on talking, waving her arm with a flick of a motion up the street towards me.

I fight my instinct to rush over, to pull her away from him, and demand he tell me why he stopped my daughter from contacting me. To ask what the hell she is doing talking to him if she made a two-hour bus journey back to Lisbon yesterday to escape him. Did she escape him?

A weight of indecision drags me down. If I go over, will I make it worse? How do I expect her to confide in me if she knows I am watching her like a stalker?

It takes every piece of restraint I have to hold back, telling myself that, as long as she walks away, I am still here for her. Isn’t that the best thing I can do? They tell us we need to prepare ourselves to let our children live their own lives, after all. That they are never ours, we are only here to prepare them for the world. All of that fights every instinct I have.

But I continue to watch her. She is safe right in this moment and, if at any point she disappears back into the hostel with him, I will be there like a shot, banging the door down and pulling her out.

Issie’s gaze drifts down to the pavement. Her foot curls to the side as she listens to whatever he is telling her.

My blood rushes through me, vibrating in my ears in rhythm with the thud of my heart. Walk away, Issie, I want to scream. Why aren’t you walking away from him?

Because he has a hold on her. What I have always known. There is still something about him that keeps her there.

And then she looks up at him and I startle at the way she doesn’t look distressed or uncomfortable.

He reaches out a hand and holds on to her elbow, and I inch forward again as she smiles at him. Only briefly. But it is definitely a smile, one that tugs at me, because this isn’t right. This cannot be right.

Dylan leans forward, pulling her in for a hug before she draws away from him, and finally starts walking towards me, her expression blank, glancing over her shoulder once as she strides forward.

Everything inside me sinks, slowly, draining out of me as I step back into the shadows of the doorway I am hovering outside of. I realise that in a twisted way I liked that she was frightened of him because it meant she sees him for who he is.

But this? There is no sign of the suffering I would imagine and this is even more frightening. The thought that he has the ability to pull her back into his web. He still has a hold over her and I don’t know how I begin to fight this.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

10 July

I hold my breath as Issie walks past, but she doesn’t see me as she strides forward, her gaze fixed ahead. I have no choice but to follow her back to the café and pretend I have been there all along instead of hiding in the shadows. She wouldn’t understand my fear, she would only mistake it for the mistrust it also is.

I keep close and stay out of sight and, when she goes into the café we agreed to meet in, I cross over the road and head into a pharmacy and buy a bottle of face cream.

Issie quickly reappears on the pavement looking for me and so I step out of the shop and wave it in the air when she spots me. ‘I needed to buy this,’ I tell her. I smile and she smiles back, and I wait for her to tell me Dylan was at the hostel.

‘Shall we get a coffee then?’ she asks.

‘Yes, sure.’ I gesture to an outside table where she pulls the rucksack off her back and drops it at her feet. A tram whistles past and she looks up, her mind seemingly a million miles away. It makes me wonder where her head was when she stepped out in front of one only yesterday morning.

I study her face now for any sign of emotion, but I see none. ‘How did it go?’ I ask. ‘Did you get everything you needed?’

‘Yes.’ She kicks at the rucksack. ‘I got it all.’

‘That’s good. And it all went well?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ she shrugs and pulls out a menu that is stuck between a salt and pepper pot. ‘What would you like? Latte?’

‘Yes. But Issie?’ I can’t help my prompt. ‘What happened back at the hotel?’

She laughs. ‘It’s hardly a hotel, Mum.’

‘You know what I mean,’ I snap.

‘I don’t. What do you mean what happened?’

‘Oh, Issie,’ I say, because I cannot help myself from asking when it’s apparent she isn’t going to tell me. ‘I know you saw Dylan. I was there.’ I can’t let her get away with lying to me but, more than that, I need to know if she knew he would be there.

Issie stares at me, a flush of colour painting her cheeks. ‘What do you mean, you were there?’

‘I followed you to the hostel.’

‘What? Why would you do that?’ Her face is a picture of genuine shock and it’s hard to see whether it’s my betrayal or the idea that she hasn’t been honest about Dylan that is worrying her the most.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I truly am sorry for following you, because I hate that I did. But honestly I was worried that if I let you out of my sight I might lose you again. That’s all it was.’ I hold up my hands, hoping and expecting she might see it from my side. How a mother’s love pushes you to do anything to protect your child. ‘But then I saw you talking to him and apparently it looks like you weren’t going to tell me. And I have to be honest, Issie, that’s worrying me too.’

‘I was going to tell you,’ she says, looking abashed. ‘I didn’t know what you would say.’

‘What I would say?’ I repeat.

‘I didn’t want you going off on one. I didn’t want it to become a bigger deal. I didn’t know he was going to be there.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘No.’ She tells me this adamantly, but the way she swallows makes me think this isn’t the case, and the idea she could have arranged to meet him there frightens me.

‘So what did he talk to you about?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know, nothing.’

I glare at her, waiting for more.

‘He tried telling me he was sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’ I press, leaning forward in my chair, urging her to tell me.

‘For everything, I guess.’

‘I can’t help my mind going to places I don’t want it to, Issie. You must realise what I’m thinking.’

‘Then don’t,’ she says, her voice quivering. ‘I asked you to give me time but you won’t.’

I let out a shallow laugh, shaking my head as a waiter appears at the table. Maybe it is something no one can appreciate until they are a parent themselves – that you do not switch off from worrying, and the fears that nag and tug at you into the night will never stop when it is your child you are fretting over.

I order the coffees, and our conversation is momentarily halted, which gives Issie the opportunity to change the subject and talk about going back to my hotel because she didn’t have a shower earlier.

I lean back, biting my lip and maybe she notices because she says then, ‘When can we go home? You said you would look into a flight today.’

‘I haven’t done it yet,’ I say. ‘I will.’ I’m still pleased that she wants to come home with me, but I can’t help thinking she’s only said it to get me back on side.

Issie smiles and we pause as our coffees are placed on the table. She fingers the tiny handle on her cappuccino cup, prodding the froth with a spoon.

‘Did you really not know he was going to be there, Issie?’ I ask her again, more gently this time.

‘No,’ she tells me, avoiding any eye contact.

‘Or even in Lisbon?’

‘I told you, Mum, I didn’t know where he was.’

‘Because you left him,’ I say.

‘Yes. Because I left him,’ she repeats.

I do not believe her. This is what I keep coming to. I don’t trust what she is saying, and cannot comprehend why she is telling me so little.

But I can’t keep forcing it because I fear I will push her away. And so, for now, I change tack completely and say, ‘I do know how hard it is for you. It takes time to accept and process when someone you love has done something awful to you.’

She looks up at me.

‘Your father,’ I tell her. ‘You don’t think he hurt me beyond belief? He walked out on us. He went back to his ex-wife. It was a total shock to think that the person you’ve been married to and who you love could do something like he did. It made me think I didn’t know him at all. I never thought the man I married was capable of hurting me the way he did.’

‘You always said it was the best thing to happen to you,’ Issie points out, though not as coldly as her words could have sounded.

I frown. Had I said that? I suppose I had told her as much in the days when I didn’t want her ever believing a man could destroy her life. It didn’t mean I believed it.

‘Iz, I had to be strong,’ I say. ‘For you and for me, and the thing is I know you are too. And you will move on from Dylan and what has happened to you because you have your whole life ahead of you. You have university and your art. You’re the most talented person I know.’ I reach for her hand to take it in my own.

She lets me hold it for a moment before pulling away. She looks like she is about to say something, but then dips her gaze.

‘You’re strong enough to walk away from him, I know you are,’ I say. I smile at her, and for a moment I think I have said the right thing and that at least some of my words have gone in.

But then she drops her spoon on the saucer and screeches back in her chair. ‘I’m going back to the hotel. You don’t have to follow me because I promise you that’s where I’m going. I’ll see you there whenever you want to come back.’

‘Issie?’ I call after her as she hauls her rucksack over one shoulder and starts to cross the road. But she doesn’t turn back.

I finish my coffee, and pay the bill. Then, ten minutes after Issie, I’m on my own way back to the hotel, only I stop outside the police station en route. Despite my earlier concern that I shouldn’t trust Melo, I push open the heavy door and step inside before asking for him.

He appears in the lobby and I tell him Dylan is staying in the Selena Guest House. Melo raises his eyes, signalling that he didn’t know. Hopeful visions of the police storming down there, arresting Dylan for stealing a car and leaving me and Issie in peace flood into my head.

I ask him to update me on what happens and he promises me he will, and then I say, ‘Is there anything I don’t know?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Is there any more information you’re holding back for some reason? Anything that affects Issie.’

‘There is nothing,’ he tells me, though I don’t know if this is the case as he cocks his head and looks like he is trying to work out what more to say. In the end he tells me, ‘You have her with you. This is the main thing. Whatever happened to her, it will come out, Mrs Adams.’

‘I’m trying my best not to push her,’ I admit, ‘but I’m not sure how well I’m doing.’ Unexpected tears fill my eyes and I brush them away as they catch Melo’s attention. ‘I’m frightened. What if she still wants to be in touch with him? She tells me she doesn’t, but I’ve always known he has a hold on her. I don’t know what to do if he still has one now.’ Because what would that mean? That she is so blinded by him he can do anything to her and she still won’t walk away?

‘You hear about it, don’t you?’ I go on. ‘The girls who won’t leave? It can happen to the ones who come from loving families too. How do you stop that?’

Inspector Melo looks at me, like he doesn’t quite know how to answer before saying, ‘I believe you make sure she knows you are there.’ There is a look in his eyes, though, that suggests he doesn’t really believe this is enough. He must have seen too many horror stories first-hand over the years of controlling relationships that have gone too far. Is he really so sure it is all he would do if it were his own daughter instead of Issie? Does he expect me to sit back and hope it won’t get to the point it’s too late?

An hour later, I am back in the hotel room and Issie is lying on the bed. I won’t tell her I spoke to Melo about Dylan because I don’t want anything to rock the boat between us further. Instead, I make small talk about work, and Lois, leaving out other important things like her fallout with her friends because, for the moment, that can wait.

‘I’m sorry about earlier,’ she says, when we are lying side by side on the bed, watching a cookery programme with English subtitles on the television.

I glance over at her. She isn’t looking at me, but straight ahead at the TV as if she hasn’t spoken.

‘I’m not going back to Dylan, whatever you might think. That’s not the case.’

Immediately a wave of relief washes over me. I try to keep my voice level when I say, ‘That’s good, Issie.’ She looks so sure about it too, so much so that I believe her.

When my phone starts ringing, and I see Inspector Melo is calling again, I switch it off. As much as I want to know what he is phoning about, I don’t want to take the call in front of her.

She asks who it is and I tell her it was a work call. Issie’s attention returns to the TV and, while I try not to think of what the inspector wants to talk to me about, I can’t help myself. After five minutes, I tell her I should probably return the call, and that I’ll do so outside.

I feel her watching me as I leave the room, closing the door behind me. Maybe she is wondering what I am keeping from her and whether it is as bad as the things she is keeping from me. I don’t lie, and never to her, so can she tell I am now? I could never have imagined a day when both of us would be keeping secrets from each other.

‘It’s Jess Adams,’ I say when Melo answers. I walk down the winding staircase and into the reception area on the ground floor, stepping outside into the heat of the midday sun.

‘Mrs Adams, I have spoken to Dylan Whiting,’ he tells me.

‘Oh yes?’

‘He says the car was stolen a few days ago. Apparently he has not got around to reporting it.’

‘He’s lying!’ I say.

‘Yes,’ Melo agrees. ‘I am sure this is the case. But we will find out. I am certain he must know this.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘He deserves to be scared.’

‘Maybe this is true,’ he replies but then I hear him suck in a breath. ‘According to Dylan, he and Issie came back to Lisbon together yesterday. He tells me they got a bus back together. He seems very certain of this. But, of course, we do not know if this is the truth.’

‘No. It can’t be,’ I say. ‘Why would he stop her taking any of my calls or letting her speak to anyone for six days if he’s then suddenly happy for them to come back? It doesn’t make any sense,’ I tell him. ‘He must know she would only tell everyone what he’d done,’ I add.

Except that she hasn’t, I realise. She hasn’t told anyone a word. Melo doesn’t point this out, instead he says, ‘I do not know. Certainly Dylan believes they are still together.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘They aren’t. She told me they’re not.’ My heart is thumping, my head starting to hurt at the idea that Issie might have lied about this. ‘She wants to go home,’ I tell him. Maybe I need to get her out of the country. ‘I assume we can leave Portugal?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘There is no reason for you to stay. We are tracking cameras for the car registration plate, and then we can start to understand where it has been. I am looking for a car, Mrs Adams,’ he tells me. ‘But maybe this is not the only thing I find.’

I look up at the hotel’s windows above me. At the one that is mine, where Issie is lying on my bed on the other side. Thoughts of the stories she has told me run through my head again. They are only fragments, not enough for me to piece together. Still, I know I am missing something. Only I don’t know what.

CHAPTER TWENTY

11 July

I book seats on a plane to leave Lisbon early tomorrow morning. It is the earliest flight I can get to Heathrow, but it means Issie and I have one more day in the city together, though we cannot agree how to spend it.

Issie is restless. She won’t settle until we are on the plane. She tells me she wants to put everything behind her, though I’m not sure if this means she plans not to tell me whatever it is she is hiding.

We eat breakfast in the hotel’s small dining room and I watch as she picks over the food on her plate, pushing it around with a fork until she drops it with a clatter.

‘You’re not hungry?’ I ask.

‘No. Not really.’

‘You should eat something.’ I frown. Since she left me in the café yesterday I haven’t started any conversation about Dylan. I haven’t even told her what Melo said to me. Instead, I have taken some comfort in the fact that, as far as I know, she hasn’t made contact with him since she saw him in the hostel.

I assume he is still in the city. The threat of him so close plays on my mind. I have visions of looking out of the hotel window to see him standing there, staring back up at me. Is he watching our every move? I don’t put it past Issie to have told him where we are, especially if he asked. Would she feel like she could refuse? Would she even want to? Perhaps he is still able to track her on her phone.

I don’t like the idea of him waiting for us, following us, any more than I like the idea of him being there when we get home, but right now that’s all I want to do. As soon as we get on that flight I am sure everything will feel better.

‘Shall we get out of the city for the day?’ I suggest as I top up my coffee from a jug on the small buffet table.

Issie shrugs. ‘Can do,’ she says, non-committal.

I sigh as she gets up and goes back to the room and leaves me alone to finish breakfast. It crosses my mind that I don’t know how I can let her put everything behind her when I am still in contact with Inspector Melo.

But how can I move on without some semblance of the truth? How can I help Issie if I have no idea what she’s dealing with? Whether the scars she will one day acknowledge are physical or emotional? If Dylan has hurt my girl in ways I don’t want to think about, I need to know what they are because I am already imagining the worst. If Issie understands this, she is doing nothing to help reassure me, but maybe that’s because the worst has happened.

I finish my coffee and am getting up from the table and grabbing my room key, when Melo calls.

‘We have found the car,’ he tells me.

‘Where was it?’ I ask.

‘I can show you on a map,’ he says. ‘I am downstairs in your lobby. Can you and your daughter meet me?’

‘You’re here? Now?’ I don’t know why he wants to show me in person, and with such urgency, but I tell him we’ll be downstairs in a minute. Hanging up the call, I go back to the room, letting myself in to find Issie staring at her reflection in the mirror. She glances up when she sees me. ‘Inspector Melo’s downstairs and wants to see us,’ I say.

‘What does he want?’ She fiddles with her make-up bag, tugging at a reluctant zip. It feels like something to take her attention off me.

‘He says he’s found the car.’

‘Found it?’ Her gaze snaps up again. It takes a moment for her to ask, ‘So what does he want to talk to us about?’

‘I have no idea. I guess that’s what we’re about to find out.’

‘Why does he keep hounding us?’ Issie asks.

‘I don’t know that either. I suspect he wants to find out more about this stolen car.’

‘That’s all?’ she says, as I beckon her to the door, urging her to hurry as she dallies by the mirror. ‘This isn’t about anything else?’

‘Like what?’ I say, hanging my head, goading her to tell me what else there could be.

Issie looks at me inquisitively. ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugs. ‘I guess I can’t understand why he keeps contacting you.’ I try to read her expression as she eventually drops her bag on the bed and comes over to where I am holding the door open. It is something more than curiosity. There is something behind her eyes that goes much deeper than this. She hasn’t wanted to talk to Melo from the moment he turned up at the hospital, but I also wonder if it is that she suspects I’ve been in touch with him.

We head down the spiral staircase to where Inspector Melo is hovering at the bottom. He looks up at the sound of our footsteps.

‘Issie, Mrs Adams.’ He nods at us both.

‘Please call me Jess,’ I say, though I doubt he will. He leads us over to a table by the front door that is seemingly out of earshot of the woman behind the reception desk who continues to watch us with interest.

‘We have found the car,’ he says pointedly, opening up an iPad to reveal a map. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Portalegre. It is 220km east out of Lisbon. Do you know where this is, Issie?’

‘No, I—’ Issie stumbles and frowns as she takes a closer look at the map.

‘You have not been here?’

‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘Only we have updates on our cameras,’ he goes on. ‘We can track where the car went on Tuesday the fourth of July.’

She nods, numbly, still staring at the map thoughtfully as she chews on the corner of her lip. I watch her intently, my heart rate increasing at the idea that she does know this place but is not telling him the truth. I can see her chest rising and dipping, trying to catch her breath because she doesn’t know what to say.

‘It arrived here, where we have found it, but this is where the tracking stops.’

Issie doesn’t answer, her eyes are still trained on the map. If I can see how nervous she is then surely Melo can too.

‘The car has some damage,’ he goes on. ‘To the front left bumper. It has hit something for sure.’

I look up at this, taking my focus off Issie as I try to piece together what this means.

‘But the car was not used again, as far as we can see. After that evening.’

‘Sorry. What are you saying?’ I ask eventually. ‘Can you just tell me outright?’

‘I think the car was driven to Portalegre on the night of the fourth, and not used again. I think Dylan drove the car there and then left it for whatever reason. Do you think this is what happened, Issie?’

‘I – I’m not sure, I mean possibly. Like I say, I don’t know where it was exactly,’ she stumbles. A glassiness fills her eyes and I can see her hands trembling at her sides. ‘He told me the car was stolen.’ Issie relays the same story she told yesterday. She is making out she is trying to recall what happened, but I don’t believe this is the case. ‘You’d have to ask him.’

I wonder how long my daughter thinks she can get away with pretending she knows nothing, because I am certain that is all she is doing now. Issie knows exactly where Dylan left the car and when. Her story is barely holding together. But behind the look of confusion on her face, there is panic. It is this that stops me from pressing her in front of Melo. In the end I say, ‘At least you’ve found it.’

‘This is true,’ he concurs. As soon as I have the chance, when Issie is not around, I will ask him what he is thinking. What he knows right now that he isn’t saying.

Suddenly, his line of questioning changes. ‘Do you know the name Beatriz Motto?’

‘Beatriz Motto?’ Issie repeats, squinting in a way that tells me she really doesn’t know the answer to this one.

‘Does the name mean anything to you?’

‘No. Nothing,’ she replies. I don’t think there’s any recognition in her face, her reaction is entirely different to the one a few moments earlier when he asked her about the car.

Issie doesn’t ask him why, and in the absence of this, it is left to me to question him.

‘She is a young woman who has disappeared,’ he tells us. ‘You do not know her?’ he asks.

Issie shakes her head.

‘Okay.’ Melo nods. ‘Thank you,’ he says finally.

I am about to ask what this woman’s disappearance could possibly have to do with Issie, who is shuffling her feet next to me, when she asks if she can go. She is anxious to be back in the room, away from his questions, and Melo must be able to tell. Does she have any clue it is all so painfully obvious?

‘Yes, you can go,’ he says, and she is turning to leave when he adds, ‘But one more thing. Do you know where Dylan is? He is no longer at the Selena Guest House.’

‘No,’ she says, and I try to gauge her expression again but I can’t read it this time. ‘No, I don’t know where he is.’

‘If you hear from him, please tell him I want to speak to him.’

‘Okay. Sure.’ Issie looks awkward as she glances at me.

‘Thank you for your time, Issie.’

She doesn’t answer as she stares at me and waits for me to join her so we can make our way back to the room.

‘I’ll be there in a moment,’ I tell her. She hesitates, giving me a cautious look. I can tell she wants to ask why I am holding back, but she doesn’t say anything. Just like she hasn’t asked Melo enough questions. Because to my mind, if she were innocent, she would be questioning him more.

In the end I think she is simply relieved to be getting away as she heads up the stairs. As soon as I know she is on the second floor, I turn to Melo. ‘What do you think happened?’

‘I do not know this, Mrs Adams. Not yet.’

‘He must have dumped the car there and then taken Issie somewhere else. How would they get to this place they were supposed to be? Serra de São Mamede?’

‘There is a train that would take them there from Portalegre. But I am not looking into this. Unless Issie tells you something that concerns you, it is not my focus.’

‘Your focus is a stolen car?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why are you asking about that woman? Beatriz Motto?’

‘I wanted to check. Rule out any possible link.’

‘So it’s a coincidence,’ I say. ‘Nothing more than that?’

‘Maybe so.’

I am not convinced. There’s a reason he brought her name up.

It is an early start the following morning. Issie and I pack up and head down to the reception desk at 7.15 a.m. to call for a taxi to take us to the airport.

‘We definitely have everything?’ I ask her. ‘Did you check the bed?’

‘Yes.’ She smiles because I do this whenever we go away. ‘How long do you think it’ll be?’

‘Ten minutes?’ I guess, opening up my bag for the umpteenth time, checking I have both passports, my phone and my credit card. We are both relieved to be leaving Portugal. Waking this morning, and knowing by this afternoon we’d be back at home, has begun to ease the knot of tension I’ve had the past week. ‘I’m so ready to go home,’ I say as my phone starts ringing.

It is Inspector Melo. It crosses my mind that whatever he has to say must be important if he is calling me this early.

Issie peers over my shoulder. ‘Mum, don’t take it,’ she says, but of course I pick it up anyway. I cannot ignore it.

‘Hello,’ I say as I wander away from Issie, whose eyes I can feel boring into my back.

‘Mrs Adams?’

‘Yes.’

He pauses for a moment and takes a deep breath. I have a feeling that what he is about to tell me is going to change everything. ‘I am afraid we need you and Issie to come to the station immediately.’

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 106: ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING: THE DEATH OF BEATRIZ MOTTO

PART TWO

Welcome back to part two of the episode involving the British teens, Issie Adams and Dylan Whiting. I have linked the episodes of the podcasts, but as you’ll notice, I’ve changed the name of them because this is no longer about a sudden disappearance.

On the twelfth of July, only three days after Issie and Dylan showed up in Lisbon, the case took a much murkier turn when the body of twenty-two-year-old Beatriz Motto was found.

Portuguese-born Motto had not been seen since the fourth of July. Her body was found exactly eight days later by Inspector Santos Melo and his team, who found her loosely covered in foliage on the side of a road.

Her death, it was soon established, had likely occurred the night of the fourth. So how had she been lying there, unnoticed, for eight whole days? And what did it have to do with the British teens?

First off, no one was searching for Motto. Beatriz had distanced herself from her family for some years. Leaving home at the age of eighteen and, with two short marriages behind her, she was known for taking off and turning up in a different country every couple of months. It was nothing out of the ordinary that no one noticed her disappearance until a friend called the police on the ninth of July to finally report that she hadn’t been seen in almost a week.

Inspector Santos Melo, who had been looking into the original disappearance of Issie Adams and Dylan Whiting, noted that the last time Beatriz was seen was also the same day that Issie and Dylan went off-grid.

Although the teens had turned up in Lisbon, there were vague, conflicting stories of where the pair had been during the five days they had supposedly vanished, now linked to the report of a stolen rental car.

It is probably testament to Melo himself that connections were made as quickly as they were. The fifty-two-year-old inspector has been in the force for twenty years. Father of one, he was committed to finding out what had happened to Issie, having initially ignored claims by Jess Adams that her daughter was in any danger.

Issie and Jess were due to leave Lisbon for England on the twelfth of July, only their return was delayed when Melo wanted to question Issie about the death of Motto.

Melo had tracked down the missing rental car in Portalegre, almost 140 miles inland from Lisbon, and near to the Serra de São Mamede region. With Dylan Whiting now reporting it as having been stolen, Melo began tracking the movements of the pair on the night of the fourth of July.

Through CCTV and police automatic number plate recognition, he was able to trace a journey that took them from Lisbon’s city centre to the area of Graça, and then on a lengthy journey to Portalegre. A journey estimated to have taken two and a half hours.

I mention Graça for two important reasons. Firstly, as the cameras’ time stamps recorded, the rental car was tracked heading towards this area at nine fifteen in the evening and appeared to leave again at around ten thirty-three, just over an hour and a quarter later. Other than this, the car’s registration was picked up on an almost non-stop route to Portalegre.

But secondly, and more disturbingly, Graça was the area in which Beatriz Motto’s body was found eight days later.

Up until now both Issie and Dylan had been telling variations of a tale that they had gone to stay in Serra de São Mamede for a few days to cut off from friends and family. But at this point, when Motto’s body is found, Issie finally starts to talk.

Part Three

Jess

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

12 July

The walls of the hotel’s small reception are closing in on me as Melo speaks, telling me about the woman whose name I had only heard for the first time yesterday: Beatriz Motto. The woman who vanished the same day Issie and Dylan stopped making contact. The woman whose body they have just found.

Now he demands to speak to Issie again. I stare at my daughter, who is gaping back at me. ‘What is it?’ she mouths.

I don’t reply but all I can think is, What haven’t you told me, Issie?

‘You have not left Lisbon yet?’ Melo is asking.

‘No. But we’re about to. If we don’t leave for the airport now we’ll miss our flight.’ My words are rushed with urgency, my desire to get out of here and on that plane back home so strong, and yet I know that will not happen now. A taxi won’t be taking us to the airport. We won’t be getting our flight back to England. Melo is telling me someone is on his way to meet us at the hotel who will bring us to the police station.

‘Mrs Adams, I am sorry,’ he tells me.

This is nothing more than a coincidence, I remind myself. Issie can clear this up. Except I don’t believe this is the case. ‘Why are you sorry?’ I say.

‘For many things. I am sorry for you, this is not what you wanted the outcome to be.’

I close my eyes, his words washing over me. It would be easier without his sympathy, I think with a sinking dread, because his pity only proves he knows what is ahead of us.

Beside me Issie is rooted to the spot. ‘We have to go to the police station,’ I tell her when Melo finishes the call. ‘They want to talk to you.’

‘No! We’re going home.’ She looks panicked. ‘We can’t miss our flight.’

‘They found a body, Issie,’ I tell her and watch for her reaction, the way her face contorts in horror, the dread that drains the blood from her skin. She barely moves but at the same time it is as if she has been punched in the gut. I can see the life billow out of her.

Issie opens and closes her mouth, furrows her brow like she might be confused.

I realise tears are slipping down my cheeks. I have never felt so hollow. Each day I lose another piece of the girl I thought I knew. The one I poured my heart into bringing up. The moment I saw her in the hospital in Lisbon I was flooded with relief. But, even then, I sensed there was more to come.

All I cared about was what Dylan had done to her to stop her talking to me. I hadn’t considered the why.

‘It’s Beatriz Motto, the missing woman,’ I confirm, though she hasn’t asked me. ‘They want to talk to you and we have no choice but to go to the police station. We’ll have to find another flight. Later,’ I add, though I hope this is true. For all I know we won’t be going anywhere for a long time.

I am too out of my depth. I have no idea what, if anything, my daughter is involved in or what she might know. The only person I’ve trusted to help us is the one man who will stop at nothing to get to the truth. We are stuck in a foreign country, with no one on our side. I don’t know what I should be doing for the best, and there’s no one who can tell me.

It is 2.15 a.m. in Boston and yet the only person I can think of calling is Scott. When the shit really hits the fan this is the person who will sort it. I dial his number and he picks up on the third ring. ‘Jess?’

‘They want to question Issie about a woman who’s been found dead,’ I say as a uniformed officer walks into the foyer. I lower my voice. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘What?’ he splutters and I hear him moving, imagine him getting out of bed so he doesn’t disturb Rita beside him. ‘What the hell’s happened?’

‘I don’t know.’ My words feel strangled and tight in my throat. ‘But they’re here to collect us, so I have to go. Do you think we need a solicitor?’

‘Hell, yes, you need one,’ he says. ‘I’ll deal with it. Tell her not to say anything. Tell her to make no comment.’

‘What?’ I say, incredulous as the police officer indicates the door. Is this really what she should be doing? ‘I have to go. I’ll call you back later.’

The officer who meets us is in his early thirties. He is tall and thin with dark spiky hair and round black-rimmed glasses. He has a car waiting to take us on the short journey to the station where he drops us and tells us Inspector Melo will meet us shortly. When we are offered a drink we both ask for a glass of water. I hold Issie’s hand as we sit and wait, and this time she lets me. The officer doesn’t leave our side and I wonder if it’s because he thinks we might run or if he wants to listen to anything we might say. I say nothing until Melo appears. ‘Can I come in with Issie?’ I ask him.

‘You can have your mother as support?’ he says to her.

‘I don’t—’

‘I’m coming,’ I say, so firmly that no one argues. Besides, if she thinks I am going to sit outside in the reception area while they question her about a dead woman, she has another think coming. ‘It’s in your best interests,’ I tell her. ‘Legally.’

She stares at me like a frightened animal caught in the headlights. It tears me in two to see her so scared, my instinct kicking in to want to make it stop, and protect her from having to go through anything that terrifies her. I realise that I have always been like this, jumping when she needs me. Like the times she’s called me from school and begged me to take in a sports bag she’s forgotten, or put extra money on her card because she spent too much on lunch the day before.

Lois always told me I should say ‘no’ more. ‘They only start learning when you stop doing everything for them,’ she once said.

I’d laughed and told her she was probably right but for her to wait and see what she was like when her kids were older. Only now I have no choice but to let Issie face whatever is coming.

We all take a seat at the table. Melo sits opposite us and is opening a pad on which one side of a page is filled with writing I cannot interpret.

‘Do you know the name Beatriz Motto?’ he asks Issie when she is settled.

I watch how her fingers wrap around the glass, curling and uncurling. ‘No. I told you already I don’t know the name.’

I think back to the way she had looked at me in the hotel lobby earlier. Her eyes filled with fear. I didn’t ask her if she knew anything about it. Why didn’t I, when I had that small window of opportunity? Instead I panicked and called Scott and then the police officer arrived. I wish now I’d asked her what she knew when I had that briefest of chances, because I have no idea what is coming.

‘Beatriz Motto’s body has been found in an area called Graça,’ Melo continues. ‘Is that somewhere you’ve been?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ she says and her body deflates. That one word has taken everything out of her. I see it despite the fact she is righting herself in the seat, straightening her back, pushing herself forward as if she has nothing to hide. But I am her mother, I don’t miss these things.

I wonder what Santos Melo sees when he looks at Issie. I wonder whether she is just a potential witness to him, or if there is anything in her that reminds him of his own daughter. I hope there is. Because, despite the reason we are here, I want him to go easy on her.

‘When was this, Issie?’ he questions.

‘The fourth,’ she says. She looks straight at him.

‘Can you tell me about the night?’

Issie draws in a breath. She holds it tight in her throat but nods, like she is playing for time. When she swallows the breath, I can almost see it squeezing down her throat in slow motion. I glance at Melo, who is writing something on his pad, and feel grateful he isn’t scrutinising her in this moment like I am.

I go to hold Issie’s hand again but she pulls away this time and clasps her hands together in her lap. They clench into a tight ball before she prises them apart and lays them flat on her legs.

‘I went there with my boyfriend, Dylan. He hired a car. It was the night before my birthday and he said he wanted to take me out, do something different.’ Issie frowns at the memory. Her voice is flat and toneless as she reels the acts off like they are on a bullet point list. ‘He said he had something planned for the next day.’

‘What was that?’

‘He didn’t tell me.’

‘And so what did you do?’ Melo asks.

‘We drove to Graça. To see the lights of the city. It was supposed to be the best view.’

I look to Melo as if I am expecting him to nod along and agree with her.

‘Do you recall what time this was?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know. It was getting dark. Maybe about nine o’clock.’ She pushes her back up again, rubbing her hands along her thighs before clenching them into fists.

‘And what did you do when you were there?’

‘We saw the lights,’ Issie shrugs. ‘It was supposed to be romantic,’ she adds in a way that suggests it wasn’t.

‘And how long were you there for?’

‘I’m not sure. It could have been half an hour. I don’t know exactly. I’m sorry.’

‘You stopped there for a while then? To look at the sights?’

Issie starts to nod, but then she adds, ‘We had an argument.’ Still she doesn’t look in my direction.

‘An argument? What was this about?’

‘Him.’ Issie pauses. ‘The way he always made me feel.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘I told him I wanted to leave and go back to the hotel, but he didn’t want to.’

‘Why did you want to leave?’

‘Because I knew I didn’t want to be with him any more. I wanted to go home.’

‘Did he know this?’

Issie shakes her head. ‘I was scared of how he might react.’

‘And how might he have reacted?’ Melo asks.

‘I was worried he might get angry. And I didn’t want that, not in a foreign country, not when I was so far away from home. I thought …’ She pauses. ‘I guess I thought he would find a way to stop me going.’

Melo nods as he listens intently. My stomach churns with the anticipation of what comes next. Issie’s cheeks are flashing in patches of red. She must feel my gaze burning into her. ‘I said I wanted to go back to the hostel, but Dylan started shouting that this was all supposed to be for me. He was furious. He didn’t want to go back. He said he had this surprise booked but I don’t know what it was.’

‘He would not take you back?’ Melo asks.

‘No,’ she says. I hear her voice cracking but she clears her throat. Her eyes are glimmering, moist, but she continues to look straight at Melo. ‘He said, “I’ve planned all this so we’re going to do it. You don’t get to have it your way all the time, Issie.”’ A lone tear escapes down her cheek and I can do nothing but watch it as it drips off her chin. I don’t think she even felt it.

‘So what happened next?’

Issie blinks slowly, taking another deep breath. ‘He told me we were going somewhere special, but wouldn’t tell me where. I didn’t like the way he was behaving.’

‘How is this?’ Melo asks.

‘Angry. Erratic.’ Issie shrugs as she rolls her shoulders and arches her back. ‘I didn’t have any idea how to get back to the hostel. I didn’t have any way to. But then he got in the car and …’

‘And?’ Melo prompts when she doesn’t finish.

‘I didn’t get in,’ she says eventually. ‘And so he drove off.’

‘And what time is this?’

‘I’m not sure. I thought it might have been about half an hour later, but maybe it was more.’

Melo nods as he dips his head and writes something on his pad. I have the feeling he knows exactly what time they left. ‘Go on,’ he says.

‘He left me there and I didn’t know what I was going to do. So I stayed there and waited for around ten minutes. Suddenly he was back and he—’ She stops again, her gaze now staring ahead of her, focusing on the memory rather than him. ‘I knew something had happened,’ she tells us. ‘I just knew. He told me to get in the car and he was really panicked. He said he had hit someone.’ The tears are now streaming down Issie’s face.

‘You’re doing well, Issie,’ Melo says.

I cannot speak. I can barely breathe. It’s as if my body has stopped. Like I have floated out of it and am watching us all from afar.

‘Can you go on?’ he asks. ‘What happened next?’

‘I got in the car like he said and he drove round the corner. I saw her then,’ she says, and I watch the way her body folds. Her eyes look so pained as they continue to stare past Melo, it’s apparent how much the memory is haunting her. ‘She was in the road. He said she just stepped out.’

She looks over at Melo now, her eyes wide as saucers. I find myself clutching onto every little thing she says, every tiny gesture she makes.

‘I knew straight away that it wasn’t right, because of the way she was lying and … Oh God …’ she breaks down.

‘Is this who you saw?’ he asks her as he pushes a picture across the table. My eyes dip down to look at it, a photo of a beautiful young girl with dark brown hair. I throw a hand to my mouth and turn my head away. I cannot bear to look at her.

‘Yes,’ Issie is sobbing. ‘He said it was an accident,’ she repeats.

‘What happened next?’ Melo goes on. ‘You say you could tell she was dead. Did you check this?’

‘Dylan did. He told me she was.’

I listen in horror. From the moment Melo called me this morning I hadn’t wanted to believe this. But they had killed a woman. He had killed her. But they had left her. They left her body. And then they ran away.

‘You did not see this for yourself?’ he is asking.

Issie shakes her head.

‘What happened after this?’

‘We both panicked.’ Issie’s body convulses with sobs. ‘We didn’t know what to do. He said he could go to prison.’

‘Did you call for an ambulance?’

‘No,’ she answers in a whisper.

‘Or call for any help?’ Though we both know the answer. Of course they did not, or Beatriz Motto would not have still been missing a week later.

She shakes her head again. My whole body aches with how tense I am, my chest feels like it is on fire. This is not the girl I have brought up. This is not what I taught her she should do. I’ve always instilled a sense of right and wrong and yet this …

‘Why?’ I say. I cannot help myself. Why did you leave her there? But I don’t ask the rest of the question.

‘He said no one knew we were there,’ she goes on, holding a hand up to her throat. ‘He said we needed to get away. No one had to know.’

But you would know, Issie.

‘And this is what you did?’ Melo asks.

Slowly she nods.

‘So you went along with what he told you to do?’ the inspector says.

‘He said it was my fault,’ she tells him. ‘He said he was so angry that he wasn’t concentrating.’

‘Oh my God, Issie!’ I cry as Melo holds up a hand to stop me. But how could she really think this? I want to ask her if she is so stupid to believe any part of it is her fault but then she must have done. Because if she didn’t, she would have got help. She would have done something else instead of leaving the poor woman on the side of the road.

Melo is asking what they did next, and Issie is telling him how Dylan moved the body to the side of the road, where he hid her in the undergrowth and then drove off, for miles out of the city. They left the car in Portalegre, and then hid in Serra de São Mamede.

She tells the inspector how he took her phone so she couldn’t tell anyone what they had done, how he said they needed to pretend they were out of range and couldn’t make contact. ‘I was too scared to do anything else,’ she says. ‘And I thought he knew what he was doing, and then no one seemed to be looking for her, and we couldn’t hide out forever so …’

‘So you come back to Lisbon?’ Melo asks.

Issie nods. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Tears spring from her eyes, coming out of her nose. The last time I saw Issie like this was five years ago at my father’s funeral. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she cries.

Jess

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I don’t know how my legs carry me out of the police station but somehow they do. I am holding us both as I take Issie outside. ‘Can you walk back to the hotel?’ I ask her as I check my phone and see I have three missed calls from Scott.

‘We don’t have a room any more.’

‘I can sort that, but – let’s get back there.’ I am too numb to think straight. Questions race through my mind, but there are too many of them to focus properly on one.

I feel sick at the thought of my daughter leaving a woman for dead. What if she hadn’t been? What if she could have been saved? Did Issie really believe it was her fault? Did she think she drove Dylan to kill someone?

I don’t know how Issie could have done what she did, but somehow what concerns me more is that she’s kept it from me since she’s been back. I have been with my daughter for forty-eight hours and all she has done is tell me a story that didn’t hold together because she’d omitted one vital part.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask her now.

‘I—’ She breaks off, not knowing how to answer. ‘I don’t know,’ she says eventually. ‘I think because I hoped I wouldn’t have to.’

‘Issie,’ I hiss, looking up at the sky. ‘That’ – I wave a hand – ‘that’s not enough.’

‘I know and I’m sorry,’ she cries. ‘But it’s the truth. If I could change what happened that night, I would in a heartbeat. I know it was wrong, but I was so scared. And so when I got back to Lisbon and there wasn’t any news about her, I thought – I thought if I didn’t say anything, it would go away.’

‘This isn’t going to go away,’ I mutter.

‘I know that, Mum, and I’m so sorry. You have to believe that.’ She grabs my arm and stops me, making me swing around to face her. ‘Mum.’ She is shaking me. ‘I’m scared.’

It is the first time in the last two days that I see a flash of innocence in her again, of the Issie I have always known and believed in. But at the same time something in me has hardened. ‘Did you leave him?’ I ask.

‘What?’

‘Dylan. You told Melo that you came back to Lisbon because you couldn’t hide forever, and no one seemed to be looking for Beatriz. So did you leave Dylan, or did you both decide it was time to come back?’ I ask bitterly.

‘It was my decision,’ she says.

‘But you didn’t leave him like you told me you did? Was that a lie, Issie?’

‘No, Mum, it isn’t a lie. How could I have just walked away from him? He told me we were in this together and— Mum?’ She is stuttering over her words. ‘Please, I need your help. What’s going to happen to me?’

‘I don’t know, Iz.’

‘Will I go to prison?’

‘No. I don’t believe you will go to prison,’ I say, though I don’t know if this is true. I am clueless as to how any of this works. All I know is, even though Issie is a witness, Melo has allowed us to fly home. If he wants to ask her more questions he will fly her back out to Portugal. But, for now, his focus is Dylan.

‘Does Dylan think you are still together?’ I ask her.

‘No,’ she says adamantly, but I am crushingly conscious that I do not believe her.

It is 11 a.m. when we get back to the hotel. I ask if we can have our room back, though I don’t know how long we will need it for. It hasn’t been cleaned yet and so the key is handed over to me.

‘I need to call your dad,’ I tell Issie, dialling his number. ‘He needs to know what’s going on.’

Scott answers immediately and I fill him in on what she told the inspector.

‘Shit,’ he says with a whistle through his teeth. I give him a moment to take it in but am not prepared for him then demanding, ‘Why the hell did she say all that? Didn’t I say for her to make no comment?’

‘Scott! As if that’s the important thing here,’ I cry, turning away from her and hissing into the phone, ‘A woman is dead.’

‘I know. And our daughter has implicated herself in covering it up.’

I’m too taken aback to respond.

‘Are you able to leave the country?’ he says.

‘Yes.’

‘Then get on a plane. Get on the earliest flight you can and get back to England.’

‘Why are you making it sound so urgent?’ I say through gritted teeth, aware Issie is hovering behind me, listening to every word, and that Scott appears more angry that I allowed her to talk than about what she did.

‘Because she’s covered up a crime, Jess. But right now their focus will be on Dylan. I assume you don’t know what his story is?’

‘No, because they don’t know where he’s gone,’ I mutter. ‘What could happen to her?’ I don’t even attempt to shelter Issie from my question. She is now staring at me from where she is standing in the corner of the room.

‘I don’t know.’ He sighs. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Okay. I think there’s a flight we can get tonight.’

‘Good. Book it. And, Jess, I’m getting the red-eye tonight to Heathrow. I’ll be there in the morning.’

‘No, Scott, you don’t need to—’

‘I am coming,’ he says sharply, and then adds, a little softer, ‘You don’t get to stop me this time.’

He hangs up the call before I get the chance to argue, though right now my fears about Issie’s future override any resistance to seeing Scott. I tell her her dad’s coming over. ‘It must be serious,’ she jokes, but her tone changes when she sees the look I am giving her. ‘I didn’t mean that. I know it’s serious.’ She looks abashed.

I don’t reply as I pull up the Air Portugal website on my phone and manage to book two tickets for later this evening.

‘What I said, it was a stupid joke,’ she says again when I’m done. ‘I didn’t mean to make light of it. I’m scared,’ she adds, and I notice the way her hands fidget at her sides as her fingers fumble with the fabric of her shorts. ‘I’m really scared.’

I am scared too, but all I say is, ‘I just wish things hadn’t got this far.’

‘You wish I’d called the police when it happened?’

‘Of course I do!’

‘I know. I do get that.’

‘Did you really believe it could ever have been your fault?’

Her eyes widen at my question and I look away. I recall the number of times Scott has made me feel like a failure over the years. He’s done it more than once in the last week, dropping in an accusation that I shouldn’t have let Issie go travelling with Dylan when I didn’t trust him, and that I allowed her to admit her compliance in the young woman’s death. Of course Dylan made her believe it was her fault.

‘But I know things would have been different,’ she is saying. ‘He wouldn’t have been so angry if I hadn’t—’

‘Stop right there, Iz,’ I tell her. ‘This was not you. You made some wrong choices but you’re putting it right now. I do know,’ I say more softly after a beat. ‘I do know how men like him operate.’

She scrunches up her eyes at me and I realise this isn’t the right time to get into this particular conversation. So instead I focus on doing what Scott tells me to: getting my daughter out of the country.

Issie’s relief as the plane taxis down the runway at Lisbon’s airport is palpable. I watch as she contorts forward in her seat, looking at the ground below as we leave it behind. I wonder if she believes that, in leaving Portugal, she can simply leave everything that has happened behind her. Whether she has any idea how much all of this will follow her.

I relax only slightly now we are on the plane, safe in the knowledge Dylan isn’t on it because I have scoured the faces of the passengers for any sight of him. Still, I don’t like the thought of him being out there, in some place unknown. Does he know what flight she is on? And what time she will land in London?

‘Do you have any idea where he is?’ I ask her.

‘No. I promise you I don’t.’ She has a searching look in her eyes. Maybe it’s that she is begging me to believe her now she is finally telling the truth. Or perhaps she is trying to figure out what Dylan vanishing again means for her.

‘What was your argument about, Iz?’ I say. ‘You said something about the way he made you feel.’

Issie shrugs. ‘Sometimes he got a kick out of making me jealous.’

I frown, and am about to reply when she says, ‘He knows what I’ve done. He’ll know I’ve spoken to the police.’

‘Yes,’ I reply, because we both understand that her telling the truth is the one thing he has been stopping her from doing. Neither of us know how he will react, but at least we are creating some distance between us and him. Melo’s attention is on finding Dylan and, with any luck, they’ll be able to detain him. I hold on to a hope that he may not be coming back to England any time soon.

Now Issie leans back in her seat, resting her head, and turns to look at me. ‘What’s going to happen when we get home?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘Dad’s talking to a solicitor he knows. We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you’re okay.’

She nods and looks away again, back out of the window as we bump through the clouds. ‘I don’t want to go to prison, Mum.’ The words are so quiet, I can barely hear them.

‘That’s not going to happen, I promise,’ I tell her, wondering if it is a promise I can keep. All I know is that she is my daughter, and that it is my job to look after her. Yes, she made a wrong choice, but what choice did she have if Dylan didn’t allow her one?

I cannot get my head round what he did to her. How he took her away, made her lose contact with me, and on her birthday too. And all because he didn’t want her talking. It frightens me how easily she’s allowed it to happen. It feels like history repeating itself – no matter what I’ve tried to do she’s as gullible and naive as I always was with her father.

Issie presses her finger against the window and glances back at me until I look away. Though as soon as she is facing away from me, I turn back to her.

I can’t help but watch closely as she starts making shapes on the glass that I don’t recognise at first. The closer I look I can see she is making letters and so I concentrate as she draws them intently onto the window pane, spelling out D Y L A N in what is invisible to the eye.

I sit back uneasily before she turns around again, my heart beating more rapidly than before. I want to open her up and look inside her. I want her to tell me everything she is thinking. I might have lost that privilege years ago but it has never felt so urgent as it does right now. What is it about Dylan that means she will not let go? How deeply has he got under her skin?

Two and a half hours later we land in Heathrow and I turn my phone back on to a message from Inspector Melo. Dylan, it appears, is in England. He had flown back almost twenty-fours ago, before Melo and his team had found Beatriz’s body. We have not escaped him, I realise. Because he is already here waiting for us.

Kay

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

12 July

Kay watches her son as he pores over his phone. He has been back home for over twenty-four hours now, turning up in the early hours of yesterday morning after catching a late-night flight the day after he returned to Lisbon.

It is 11 a.m. and he is standing at the back door, smoking a cigarette and flicking ash into one of her empty tubs, cradling a mug of coffee with his free hand.

‘I thought you’d given up,’ she says.

‘Coffee?’ he replies wryly. ‘No chance.’

‘Smoking, Dylan.’

Her son throws the cigarette to the ground, rolling his shoe over it to put it out. ‘I had.’

‘It’s expensive,’ she points out.

‘I know. I don’t even particularly want it.’ He comes inside and kisses her on the head. ‘My last one,’ he tells her.

Kay frowns. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘But, on the off-chance it isn’t, can you make sure Billy doesn’t see you.’

Dylan nods as he goes back to his phone. She had asked Mike for the day off today so she could spend it with Dylan, and Mike was clearly fine with it. Since the conversation they’d had before the weekend, they haven’t yet brought up his inference he couldn’t keep her on, but she knows they’ll have to sooner or later.

She’d wanted her and Dylan to spend some time together, but the day isn’t panning out as she’d hoped. Issie did not get on a flight this morning as Dylan believed she was doing. She has not touched down in Heathrow as she’d told him she would be. Her son has no idea why, and there is nothing Kay can say to put his mind at rest when he cannot get hold of his girlfriend whose phone is now switched off and who is not back in the country.

He paces the kitchen and then heads into the front room, where he goes to stand by the window, running a hand across his chin. His hair is sticking up, she notices. It needs a good cut.

Kay doesn’t like to see him so worried about Issie, but there’s been something edgy about him since he got home yesterday. He hasn’t been his usual happy self and neither has he wanted to speak much about the fact he and Issie returned to Lisbon two days ago amid headlines that screamed suggestions he had murdered her.

Luckily they hadn’t reached the papers, she thinks now. Features on websites had quickly been covered up as a non-story when the two of them were discovered to be perfectly fine only hours later.

‘You didn’t believe I could do that did you, Mum?’ he had asked her when he called her the afternoon they had got back to Lisbon.

‘Of course I didn’t believe them,’ she’d said with conviction. As soon as the relief had set in she could start to believe it too. She would convince herself there was not even one moment it had crossed her mind her son could be capable of doing anything to hurt Issie.

They’d had an argument, like he said. The pair of them needed the space to sort it out. Now Kay could comfort herself that she wasn’t naive as she’d accused herself of being, and that Dylan was nothing like his father as she’d briefly feared.

But surely the headlines on news sites must have affected Dylan more than he implied? Insinuations he was capable of killing the girl he loves.

Dylan’s hand clenches into a fist and he punches it against her front room wall. ‘Dylan?’ she calls through, questioningly. He doesn’t acknowledge her. She narrows her eyes as she regards him, unsure what mixture of headlines and Issie’s refusal to pick up her phone are bothering him the most. It unnerves her to see him this way, and she isn’t sure how best to approach it.

‘I’m sure she’s okay,’ Kay says to him now, a platitude that won’t work, because neither of them knows this is the case.

‘So why isn’t she taking my calls?’ He can still see Issie’s location, somehow, on his phone. Before she turned her phone off, he could see her image and so knew she was still in Portugal and not coming home like she’d told him.

‘Maybe she’s on the plane now,’ Kay suggests. ‘Their flight could have been delayed.’

‘So why didn’t she tell me?’ he mutters. ‘Why not text to say that, or that she was getting a later one?’ He bangs his phone against his thigh.

Kay doesn’t have an answer for him. But, as the hours tick by, Dylan is getting more rattled as he tries numerous times to get hold of Issie, making no effort to hide the fact he is smoking another cigarette at the end of the garden.

When he had arrived home early yesterday morning, Kay had lunged towards him and enveloped him in a hug, dropping Billy’s school shoes that she had been cleaning. She hugged him so tightly and began to cry. All of her emotions from the last week had been building up and, right in that moment, she couldn’t stop them from coming out at the same time.

Eventually she pulled back and banged a hand lightly on his chest. ‘I missed you,’ she told him, studying his face in earnest. She had to look up to him now he was five foot eleven. One day he was her little boy and the next he was this grown man. She couldn’t remember when it had happened. Often she wondered if she had missed many things about Dylan growing up. Since he was twelve, her focus had been on Billy and his needs. Had she been paying enough attention to her eldest boy? Did she know as much as she should about the man he had become?

She led him through to the tiny galley kitchen at the back of the house where she filled the kettle and flicked it on without asking if he wanted a cup of tea. She would make them both one anyway. She pointed out the Victoria sponge she’d made the night before for his return.

‘Why haven’t you and Issie come home together?’ she’d asked him. ‘You were supposed to be travelling – couldn’t you have carried on? Didn’t you want to?’ she said, despite how pleased she was to have him home.

‘It was time,’ he told her, but his attention was on helping her, picking mugs off the draining board, plucking tea bags out of the jar. While she couldn’t read his expression, she thought it didn’t seem like his heart was in his statement.

‘I take it this was Jess’s decision,’ she’d muttered. Jess, who had no doubt been sleeping in her plush hotel bed with high thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, her daughter in bed beside her, right where she wanted her. Could the woman see there was something a little ridiculous in the notion of her bringing her eighteen-year-old home when her worries about Dylan hadn’t come to fruition?

Kay had run a hand over her son’s hair and smiled at him. None of that mattered now she had her family back in one piece again. If it was possible to feel the cracks in your heart heal over, then in that moment, that was exactly what Kay felt.

But in the last twenty-four hours, anxiety has crept in again. Now, the hours continue to tick by, and Dylan still has no news of Issie. He can’t get hold of her and Kay doesn’t feel comfortable with the way he’s getting more irritated, more angry.

At 2.30 p.m. she is hanging her washing out to dry on the line when she hears Dylan’s phone ringing from inside the house. She glances at the kitchen window where she can see him standing with his back to the sink and stops pegging Billy’s school shirts so she can listen out for whether it is Issie.

Whoever it is, and whatever they are saying, causes Dylan’s body language to strain. She can sense his stress as he runs a hand through his hair, which then stops short and remains solid against his scalp. She can see how tense he is as he stands bolt upright.

Kay takes the washing basket back into the kitchen. She knows immediately something is wrong. His face says it all when he turns to stare at her. He doesn’t say a word but she can make out the sound of a man’s voice on the other end of the line.

Dylan listens to whatever it is that is said and then puts the phone down before responding.

‘Who was that?’ Kay asks.

‘It was no one.’

‘Dylan?’ She can almost see the way his brain is ticking over behind his eyes. Does he not realise there are certain things about him she knows so well?

His breaths are erratic and he appears not to know what to say. ‘This …’ He wavers. ‘I have to sort something out.’ He looks at her with concern, puts a hand on her arm as if to tell her there is nothing to worry about, then starts searching for something on his phone.

She looks over his shoulder as he enlarges a map. ‘Is that Issie?’ She points at the animated figure, which suggests she has her phone back on again.

‘She’s at Lisbon airport,’ he murmurs, more to himself than to her, which they both know means she wasn’t on a flight earlier after all.

She can see his brain continue to tick and Kay wants to know what is going on, but she glances at the clock and suddenly realises with a lurch that she’s going to be late to pick Billy up if she doesn’t leave now.

‘We’ll talk when I get back,’ she tells him and Dylan nods. She doubts he has listened to what she has said, his mind is somewhere else entirely.

At the school gate, the same huddle of mothers stare in her direction. She avoids their glare and thinks them cowards for not speaking to her face if they have something to say, though she dreads the idea of it all the same.

Kay left the house with a sense of unease and so she supposes she shouldn’t be surprised when, forty minutes later, she walks back in with Billy and there is no sign of Dylan. She sticks the television on for her youngest and goes upstairs to Dylan’s bedroom. There is a pile of clothes upturned on his floor but she notices straight away that his rucksack, which had been lodged against the wardrobe, is no longer there.

She tries calling him but he doesn’t answer so she leaves him a message. She does this a number of times over the next two hours but each time she is met with radio silence.

Finally Kay can’t bear it any longer. She needs to know what’s going on. Something has spooked her son. Something that she is certain has to do with Issie and the phone call he had earlier.

There was a familiar lilt to the odd word she’d heard on the other end of the line, and the more she thinks about it the more she believes the person who called Dylan was the inspector from Lisbon.

Kay pulls up the number from her call log and stares at it. If she calls him she may get an answer. But what if he tells her something she doesn’t want to hear? She laughs at the idea, because what more could there be? And so she presses dial.

‘Melo,’ he answers, swiftly.

‘This is Kay Whiting,’ she tells him. She pauses for a moment, wishing she had worked out what to say next when he speaks for her.

‘Ah, Mrs Whiting. Do you know where your son is?’

‘He’s here,’ she says. ‘Well, not right at the moment, but …’ She trails off.

‘I tried to speak to him earlier,’ he says. ‘And now I cannot get hold of him. I need to talk with him urgently. Do you know where he is and why he is not answering my calls?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘But please, can you tell me what this is about?’

Five minutes later, Kay puts the phone down and stares at Billy, who has appeared at the top of the stairs, asking what is for tea. ‘What’s the matter, Mummy?’ he says when she doesn’t answer him.

‘Nothing’s the matter,’ she lies, and forces a smile, putting on a face as she tells him, ‘Chicken nuggets again?’ She has nothing left inside her to think about making anything more complicated when she has just been told the police want to speak to Dylan about a hit-and-run. One that Issie has said Dylan was responsible for.

When is her world going to stop caving in on her? Will it only give up when it crushes her for good? Kay leaves Billy and goes into her small kitchen, her hands trembling as they clutch onto her sink. How could her son, who she loves with all her heart, have walked out of her house and not told her any of this? Was she right to be worried about him, she thinks, as all the memories of his father come crashing down on her once more until she sinks to the lino and huddles herself into a ball. She doesn’t know how much more she can take.

Jess

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

13 July

It’s a relief to have slept in my own bed knowing Issie is tucked up in the room next door. There’s something about the safety of home you don’t get from hotels in foreign countries. Despite feeling more settled, I found myself creeping into her room last night, the way I used to when she was young, watching her from the doorway and checking she was breathing.

Then I had stood in my own darkened bedroom, my fingers parting the curtains as I’d looked out on the street beyond, just to check Dylan wasn’t there, watching, waiting.

Not knowing where Dylan is frightens me. His mother is apparently none the wiser, though by now we all realise we cannot trust Kay’s word.

At Heathrow airport, when I received the message he’d already flown home, I demanded to know if he could still track Issie on his phone. It turned out he could, and I forced her to block him. She proved she had as she held out the phone to me, though I couldn’t help but think she was too reluctant to do so for my liking. Maybe I’m looking for things that aren’t there but it doesn’t take a genius to work out she could easily make her location visible again if she so wishes.

Either way it means Dylan knows exactly where we are. He knows we must be home, and I know it’s only a matter of time before he is here too.

Despite these thoughts, I ended up sleeping heavily now I’m back in my own bed, although I wake at six thirty with the unsettling knowledge that in less than half an hour Scott will be in the same country, fully refreshed from a night in first class on Virgin Atlantic, a luxury I only dream of, but that Scott appears to take for granted. By 10 a.m. he will be standing on my doorstep.

I get out of bed, shower and sit in a towel in front of my mirror telling myself it is only natural that, despite the horror show my life has recently become, I still want to look my best when my ex-husband arrives. I do not want him any longer, but I do want him to realise his mistake, to feel regret, to go back to Rita with a level of guilt I’m not sure he’s had.

When I finally dress I go back into Issie’s bedroom where she is still sound asleep, stretched out in the double bed she’s had since we redecorated when she started secondary school. Her blue elephant is tucked under her chin – the way she used to sleep with it – and in an instant I am back there again, years before, when she was a little girl.

I lean my head against the doorframe, wiping away the tears that come too easily these days. I haven’t recognised my daughter lately but she is still here in front of me, she has been here all the time, buried beneath the abhorrent secret she felt she needed to keep from me. In this moment I know I will do anything in my power to protect her. Whatever she throws at me, whatever she keeps from me. When you love someone as unconditionally as you do your child, isn’t that a given?

At quarter to ten my hands are wrapped around my third mug of coffee of the day when the doorbell rings. I freeze, take a breath and then answer it.

To my surprise I don’t even flinch when I see Scott standing on the other side of my door. His lopsided grin that I once adored now makes him look pompous. His hair is greyer than I imagined, his skin saggier. He looks older than I expected, I think, as I say hello and stand aside, waving him inside the home he once bought for us all to spend the rest of our lives in.

He glances up the stairway, raises his eyes but doesn’t make any comment on how nice it’s looking before turning to me. ‘How are you doing, Jess?’ He leans in for an awkward hug, kissing one cheek and then going for the other but I pull back, leaving him hanging in mid-air.

‘How was the flight?’ I ask, as he leaves his case beside my shoe rack by the front door and kicks his shoes off next to mine. I peel my eyes away from them, the sight so alien and yet at the same time hauntingly familiar.

‘Fine,’ he replies, as he follows me into the kitchen, his gaze drawn around it as he takes in all the changes I have made. He nods in response to them but doesn’t say anything. He makes me feel like I am on show to him, waiting for his inspection and his criticism of the home I have created for me and Issie. I can’t bear to think of him phoning Rita and telling her about our lives, marvelling at how she has created a better home for them.

Seeing him standing here, inside my house, makes me realise that the walls I have built up around us since he left have been smashed down in a moment. I am laid bare all over again.

‘Coffee?’ I say, turning away from him. His presence is a necessity and I must keep reminding myself of this. He is an unwelcome guest but Issie and I need him and that’s all that matters.

‘Lovely. You know how I take it.’

‘You’ll have to remind me,’ I reply, though of course I haven’t forgotten: black, strong and half a sugar, because despite his infatuation with a healthy body he has a sweet tooth.

He laughs like I have made a funny joke, a sound that jars as he tells me black, strong, half a sugar. When I have made him a coffee and he is sitting up at the kitchen island I find myself wondering if he thinks I have aged too, and if he is comparing me to Rita who Lois always used to assure me looked so much older than I ever did.

‘You look well, Jess.’ He peers at me over the rim of his mug as he takes a sip. ‘Where’s Issie?’

‘Still asleep. I don’t want to wake her, she’s been exhausted.’

Scott waves a hand. ‘There’s plenty of time to see her,’ he says and asks me again how I have been.

‘I’m relieved to be back and to have her home,’ I say.

‘And this Dylan?’

‘He flew back before we did. He was in England before us, but the police can’t find him. He must know that Issie has spoken to them and that she’s done the one thing he went out of his way to stop her doing,’ I say. ‘Who knows what’s going through his head now. What he’s capable of, what he’s planning.’

‘Has she said what he actually did with her last week?’ Scott asks.

‘No. She won’t talk about it. All I know is that he frightened her into not having any contact with anyone, at a time when she must have been desperate to.’

‘Yeah, well I’m here now,’ Scott says. ‘I won’t let him get to her.’

Only it isn’t as simple as that I’ve realised. It’s not even Dylan turning up at the house that worries me most. It’s the strange notion that Issie is inexplicably still linked to him in ways I don’t understand. That while I am worried about what he will do, I’m equally anxious about how she might behave. But then maybe I do understand, I think, as I look at Scott. How long did he have a hold over me for?

I shrug and tell him, ‘She’s holding something back from me, only I don’t know what it is. It’s like she’s covering for him still but I don’t want to keep pressing her because—’ I break off before saying, ‘I found her writing his name out on the window of the plane.’ I mime doing so with my fingers.

He screws up his eyes at me. ‘And?’

‘It felt creepy. I mean, why do that unless you’re thinking of someone? After what he did and then she’s there, scrawling his name on a pane of glass like he’s some long-lost love. It freaked me out,’ I admit. ‘So I don’t know if she’s still in contact with him or not.’

‘You think she might know where he is?’

‘She says she doesn’t. I don’t know if I believe her though,’ I sigh. ‘What if she thinks she’s still in love with him?’

He raises his eyes. ‘Seriously?’

I turn to my own, now cold coffee. ‘It’s possible.’

‘Jesus. What’s that girl playing at?’ Scott scowls. ‘Doesn’t she realise what kind of trouble she’s in?’

‘Yes, I’m pretty sure she does, but—’ I break off, shrugging.

After a beat, he shifts back in his chair and changes the subject. ‘What’s been going on with you other than all this then, Jess?’ He cocks his head and glares at me earnestly, like he expects to find I have been falling apart over the last eight years.

The truth is my life did fall apart, but I kept it from him as much as I kept it from Issie and I’m not going to let him see how much he broke me now. ‘All that’s important is what we do about our daughter,’ I say.

‘Well you did the right thing coming back to England.’ If he’s annoyed I haven’t taken his bait then he’s not showing it. ‘If they want to question Issie about anything, they have to get her back to Portugal, and the only way they can do that is by offering to pay for your flights. But you can refuse. I have a friend, Hugo Campbell. He’s a criminal lawyer in London and I’ve had a chat with him about our case.’

‘We call them solicitors over here,’ I say. ‘And what do you mean, “our case”? Do we really need him?’

‘If she needs legal representation then we need a solicitor.’ He emphasises the word. ‘And he’s one of the best.’

‘I’m sure,’ I mutter wryly, though in all honesty I’m pleased. If Scott’s money can provide the best for Issie, I will take every penny.

Issie comes downstairs an hour later and I feel myself tense, though Scott is currently standing in the garden, talking into his mobile, animatedly gesticulating in the air with his hands.

She pauses in the doorway as she watches him pacing the lawn and I see her flinch as if she isn’t sure what to do, though I sense she wants his attention. Eventually he sees her and holds up his hand in a wave, a gesture to say he won’t be long. In this moment, I wish more than anything that we didn’t need him to be here. He’s come all this way for Issie, and yet he’s still prioritising a work call over her. I don’t want him breaking my daughter’s fragile heart any more than it already is.

When she sees me watching her, she turns away and walks over to the sink to pour herself a glass of water. She has seen Scott twice in the last year when he has flown over to the UK on business, but not properly since she went over last summer, and I can’t tell if she’s pleased to see him or not.

Eventually he comes inside and Issie makes a fuss of something on her own phone in an attempt to make out she wasn’t waiting for him. ‘Hi,’ she says awkwardly. She is lingering cautiously and I can see she isn’t going to go to him. Her right foot is tapping nervously on the floor as she waits to see what he’s going to do.

‘Iz,’ he says, striding over and pulling her in for a hug. She allows his embrace but stiffly puts her arms around him in return. When he pulls away he tucks a hand under her chin and says, ‘You doing all right?’

Issie nods. ‘You didn’t have to come over,’ she says as he wanders back to the dining table where he has laid out some papers and his iPad. He drops his phone on top of them.

‘I think I did,’ he replies, which stops the conversation short.

I’d like to leave the room and their awkward charade behind me but I don’t want to risk what he might say to her. Doesn’t he see what she needs from him? Is he so intent on making sure he stays on top in his relationship with his own child?

Instead, I busy myself, tidying, wiping down already clean surfaces. Eventually, after half an hour of talking to him, Issie heads back up to her room.

Later, I am thrilled when I open the door and find Carla standing the other side of it. I hug her tightly as I say, ‘I didn’t know you were coming over.’

‘Issie and I have been talking,’ she murmurs nervously, hugging me back.

‘It’s good to see you,’ I say. ‘I hope more than anything you girls can sort things out.’

Carla smiles sheepishly. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Jess. How is she?’

‘I’m hoping you might be able to find out. She’s very …’ I search for the word I want to use and settle on, ‘withdrawn. She’s in her room if you want to go up.’

I watch Carla go as Issie appears at the top of the stairs. They hug silently before Issie pulls her away, out of my sight. My body tenses, as I make for the kitchen, at the sight of Scott studiously poring over his laptop, his work beginning to spill out further.

Carla is with Issie for two hours before the two of them come downstairs. Out of the corner of my eye I see them by the front door. ‘Scott, do something to distract Issie,’ I say.

‘What?’ He looks up from his laptop.

‘Do something to get Issie’s attention,’ I hiss. ‘I want to speak to Carla.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Anything. Tell her you want to talk to her in the garden,’ I suggest as he stares at me blankly. ‘For God’s sake, just do it.’

‘Okay,’ he says as he reluctantly gets up and I push him to the door, watching him fumble over a pathetic reason to get Issie away as Carla leaves.

As soon as they are out of earshot, I run out the front. ‘Carla, wait!’ I call. She stops at the end of the driveway and turns towards me, tossing the keys to the Mini her parents bought her in her hand.

‘Nice car,’ I say.

‘Thanks. I did ask Issie if she wanted to go out in it, but …’ She shrugs.

‘Was everything okay between you?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’ Carla frowns. ‘I don’t know. She’s not herself.’

‘Did she say anything about Dylan?’

‘She told me about the accident,’ Carla admits. ‘But not much more. She didn’t want to talk about him.’

‘She didn’t say if she was still in contact with him?’

Carla shakes her head.

‘Do you think she is?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

I let out a sigh. ‘I think there’s more she isn’t telling me. I fear there’s something to come.’

Carla’s gaze drifts over my shoulder and back at the house. ‘We don’t really have the same friendship we used to,’ she says.

‘You’ll get that back,’ I insist, desperate for it to be true. ‘And you’re both off to London in September as well.’

Carla looks at me quizzically. ‘Issie isn’t going to London,’ she says.

‘What do you mean?’ I laugh. ‘Of course she is.’

‘No. Iz cancelled her place at uni a few months ago. You didn’t know that?’ she says slowly when the look on my face must tell her I don’t.

‘No, I didn’t.’ It’s my turn to look back now, to where my daughter is somewhere on the other side of the walls of my house, harbouring yet one more secret. ‘Why would she do that?’

‘Honestly? I don’t know.’ Carla shrugs. ‘All I heard is that she said she didn’t want to do it any more. She stopped being fussed about much this last year. She wasn’t bothered about working for her A levels, she was too engrossed in spending time with him. I should have asked her just now, I guess, but I don’t know, somehow I don’t think she would have told me.’

‘She gave everything up for him, didn’t she?’ I murmur. ‘And I didn’t even know.’

‘How didn’t I know?’ I ask Carla again when she doesn’t respond, as if she could possibly have any of the answers I need. I knew Dylan had a hold over Issie but I didn’t realise how much. And even now, she still won’t let go.

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 106: ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING: THE DEATH OF BEATRIZ MOTTO

PART TWO

No longer a missing persons case, or that of a stolen car, this was now an investigation into the death of a twenty-two-year-old Portuguese woman, only the police’s main suspect had vanished.

Issie and Dylan were undoubtedly scared of what would happen to them when they made the choice to leave Beatriz Motto on the side of the road – and let’s remember that, despite what people may or may not think of Dylan Whiting at this point, he is still only nineteen. Issie, of course had only just turned eighteen herself. These are two young and vulnerable people in a distressing situation in a foreign country. It is highly probable they weren’t thinking straight.

But with Issie coming clean and telling the police what had happened that night, Dylan’s subsequent behaviour was being scrutinised. Did he plan on running from the truth forever? The case was about to take yet another sharp turn when one of the workers at the rental hire company where Dylan had picked up the car on the fourth of July, returned from holiday to discover what had happened.

Until this point, no one knew why Beatriz Motto was wandering the dark lanes of Graça late at night. However, when the worker came back from holiday, he told the police that he recognised her face.

He reported that he had seen Motto outside of the rental company on the night of the fourth of July. More importantly, he claimed to have witnessed her in conversation with Dylan Whiting moments before he hired and drove the car that would later, reportedly, hit and kill her, in what, up until now, had been described as a horrendous accident.

This created more questions in a rapidly evolving case: did Issie know the pair had already met? And, if so, was she lying when she said the hit-and-run was an accident, and that she had never seen Beatriz before the moment she stepped in front of the car?

Was there a reason Issie was still covering for her boyfriend? Her parents and soon-to-be-appointed solicitor would later claim that she was scared of him but, if that was the case, then why did it later transpire that Issie was still in contact with him?

Kay

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

13 July

Kay should be getting used to spending nights lying in bed and staring at patches of damp creeping into one corner of the ceiling while her brain scrambles through countless scenarios of where her son is, why he has not called her back and what he is planning on doing while the police are wanting to speak to him. Kay assumes he knows why. And also surmises he understands Issie is the reason.

She feels sick at every part of what’s happened. That her son has done something so awful and has not told her anything of it. That his girlfriend betrayed him, because despite it being the right thing to do, she can’t imagine Dylan seeing it this way.

She can’t help questioning the story he told her, the reasons he used to explain why they went off-grid for five days. Of course this is what their fight must have been about. Did Dylan think they could cover it up? Was he attempting to persuade Issie she could too?

He knows Issie must be home by now. Maybe he also knew she was speaking to the police. Perhaps this was why he was so anxious to hear from her.

Kay shudders. Possibly he has gone to Issie’s house but, if he has, then what does he plan to do next?

She squeezes her eyes tight to try and blank out the images that keep popping into her head. The ones she tries to ignore but that refuse to go away. Neil. The man she once fell for, and who she’d had a child with. She’d never stopped looking for signs in Dylan that he was his father’s boy. When you have a son with a man like Neil, it is always there in the back of your mind, the thought that it doesn’t matter how much you do, there is a 50 per cent chance they will turn out like the wrong parent.

She’s looked for it over the years, watching the way Dylan behaved with his girlfriends, but has never seen any trace of his father there. Then, did anyone see it with Neil? When he’d done such a good job hiding it.

Perhaps she should call Jess. It would be the right thing to do, to tell her to keep her daughter safe. If only someone had done that for her twenty-odd years ago.

Kay clamps her hands over her ears as if, in doing so, she can block everything out. She screams, silently in her head, because she cannot wake Billy up with her fears, as she rocks herself into a ball. She can’t stand by Dylan’s side when he does the wrong thing again. Not if there is even the slightest of doubts creeping into her mind that he is anything like his father.

The next morning, Kay gets out of bed and drifts through the motions. She tells herself that no news is good news in a pathetic attempt to calm herself from worrying.

She rubs a hand on Billy’s back to gently wake him and asks him what he would like for breakfast. Does he want Shreddies or Weetabix?

She will go back in ten minutes to make sure he is awake still, and get him up and dressed. Isn’t it funny, she thinks, that when she is so caught up in Dylan she isn’t worrying about Billy. But then you’re only ever as happy as your least happy child.

Downstairs, she is on autopilot, putting Shreddies into Billy’s favourite Spiderman bowl, making a strong coffee for herself. She cannot face the thought of eating. She is staring out of the window at the patch of back garden and Billy’s shirts that are still hanging on the line, and the tired green shed that really needs pulling down, but that she cannot bear to because Dylan always used to love sitting inside it, playing with his cars.

She is thinking non-stop of the boy she’d grown inside her, who she has loved and adored for nineteen years. The one she has so many memories of that she can barely separate them from one another any more.

How old was he when she picked him up and carried him for the last time? When was the night he stopped sucking his thumb? At what age did he brush his own teeth, or did she stop reading to him at night and he read to himself instead? She didn’t make a record of these momentous occasions because she didn’t recognise then that they would be their lasts.

Kay has been building up a picture of her son by layering the memories on top of one another, one by one. The time he’d carefully carved a keyring out of wood at school into the shape of two hearts, and had wrapped it in toilet paper to give her. The smile on his face as she opened it that was so contagious.

Or when he sat on the bottom stair for nearly an hour as he patiently showed Billy how to tie his shoelaces. When he’d come home from his first week of working and slipped cash into an envelope for her which she’d never asked for.

Then the way his face had lit up when he’d brought Issie home to meet her, and how she knew in that moment something had changed in him. He had fallen in love, deep. Kay was aware of this from the start of their relationship. Before even Dylan was, she suspects.

The memories hurt so much they make it difficult to breathe. Is it true, what he has supposedly done? Did this boy really do something so unthinkable?

Thoughts circle like vultures, relentless, and yet somehow she manages to get Billy to eat his Shreddies and make sure his teeth are brushed and that he looks smart as they leave the house in shoes that are beginning to fall apart at the end of the school year but are nonetheless freshly polished.

She ignores the mother from Billy’s class who frowns at her as she hovers at the gate to the playground and turns to walk to the café. She doesn’t want to get into any conversation. She is running on empty.

But the mum catches her arm before she can leave, trotting beside her on the pavement.

‘Kay?’ she questions. ‘Are you okay?’

‘What?’ she replies, instinctively pulling back. The mother’s name is Alison. She has a girl in Billy’s class but Kay doesn’t know which one.

‘I wanted to make sure you’re okay,’ she says again.

Kay looks behind her expecting to see a gaggle of other mothers staring in their wake but there is no one there.

‘I’m making sure, that’s all,’ she goes on. ‘I’ll be honest – I heard the stuff about your son.’

‘About Dylan?’ she says, tired of what is about to come next.

‘No.’ Alison frowns again. ‘About Billy. I heard he was being bullied. Edie told me about it.’

‘Edie?’ Every response another question.

‘My daughter? She told me some of the kids weren’t being kind to him, and I wanted to say I hope you’re okay.’

‘What are they saying?’ Kay asks.

‘Things about his brother,’ Alison tells her. ‘Some of the parents must say too much in front of their kids.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘You do know this, don’t you? The school have told you?’

‘No. They haven’t.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry. You must think I’m speaking out of turn but I wanted to make sure Billy is okay. Edie says he’s such a sweet boy.’

‘Thank you.’ Kay bites her lip because Billy is a sweet boy and knowing Edie has noticed this makes her feel like she might cry. ‘I appreciate it,’ she says, while all the time she is wondering how is this one more thing she’s missed?

Alison nods. ‘Some of them are …’ She drifts off without finishing the sentence. ‘I wanted you to know we aren’t all like that. A couple of us are meeting for coffee next Tuesday, if you fancy it? You know, before the kids break up for the summer.’

‘Thanks, but I work.’

‘Of course,’ Alison says. ‘Of course. Not to worry.’ She smiles and eventually Kay makes her excuses and hurries off, her world continuing to fold inwards, because how is her son being bullied and yet the school haven’t told her?

Kay’s face is burning by the time she reaches the café, her breaths too rapid, like she has run the mile and a half to get there.

‘Jesus, Kay, what’s the matter?’ Mike asks.

‘Nothing,’ she lies. ‘I didn’t want to be late.’

‘It’s more than that,’ he murmurs, his eyes trailing her face.

She tugs at her hair that is falling out of its bun, taking the band out and winding it into another knot. ‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ she says, trying to regulate her breaths.

‘Go home. Whatever it is, if you’re not going to tell me, then please go home and sort it out.’

‘No. I’m fine. I’m sorry, my head’s on work again now.’

‘Look at it here,’ he mutters. ‘The place is hardly busy, is it? The weather isn’t getting better any time soon.’

‘I need the money, Mike,’ Kay pleads, at the same time knowing it’s money he can’t afford to pay her.

But Mike nods. ‘Then do whatever you need,’ he tells her, but he is still looking at her questioningly. ‘That boy of yours doing okay?’ he asks.

‘Which one?’ she murmurs before shaking off his question with a, ‘Yes. Everything’s fine.’

‘That’s good,’ he says, though he doesn’t look like he believes her. Eventually, he disappears back inside the café and Kay follows him, into the kitchen.

Her gaze sweeps around her at the people she works with. They all come here because they need the money but most of them don’t stick around long. They might do a summer but only a few of them, like Paige, have been here longer than a year. Kay knows so little about any of them, and they about her. It’s the way she’s always preferred it. No one asks questions. They come to do a job, make small talk and occasionally have a laugh.

The others carry on bustling around her, saying hello but not stopping to check in. All of them oblivious to the storm that’s unfurling inside of her. She wonders at the fact she has no one she can call a true friend. But, then again, she has spent all the years since she uprooted her and Dylan from her first marriage shutting herself off from other people. All it means now is she has no one she can turn to. No one bar one.

‘Mike!’ she calls out as he pushes through the back door and it slams shut behind him. She spots him unlocking his garish yellow Mazda and runs across the grass to where he always parks as close to the café as possible. ‘Mike?’ she says again as she gets near and he stops to turn to her. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she tells him. She can feel herself start to crumple.

‘Get in.’ He opens the passenger door and she walks around the car to climb in. ‘If you come to Costco with me then you’re still working and I still need to pay you,’ he says as he closes the door behind her and walks round to the driver’s side.

She feels so utterly grateful to him as he flicks his gaze to the rear-view mirror and pulls out onto the road before finally glancing at her. ‘What’s going on, Kay?’

‘I’m a bad mother,’ she says, so quietly she thinks he might not have heard her but he turns to her and frowns.

‘You’re anything but.’

‘No,’ Kay insists, ‘I am. Billy’s getting bullied at school and I didn’t even realise, and the Portuguese police want to speak to Dylan about a woman who was killed by a car.’ She turns to Mike. ‘His girlfriend told them he was driving it,’ she says. ‘Now Dylan’s done a runner, and I can’t get hold of him.’ Hot tears slide down her cheeks as she leans her head back and watches the air freshener as it sways from the mirror.

‘Bloody hell,’ he mutters.

‘Dylan won’t talk to me. I only found out by calling the police myself.’

‘You need to find him. Running away isn’t going to help. He must know that.’

‘I don’t know where to start looking and he won’t answer my calls.’ Kay realises the irony. Here she is, only a week later, in the exact same situation Jess had been. She can’t help thinking that if she’d helped Jess when she needed her to this wouldn’t be happening now.

‘Speak to his mates? Someone must have heard from him,’ Mike suggests.

Only Kay isn’t sure who Dylan is in contact with. His friendship with his oldest friend, Hannah, who he has known since he was seven, has dwindled since Issie appeared on the scene. Dylan had gone out with Hannah for six months before Issie, a mistake on both their parts they agreed, but Kay was sure Issie’s arrival put pressure on him still seeing her.

He played football before they went away, but only once a week now and she has no idea who his teammates were. The only friend she can think of is Russ, who he went to school with, but Kay doesn’t have any way of getting hold of him.

‘What about the place he worked?’ Mike suggests.

Kay considers this. She has his boss’s number, though she doubts he’ll have heard from Dylan. But she has to try something.

For a while they drive in silence as Mike winds his way round the country roads that head towards Southampton. ‘I keep thinking—’ Kay starts, before breaking off. ‘About his dad,’ she goes on. ‘He wasn’t a good man.’

‘You’ve never spoken of him,’ Mike points out.

‘I know. I never wanted to. But there must be traits, mustn’t there? I mean, I can’t be naive enough to assume Dylan inherited everything from me.’

‘You’re the only parent he knows, Kay.’

‘But is that enough?’ she questions.

‘Yes,’ he tells her with so much faith she can almost believe him. ‘Don’t start thinking like that. You need to find him and hear his side of the story first.’

‘Maybe,’ she murmurs.

‘There are always two sides,’ Mike says.

Jess

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

13 July

‘It’s good for us that Dylan’s gone off the radar,’ Scott tells Issie. ‘As long as he isn’t telling his side of the story, the only one they’re hearing is yours.’

‘What could his side of the story possibly be?’ I ask as I barge into the kitchen, interrupting their conversation.

Scott is in business mode, like he is the lawyer himself and not Issie’s father. He has been prowling the kitchen making calls to America since Carla left, shouting demands in his brash manner as Issie sits and watches him, absorbing it all.

‘I was just telling Issie about Hugo Campbell,’ he says, not answering my question. He has spoken to the solicitor on the phone, a call which appears to have buoyed him. Scott is in his element right now and it frightens me that this was once the man I loved. I hope he is thinking of our daughter, and not simply seeing the fact Dylan has gone AWOL as a potential triumph.

I, on the other hand, don’t like not knowing where he is because it means I don’t know what comes next, what he is planning. What my daughter might be planning.

Since we got home last night she has been closing down again and, with Scott in the house, in front of me every way I turn, I can’t find the time to speak to her.

Sometimes, the pain is too much. When all I am faced with is a hard shell I can’t chip into, I have no idea what’s going on inside Issie’s head, or how she is feeling. It breaks me to look at her pulling herself even further away.

It was only twelve months ago when she would still talk to me about anything. Just last summer I could walk into her room in the morning and wake her up with a cup of tea, and she would shuffle up in her bed so I could sit on the end of it.

She would sip her tea and tell me what she had on at school that day, or in the holidays she’d ask if I thought it was beach weather. We would chat, back and forth, and I would take it for granted because I knew no different.

Despite her openness, I still read all the books, preparing myself for the onslaught of teenage hormones. But when they came there was nothing I couldn’t deal with. Issie wasn’t moody or withdrawn or silent. She didn’t pull away from hugs.

I don’t have to ask what happened between then and now, because I know the answer: Dylan happened. Dylan came into her life and, slowly but surely, sucked her away from me until I had nothing left to hold on to.

When Issie finally retreats to her room I say to Scott, ‘Do you think Issie is scared Dylan will turn up at the house?’

I hope this is the reason she won’t talk to me. That I can cope with.

‘Maybe,’ he says, though his head isn’t in the conversation. It is somewhere else entirely. He is absently half looking at his phone, but now he tosses it to one side as he finally resorts to giving me his full attention.

‘Or maybe she’s scared she won’t see him again?’ I persist.

I don’t expect him to have the answer, but I want him to think about it rather than expecting everything to be solved the moment he gets Hugo Campbell on the phone.

When he doesn’t answer I gesture to his phone. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Not really,’ he replies, but doesn’t offer up any more.

His work is extending onto other surfaces. I don’t want it here. I don’t want him taking over my house, spreading his office over it. I should tell him to book into a hotel, but I know I won’t, because even now, after everything, I would feel too bad to do so, like his coming here is a favour to me. I’d thought Issie would want him here, though now I’m not so sure.

‘If you want to work you can use the spare room,’ I tell him.

‘Fair enough,’ he says, but doesn’t make any move to tidy his things away. ‘Hugo doesn’t think anything will come back on Issie but she needs to open up about what happened.’

‘Does she?’ I snap sarcastically. ‘Like I haven’t been trying to get her to do that since the moment I saw her again.’

‘Maybe you need to push harder.’

‘Jesus, Scott. How can you approach this like it’s some deal you have to close?’

‘That’s not what I’m doing.’

‘Well it sounds like it is,’ I retort. ‘I’ve been trying to get through to Issie,’ I hiss, marvelling at how he manages to make everything sound like it is my fault. Doesn’t he think I don’t know this? That when it comes to Issie everything starts and ends with me.

I tell Scott I am going to be in my workshop, if only to escape having to look at him for a while. Once inside it I pick up the phone to Lois and a surge of relief floods me when she answers.

‘He’s only been here a matter of hours and I can’t bear it,’ I say.

‘For God’s sake, get him out of your house,’ she tells me. ‘Of course he can stay in a bloody hotel. He could buy his own if he wanted to.’

‘It isn’t about the money though,’ I tell her.

‘Then what’s it about?’

‘I don’t know any more. I felt like we needed him here, it all seemed too huge to deal with on my own. Only now he’s here, I want him gone.’

‘You don’t need him sleeping there,’ she points out.

‘No. You’re right. What’s wrong with me, Lois? I feel like everything I worked on, everything I built myself up to be when he left, was all for nothing.’

‘That’s not true,’ she is saying as I hear the beep of another call coming through.

‘Hold on,’ I tell her as I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at the screen. ‘It’s the inspector from Portugal,’ I say, with a rush of dread. ‘I’m going to have to call you back.’ I hang up and accept Melo’s call.

‘Mrs Adams, I need to speak to Issie, please,’ he says. ‘She is not answering her phone. Is she with you?’

‘Yes. She’s here,’ I say as I get up and leave the workshop, striding over the garden back to the house to where Scott is hunched over the table. I walk past him and go to the bottom of the stairs, hollering for Issie as I say to him, ‘What’s happened?’

‘Maybe you could put me on speakerphone as I talk to her,’ he says. I glance at Scott, who is looking back at me, and put the phone on speaker as Melo suggests.

Scott tilts his head questioningly and I shrug back as Issie saunters downstairs and I hand her the phone. ‘Inspector Melo wants to talk to you. He says you’re not answering your phone.’

‘No, I—’ She breaks off, not knowing how to respond that she no doubt didn’t want to answer it. She takes my mobile apprehensively.

‘Issie?’ I hear Melo say on the other end of the line. ‘I wonder if you can help me out on something. You say you did not know the name Beatriz Motto.’

‘That’s right,’ she answers, turning her back to me, but for whatever reason she doesn’t take the phone off speaker.

‘What I did not ask you was whether or not you had seen her before …’ He hesitates. ‘Before the car hit her.’

I glance at Scott, who has got up from the table and joined me in the hallway. His arms are crossed as he leans against the doorframe, his eyebrows furrowed as he stares at Issie’s back. I imagine he must be contemplating the same thing I am, the direction in which this is going. I imagine he wants to take the phone away from Issie before she says anything but to his credit, he doesn’t.

‘Had you?’ Melo is asking.

‘No,’ she says finally. ‘No. I hadn’t seen her before.’

‘And you are sure about this?’

‘Yes. I’m sure,’ Issie tells him. ‘Why?’ she asks him with a confidence I don’t expect.

‘Because,’ Melo begins, ‘Dylan was seen talking to her at the rental company. Apparently she got in the car with you both when you left.’

‘Did you know her?’ Scott demands when the call is finished.

‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Okay, fine,’ he says. ‘Then no more needs to be said about it.’ He glances at me with a look that appears to tell me I don’t need to ask any more either before he flounces back out of the hallway and into the kitchen.

My heart is racing as Issie stares wide-eyed at her father with a look that feels more like admiration than anything else, but I can’t believe what he’s just said. What is worse, I cannot believe her either. Of course she must have seen Beatriz before if she was seen getting in the car with them.

I stride in after Scott. ‘You don’t tell me what I get to do,’ I say. ‘Not when it comes to Issie.’

‘Mum!’ she says, as she follows me through. ‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’ I shout. ‘Don’t start? Are you serious? What the hell’s going on here?’ I demand, the idea that she is taking his side over mine so awful I can’t bear to imagine it.

I am losing control of everything. My mind, my daughter, my own home. All of it is slithering out of my grasp.

‘I need to get out of here,’ I say. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

‘Now?’ Issie asks, as if 6 p.m. is the middle of the night, when it’s still going to be light for at least another three hours. Or maybe she means now after we all know she is lying about something momentous.

But I cannot stand to be near either of them and the way they are both acting, and I don’t bother answering as I walk past her, calling behind me, ‘And, Scott, I want you to find a hotel to stay in.’

Scott has packed his things by the time I get home, though he is on his mobile again, outside the back door. This time I know it’s not work. There is something in his demeanour that tells me he’s speaking to Rita.

A bubble of anger that he’s calling his wife from my home rises within me. It takes every ounce of restraint not to demand he hangs up on her, but I refuse to make a scene. Not in front of Issie, who is in the kitchen, pouring frozen berries into a juicer. She looks up when he walks back into the house and I find myself holding back, watching them together for a moment, without them knowing I’m here.

‘Problems?’ she says.

Scott lets out a laugh. ‘Yeah, you could say that.’ Issie’s attention turns back to the juicer and Scott frowns as he stares at his phone before dropping it onto the table.

‘So you’re not going to art school then?’ he asks.

Issie shrugs as the juicer whirrs into action and I hope he doesn’t let the subject drop. When the noise finishes a few seconds later he says, albeit dismissively, ‘Good for you. You don’t make any money with paintbrushes.’

My heart skips a beat at the casual way he discards her obvious talent, the dream she’s had for eight years. Issie looks up at her father. ‘No. I know,’ she murmurs, though her heart isn’t in it and his focus has returned to his phone.

As she stands there watching him, it hits me that this isn’t the first conversation they’ve had, judging by the way he asked her, ‘You’re not going … then?’

I step out of the shadows and into the kitchen. Our daughter is still looking at Scott, waiting for more of his approval that she isn’t going to get. She turns her head slightly and only then does she see me.

‘It was you,’ I say to him as it suddenly dawns on me, and maybe I haven’t got it right but I accuse him anyway. ‘You were the one who told her not to go.’

‘No one told me not to go,’ Issie says defensively, and I know I must be right. ‘I can make decisions myself.’

‘Exactly,’ he chips in. ‘Issie’s perfectly capable of choosing what she does with her life.’

‘She had chosen what she wanted to do with her life,’ I say. ‘But then this last year she changed her mind. And you put that idea in her head because, as far as you’re concerned, she won’t make enough money doing the thing she loves most?’ I turn to our daughter. ‘Is that what it is? You think it’s not worth following your dream because your father thinks you won’t be as successful as him?’

‘No,’ she says, staring at me, making me wonder how accurate I actually am. ‘But maybe he’s right anyway,’ she adds. ‘I mean, what would I even do with a degree in art? What job am I going to get at the end of it?’

‘Oh, Issie,’ I sigh. ‘There are so many things you can do. You can do anything you want if you follow your passion.’

Issie shrugs in response and I don’t push it with Scott still here, lingering, listening. Judging. ‘Are you ready to go?’ I ask him.

‘Yes, don’t worry,’ he tells me as Issie announces she’s going for a bath. ‘I’ve got a car coming for me in half an hour.’

‘Good,’ I say, then, ‘Where are you staying?’

‘The Manor.’

I laugh. Of course he is. A five-star hotel in the New Forest that’s at least half an hour away when there are plenty closer. But no problem. The further the better.

I follow Issie out of the room, up the stairs to my bedroom where I close the door behind me and sit on the end of my bed. I am shaking with anger as I clasp my hands together and think how I had got it all wrong. How her dad has managed to influence her choices more than me. Is it him she looks up to now? But it isn’t just this. Because it also means that it wasn’t Dylan who had stopped her going to university, as I’d thought it was.

Kay

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

13 July

As Mike carries on driving to Costco, Kay concedes that he is right. She needs to find her son. Before it is too late – though too late for what, she isn’t sure.

Possibly before he finds Issie and confronts her betrayal. She has never seen Dylan angry, not to any worrying extent, at least. She cannot imagine him hunting Issie down the way Neil would her whenever she’d supposedly done something to upset him. Like the time she’d been held up late at work and he decided she must be having an affair.

But this isn’t Dylan, she thinks with waning resolve. Because, what if it is? Either she doesn’t see it, or he has been pushed to his limits.

She blows out a lungful of air, which makes Mike glance over at her. ‘What if he does something stupid?’ she says.

Mike narrows his eyes. ‘Like what? What are you thinking? Jump off a bridge?’

‘No!’ she exclaims. ‘At least, I wasn’t thinking that before.’

Mike smiles thinly. ‘He’s not going to do that.’

‘I meant if he did something stupid to Issie.’

‘Nah, he’s just hiding out. He’s not that kind of kid. When all that stuff was kicking off about him and his girlfriend, I never believed a word of it. Even if they hadn’t turned up when they did, I wouldn’t have.

‘I mean it,’ he says when she doesn’t respond. ‘He’s a good kid, Kay. One of the best.’

She nods again, wanting to believe he truly thinks this as she fights the urge to cry. With relief. With shame. She isn’t sure which, but probably it’s a mixture of the two.

‘But you do need to find him,’ he says. ‘For his own good.’

Mike is right and, as she sees it, she has two options. One, she knows roughly where Issie and Jess live. Dylan had shown her their house once on one of the websites that allow you to stalk people. Though the thought of confronting either of them terrifies her. Then secondly, there is an easier option in doing what Mike suggested and reaching out to contacts of Dylan, starting with his old boss.

She pulls out her phone and finds the number for Ron Barry, a man she’d briefly met once when Dylan first worked for him. Dylan was sixteen and had just started his apprenticeship and possibly this was why she took his number back then.

‘I don’t know what use this will be,’ Kay murmurs as she calls him and the ringtone kicks in.

Ron is a Londoner with a broad cockney accent. He answers after a few seconds and Kay explains who she is before asking if he has heard from Dylan.

‘Not a peep, love,’ he says. ‘Not since he left us in June. Listen I have another call coming through, do you want to call me back later?’

‘Tell him it’s urgent,’ Mike hisses. ‘Ask if you can see him.’

‘Erm, where are you?’ she asks and he tells her he’s working at a house on the outskirts of Lyndhurst, which is barely fifteen minutes’ drive from where they are.

‘I’ll drop you there,’ Mike says. ‘I can pick you up when I’m on the way back from Costco. Have a chat with him, see what you can find out about Dylan.’

She asks Ron if she can pop by to speak with him and, when he says yes, she hangs up and slides the phone back into her bag. ‘He’s not going to be able to tell me anything,’ she mutters.

‘It’s worth a try. And speak to some of the others he used to work with while you’re there. Some of them might be mates with him, or know someone who is. You never know,’ he adds. ‘You need to do whatever you can.’

They pull up outside a huge detached property and Mike peers through his windscreen in awe. ‘Where shall I meet you? I’m going to be a good two hours.’

Kay pulls down the passenger seat’s visor and peers in its mirror. She looks awful. She has aged in the last week and there are bags under her eyes that she hadn’t noticed when she was brushing her teeth this morning. No wonder everyone keeps asking if she is okay when clearly she looks like death.

She reties her hair into a bun, pulling it tight and low at the nape of her neck, fiddling with a couple of strands. ‘I can walk into Lyndhurst from here. I’ll wait for you there,’ she says and thanks him as she gets out of the car, running her hands down her skirt before walking up the long driveway to the house and passing what she supposes is Ron’s van. He appears from around the side, carrying a large cupboard door under his arm that he drops on the ground by his feet.

‘Hi, I’m Kay,’ she reminds him.

‘Nice to see you again, love.’ He nods to the back of his van and opens the double doors so they can perch on the edge. ‘Everything all right with your lad then? I saw the news, but thought that was all something about nothing.’

‘It was,’ she says. ‘Only something else has happened. The police want to speak to him, but he’s disappeared. I can’t get hold of him and I’m worried. I need to find him and I have no idea where he is.’

Ron blows out a breath as he opens up a half-drunk bottle of Coke and takes a swig. ‘Like I said earlier, I haven’t heard from him since he left back in June. Don’t think any of the lads have either, but I can ask around for you. Hey, Shorty.’ He leans around the door of the van and calls out to a man Kay can’t see. ‘You heard anything from Dylan?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘You reckon any of the others have?’

‘Don’t think so,’ he replies.

‘I’ll check for sure,’ Ron says as he turns back to her. ‘But he went quiet when he and that girl of his went off. Didn’t think he’d last long, travelling,’ he jokes. ‘Thought I might have seen him back by now.’

‘Last long?’

‘Not really his thing, is it?’

‘I imagine it was Issie’s plan rather than his. I was worried about how he could afford it,’ Kay admits.

‘Hmm.’

Kay looks at Ron questioningly.

‘Your boy asked me for a loan about a month before he went. Not much, just a few hundred. I joked to him, “How you going to pay that back when you won’t be working?”’ Ron shrugs. ‘He promised he’d find the money somehow. That’s when I asked him if he’d be coming back and he said he couldn’t commit for sure. Said if I needed to find someone else to take his job he’d understand. That’s what Shorty’s here for, but he’s a useless pile of crap.’

‘Was the loan to pay for the holiday?’ Kay asks.

‘Yeah. Pretty sure it was.’

‘How much did he borrow?’

‘Eight hundred in the end. Don’t know if I’ll see it again, to be honest, but it meant a lot to him.’

‘He owes it to you so he’ll pay it back,’ Kay says. She’s not once asked anyone for money in her life and it galls her that Dylan did so for nothing more than a holiday. ‘He shouldn’t have asked in the first place. I can’t believe he did.’

‘He was desperate to go, I guess. What do the police want him for anyway?’

‘He was involved in an accident, someone got killed.’ She lets out a deep breath as Ron whistles through his teeth. ‘And Issie told the police Dylan was driving the car when it hit her.’

‘Oh,’ he murmurs, clearly an understatement. ‘And he’s run off?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the girlfriend doesn’t know where he is?’

‘I haven’t spoken to her,’ Kay admits. ‘I don’t have her number, so I’d have to go to their house and I don’t know …’ What she does know is she would never get past Jess.

‘I hoped he’d come back to work with me. I told him he always had a job here ’cos he’s a bloody good worker.’

‘That’s nice to hear.’

Ron pauses as he carefully screws the cap back onto his bottle. ‘I don’t think he was keen to leave in the first place.’

‘I thought you said he was desperate to go?’ she points out.

‘Yeah, but if he’d had it his way he would’ve only gone for a couple of weeks, if you ask me. Lads here used to joke he was under her thumb. Dylan would laugh it off, like he probably knew he was, but he didn’t care.’

‘I think he was just in love with her.’

‘Yeah. Summat like that.’ Ron laughs.

‘You don’t think that was it?’

‘I think he thought he was.’ He shakes his head. ‘He wouldn’t commit to coming back here, said he didn’t know what they would be doing. I told him he’d need a job, but he was always vague about what would happen next. I got the impression it depended on what she was doing.’ Ron stands up and starts moving planks of wood in the van behind her until he seemingly finds the one he wants. Kay stands too now. It’s apparent he wants to get back to work.

‘Did you ever meet her?’ Kay asks.

‘Yeah. Just the once.’

‘Did you like her?’ she asks, finding herself thinking about what Paige had said to her.

‘She seemed all right. Didn’t go together though, did they?’ he says.

‘Maybe not,’ Kay answers. ‘Thank you for lending him that money. You will get it back.’

Kay walks to the high street in Lyndhurst with an hour to wait before Mike collects her. She ambles along the street, window-shopping for pricey gifts she can only look at and coffee it would be ridiculous to spend money on when she can get it for free at the café.

It’s almost midday when they return. Paige looks up from one of the outside tables she’s clearing as Kay wanders over. ‘Oh yeah,’ she jokes. ‘What have you two been up to?’

‘Nothing like what you appear to be thinking,’ Kay says.

‘Ha ha, not that Mike would mind.’

‘Mike?’ She turns back to her boss, who is unloading boxes from the boot of his car. ‘I don’t think so. He’s a friend.’

‘Maybe to you. Oh come on, you must have realised how much he likes you, Kay. Open your eyes,’ she says as Kay picks up a tray and starts helping clear the table. Kay doesn’t want to think her friendship with Mike could be construed as anything more right now – that’s not where her head is.

‘He was helping me,’ she says. ‘I needed to go and see someone and he gave me a lift there. That’s all it was.’

‘Oh?’ Paige asks, but when Kay doesn’t give her any more the girl shrugs. Kay follows her into the kitchen where they unload the dirty plates onto the side. ‘Look at these,’ Paige says as she pulls out a carrier bag and plucks a pair of shiny black boots out of it. ‘Do you like them? I’m taking my girlfriend out for dinner tonight. It’s our anniversary.’

‘Your anniversary?’ Kay asks, surprised, when what she really wanted to say was ‘your girlfriend?’

‘Yeah. One year.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘That I was in a relationship, or that it’s with a girl?’ Paige laughs.

‘Either, I suppose.’

‘I talk about Luce all the time. How can you not know?’

‘I just thought she was a friend.’

‘Like you and Mike?’ Paige raises her eyes playfully.

‘Yes, exactly like that!’ Kay can’t help but laugh. ‘I don’t know, I always suspected you liked Dylan, if I’m being honest, so I never put two and two together.’

‘Liked him as in liked him?’ Paige smiles. ‘I like him, but not like that.’

‘I thought that’s why you struggled with Issie?’

‘You think I was jealous of her?’ She throws her head back with laughter. ‘Er, no. I just don’t like her.’

‘Why not?’ Kay asks. She hasn’t been sure how anybody could dislike Issie, and yet she wonders now, after her conversation with Ron, how others saw their relationship.

All Paige says is, ‘She never wanted to hang around here. Not like Dylan, he was always happy to talk to me, but Issie couldn’t wait to get away.’

‘She went to the police about him,’ Kay tells her. She doesn’t know why she suddenly confides in Paige, but for some reason she does. Maybe it’s that she’s increasingly desperate to track Dylan down. ‘Maybe she was right to,’ she adds. ‘I know she probably was, but I also think she should have told him what she was doing. Maybe if she had, he wouldn’t have done a runner.’

‘God. What the hell did she need to go to the police about?’

‘An accident they were involved in. There was a hit-and-run.’ Kay finds herself telling Paige brief details of what happened and the fact that she now doesn’t know where Dylan is.

‘And you believe her?’ the girl asks.

‘How do you mean?’

‘You believe what Issie’s saying?’ Paige persists. ‘Because I’m not sure I would.’

Jess

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

13 July

Scott is downstairs, waiting for his car to take him to the hotel. Issie is upstairs, running water for a bath. She will be in there at least half an hour – it’s one of the things she loves most in life, soaking in the water, watching some inane programme on the little television I’d had installed into the wall above the foot of it. I can hear the low murmur of the TV across the landing as I sit on the foot of my bed, turning over the fact it is Scott’s fault Issie has turned her back on her dreams.

I am so angry with both of them. Scott for barrelling back into my life when I did not want him, and for not caring enough to dissect everything Issie tells us like I do, wondering what is the truth and what is a lie.

Issie because of the way she’s reacting, how closed off she is. I know something is still not right.

She denies knowing who Beatriz was and yet she must have done.

She tells me she’s not in touch with Dylan but I don’t believe her.

In the hotel Issie had told me he was in control. Like you always said he was, she had pointed at me. He didn’t hurt me. Not in the way you think.

Then how?

I get up off the bed and go onto the landing. The bathroom door is closed and I hear her turn the water off, splashing as she climbs into the bath. I creep past it, towards her bedroom, stopping at the door before gently pushing it open and stepping inside.

I don’t want to stop and consider what I am doing behind her back. What I am looking for, or what I might find. Maybe all I need is another piece of the jigsaw to slot into place and show me the bigger picture.

My gaze flicks around her room. She kept a diary when she was ten and wrote every thought inside its pages. She didn’t mind me looking, she used to show me her pictures and lists, there was nothing she wanted to keep secret at that age. Not like the diary I kept when I was fifteen, and the dread of my mum ever finding it and working out the combination on my padlock. But of course, Issie won’t have anything like that nowadays. Everything is on her phone. Maybe this is what I am looking for.

I dip down at the side of her bed, searching across her bedside table and on the floor around it. I have never snooped in her room before, but then I have never had the need. What do I think I’m going to find? Some golden key to all the things I believe she’s hiding from me? Or maybe I just want confirmation that she’s still in touch with Dylan.

I’m looking on her dressing table when I hear a tiny beep coming from her bed. Pulling back the covers I see it lying on the sheet, hidden under her duvet.

I pick it up, stare at its screen and then at her bedroom door, checking she hasn’t suddenly appeared before I press on it and swipe up, needing to enter a six-digit passcode.

I always knew what it used to be, my date of birth: 020374. I tap out the numbers, expecting the screen to shake in denial but it doesn’t: Issie hasn’t changed her passcode. She still uses my birthday.

As the home screen appears I feel a rush of something I can’t quite put my finger on. Gratitude she hasn’t changed her passcode? No, it is more than that. It is how this one tiny gesture, her access code being my date of birth, makes me feel such a burning love from deep in my heart. It makes me feel sick with guilt as I acknowledge what I am about to do.

There are notifications of messages and snapchats, and from other apps too. I press onto the Snapchat icon, silently apologising to Issie for invading her privacy but knowing I have no choice.

The latest one is from Carla, and before that, from a group called ‘Girls Only’ that I assume includes the four of them. The third icon is a little caricature of a boy with wild wavy dark hair that I guess must be Dylan. I press on it, and it takes me into their messages. The screen is blank which means none of their conversations have been saved.

And so I click out of the app and go into WhatsApp. There, I find Dylan’s name, right at the top of her message list.

I open up their chat and my eyes wildly scan the screen, my heart racing as I take in what has been said between them. Soon, it is all too clear that, not only is my daughter still in touch with Dylan, but that I had every right to be worried about her.

Jess

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I can’t read the messages quickly enough. I try to take in what they’re saying but there are so many of them and they chop back and forth with a lack of consistency.

Then there are some that stick out so sharply they cut right through me and it is these I need to read again to make sure I am seeing them properly.

In the end I go back to the beginning, from the day they returned to Lisbon. I work my way through the messages and see that she has been in touch with Dylan the whole time. She knew he would be at the hostel when she picked up her things. She also knew he was already in England by the time we’d come back, because they had planned it between them. Since we’ve returned, she has known where he is. And now he knows what she has told the police.

Despite all of these though it’s the ones from today I can’t stop reading. The ones he has just sent her.

Dylan: | After everything I still don’t know how you could do what you did.
Issie: | I’m sorry. I panicked.
Dylan: | I would have done it for you, Issie.
Dylan: | You know that right?
Dylan: | All you had to do was ask me and I would have said it was me.
Dylan: | I would have done anything for you.

I don’t hear her get out of the bath. I don’t hear Issie padding across the landing leaving wet footprints in the carpet. I only know she is right behind me when she is in the doorway and I turn to face her, her mobile still clutched in my hand.

Her complexion is a deathly white, her mouth open in a perfect O. ‘What are you doing?’ She comes towards me and goes to grab her phone. I contemplate pulling it back, but in the end I let her take it. ‘What are you doing with my phone?’ she says.

‘As if that’s the worst thing that’s happened here, Issie,’ I say calmly. I won’t keep letting her make out I am the one in the wrong. I have been doing that for so long now it has become second nature. It’s what I always do with Scott too. I’ve been tiptoeing around Issie since Dylan came on the scene, second-guessing how I should act towards her so I don’t push her away any further.

Issie says nothing and I find myself watching for what comes next, as I try to see all the emotions running through her. I would have thought that after eighteen years I would be able to do that and yet I also understand I don’t know her the way I used to.

This girl in front of me is a stranger. I am not party to anything that goes through Issie’s head any more. How did it come to this? I always thought it was the moment Dylan walked into our lives but now I don’t know this is the case. Now, I think I may have got so many things wrong.

‘Were you driving?’ I ask. ‘Was it you behind the wheel?’ I stare at her, numb to my core. I don’t know how I feel, but I do know I want the truth. I have wanted that from the start but I’m determined to get it this time, I think, with a coldness I didn’t realise was possible.

Issie goes to answer but then clamps her mouth shut, her teeth biting into her bottom lip. Only now do I begin to see some emotion in her. I watch the fight drain out of her, and the determination of her silence and lies over the last few days ebbing away.

It wouldn’t take much to break her, I realise, but I cannot do that to my child. Because she is still my Issie, my girl, the only person I have ever loved unconditionally.

She starts to tremble and so I go to hold her. I wrap an arm around her and pull her down on to the bed with me. ‘I’m here,’ I tell her. ‘I will always be here. Whatever happened, Iz. Whatever you have done.’

She doesn’t have to be strong any more, I can do that for her. It doesn’t pass me by that there’s such a contradiction of feelings rushing through me, but then I guess this is what happens when the person you love most in the world has done something unimaginable.

You do not stop loving them. You want to take all the hurt away from them as you are programmed to do. But at the same time, it is impossible to ignore what they have done.

She cries as she collapses forward, burying her head in her hands. Her fingers dig into her scalp, clawing at it. I watch on in horror, wanting to prise them away, but for a moment I am helpless.

‘Talk to me,’ I say as calmly as I can when eventually I take hold of her hands and pull them apart. I clasp them in my own as I shift myself around to face her, tipping her chin up so she can see me. ‘Was it you?’ I ask again.

‘Yes,’ she says, and with her admission floods all the guilt and the fear and the secrets she has been keeping from everyone.

I nod, silently, trying not to show my own dread.

Issie doesn’t speak, but I carry on holding her as she continues to sob uncontrollably. In some ways it must be a relief for her to finally trust me with the truth.

‘What happened?’ I say when her crying subsides. I faintly hear Scott calling from somewhere below but I ignore him.

‘Dylan was going on at me,’ she says eventually. ‘Up on the hill that evening,’ she clarifies. ‘It’s true what I said about not wanting to be there any more. He knew I wanted to come home. It wasn’t right between us any more – no one is supposed to make you feel as crap about yourself as he did me.

‘But he kept saying everything was fine. He kept trying to make it work, and I didn’t want it any more. He’d hired a car because he had some birthday surprise for me the next day. I didn’t want to go but I felt like I had no choice when he’d gone to this effort. He dragged me up to Graça because of the view,’ she says. ‘He’d met Beatriz earlier but we didn’t know her,’ Issie goes on. ‘He got talking to her and she told him we should visit the lookout. She asked for a lift and he said yes. As soon as we got there, we said our goodbyes and she went off in the other direction. We didn’t think anything else of her.’

Maybe I hear Scott’s feet on the stairs as he comes up to find us, but I don’t register them. His car must be here to pick him up so he is ready to leave, but I’m too focused on Issie to listen out for him, or to even think what it means if he hears us.

‘He kept saying it was supposed to be romantic but I didn’t want to be there,’ she is telling me. ‘I wanted to leave but he wouldn’t go. I think he thought, if we did, he was going to lose me. He kept telling me I had to enjoy the view. So I took the keys and said I was going. He laughed and told me not to be so ridiculous but I got in the car and started the engine. I didn’t even want to go far, I was only doing it to piss him off and show him I was serious. He stood there and laughed at me like he knew I wasn’t going to do it. But I did. I drove off,’ she says.

I keep quiet, allowing her to go on. ‘Everything felt so out of control. I didn’t know what I was doing. I meant to stop but I went round a sharp corner and the lane was so dark. And then she stepped out in front of me. I didn’t see her. She came from nowhere,’ Issie starts crying again. ‘She literally came from nowhere.’

‘It was an accident,’ I say.

‘Yes, it was an accident,’ she tells me. ‘It felt like she was waiting for one of us to drive round that corner. That’s what I keep thinking. It’s how it feels. Like she wanted to step out in front of us.’

‘But you didn’t call for help?’ I am still holding Issie’s hands. Still trying to keep my voice measured, although in a way it is surprisingly easy when I feel so numb.

‘I was scared,’ she cries. ‘We were scared. We knew she was dead and we couldn’t do anything to help her. Dylan said we could just drive somewhere else and pretend we’d been there all along and no one needed to ever know we were in Graça. The rest is what you know. We went to Serra de São Mamede because it was off-grid.’

So Dylan hadn’t held her against her wishes. He hadn’t stopped her from calling me. All of that was Issie’s choice.

‘You didn’t once call me to tell me you were okay,’ I say. ‘I thought you were dead. I thought it would be your body the police would be finding.’

‘I thought it would be better you think I was dead than that I had killed someone,’ she says.

‘Issie!’ I gasp. ‘How can you say that?’ But she is looking at me like she actually believes this is true. Suddenly Scott is standing in the doorway and Issie’s attention snaps up at him over my shoulder.

‘Don’t,’ he says, lifting his finger up and pointing it vaguely in both of our directions. ‘Don’t say another word. None of this’ – he wags his finger – ‘you haven’t said any of this. It’s your word against his, Issie. Your word against his.’

I gape back at Scott and turn to Issie and realise she is nodding her head at her father. ‘I know,’ she says, so quietly I barely hear her.

My hands slip away from hers with the realisation that she does already know this. She has known right from the start it is her word against Dylan’s. From the moment she stepped out in front of the tram in Lisbon, refusing to speak to Melo, and holding back from me.

Has she been playing me all along? Did she think that, if I fell for her lies, she could sure as hell bet everyone else would too?

Kay

CHAPTER THIRTY

13 July

Kay is standing in the playground waiting for Billy when the nice mother, Alison, who she spoke to this morning, lifts her hand and waves to Kay when she catches her eye. Alison is standing with a group of three mothers, all of whom Kay recognises, but has barely spoken to. Kay smiles and nods in return. She wonders which of the parents have the kid who is bullying Billy. She knows the school won’t tell her, she doubts she will ever get an answer.

As soon as Billy sees her, his face lights up. He runs across the playground, a piece of artwork flapping in one hand.

‘Hey you! How was your day?’ she asks.

‘It was okay.’

‘Only okay?’

Billy shrugs. He is pleased to be out of there, she can see his steps lighten as they walk, and his chatter increases. By the time they are home he seems perfectly happy.

‘Billy, I want to ask you something,’ she says when they are inside and she is making him a squash and opening a packet of biscuits. ‘Have the other children in your class said anything to you about Dylan?’

‘I don’t know.’ He reaches for a Jammie Dodger and shoves it in his mouth, crumbs pooling around it.

‘What do you mean, you don’t know? Hey, Billy,’ she says, gently taking hold of his shoulders and turning him around so she can see his face. ‘You know you can tell me anything?’

‘I don’t know if they have,’ he says again.

She cocks her head, looks into his eyes, and takes hold of his hand, pulling him down onto the cushiony lino of the kitchen floor where she sits opposite him and crosses her legs. ‘I think they have,’ she says. ‘And you can tell me what it is they’ve said.’

Billy turns his head and she holds his chin and turns it back to face her. ‘Bill?’ she says softly as she holds a little finger out. ‘I’m not going to be cross or upset about anything you say,’ she tells him. ‘Pinkie promise.’

He looks at her earnestly and eventually links his own little finger with hers.

‘What have they said?’

‘That Dylan’s a killer,’ he tells her bluntly.

‘What?’ she replies, wondering what child could have said such a thing and how they could know what has happened when she only just knows herself.

‘That he killed his girlfriend.’

‘Issie? But of course he didn’t,’ she laughs lightly, only partially relieved she can at least put his mind at rest and set the record straight. ‘Issie is at home. She’s very much alive.’ Kay smiles like it is a funny joke.

‘Why did they say it then?’

Kay sighs. Maybe she was wrong to keep Billy in the dark but he’s seven years old for God’s sake. Of course she wasn’t going to blight him with the crap she’s been dealing with. She didn’t think for one minute some other kid would know what flashed in the news four days ago, thanks to Jess Adams.

‘Sometimes there are stories on the news but they aren’t always true. People think they know what has happened even when they don’t have all the facts. And some newspapers or people online like to tell stories to make everyone else think something bad or really dramatic has happened. Does that make sense?’

When Billy nods, she presses on. ‘And last week, when Dylan and Issie were still on holiday, no one could get hold of them for a few days. They were both fine but that’s when some of these people decided to make up a story about them.’ Kay pauses and watches Billy for a reaction he doesn’t give. If only that was all she needed to say, she thinks. If only she could leave it there. ‘But there was an accident and the police need to speak to Dylan about it and, right now, no one knows anything more. So you’re not to talk about it, okay? Though I promise you none of the children in your class or any of their parents know the truth. So if they say anything to you, they are making it up, do you understand?’

Slowly Billy nods again. ‘Is Dylan okay?’ he asks solemnly.

‘Yes,’ she says, overly brightly. ‘Dylan is okay.’

His wide eyes are staring at her, hopefully. ‘Is he coming back soon?’

Kay smiles and ruffles his hair. ‘I’m sorry the kids at school weren’t kind to you, sweetheart.’

‘It’s okay. I’m kind of used to it.’

‘You shouldn’t have to be used to it, my darling,’ she says, the words tightening in her throat. None of this is right and she is furious with the school for not telling her what has been said, for not dealing with it head on, and for allowing her boy to think it’s acceptable.

Billy eats his snack on the middle of the kitchen floor before heading upstairs to play in his room while Kay begins cooking the mince she’d at least remembered to take out the freezer this morning.

She is on autopilot, functioning because she has no choice but to keep going: feeding her son; getting him to bed on time; getting him to school; working. Some things are slipping though. She isn’t listening to him attentively when he reads like she should be. She hasn’t got onions to put into the bolognese. She ran out of Shreddies this morning and forgot to buy more on their way home.

She is crumbling and she doesn’t know how to stop. There are things to be done to make it right but she can’t even contemplate standing in front of Billy’s teacher tomorrow morning without shouting at her. Kay is tired, so tired. All she wants to do is go to bed and sleep and, right now, if she didn’t wake up then so be it.

Jess

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

14 July

The following morning the solicitor Scott has hired, Hugo Campbell, arrives at nine thirty after what I assume was at least a two-hour drive from London. He is wearing a pink striped shirt and a blue jacket with chinos and has dark, greying hair and I know by looking at him as he strides confidently into my home that he is a man anyone would want on their side.

I don’t ask questions, like how Scott was able to get him here so fast, or what he must be paying him. I don’t particularly want to know. But I take Hugo through to my kitchen where Scott is making himself at home, sat at the table with a pot of coffee in front of him and three mugs laid out in a line.

‘Hugo.’ He stands, holding his hand out to shake, slapping the solicitor on the back with the other. ‘Thanks for coming so quickly.’

‘Of course.’ Hugo brushes him off with his public-school accent and as they make small talk I open the doors, letting the air in to help ease the suffocating atmosphere.

‘Jess?’ Scott says, pulling out a chair beside him, as though my dithering is bothering him.

I numbly take a seat next to him, a grumbling of anxiety balling in the pit of my gut that I know I will not shake. Hugo pulls a pad out of his briefcase and carefully lays a fountain pen on top of it. Everything he does is a work of precision. It’s hard to imagine someone like Hugo getting out of bed with his hair sticking up, a line of dribble down his chin. I wonder what it must be like to be married to him and how comfortable you’d have to be in your own skin, because he makes me feel on edge.

‘Shall I outline everything before Issie gets here?’ Scott says.

‘Where is she?’ Hugo raises his eyes.

I don’t say as much but she is still in bed, where she spends most of her time, and has remained since our conversation finally ended last night.

‘She’s upstairs,’ I tell him vaguely, clearing my throat like I am the one on trial. He makes me feel as though I daren’t put a foot wrong inside my own home even though we are the ones paying him to work for us.

‘I think I should see her,’ Hugo says.

‘I’ll go,’ I say as Scott makes a move to get up. Her dad told Issie he’d be contacting his solicitor, but I doubt she expected him to be sitting at the breakfast table before she has woken up.

Upstairs, Issie is sound asleep. It amazes me that, with so much hanging over her head, she can sleep like she does. It irritates me when I have had too many recent nights plagued by thoughts of what the future holds for her.

I spent the rest of last night in shock, listening to Scott as he took over, telling Issie what she should and shouldn’t do and say. ‘If she utters a word of what she admitted tonight she’ll end up in prison,’ he told me when Issie was out of earshot.

‘So what’s the alternative?’ I’d said. ‘We lie?’

Scott had let out a laugh in return, I’m not even sure he answered me.

‘Issie,’ I say, and again more abruptly when she doesn’t stir.

‘Hmm?’ She rolls over, her eyes still closed. ‘What time is it?’

‘The solicitor’s downstairs. You need to get dressed and come down.’

She opens her eyes at this and shuffles herself upright. ‘What time is it?’ she repeats.

‘What does it matter? You need to get up. The solicitor wants to speak to you.’

She throws back the covers and I leave her room questioning what exactly it is that I want from her. Maybe for her to be perpetually frightened, just so I know she is not dead inside, and yet at the same time, as her mother, I want to take all the pain and fear away from her.

Downstairs Hugo and Scott are talking like they are old friends. Both of them look up when I walk in. ‘Is she coming?’ Scott asks.

‘Yes, she’ll be here in a minute.’

It doesn’t take Issie long to dress in flared cotton trousers and a white cropped top. Her blond hair is hanging down her back in waves. ‘Sit down,’ I say gently. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea.’ I am pleased for the excuse to be doing something rather than sitting at the table watching Scott trying to be impressive and second-guessing what will come out of Issie’s mouth, because the more I see them together, the more I fear it’ll be her father’s words.

‘Issie, I’m Hugo.’ The solicitor holds out a hand which Issie tentatively shakes. ‘If you’re good to get started, I want you to tell me everything that happened.’

By the kettle I see Issie throw a glance at her dad who nods at her in response, and only then does she begin relaying the story she’d told Santos Melo three days earlier. Word for word as if she has rehearsed it over and over.

All the while Scott watches her like a hawk, making sure she doesn’t mess up. His eyes don’t leave her as his head nods in time with what she is saying. To the other side of her, Hugo makes notes in his pad, only glancing up every so often.

I have no idea what Hugo knows and what Scott might have told him. I doubt it is the truth, but might he have hinted at her involvement? Is this why the solicitor is in our home twelve hours later?

Perhaps Hugo has told him he doesn’t want to hear the version of the story Issie shared last night, and told Scott to make sure we all toe the line because this pack of lies is our only chance. Then again, maybe he doesn’t know the truth at all, but if that is the case, I wonder if he guesses at it anyway.

I keep quiet in the background, my fingers curled around the handle of the kettle that has long since boiled. I watch them all from a distance, unable and unwilling to join in. It is easier this way. I am glad Scott is here to take over this part because it stops me wondering how I would play it if I had to make the decision myself.

The thing is, it isn’t so easy to guess what you would do, as I have learned over the last two days. I would like to have thought I would always tell the truth, no matter what. That I would always do the right thing. I know I would if it were myself. But it isn’t, it is my daughter. And so I go round and round in circles with questions and what ifs and keep coming to the conclusion that I do not know what to do because, when it is your own child, nothing is clear-cut.

It doesn’t pass me by that I have become the mother I accused Kay of being only one week ago. The one who would stand by their child no matter what they had done. But while Scott is seamlessly taking the decisions out of my hands, I am letting him do so. In his mind, there is no question as to what we do and therefore no discussion about it either.

I am the spare parent in this scenario. I am the outsider and Scott has taken on the role of lead carer, the one who ensures everything is done in Issie’s best interests. He told her last night she needs to stick to her original story.

‘No one’s going to believe Dylan when he says you’re responsible,’ he’d said to her. ‘It will look like he’s trying to dump the blame on you.’

I had been too aghast to respond. Scott might be doing the right thing by Issie, but it didn’t mean it was right. And yet what would I do? Is Issie not my priority above anything like she is his?

Eventually, seemingly satisfied with his copious notes, Hugo sits back and takes another sip of coffee. The pot in front of him has been drained and Scott looks up to catch my eye. It takes me a moment to realise he is expecting me to fill it back up.

I still haven’t made Issie’s tea and so I turn away from him and fish out a tea bag from the jar, popping it into a cup and pouring in the water. ‘Another coffee?’ Scott asks.

‘Yes please,’ Hugo is replying.

‘Jess?’ Scott questions, holding up the pot and, through gritted teeth, I take Issie’s drink to the table and pluck the pot from his hand, staring him down as I do, making sure he knows I am only doing this so as not to cause a scene. In return he raises his eyebrows as a glimmer of a smirk hangs off the edge of his lips.

I cannot believe I am allowing this in my own kitchen and yet I find myself making another pot of coffee and placing it on the table for them. Scott barely looks up, deep in conversation with Hugo. I imagine pouring the coffee over his head, watching it drip tar-like down his face. But then, of course, I am the one who has chosen to take a back seat.

Issie, on the other hand, doesn’t seem put off by them. It sickens me how well she seems to be coping. Finally, when another pot of coffee has been drunk, Hugo is ready to leave.

‘Do you have everything?’ Scott asks.

‘For now. Good job, Issie,’ he says, which confirms what I think, that he does know the truth and understands every word that’s come out of her mouth is a lie. But, for Hugo, as long as Issie tells this story, everything is going to be fine.

As he walks to the door, closely followed by Scott, I stare at my daughter who is still sitting at the dining table sipping her tea and I wonder how we are all so consumed in making sure Issie is all right. I haven’t even asked how she is able to do this to Dylan.

Kay

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

14 July

Kay lets the wooden spoon slip out of her hand and does nothing as it bounces off the side of the saucepan, spilling the tomato soup she is having for lunch into the grooves of the gas hob. She is so exhausted and yet what happens if she stops? Billy has no one but her and Dylan needs her more than ever now.

After the conversations with Ron and Paige, she’s wondering if she missed something about her son’s relationship, but yet she still does not see it.

Kay rolls her shoulders back. She has been standing at the hob so tensely they are aching and she jumps when there is a loud rap on the door. Turning the hob down low, Kay goes to answer it and is surprised to find a girl who looks like she’s about twenty, standing the other side. ‘Hi, are you Dylan’s mum?’ the girl asks.

‘I am,’ Kay says cautiously.

‘I’m a friend,’ she says. ‘My name’s Ashley. My boyfriend, Russ, is a friend of Dylan’s.’

‘Oh? Oh, okay?’ Kay opens the door wider so Ashley can step inside but the girl doesn’t move. ‘Is this about Dylan?’ she asks. ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Yes. He’s at ours. He’s been in a fight,’ she says. ‘He doesn’t know I’m here but I think you need to come with me.’

Kay nods silently and retreats to turn the hob off and grab her coat, before climbing into Ashley’s red Fiesta that is parked in front of her house. Together, they make the short journey to the estate of flats that sit back from the sea further up the coast.

They climb the stairs inside the communal entrance to Heritage Hall, an overpowering smell of damp making Kay hold her breath until they are on the third floor, where Ashley sticks her key in the door of number 29 and goes inside. Kay steps in behind her, straight into their living room to where her son is lying flat out on the two-seater sofa, his legs hanging over the end, an ice pack pressed against his face.

‘Mum?’ He swings his legs up and pushes himself upright when he sees her come in. ‘What are you doing here? Ash?’

‘I brought her here,’ Ashley says. ‘I hoped she might talk some sense into you. Is Russ here?’

‘No. He left.’

‘Are you okay?’ Kay asks as he makes room for her on the sofa and she sits down beside him. ‘Ashley said you got into a fight. What the hell happened?’

Dylan winces as Kay removes the ice pack to see the bruise. ‘You might need stitches,’ she says.

‘It’ll be fine, Mum. It was nothing. I had too much to drink and clearly pissed someone off.’

‘What were you thinking, son?’

‘I was drinking so I didn’t have to think,’ he admits.

‘You need to speak to your mum,’ Ashley tells him. There is nothing in her voice to suggest she feels any guilt for bringing her here, and Kay feels a stab of pride towards this girl she doesn’t know but immediately thinks she likes very much.

‘Ashley’s right. Don’t shut me out,’ Kay murmurs, placing a hand on his leg. ‘I’m your mum, don’t you think you can tell me anything?’

‘I don’t know what to think any more,’ he says as Ashley offers them a drink and, when they both say yes, dips into the kitchen to make tea.

‘Why did you come here, Dylan? You could have stayed at home,’ Kay says. ‘Did you really not think I would stand by you if you told me the truth.’

He looks up at her.

‘I spoke to Inspector Melo,’ she confirms.

Dylan nods slowly, his eyes never leaving hers as if waiting for her disappointment or anger, she isn’t sure which. She squeezes his hand. All she wants is for him to know she is here.

‘I thought no one would find me here,’ he tells her. ‘Melo has your address and I thought if anyone turned up, at least I wouldn’t be there, and you wouldn’t feel like you had to lie for me if you didn’t know where I was.’

‘You really think hiding’s the best thing to do?’

‘What else can I do? I don’t want to go to prison.’

Kay nods. She doesn’t know what to say, because as soon as he hands himself in and tells the truth, this is what will happen.

‘Have you heard anything from Issie?’ she asks.

‘Messages, nothing more and not since yesterday.’

Ashley comes back with two mugs of tea that she places on the coffee table, before saying she’s going out. She holds Dylan’s gaze for a short moment. He looks up at her and shakes his head before she turns to go.

‘What was that about?’ Kay asks after Ashley has left the flat. Dylan purses his lips, pressing them into a thin line. He doesn’t look at her, but Kay won’t give in. ‘She meant something by that look. What is it?’ she persists.

Dylan blows out a breath then looks at her earnestly. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he says finally.

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘I didn’t hit Beatriz. I wasn’t driving the car. I wasn’t even in it.’

‘Then who?’ is all she manages to say, like the answer isn’t obvious.

‘It was Issie. Issie was driving.’

Kay feels everything inside of her shift, heavy weights sinking deeper into her gut, though she doesn’t know what this means when she should be pleased it wasn’t Dylan. Maybe it’s the simple fact that Issie has approached the police and pointed the finger at her son. Possibly it’s that Kay knows Jess Adams will stop at nothing to stick the blame on Dylan. ‘It was Issie who killed her?’ she says.

‘She’d been drinking,’ he goes on. ‘And she doesn’t even have a driving licence. She was so scared, I said we should just leave the woman there and go. It was my idea. I told Iz we could run, get away from there and hide out somewhere. I did it to protect her. She was never supposed to tell the police it was me.’

Kay buries her head in her hands as she absorbs the truth of what her son has told her, and of what she’s seen over the last year and yet never realised the extent of. She always knew Issie was different to the other girls. Her son fell hard for her from the start. She understood their differences could be a problem, and worried Dylan wouldn’t handle them. She certainly knew Dylan didn’t control Issie the way Jess had implied.

But what Kay didn’t see was that Dylan believed he loved this girl so much that he would give up everything for her. Her supposedly street-smart, stubborn nineteen-year-old who has always been slightly cocky and no doubt assured of his good looks. But who also has a heart of gold that he is happy to hand over to a girl he likes, and who would do anything for anyone.

Of course he is not his father’s son, Kay suddenly realises. He never has been. Dylan is her through and through. They are the ones who are used and manipulated and trodden on, and her heart cracks wide open at the thought that she didn’t do more to protect him.

‘Anyway, none of it matters,’ he is saying. ‘It’s not like I can do anything about it because it’s my word against hers – and you tell me who they’re going to believe.’

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 106: ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING: THE DEATH OF BEATRIZ MOTTO

PART TWO

The case would fast become a tale of two sides. Two teens who each insisted the other was to blame.

On her side, Issie Adams appointed Hugo Campbell to represent her. Campbell, a top criminal law solicitor from London, would defend Issie’s account of how she walked away from the scene of a crime and left a woman for dead. He is a man who has a reputation for fearless representation, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. If this were to come to trial, he would be the person you want standing in your corner.

Campbell’s name would begin to stretch the divide between the two families even further, a disparity that would play out more in the days to come. Because, if this was to go to court, as both families feared it would, then Kay and Dylan Whiting knew it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

But money wasn’t the only factor. So too was the past behaviour of the two mothers. Jess Adams had voiced her concern from the moment she lost contact with her daughter, always pointing the finger at Dylan. Her daughter had come forward of her own volition and made a statement in Portugal about the events of the night.

Kay Whiting, however, had lied to the police about speaking to Issie when Jess feared her daughter was in danger. Her reason for doing so was a deep-rooted belief that her son was telling her the truth, and fear of what would happen to him if she didn’t claim to know Issie was safe. A mistake on her part, and one that would be costly.

It certainly wasn’t going to help her son’s defence and neither would the fact Dylan had quickly returned to England and then disappeared again when Inspector Santos Melo tried to speak to him. The odds were most certainly against the Whitings.

Kay

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

15 July

The smell of bacon fills the house. Bacon isn’t something they usually have for breakfast. She doesn’t even know why she is cooking it this morning but she picked it up from the supermarket last night and thought they could all do with a bacon sandwich on a Saturday morning.

Dylan is sprawled over the sofa, his hoodie up and partially covering his face. Every so often he picks up his phone, scrolls through it then drops it down where it hits the carpet with a soft thud.

Issie isn’t answering his calls or replying to his texts. His mood has become even more subdued since the last response he had two days ago, a simple: I’m sorry. I panicked. A vague and meaningless apology that couldn’t even be used as evidence when it could easily refer to her going to the police in the first place.

Since then, there has been radio silence. No doubt she’s been told not to contact him.

This morning Kay is taking Dylan to the Citizens Advice, despite his reluctance. ‘What’s the point?’ he had said. ‘We all know no one’s going to believe me over her.’

‘That’s not true,’ Kay had responded, though she realises it likely is. When it is Issie’s word against Dylan’s, then isn’t it obvious? Kay doesn’t just mean the press either, or the public reading the news. She means the jury when it goes to court.

She can see how it will play out. Issie’s defence team will rip Dylan to shreds, but who will defend Dylan? They cannot afford a solicitor and so they would be supplied with someone straight out of law school with no experience, and it won’t turn out like it does in the movies when the underdog gets justice.

Meanwhile Jess Adams will have hired a hotshot solicitor who knows every angle to play, if they even have to bother. Because the sad truth is that the judge and jury would likely take one look at her son and his upbringing and then at Issie, the perfect girl next door. All of them would make a decision instantly. No one would fathom that, behind Issie’s shiny veneer, the girl is a liar who has fooled them all. She certainly fooled Kay.

Besides, Dylan was the one who hired the car, and Issie doesn’t even hold a driving licence. Dylan was seen driving out of the car rental earlier that evening. Jess was the one who flew out to Lisbon to look for her daughter, who spoke to the press, who has put the idea in everyone’s head that Kay’s son is evil.

Kay was the one who lied to the police.

No, Dylan is right. Not one person will believe him over Issie because everything has been stacked against them from the start. But she has to talk to someone. She needs to know what options they have if she can ever get her son to consider telling the police what actually happened, and the Citizens Advice is their only choice.

Dylan gets up from the sofa and comes into the kitchen and Kay holds out a hand towards him, which he takes. She squeezes her fingers round his and closes her eyes as tears well in them.

She can’t believe that she could have considered him to be anything like Neil. She was the one who held him when he was a baby, who rocked him at night when he wouldn’t sleep and whispered stories into his ears of boys who went on adventures and had big dreams. She was the one who helped him press stickers into his collection books, and who watched him clutching the bars at the zoo as he rocked with laughter at the chimpanzees.

She is the one who has built up a memory book of Dylan over nineteen years. No one else will ever come close to knowing her son or loving him like she does. And yet for a moment she had doubts too. If Kay didn’t believe in her son, how can she expect anyone else to?

‘We will get through this,’ she tells him, with a certainty she does not have.

By lunchtime Kay, Dylan and Billy are making the short bus journey to Lymington where the Citizens Advice is in the town hall. Here they ask about legal aid, free legal advice, solicitors who might take them on a no-win-no-fee basis. Kay frowns at Dylan’s joke that at least this way they won’t have to pay a penny.

‘Don’t say that,’ she mutters as they leave. She would give everything to make sure her son gets the justice he deserves.

What they do have is the name of a criminal defence solicitor in Southampton who accepts legal aid and gives them an appointment for later that afternoon. Getting to Southampton means two train journeys and a walk but, within the hour, they are sitting in the reception of Eric Locke solicitors.

Kay has bought Billy a Lego Ninjago magazine and a tube of Smarties as a treat and both are keeping him entertained. Beside her, Dylan fidgets. His leg is restless, his heel tapping rhythmically on the cold tiled floor. Kay rests a hand on his thigh and he smiles and stops his frantic movements, but only for a moment before they start up again.

He used to do that when he was younger. There was a time when he could never sit still. She glances at her eldest son as he scrolls through his phone, watching silent videos that flash and roll too quickly for her to see what they are.

The last few years have passed in a blur. She doesn’t know how they got here. Dylan is a man now and yet he needs her more than ever. It’s a thought that makes her heart stretch until she fears it will snap. They tell you they never stop needing you and yet she hasn’t recognised it since he left school and got a job. Did it really have to take something like this for her to see it, she thinks as Eric Locke appears behind the reception desk and calls Dylan’s name.

Eric is in his mid-sixties and Kay isn’t certain if she’s pleased he isn’t some young kid straight out of law school, because she can’t imagine Eric standing in court defending Dylan with his grey hair and friendly face.

Regardless, she and Dylan follow him into his small office with worn leather chairs and a mahogany desk with a leather writing pad on top of it. Next to his notebook are photo frames that portray him as a family man with children and young grandchildren and a pot stuffed with fountain pens.

‘We can’t afford to pay for this ourselves,’ Kay tells him before they have begun. She has mentioned this over the phone, but the fear of spending an hour in his company and leaving with minimal advice and a hefty bill fills her with dread and she would rather walk out now than have a debt hanging over them.

‘We can apply for legal aid,’ he tells her. ‘It’s means tested so if you believe you’ll qualify—’

‘We will,’ she says firmly.

Eric nods. ‘Let’s start at the beginning then, shall we? Dylan, do you want to tell me why you’re here.’

Kay sits stiffly in her seat as Dylan begins telling him what happened in Lisbon. He relays the story from the point he hired a car and how he’d planned a surprise lunch in a castle for the following day – Issie’s eighteenth – but that they never made it.

Instead Issie was already drunk by the time they got in the car and had met Beatriz Motto, a young girl who pointed them towards Graça, where they could see the lights of the city, and had asked for a lift there.

Dylan laughs now and makes a joke about how he thought he might have even proposed to Issie that night. He waves a hand when Kay snaps her head to look at him. ‘I wouldn’t have done it,’ he says, but she isn’t so sure.

He goes on, telling Eric how Issie told him she wanted to leave, but that he’d said he wasn’t taking her anywhere. He looks ashamed as he admits this, but this is Dylan, as Kay knows. Her son can be obstinate when he wants to be.

‘The angrier she got with me, the more adamant I was we weren’t going anywhere,’ Dylan tells Eric. ‘I had this feeling she was going to finish with me and I – I just didn’t want her to,’ he says honestly. ‘I thought if I took her back to the hostel she was going to pack her bags and go home.’

Next, he relays how she had taken the keys out of the back pocket of his jeans, and opened the driver’s door. ‘I didn’t do anything to stop her because I didn’t think for one minute she’d drive off. I wish I had,’ he goes on. ‘Of course I wish I’d taken them off her, but she was goading me, waving them around, and I thought, Sure. Go on then.’ He pauses, looks up expectantly. ‘But then she did.’

Eric’s expression doesn’t change as he listens to Dylan’s story of how Issie climbed into the car and turned on the engine, jolting forward before speeding off round the sharp bend. Only seconds later Dylan had heard a screech of brakes.

‘I didn’t even run round there at first,’ he says. ‘I thought she’d come to her senses and had stopped suddenly and would be waiting for me. I took my time walking round the corner. I was pissed off with her,’ he goes on. ‘I was so angry. But as soon as I got there I saw something in the beam of the headlights. I thought it was a deer. Only for a split second, though. After that I could see it was a person, lying on the ground in front of the car. Her leg was bent at the knee,’ he says.

Dylan hangs his head. ‘It was awful. Issie was sitting there, staring out the windscreen. I knew she must have hit them. She was in shock and I started yelling at her to get out of the car, but she didn’t move and I was screaming at her, saying, “What the hell’s happened?” but she just looked blankly at me.

‘I opened her door in the end, and hauled her out. She asked me if the woman was still alive. I checked, but I knew she wasn’t. That’s when …’ Dylan falters. ‘That’s when we made a decision. Issie started panicking. She was crying. She kept saying she couldn’t go to prison and so I said she wouldn’t have to. I told her no one needed to know we were ever there.’

Dylan lets out a breath and turns to Kay. ‘I know it was wrong, but I did it for her.’ Kay sees his eyes darken now. Something in him has hardened. Something that makes him realise he was stupid to protect Issie after all. ‘I did it because I loved her and, in that moment, I thought that was the right thing.’

He thought she would stay with him if he did that for her, Kay realises.

‘I guess I hoped we could get away with it,’ he says quietly. ‘But Issie must have had a back-up plan all along. The moment she found out I’d spoken to you on the phone, she didn’t believe I hadn’t told you,’ he says to Kay. ‘She thought she couldn’t trust me.’ He turns back to Eric and adds, ‘She thought I’d told Mum the truth. That’s when Issie told me we needed to go back to Lisbon, and so we got a bus back. She must have decided then to make sure it was always going to be her word against mine.’

Eric finishes making notes and looks up at Dylan. ‘Anything else you want to add at this point?’

Dylan shakes his head.

‘What happens next?’ Kay asks.

‘Okay, well, the British police won’t have any jurisdiction to bring charges. It’s the Portuguese police who will need to gather enough evidence to arrest Dylan, if that’s the way they decide to go. To do that, they need an extradition order. This will enable them to bring their person of interest back to Portugal and charge them. They’ll need to send evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service. Evidence they may or may not have. With regards to you, Dylan, I don’t know how they’ll be able to prove you were driving the car that killed Beatriz Motto when, by the sound of it, all they have is your girlfriend’s statement.’

‘Which isn’t even true,’ Dylan pipes up.

Eric splays his hands palms upwards and nods slowly. ‘And whatever evidence they produce we can dispute.’

‘So what are you suggesting?’ Kay asks. ‘We wait for them to charge him?’

‘You could wait for them to attempt to charge him,’ Eric concurs. ‘And if this is the route they try to go down, it’ll take at least a few weeks.’

‘Or he speaks up,’ she says, ‘and tells them the truth.’

‘And then it’s my word against Issie’s,’ Dylan says, through gritted teeth. He slams a hand down on the desk. ‘No. I can’t hand myself over to them. If I do that, I go up against her and we both know there’s no point in that. I’m better off keeping quiet and hoping they can’t prove anything.’

Kay stares sadly at her son with a realisation that maybe he’s right. There’s little point going up against a family with their means. Yet if he does nothing but hope for the best, Issie will get away with what she’s done.

Somehow, either way, Dylan’s life will be the one that is destroyed.

Jess

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

15 July

In Hugo’s absence, Scott swoops around the kitchen as though he’s in court defending Issie himself. ‘The thing we have to make sure is that everyone understands why you didn’t speak sooner,’ he is saying. ‘Because at any time you could have done.’ He pauses, spreading his hands on the kitchen table where she remains seated. ‘But they need to know Dylan made you feel like you couldn’t.’

Issie hangs off his every word and, in return, I look on in horror. Only two days ago I believed that this was the reality but now I know it isn’t true. And yet, Scott talks as if it is, like he has convinced himself Issie isn’t lying. That none of us are lying. And he does it so well.

And what about her, I think, as I watch them conspiring with each other. Her deception ran deep from the point she came back to Lisbon and drip-fed me snippets that reeled me in and had me believe the worst of what Dylan could be capable of.

Right now I don’t trust myself to speak for fear that if I do I will tell them both we cannot go through with this. But once Issie slips out of the room I mutter to Scott, ‘He doesn’t deserve this.’

‘You can’t think like that,’ he shoots back. ‘And besides, all the things you’ve said about him.’

‘That isn’t the point.’

‘Isn’t it? You told me yourself he controlled Issie. That theirs wasn’t a good relationship. You said he manipulated her from the start.’

‘The way you manipulate everyone around you?’ I hiss back without thinking.

‘What?’ Scott laughs and glances over my shoulder as Issie walks back in.

‘What are you saying?’ she asks.

‘Nothing,’ I tell her. ‘Nothing for you to worry about.’

‘Dad’s right. You always hated Dylan,’ she says eventually.

‘Yes, but do you?’ I ask her, meaningfully.

By the look on her face, I can see I have shocked her. ‘If it wasn’t for him it wouldn’t have happened,’ Issie argues. ‘If he’d taken me back when I asked him to, I would never have got in the car.’

‘You’re blaming him for it?’ I cry.

‘He is to blame too,’ she snaps back.

Scott is staring at me. I know what he is thinking. He isn’t going to back me up because, in his head, we need to be in this together. I wish I could see a flash of remorse in either of them, but particularly in Issie.

‘I take it you dropped in for a reason?’ I say to Scott now. I assume he has nothing better to do in his five-star hotel. Could he not while away his weekend in the spa and leave me alone for one day at least?

‘Just checking on you both,’ he says, raising his eyes like he thinks it’s a good job he did. ‘I’ll be off again.’ He waves his phone in the air as he orders an Uber to collect him.

As soon as he is gone, I tell Issie I’m going to drop in on Lois. I need to be away for a couple of hours. I need to get away from my own daughter.

I am grateful Lois is in, and that her house is its usual chaotic mess, because right now I want to step into someone else’s normality. It means I don’t have to think about how far from that my own life has strayed.

‘Look, Aunty Jess is here,’ she says to her kids, who aren’t particularly fussed to see me. She suppresses a smile. ‘Come and have a cup of tea in the garden. The kettle has just boiled. It’s good to see you, Jess. How are you doing?’

‘I’ve been better,’ I say. ‘I needed to escape the house.’

‘Scott back again?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I thought he was staying in the luxury of The Manor.’

‘He is, but he keeps dropping by to talk to Issie. He had a solicitor come over yesterday who told us it could take a few weeks for the Portuguese police to extradite Dylan,’ I tell her before looking away and changing the subject. I hate that I can’t tell Lois the truth, not least because I am under Scott’s strict instruction that what Issie admitted must never be spoken about.

‘If we do this, we make it the truth,’ he’d told me. ‘And that means you don’t utter a word to anyone. Not even Lois.’

‘Of course I won’t,’ I’d snapped. How could I admit to anyone what we were doing? ‘And it means you don’t say anything to Rita either,’ I pointed out. ‘Do you think you can do that? Keep a secret from your wife?’ I’d asked with a touch of bitterness because I was certain Scott wouldn’t have any problem keeping secrets from her.

‘How are the kids?’ I say to Lois, as she passes me a cup of tea. We wander into her garden that is filled with an assortment of bright coloured plastic shapes for the children to climb over and hide inside.

‘All fine. And Issie?’

I grimace, we are back on unsafe territory again. ‘I’m not sure,’ I admit.

‘Finding it difficult, no doubt,’ Lois says.

I smile thinly.

‘It must be weird for her having her dad around.’

‘I guess. I don’t know, I think they were in contact more than I realised over the last year,’ I say. ‘That’s what he hinted at anyway. Since she went to visit him in Boston last summer.’

‘Do they get on?’

‘Better than I thought they might,’ I tell her. ‘Sometimes she seems to hang off his every word.’ I pull a face and so does Lois in return.

‘Scott’s charm,’ she says. ‘Imagine what she must have seen when she was living his life for two weeks last year. All that glitz.’

‘I know. The fact he has all this money and can do anything he wants,’ I say, thinking it’s exactly how he’s handling everything now, clicking his fingers and getting the best solicitor at the drop of a hat. I roll my thumb over the rim of my mug. ‘I wonder how much it rubbed off on her,’ I say. ‘I don’t think it ever did in the past, but last year she was seventeen, and so impressionable. Imagine being shown this amazing lifestyle with all the glamour, walking into a posh restaurant and getting the best table. She wouldn’t have been exposed to all the grind and his daily life behind it.’

‘What did she say about it when she came back?’ Lois asks.

‘She didn’t tell me much. She was really quiet, and I thought it was disinterest.’ But what if it wasn’t, I think now. What if she questioned why she hasn’t got his life? That it isn’t fair how she and I have to work hard and be nice and act the right way, and meanwhile Scott is the one who did the dirty on us, and is getting away with it. What if she realised that this was the life she craved too?

‘She cancelled her place at St Martins,’ I tell Lois. ‘I didn’t know anything about it, but I found out the other night and it’s all because Scott told her she wouldn’t make money from art.’

‘My God, he’s something else, isn’t he?’

‘She looks at him like he’s some kind of hero at the moment,’ I murmur. ‘I wish he’d never come over here. I wish I’d handled this myself.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t know that you could.’

‘I would have found a way.’ I shrug.

‘I know you would, hon.’ Lois places a hand on top of mine.

What if I got Dylan wrong? It’s not a question I can ask Lois, when I can’t tell her more, but what if I did? I have watched my daughter changing over the last year and I blamed Dylan for it. But there’s been so much more than I ever saw: the fact she stopped trying so hard at school, that she has given up her dreams to study art. What if all of this wasn’t Dylan’s influence? What if it was Scott’s?

Kay

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

16 July

The following morning Kay wakes with a sense of purpose. Their choices seem simpler after a night’s sleep though neither option is perfect.

When Dylan wanders downstairs and picks out two slices of white bread to put into the toaster, she says to him, ‘You need to clear your name. You have to contact Inspector Melo and tell him the truth. Let him know you want to help.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You have to,’ Kay says. ‘Why should they get away with making out you killed someone when you didn’t? Because they have more money than us? Because they think they’re better than we are? No,’ she says firmly. ‘I won’t let them.’ The idea of him sitting back and doing nothing while hoping Melo won’t have enough evidence to charge him does not feel right.

But Dylan still looks unsure, and he doesn’t answer as he waits for the toast to eventually pop. He flings the two slices onto a plate and reaches across her into the cupboard for a jar of peanut butter which he slathers on in thick layers.

‘That’s a bigger risk,’ he says eventually. ‘I’m more likely to fail. More likely to end up in prison, and I don’t want to take that chance.’

‘So you’ll let them continue with what they’re doing, even though it’s wrong?’ she questions.

Never before has she felt so sure. Maybe Dylan is right and the risk of him losing, and going to prison, is greater this way, but she cannot allow Jess to win without a fight. She can’t bear the thought of Issie lying to the world that her son is a killer while refusing to face what she did.

‘Maybe you will end up going to prison, Dylan. That could happen whatever you do. But if you do nothing you have no chance of winning. The police may not be able to find enough evidence to charge you, but do you really think you will ever escape this? Your name will forever be tainted. Every job you go for, every girl you meet – however much you think you can convince people of the truth, there will always be a question in their mind: did he do it?

‘We might know the truth but no one else will, so you’ve got no choice but to fight,’ she goes on, because despite how hopeless it feels, if they do not fight, she will always regret it.

‘Did Issie stop you from seeing Hannah?’ Kay asks.

Dylan laughs. ‘Something like that.’

‘She was jealous?’

‘She said I was out of order for even thinking of keeping in touch with an ex-girlfriend. She didn’t get that I didn’t see Hannah that way. But I don’t know. I gave in. Stupid really, Hannah probably won’t talk to me again.’

‘You should try.’

Dylan shrugs.

‘Jess told me she thought you controlled Issie.’

‘What a joke,’ he says sadly.

Yes, Kay, thinks. It is a joke. Because as far as she’s concerned, it was the other way around.

Dylan sighs, pushing his plate to one side as he looks out the back window. ‘Okay,’ he says eventually, before turning to face her. He straightens his back and nods. ‘Okay, if that’s what you want, then let’s do this.’

Kay closes her eyes and lets out a sigh of relief, reaching out for Dylan and holding him in her arms. This isn’t going to be an easy road ahead, but she’s certain they are doing the right thing.

The next day is a Sunday but Kay needs to work. She has taken so much time off this last week that she’s asked Mike if she can come in for the day and cover one of the girls who is off sick. She’s sure he hasn’t brought up her future at the café again because of how much she has going on at the moment, but it’s not a conversation she wants to start any time soon anyway.

Finally, the weather has turned. There are breaks in the clouds, and bursts of sun, which means the café is busier than it has been for the last week.

Paige waves as she arrives, but is too busy to stop. Mike isn’t in yet, and so Kay unravels her apron, ties it round her waist and gets to work taking orders, delivering coffees and bacon sandwiches and clearing plates. It is eleven thirty before she has time to grab herself a drink and look up to see Mike pulling into his parking space.

Kay kicks the back door open and walks over to meet him. He is finishing a call and waves in a gesture to tell her to hold on. A minute later he finishes and asks, ‘How did it go with the solicitor?’

Kay fills him in on what Eric Locke told them. About how hard it would be for the Portuguese police to extradite Dylan, and maybe the best thing to do would be nothing, but that Dylan’s going to tell the truth.

‘I know how reluctant he is though,’ she says, looking up to see Paige chewing on a Cheese String as she wanders over to join them. Despite what Dylan had agreed to, his eyes had been a giveaway. They were tired and empty. Gone was any of the spark he once had. Dylan might have told Kay what she wanted to hear but his face said he’d already lost the fight.

‘Reluctant to do what?’ Paige asks, with a mouthful of cheese, and so Kay tells the same story she has just told Mike.

‘He has to tell the police,’ she says. ‘There’s no way that bitch can get away with what she’s done.’

Kay laughs. She is grateful for these two people in her life, these two unlikely friends who she knows she can trust, but most importantly who believe Dylan without question. ‘I know. Only, I don’t fancy our chances.’

‘You know there’s someone who might be able to help,’ Paige says, pointing her finger at Kay as she thinks. ‘My girlfriend, Lucy, has a true crime podcast. She mostly covers missing people, but I know she’d be up for your story. You can tell her your side, and she can get that over to people.’

‘What’s a true crime podcast?’ Kay asks.

‘You’re joking, right?’ Paige says. ‘Come on, even Mike knows what one is, don’t you, Mike?’

Mike raises his eyes, shrugs. ‘I’ve listened to the odd one.’

‘Well there you go,’ Paige replies. ‘Luce looks at real-life cases of when people have disappeared and then tells the story in a podcast. She usually covers much older cases, but not always. She has loads of listeners, she’s brilliant. Look her up and listen to one. I think this could be really good and she’d take you on because, you know, they did disappear in the beginning, didn’t they?’

Kay smiles. ‘Thank you, Paige, I will listen to an episode,’ she says, though she doesn’t really see how it could help them.

‘She can interview both you and Dylan and do loads of research. She’s clever,’ Paige goes on.

‘Worth a go?’ Mike suggests as Paige pulls out her phone and asks for Kay’s number.

‘I’ll ring you tonight. Make sure you listen to her,’ she says, bubbling with an excitement that Kay can’t share. But, then again, with everything else against them, right now she will do anything if there’s even the smallest chance that Dylan’s side will get heard.

Jess

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

18 July

Hugo Campbell‘s face looms on the screen of Scott’s laptop as he tells us on a Zoom call how hard it might be to extradite Dylan. ‘Tricky, but not impossible,’ he says, leaning back in his leather chair, twirling a pen between his fingers. ‘But either way, none of this really matters for us.’

For us, he says like we are all part of one big family, all on the same page. ‘Why doesn’t it matter?’ I ask, ignoring the side glance from Scott because I can’t work out whether it means I am naive in my questioning, or if he doesn’t know himself.

‘Well whatever happens, Issie is out of the frame as far as they’re concerned. They want to bring someone in for the hit-and-run but they’re not looking at her. Their focus will be on charging Dylan. I highly doubt they’ll be interested in pressing any charges on Issie.’

‘Even though she didn’t report it?’

‘Duty of care,’ he muses, nonchalantly. ‘They could go down the road of suggesting Issie might have been able to save her, but if forensics determine Beatriz Motto was dead on impact, then I doubt they’ll be interested.’

‘Right. That’s good then,’ Scott says, clapping his hands together and nodding his head, leaving me feeling sick to the stomach. ‘So we just wait and see what the Portuguese police come up with.’

‘This isn’t a business deal,’ I mutter when he ends the call and Hugo’s face disappears from the screen. ‘A woman is dead.’

‘I know that, Jess,’ he says. ‘And all I’m doing is making sure Issie doesn’t go down for it. You heard Hugo. It’s unlikely they’ll get enough evidence together anyway. So we sit tight.’

‘Sit tight?’ I snap. ‘While two teenagers’ lives hang in the balance.’

‘I’m going back to Boston tomorrow,’ he says, choosing to ignore me.

My stomach tightens at the thought of it and I try to work out why when this is all I have wanted since the moment he stepped inside my home again. Perhaps it is the idea that he can simply board a plane and leave all this behind him. That he believes he has swooped in like Superman to put everything right and now he can go back to his sparkly wife and job and life of luxury, while wiping his hands clean of the whole sorry mess I am drowning in.

‘Fine,’ I say, waving my hands in the air as I screech my chair back from the table.

‘You don’t want me to go?’

‘Oh God, no. I do want you to go, Scott. We’ll be perfectly fine,’ I tell him, but I hate how I hear it in my voice: that it feels like he is walking out on us all over again. A ball of anger turns over in my stomach. I want to scream at him that I hate him. But I won’t give him that satisfaction. Instead I inhale a deep breath and say, ‘Honestly, we’ll be better off this way.’

My hands are clenched into fists as he gets up too. More than anything I want him gone because I can’t bear the sight of him or the sounds of the words that come out of his mouth. I can’t bear that his influence over Issie is greater than I ever could have imagined.

And yet, as always, it is all on his terms. He chooses to fly over when he pleases, and to drop us like a stone when he’s done.

He pauses before he goes, absent-mindedly running a hand along the dining table as he says, ‘You should know that Rita and I are getting divorced.’

I turn back to him and am momentarily lost for words as I see a flash of vulnerability in him.

Scott shrugs. ‘I thought you’d want to know.’ His finger drags back and forth over the surface of my table.

I nod, though I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry, doesn’t fit the bill here. Or So it wasn’t worth leaving your family after all? More than anything I don’t want him to consider moving back to England would be a good possibility. In the end, all I say is, ‘I’m surprised.’

Two days later I get an update from Santos Melo. The news he gives me is not a shock. I expected it sooner or later but, still, when I hear the words everything inside of me sinks.

‘Dylan Whiting tells us he was not driving the car when it hit Beatriz Motto. He says it was Issie. She took the keys from him and drove off at speed.’

He lets the words sink in and, for a moment, I don’t respond. We have batted this scenario back and forth, Scott and me. Not with Hugo, because with him we are still pretending Issie is telling the truth.

Now, as Melo tells me what I’ve dreaded hearing, I wish we had touted the idea to the solicitor, so I could have asked for his handle on it.

Scott had warned me that when it happened, as it most likely would, I needed to play dumb, act aghast. I needed to make it sound like it was the very last thing we expected.

I’m glad I am on the phone and not looking at Melo’s face. He cannot see how my skin is burning, a hot red flush that sweeps up my neck in a rash. He would see right through me. He would only have to look at my eyes to know something isn’t right. I have never been any good at lying. Not outright, not like this.

Melo is waiting for me to respond and eventually the words come out with a gulp. ‘He’s said what?’

I end the call as quickly as I can and call Scott immediately. He is currently safely ensconced on the other side of the Atlantic but it has become clear that everything that happens must be shared between us. It means we are all on the same page, all spinning the same web of deceit.

‘Dylan’s told the police Issie was driving,’ I say. My hands shake as they clutch my phone. This is the beginning of the end. I see it spiralling out of her hands.

It is a moment before he answers. ‘His word against hers,’ he says calmly, like he is totally unfazed. ‘We’ve been through this, Jess,’ he adds as my doorbell rings. I tell him I will call him back.

A woman I don’t recognise is standing on my doorstep. She’s in her mid-twenties and has blond cropped hair. She is pretty, tall, and has a small shiny stud in her nose that glints in the sunlight.

‘Hello, are you Jess Adams?’ she asks me.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘My name’s Lucy Hawes,’ she replies, still beaming as she holds out a hand for me to shake. I stare at it and then back at her. I’m usually too polite to ignore an outstretched hand but, after Melo’s call, I’m on edge and something tells me this is about Issie.

‘I was wondering if I might be able to have a chat with you,’ she goes on.

‘Who are you?’ I say. ‘Are you a journalist?’

‘Actually I’m a podcaster—’

‘I don’t want to speak to you,’ I interrupt and start to shut the door, but the same hand reaches out and gently pushes it back again.

‘I’m getting Kay and Dylan’s side of the story, so I think it would be good to get Issie’s across too, Jess.’

‘Don’t,’ I say, though I’m not sure what I’m telling her not to do. Don’t use my name like she knows me? Don’t stand on my doorstep and demand I tell her our story, because I cannot do that. How could I possibly do that when ours is a story built of lies?

‘I want you to leave my property,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll call the police if you don’t go.’ I push the door back with such force that it slams shut.

‘I’m going to investigate this story with or without your input, Jess,’ she calls out merrily. ‘I think you might be better off giving your side.’

I keep my hands pressed against the door, as if by holding it there is no chance of her getting to me, even though she already has. When I hear her footsteps retreating up the path, I slide down the door with my back to it, until I am sitting on the floor.

Of course they are telling their side of the story. Who can blame them? They’ll be clutching at straws. Kay must know their chances are slim compared to ours. I try not to think about Kay too much because whenever I do my heart cracks open a fraction more.

‘Mum? What’s the matter?’ Issie appears at the top of the stairs and slowly walks down them to where I am hunched over my knees.

‘Nothing, don’t worry.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Dylan’s told the police you were driving,’ I say.

She doesn’t react, though I can see her face drop and her skin pale. Surely she must have known this would happen? Did she really think he wouldn’t defend himself? Did she think he loved her that much, that he would stand by and let her do this to him? Is she still really so naive?

But of course she is. This girl, who has been scaring me with her actions, but who I love beyond anything. She is only just eighteen, she is barely an adult. She is still my child. Of course she thinks he loves her this much when he told her so in his text.

I would have done it for you, Issie, he had said. That’s the thing. You know that right? All you had to do was ask me and I would have said it was me. I would have done anything for you.

At her age you believe what anyone tells you, trust the story you want to be true. I see it in the way she laps up what Scott says, who tells her she will be okay if she sticks to her story. After all, isn’t that what I am doing too?

Kay

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

18 July

Kay meets Lucy Hawes in a coffee shop on the high street of Milford on Sea. She has never been in here before but Lucy has offered to pay and insists Kay choose a piece of cake.

Kay points out a slice of the Red Velvet she always thinks looks interesting and the young Australian girl behind the counter tells her it’s a good choice.

She likes this place, she thinks, as she goes back to the table as instructed and waits for the girl to bring her and Lucy their coffees. It is cosy and friendly, and feels slightly luxurious in a shabby chic kind of way. It’s no wonder Mike’s business has been in steady decline.

‘Paige has given me an outline of what’s happened,’ Lucy tells her when they have been served their coffees. ‘I’m sorry for what you’ve been through.’

‘Thank you. I want to know more about what you propose to do though, before I agree to anything.’

‘Of course,’ Lucy says. ‘Have you listened to any of my other podcasts?’

‘Yes. A couple.’

‘Well then, as you’ll have heard, each episode is dedicated to a new case. Usually people who have gone missing, like Issie and Dylan did at the start. Sometimes it’s known what happened to them, sometimes I look into cold cases. I do a lot of research,’ she says. ‘And I always try to give a fair representation of what’s happened. You know, it needs to be impartial.’

‘Paige said this would be helpful to us.’

‘It will. But I can’t make it one-sided just because Paige knows you – though she trusts you, Kay, and from what she’s told me I think this could be an interesting case to cover, and a good way for you to tell your side of the story.’

‘So how does this mean you’ll handle it?’

Lucy flips open a small pad in which she’s made some notes. ‘What I’ll do is go right back to the start from when Issie was first reported missing. I’ll cover everything that happened, questioning why. I’ll run it chronologically, and probably divide it into two parts. I’m thinking the first will be the mystery of where they’d vanished to, because this is what reels people in.’ She pauses and looks at Kay expectantly but Kay doesn’t respond. ‘Then the second part will be about Beatriz Motto and what happened to her. I’ll let you listen to both first, before they go live. I don’t usually do that, but as you’re a friend of Paige’s …’

‘And if I don’t like any of it?’

‘We can talk about it. We can see what I can change if there’s anything you think is contentious, but I have to be clear – this is a true crime podcast. My listeners want the story as it unfolds, they want the mystery. They like to be armchair detectives and unravel the puzzle themselves. That means it may not always feel like I’m on your side, but you know – in the end …’ She trails off. ‘I hope you’ll be happy.’

‘So what do we do next?’ Kay asks, shifting in her seat, unsure whether she is doing the right thing, trusting this girl who she has only just met to expose her family to public scrutiny.

Lucy smiles. ‘You tell me your story,’ she says warmly. ‘From the beginning.’

Kay spends two hours in the coffee shop with Lucy. She tells her everything from the start, like she’d asked her to, from the moment Jess Adams was waiting for her in the Little Blue Café.

Lucy speaks to Dylan but, as they thought, Jess continually refuses to speak to her, despite how many times Lucy tries to contact her. She cannot get through to Issie either. Oddly though, a friend called Lois agrees to answer her questions, determined Dylan is lying, which makes Lucy believe Jess hasn’t told her friend the truth.

Kay suspects Lois talking was part of Jess’s plan. No doubt she wasn’t able to tell a bare-faced lie herself, but using her friend was a way of getting across their side.

Lucy warns Kay it will take time for the podcast to take shape and likely won’t air for another few weeks. Still Kay has no idea if it will help them. She doubts it will as far as Dylan’s case goes, but right now they have so little hope she is clinging on to what she can.

Days turn into weeks. July ends and August begins.

Inspector Melo asks Dylan to return to Portugal so they can talk, but Eric Locke advises him not to. ‘They could arrest you as soon as you arrive in the country,’ he says to her son. ‘Let them do the work and come to you.’

Kay presumes the Portuguese police are building a case against him still. While they wait for this outcome, life must go on.

Yet, in the midst of the darkness, there are tiny flashes of light.

Their application for legal aid is accepted on the grounds of both means testing and in the interests of justice, which Kay learns is based on the fact the case could lead to prison. She does not focus on this part. What she focuses on are the good things that come in small packages, in the shape of a humanity she hadn’t learned to expect.

One morning Dylan got a call from Ron asking him to come back to work. ‘Are you sure you want me to?’ her son had asked his old boss.

‘Jesus, Dylan, you were the best worker I had. Of course I want you to.’

‘But with everything—’

‘Dylan,’ Ron had cut him short. ‘Are you coming back or not? How do you expect to earn money to pay me back if you don’t?’

Kay heard her son laugh. Going back to his old job, with mates who accepted him, was the best thing to happen to him. Right now, Dylan’s life was small, but with the promise of work, his football team, and Russ and Ashley keeping him going, she was proud of how he was coping.

Then there were her own unlikely friendships with Mike, Paige and Lucy, who were fast becoming people she wanted to spend time with. People she trusted, who were there for her when she needed them most.

And finally there was Alison. Who, one day at the school gates, had simply taken hold of her arm and said to her, ‘I can’t imagine what you’re going through, Kay. You know we’re not all the same.’ She had made a sweeping gesture at the playground behind her, though towards no one in particular. ‘I want you to know some of us are thinking of you.’

That was all she’d said. There was no offer for her to talk, or to meet for coffee again, and Kay was grateful for this, because she believed it meant Alison wasn’t interested in getting the gossip.

And with Billy broken up for the summer, she doesn’t have to worry about the bullying, for now at least. Instead she has cut back her shifts in the week and picks up more hours at the weekend when Dylan can look after him. At other times, Billy comes to the café with her.

Kay can almost convince herself she is having the best summer yet with him, because in many ways she is. If she ignores the black cloud hanging over them all, that is.

But it is there. And it does not go away. Because, as the summer slowly rolls by, Melo and his team are working hard on gathering evidence. And Kay knows, deep down, that somehow they will get what they want.

Eric Locke tells them it could take up to a month to hear more from the Portuguese police and there is a date circled on her calendar of the end of August that is fast approaching.

And so Kay knows that you can never really live your life when there is a very real threat it will all fall apart at the end of the summer.

On 17 August Lucy and Paige turn up on her doorstep. They are taking Billy out for a day at Paulton’s Park so she can go to work. Lucy tells her the podcast is nearly finished. ‘I’m planning to go live in two weeks,’ she says as Billy excitedly slips his rucksack onto his back.

‘Aren’t you going to wait to see what happens?’ Kay asks.

Lucy shakes her head. ‘I can do an update when we know, but the story has become so much more than the outcome. It’s about right and wrong, and the decisions we make, and what mothers will do for their children. I think this is the best time for it to go out, because people will make up their own minds. They will get behind you and Dylan before—’ Lucy doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to say what she’s thinking. She means before Dylan is charged with manslaughter, and before the public’s minds are made up for them.

Kay thinks about what Lucy has said and considers that maybe she is right. This isn’t about neatly wrapping up a case for those who are ready to gobble it up. It’s about telling a story of lives and how they can be shattered. About judgements, and how easy it can be to get them so wrong.

In fact in all the time she’s been speaking to Lucy, it’s really ever only been about this. Because, deep down, Kay knows the podcast was never going to help them overturn the probability of Dylan being charged with a crime he has not committed.

But maybe, just maybe, if she can get a handful of people to believe them; to not judge them; to look at Issie and her perfect family and think there is a possibility they are hiding the truth inside the walls of their beautifully immaculate home, then this will at least be something.

Lucy gives Kay a paper copy of the script to read as she had promised. She hands it over gingerly. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever done this,’ she reminds her. ‘The first time I’ve ever wanted someone’s approval as much as I do yours.’

Kay takes it cautiously as she says goodbye to Billy, kissing him on the top of his head and making him promise to be careful.

She has an hour before she needs to be at the café and so she makes a cup of tea and sits up at the kitchen table where she begins to read.

She winces at certain parts, like when Lucy asks So was Kay Whiting lying? And, if she was, then why?

Was she covering up for her son as people would go on to accuse her of?

She would rather Lucy not make any comparison between her and Brian Laundrie’s mother, or suggest her statement hampered a search for Issie. But she reads on until the end, as Lucy had asked, before she forms an opinion. And, by this point, Kay knows Lucy has done a good job. By giving her listeners every side of the story, she is letting them make up their own minds.

She tells her this when, at six o’clock, they drop a happy, tired boy home to her. ‘I just wish I could do more for you,’ Lucy says. ‘You know, Kay, we’re thinking of you and Dylan.’

Four days later, on 21 August, they receive news that the Portuguese police have gathered enough evidence to prove Dylan was driving the car when Beatriz was hit. They have filed an international letter of request to have Kay’s son extradited. It did not matter that he told them what really happened. As far as they’re concerned, he is guilty.

Kay and Dylan hold each other as they sit on the sofa, wrapping their arms around one another as Kay sobs against her son. ‘It’s going to be all right, Mum,’ he whispers in her ear. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

Her mind sweeps to Jess as it has done so many times. It has been six weeks since Issie and Dylan returned to Lisbon, six weeks that Jess has been burying the truth for her daughter. At any point she could have done the right thing, but she hasn’t. She hasn’t, and Kay hates her for that with an intensity she could never have believed possible.

Lucy tells them she will bring her podcast forward. It will air in two days’ time. She will work through the nights to get it finished if she has to. ‘Timing is everything,’ she says.

Kay thanks her but her heart is no longer in it. The podcast will not change anything now. Dylan’s fate is sealed.

Part Four

Jess

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

20 August

The last four weeks have passed in a blur as we’ve waited for news from Melo and his team. A month of some normality, though our lives will never be the same again. Whatever happens, I am drowning in our lies and I don’t see a way of coming up for air.

Issie is lying in a hammock at the bottom of the garden. One of her arms hangs over the edge, her fingers catching the grass as she gently swings in it. I watch her from the kitchen door, sipping a mug of coffee, wondering what my daughter is thinking. I don’t know any more. Even her disappointing A-level grades didn’t seem to affect her.

Eventually I go over to her, though every conversation I start now is with some trepidation. This summer has torn us apart in ways I could never have imagined possible. Now I think back to the months before with rose-tinted glasses, remembering the way she hugged me at the airport, the times when we weren’t fighting over Dylan. There were so many more of these lighter moments than I ever saw at the time.

I peer over the side of the hammock. ‘Remember I’m out tonight with Lois. What are you doing with the rest of the day?’ I ask her.

‘I don’t know. I might go to the gym.’

I nod. She has re-joined, thanks to Scott paying the bill and the fact that she is now friends with Leah again, which turned out to be the real reason she stopped going before. I briefly argued with her dad who insisted on paying for her, before relenting. At least she was getting some exercise.

She pushes her glasses onto her head. ‘What is it?’ she says. ‘Have you heard something?’ She is momentarily panicked until I tell her I haven’t. ‘Oh God, I thought for a moment …’ She doesn’t finish and swings herself out of the hammock. ‘Mum, what’s going to happen?’

‘With the police?’ I ask as she nods her head. ‘I don’t know, Iz.’ We have been through this so many times.

‘I mean, do you think they still believe me?’ she asks. Her tone feels childlike. ‘Do you think we haven’t heard anything because something else is going on?’

‘I don’t know what is happening,’ I tell her again. I have been holding on to a hope that Melo and his team won’t find enough evidence to extradite Dylan, because this is the best option. If they don’t then I can let myself believe the events of this summer will all somehow fizzle away. But I also know this isn’t the point. Our lie is destroying him anyway.

‘Have you heard from Dylan?’ I ask her. Now my question is no longer about concern that she is in contact with him, it is more my disbelief that she is focused solely on what happens to her.

‘No.’ Issie glances up at me, briefly, checking for my reaction before looking away. ‘And I’m glad I haven’t,’ she says.

‘Of course you are.’ I let out a laugh. ‘How do you think you would cope if you did?’

She screws her eyes up, like I have said something awful to her. I am surprised he hasn’t been in contact, and more so that Kay has not turned up on my doorstep. I think it says a lot more about her than I ever gave her credit for. Then, maybe like Issie, I force myself to stop thinking about them too much. It is the only way.

‘Sometimes I think you’re on his side,’ she says to me.

‘Oh my God,’ I spit. ‘Did you really just say that? Do you think that could in any way be true, given what I’m doing for you?’

‘No.’ She looks abashed. ‘But – it’s like you’re convinced he’s done nothing wrong. Like you’ve forgotten what he was like.’

I cock my head. ‘What he was like?’ I ask.

‘I would never have got in that car if he’d done what I asked,’ she says. ‘He kept me up in that place against my will. If he’d driven me back to the hostel, none of this would have happened.’

‘I agree, Issie,’ I say. ‘I am certain that is the case. But do you believe that means he should go to prison for what happened?’

‘What are you saying, Mum?’ she asks me. ‘That we should tell them it’s me? Go on then,’ she cries. ‘Phone Inspector Melo and tell him the truth, if that’s what you want. Put me in prison instead.’

She is shaking as she leaps up and storms across the garden into the house. I follow her inside to where she is standing in the kitchen, tears welling in her eyes, her hand tapping nervously on the surface of the island.

Deep down I don’t think she believes Dylan should go to prison. She wants the same as I do, for Melo to not be able to gather enough evidence. But when it comes to it, if one of them has to go, then she would do anything to make sure it isn’t her.

And, meanwhile, I keep protecting her freedom too, regardless of the cost. I keep telling myself this is what every parent would do in my situation. We look after our children, first and foremost. We do whatever it takes.

At 5 p.m., after Issie has left for the gym, Lois turns up. We have booked a restaurant in Christchurch for seven thirty, a night together that has been long overdue, but that I have been putting off when I can no longer be honest with her.

‘I’m leaving my car here,’ she says as she waltzes in. ‘Gavin will bring me over to get it in the morning. The joys of the summer holiday,’ she enthuses. ‘I might still have to get up early but at least I don’t need to tackle the school run.’

I smile, remembering those days fondly, as tears unexpectedly fill my eyes.

‘God, what have I said?’ she asks.

‘Nothing. You haven’t said anything,’ I promise her. ‘It’s just life’s so much simpler when they’re smaller. Physically harder, but I’d take that over this,’ I say as we head into the kitchen and I turn my attention to filling a tray to take out to the garden.

I open a bottle of Sancerre and wedge it into a glass cooler, take two glasses from the cupboard and spoon olives stuffed with almonds and pimento into a bowl I once brought back from Greece. Next, I slice fresh focaccia bread and glug olive oil and balsamic vinegar into tiny dishes. I keep going with the little, pleasant things because, in doing them, I’m able to ignore the big ones.

We sit on chairs on the decking and watch the sun begin to dip behind my apple tree and, for a moment, I make myself believe this is what life is all about.

Eventually I say, ‘I feel like I’m forever living in the past. It’s the nicest place to be.’

‘This seems pretty nice to me,’ Lois jokes.

I smile, thinly this time. No. It is anything but. I am living somewhere along the road to hell.

Our lives are a lie. Mine, Issie’s and Scott’s, and I have no idea how he copes with it, but I have the sense he finds it easier than me. My whole life has been built on bricks of goodness, of doing the right thing, of showing Issie the right way. And those bricks are crumbling down around us.

‘Still no news on Dylan?’ Lois asks. ‘And whether he’ll be arrested?’

Dylan is the first thing I think of when I wake in the mornings, his face the last thing I see before I eventually fall asleep at night. Dylan, who I got so wrong. I had watched Issie changing and had put it all on him.

I shake my head as I pick out an olive. There is a knot of tension in the pit of my gut and I don’t believe it will ever go away. Issie is so focused on making sure she isn’t going to prison I don’t believe she is giving Dylan a second thought, and sometimes I think it is this very fact alone that will break me.

Lois sighs. ‘Unbelievable,’ she says. ‘What’s taking them so long? Surely they don’t think there’s any truth in what he’s saying?’ She laughs with the abhorrence of the thought as I pop the olive into my mouth and it lodges hard in my throat.

‘When’s that bloody podcast coming out?’ she says.

‘I don’t know.’ I take a swig of wine. ‘You’re more likely to hear from her than me. Maybe it’s not going ahead any more.’

I didn’t want to talk to Lucy Dawes and so I asked Lois to do it for me. But still I have no idea how she will handle Issie and Dylan’s case.

We drink the wine and eat the bread and olives. Soon she says we should get going if we want to walk to the restaurant and so I find a pair of sandals, grab a wrap from the hook and drape it over my shoulders.

Our conversation weaves onto a safer path and by the time we have reached the bridge we are chatting about her kids’ school, and old friends we share. But as we walk alongside the River Avon my mind drifts somewhere else again, somewhere dark, buried under shadows.

‘Jess?’ Lois is laughing. ‘Have you actually heard a word I’ve said?’

I stop and stare back at her. We have reached the quay and I hadn’t even noticed. Lois frowns at me. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes. Of course. What did you say?’

‘I said I was thinking of Kay Whiting,’ she replies, a sentence that makes my stomach plummet even further. ‘And what she must be thinking right now. Don’t you ever want to confront her about lying to the police about Issie in the beginning? I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself.’

I have wondered enough about Kay Whiting over the last weeks, but not in the way Lois thinks. Does she believe her son? Above anything, I hope she does. I hope Dylan has someone on his side; he deserves for his mother to believe him, and yet maybe – maybe she doesn’t. It is yet one more thought that cracks me apart.

Lois doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Then I guess what would any of us do?’ she muses. ‘We don’t know, do we? When it comes to our kids. I mean I’d like to think—’

‘Don’t.’ I stop her with one quiet word. ‘Please don’t say any more, Lois.’

‘What is it?’ she asks me. ‘I know you’ve got loads on your plate at the moment, but there’s something more. You – you look awful, if I’m honest. You look ill. God, you’re not, are you?’

‘No,’ I say quickly as we pause by the river where a family are badly attempting to moor their rental boat up to the jetty. ‘Oh God, Lois. If I tell you something I need you to promise me you’ll never ever utter a word to anyone. Not even Gavin.’

‘You have my word. You know you do. What is it?’ she asks.

‘Dylan isn’t lying,’ I say in barely a whisper.

Lois frowns. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘He isn’t lying. Issie was driving the car.’

‘But—’ She breaks off, a look of disbelief on her face as she stares back at me and tries to fathom what I mean. As realisation dawns on her, Lois’s disbelief is replaced with a shock I can’t bear to decipher further. ‘It was Issie?’ she says eventually.

‘I didn’t know at first,’ I tell her. ‘But I found out a month ago. Issie admitted it was her, and Scott told her we could cover it up, because she is our priority.’ The words tumble out. ‘And I went along with it, because I couldn’t bear the alternative. Because I thought I had to do whatever I could to protect Issie. And I believed that, Lois,’ I cry. ‘I really believed that.’

It is a moment before Lois answers. ‘You don’t sound like you do any longer,’ she says eventually, though I can tell she is still in shock.

‘I don’t know what I think,’ I say. ‘What do you think?’ I ask her. ‘What would you do if it was one of your children?’

Lois stares at me in disbelief. It isn’t fair of me to ask her, but I want her to tell me. ‘I don’t know,’ she says at last. ‘I honestly don’t know, Jess.’

‘I would die for Issie,’ I say, silent tears dripping down my cheeks. ‘I’d give up my life to save hers in a heartbeat.’

Lois nods in agreement. ‘Then there’s your answer,’ she says, her eyes wide as they search mine – for what, I am no longer sure.

‘But—’ I start.

‘But?’

‘But this isn’t how I brought her up. I taught her to be good and kind and to do the right thing. I worried Dylan was controlling her. But I didn’t see what was really happening. Because the truth is so much worse.’

‘I don’t follow,’ Lois says.

‘I always thought I’d done enough,’ I say. ‘That I’d instilled all the right values in Issie so she wouldn’t become like her father. How could she, when he didn’t have anything to do with bringing her up and it was all on me? She was my daughter, she was supposed to turn out like me.’

‘She is like you, Jess.’

‘No. I don’t see it any longer. She watches how Scott acts, as if being kind doesn’t pay, and she’s doing the exact same thing. He doesn’t care who he hurts along the way as long as he comes out on top. That’s all he wants. To be the one in control. And Issie’s emulating his behaviour. She is fifty per cent him, after all,’ I go on. ‘I never accounted for that. I thought I’d done enough to make sure she didn’t become her father.’

Eventually Lois says, ‘So what are you going to do?’

I smile sadly. ‘I’m sorry, I think I need a rain check. I need to go home.’

She nods as she takes hold of my hand and squeezes it.

Issie is back from the gym and in her room when I get home. I make a coffee even though I would love another glass of wine, and then eventually call her down.

Her head is in her phone when she wanders into the kitchen but when she looks up at me, she smiles. ‘I’m glad I went back to the gym,’ she says. ‘I missed Leah.’ She puts her phone down and comes over to me, wrapping her arms around me. I hug her back, close my eyes and hold on to this precious and unexpected moment for as long as I can before she pulls away.

‘What’s this for?’ I say.

When she does, she notices the tears that are running down my cheeks. ‘What is it, Mum?’ she asks. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Issie, sit down,’ I tell her.

‘Oh my God, you’ve heard from them, haven’t you? What’s happening? Do they know it’s me?’

‘No. I haven’t heard anything,’ I say.

‘Then what?’ She looks at me quizzically as she takes a seat at the kitchen island, her eyes wide, searching mine.

My heart is thumping. It feels like it might burst through my chest. I don’t know if I’m about to say the right thing, but the idea of letting her get away with what she has done has become so much bigger than Issie now.

‘I didn’t like Dylan,’ I start. She nods and I continue. ‘I thought he was a bad influence on you. I thought he was the one who was stopping you from doing the things you love, like going to the gym. When I found out you’d fallen out with your friends I assumed it was because of him.’

‘I mean, they didn’t really like him, but …’

‘Why did you fall out with them?’

Issie looks down at her hands that are splayed in front of her. ‘Where’s this going, Mum?’ she asks.

‘Why did you want to spend all your time with him at the cost of your friendships?’ I go on.

‘I don’t know, it was fun. It wasn’t all about school,’ she says, which isn’t an answer to anything. ‘Dylan wasn’t a saint, Mum, if that’s what you’re trying to make out. He used to get jealous of me. He was jealous of what you and I, and Dad, had and he did make stupid comments about me sitting next to boys in photos that I didn’t even know.’

‘I’m sure he isn’t a saint,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t think for one moment your relationship was right.’

‘He said things about you too,’ she goes on. It is as if she knows where this conversation is heading. ‘He always said you were too wrapped up in me and that you wanted me to stay your little girl forever.’

I nod, I know this. Maybe, in some ways, he was right. ‘It doesn’t mean he deserves what we’re doing to him. He loved you,’ I say, ‘and you’ve taken advantage of that, Issie.’

‘No,’ Issie says. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying—’

‘I’m saying you need to tell the truth,’ I tell her as calmly as I can. ‘None of this is right.’

‘No, Mum,’ she starts.

‘We can’t let Dylan go to prison for something you did. He’s innocent, Issie.’

‘No. Mum, please. No. You have to stop.’

‘Issie,’ I say, trying to keep my composure as the tears creep down my face. I can’t bear to see how frightened she is. ‘You made a mistake. It was an accident. You didn’t mean to hurt her, Iz, but to lie and say Dylan did it? You have to own up to what you did. You have to take responsibility.’

‘You can’t do this,’ she screams. The fear in her eyes is palpable. ‘How could you even do this to me?’

‘Issie, how can we do this to him?’ I cry.

‘He can cope with it,’ she blurts out. ‘He said he would have done it for me. He told me when we were hiding out. He said if anything happened he would take the blame, but now he’s changing his mind. And it was his fault it all happened in the first place,’ she insists. ‘He can go to prison and still come out and do his job, but I can’t. I can’t go to prison. You said you would do anything for me. Like Dad is,’ she adds. ‘Why can’t you be more like him?’

I don’t respond. Somehow Issie has confirmed that I am making the right decision. It is my job to teach her she can’t get away with whatever she wants. She does not get to believe that her father’s way is right.

Jess

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

21 August

The following morning I wake to the news that Inspector Melo and his team have pulled together enough evidence to charge Dylan and extradite him to Portugal. Our time has run out.

Issie has not spoken to me since our argument. She has shut herself in her room, refusing to come out. I can’t second-guess what this means. Whether she hates me for my change of heart, or if there is a chance deep down she knows this is what we must do. I would like to think it is the latter, but either way my daughter’s pain breaks me.

I knock on her door. She tells me to leave her alone, and so I call through that Dylan is going to be charged with Beatriz’s murder, because surely this will draw her out. ‘Issie?’ I say when she doesn’t respond. ‘They are extraditing him to Portugal. There’s every chance he’ll be found guilty now.’

She eventually appears, her face a whole mixture of emotion. Fear, anger and yet more than anything betrayal.

‘It’s time. We need to do the right thing,’ I tell her before she slams the door shut in my face again. I don’t know if she understands what I am doing or if she ever will. In the end I tell her I am going through her closed bedroom door, but there is no reply.

I wonder if she thinks this is easy for me. She must have no idea how hollow I feel inside. No comprehension of how much this hurts.

Inside the locked doors of my car I scream. I no longer know if I’m doing the right thing or not, but I put the address into my satnav and make the twenty-five-minute journey to Milford on Sea.

Kay’s house is a thin semi-detached, one room wide with a bay window and a front door on the left. It is attached to a house that mirrors it in design. Next door has net curtains up against its bay, but Kay’s is bare. The curtains are wide open so I can see inside the living room if I want to.

I press my finger on the bell and automatically take a step back as I wait for it to be answered, fidgeting nervously with my hands in my pockets.

Eventually the door opens and Kay is standing the other side of it. She stares at me, her face dropping before contorting into a frown. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I need to talk to you,’ I say softly.

‘How dare you come to my home.’ Her voice is shaking with raw emotion and I hold up my hands in some kind of show that I am not here to cause her any more grief.

But, despite her fear at seeing me, she doesn’t go back inside or close the door. She wants to know what I have to say. I don’t blame her. We haven’t spoken since the call I made from Lisbon, and the only time we’ve been face to face was six weeks ago at her workplace. Both times I insinuated her son had hurt my daughter.

For my part I’ve not been able to face Kay since we returned. My initial fear of having anything to do with the Whitings was rapidly replaced by an inability to look either of them in the eye when I knew what we were doing.

‘I have something to say that I promise you will want to hear,’ I tell her.

She hesitates for a moment as her eyes flick over me. She isn’t sure whether she is wise to let me speak or not but I know she won’t be able to help herself.

I take a deep breath. This is the hardest thing I have ever done.

All along everything has been about Issie. Going to Lisbon to find her, making sure she is safe. Getting her to talk, protecting her. Doing whatever I can as her mother because this is my role. The only one that’s important.

Ever since my daughter was born, and I cradled her in my arms, I fell in love, my heart swelling with an emotion I could never have imagined. In our first moments together, I knew I would do anything for her.

I said all this to Lois as we stood by the river last night and I finally told her the truth. ‘What would you do if it was one of your children?’ I asked her. It was unfair of me but I needed to know.

‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘I honestly don’t know, Jess.’ No one knows what they will do until they are faced with an impossible situation. Some might say they would defend their children whatever. Some might believe they would do the right thing. The truth is we do not know, because we don’t ever want to imagine it.

‘Firstly, I want to say I’m sorry,’ I tell Kay now. ‘I’m sorry for what we’ve put you and Dylan through. It should never have gone this far.’

Kay hangs her head to one side. She is trying to take in what I’m saying.

‘We are going to tell the truth,’ I tell her.

She parts her mouth but it looks like she’s too scared to utter a word.

‘I am going to speak to Inspector Melo and tell him Issie was driving, not Dylan.’

Kay’s hand clutches onto the doorframe, her hand flinging to her mouth. She looks like she is about to collapse, though I can tell she doesn’t know whether to believe me.

‘You have my word,’ I add. ‘Though I also appreciate it might not mean much to you.’

‘Issie made this decision?’

I frown, pause.

‘No,’ she says. ‘It isn’t Issie then?’

‘She’s finding it hard—’

Kay laughs harshly. ‘She’s finding it hard?’ she says, sarcastically.

‘Issie’s going to pay for what she did,’ I tell her. ‘So yes, she is finding it hard.’

Kay bites her lip. She will be imagining my daughter in prison, she must be realising what this is doing to me. Maybe even wondering if she would do the same herself.

What I wish I could do right now is tell Kay all the memories I have of my daughter. Of who Issie really is. The times she has made me laugh until we are both crying, how she has always made me something for my birthday because she hasn’t had a father to help her buy a present. How she sobs when we watch Comic Relief and always buys the homeless man who sits by the gates of the priory a coffee and a sandwich.

But what I say is, ‘My daughter lost her way and I think some of that is my fault. I also made some judgements about Dylan that weren’t right. I got him wrong, and I’m sorry for that.’

‘He was intimidated by you,’ Kay says. ‘He knew you never liked him.’

‘I thought he was manipulating Issie. Like I said, I got it wrong.’

‘She manipulated him,’ Kay says.

I nod. ‘I am sorry,’ I say again as I turn to leave. There’s nothing more to add. I remind myself I have done what I came for and it is the right thing.

I am at my car on the other side of the road when she calls out after me. I stop and turn back. She has walked to the pavement and there’s something else in her face now when she looks at me that feels more like relief. ‘Thank you,’ she tells me. ‘I …’ She pauses. ‘Thank you, Jess.’

GONE: true crime podcast

Lucy Hawes

EPISODE 106: ISSIE ADAMS AND DYLAN WHITING: UPDATE

Hi, listeners and Happy New Year! This is the first podcast I have released this year and it’s only a short one, as it’s an update on a case I aired last August.

You’ll likely remember Issie Adams and Dylan Whiting, the teenagers who went missing in Lisbon, and were then associated with the death of Beatriz Motto.

With all fingers pointing at Dylan Whiting, there was a shocking turn of events on the day the Portuguese police filed for his extradition from the UK to Portugal. Issie’s mother, Jess Adams, admitted that it had been her daughter who was driving the car that killed Beatriz Motto on the night of the fourth of July.

This was a massive bolt out of the blue for the case. Dylan had professed his innocence one month earlier but it was still very much a battle of stories with the Adams versus the Whitings.

Defended by a top criminal barrister Jacob Gordon, on the third of January Issie was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. Prosecuted as a child, as she was seventeen on the night of the fourth of July, and taking into account factors such as previous good character, and that she eventually admitted to the offence, it’s expected she’ll get out after twelve months.

So that’s a wrap on this case, and I’ll say goodbye until next week when I am back with another exciting episode on the strange disappearance of fifty-three-year-old Moira Lowley fifteen years ago.

Stay safe, everyone.

Kay

CHAPTER FORTY

4 January

‘I’ve made a decision,’ Mike says as Kay sits opposite him in the empty café. It is 8 a.m. and he’s asked her to come in before he opens up for the day. ‘Things can’t keep going like they are. Last summer was hard enough, and the winter’s been dire. People don’t want greasy bacon baps and a cup of tea any more, they want coffees with fancy names and shots of caramel, and breakfast has to include a bloody avocado.’

Kay smiles though she can guess what’s coming.

‘That’s not me,’ he says. ‘I’m not interested in things like that. And the rent on this place is going through the roof. I’ve been approached by developers,’ he adds. ‘They want to build flats here.’

‘No,’ Kay says. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘I’m not going to,’ he agrees. ‘But I have been talking to someone who wants to build some restaurant-cum-yoga place.’ He runs his fingers across the table between them, distractedly drawing circles. ‘They’re offering me good money – not as much as I’d get for the flats, but this is single storey. It won’t affect anyone’s views.’

‘You’re actually going to sell?’

‘I don’t have a choice,’ Mike mutters. ‘And I’m sorry.’ He waves a hand in her direction. ‘Are you going to be all right?’

‘Yes.’ Kay laughs. ‘Of course I will. I’ll just have to get another job. There are enough coffee shops on the high street, one of them might need a waitress.’ She smiles thinly, she knew this was coming but she also knows the reality of finding something that’s flexible isn’t going to be easy.

‘Honestly,’ she adds. ‘Don’t worry about me. If the last year’s taught me anything it’s that there’s always a way.’

Mike nods as he gets up, scooping their empty mugs off the table and asking if she wants a refill.

‘Please,’ she says as she follows him into the kitchen.

‘I see Issie got eighteen months,’ he says.

‘Yes.’ Kay lingers by the sink while Mike turns the coffee machine on. She’s relieved the trial is over and done with and she knows Dylan is too. They’ve been living in limbo for the past four and a half months, in part because Kay couldn’t quite allow herself to believe something wouldn’t come back on Dylan.

‘I can’t help but think if it were Dylan it would have been a longer sentence,’ Kay murmurs. ‘And not just because he was an adult. But anyway. That doesn’t matter. It isn’t him. I guess I’m struggling to put it all behind me.’

Mike passes her a coffee and she wraps her hands around the mug. Paige has left her job at the café and moved to Bristol, Lucy’s hometown. Maybe it’ll do her good to find something new when everyone around her is moving on. Even Dylan, who has paid back his debts to Ron and met a new girl. Kay thinks she’s probably not ‘the one’ but still, he is only nineteen. There are years ahead of him yet. And Billy, who has made a new friend at school.

‘Time to focus on you,’ Mike says to her.

Kay smiles. Yes, possibly. Changes she makes won’t be anything grand but that’s the way she likes it. She won’t be taking the opportunity to try her hand at something new. She doesn’t have the financial luxury of swapping her life for another one, but if she can get a job making coffee for other people again, she’ll be happy.

Kay doesn’t need anything more than enough money for them to get by on. She’s seen first-hand that it doesn’t buy happiness. Everyone around her can have their dreams and plans. All she knows is that she wants back what she had before – a life without drama and for her sons to be happy. She thinks there’s a lot to be said for that.

Jess

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

One year later

It’s hard to imagine that a year of our lives has seeped away. Issie is nineteen now, she will be twenty this summer. The teenage years I had fretted about are nearly over. Now I wish I’d spent less time worrying about all the little things.

She is coming out of prison today. We are finally going home. It took four and a half months for her to be tried and sentenced, our defence barrister assuring me she would be out in a year.

During those months our relationship frayed, clinging on by threads with Issie either refusing to speak to me or crying, scared as to what the future held for her, layering the blame on me for it all, as if she had played no part.

My role as a mother was put to the test more than ever during the twelve months beforehand. Then, it was hard not to stay patient and take the battering from her, to be there at the drop of a hat in the moments when she needed me. Because I blamed myself too. Scott blamed me also, but I did not care about that.

I have two hours to kill before I meet Issie outside the prison. To pass the time, I find a small café where I grab a seat indoors by the window. There is a photo of her online today, alongside an article that reminds its readers she was the girl who killed a young woman in a car she wasn’t licensed to drive. They haven’t got all the facts right, but I’m used to this now. I usually skim past the headlines and don’t bother reading the rest. But, for some reason, today, I can’t help myself.

I have been approached by too many journalists wanting my side of the story for their own gossip and entertainment. My name has made headlines of its own. Mother hands over daughter to the police. You only have to read a line like that to form a judgement of who we are, and to imagine my daughter as some wild-eyed crazy killer who smiles as she’s led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

At least, this is what I torment myself with. For the last eighteen months I have been agonising over most things to do with Issie and the case. Not least whether or not I did the right thing. Because this is, of course, what everyone wants to know.

Other mothers are the worst – even those I once thought of as friends. ‘How could you do that to your daughter?’ another grammar school mother asked me on an old WhatsApp group, no doubt hoping to encourage a tirade of abuse against me for her own warped amusement. ‘Don’t you care about Issie?’

‘I did it because I care about her,’ I replied, before removing myself from the group and calling Lois in shock.

‘She didn’t even warrant a response,’ she’d said angrily. As always, Lois has been in my corner, defending me. But the truth is, these are only questions I ask myself.

I order a latte and open a book called Rescue and Restore, which could be about my life but is actually about furniture. I have been running an online version of my business over the last year, having moved to Portugal where I’ve been renting a small flat near to the prison.

As I flick through its pages my mobile rings and I glance at the screen to see Scott’s name.

I exhale a loud breath as I pick up. ‘Hi.’

‘What time are you getting her?’ Any pleasantries between us are long gone since I supposedly went behind his back. Scott has not forgiven me for what I did, and I am not sure if this is because I did it without telling him, or because of how it’s inadvertently affected him. I assume it’s a mixture of the two.

He’d yelled at me with such anger the day Issie had been sentenced. ‘What do you think she’s going to turn into after a year of being in prison?’ he’d asked.

‘What’s she going to turn into if we keep picking up the pieces?’ I’d retorted.

‘This is on you, Jess,’ he’d spat. ‘You’ll be the one picking up the pieces at the other end.’

I had laughed then. Of course it was on me, it has always been on me, though I wasn’t sure he realised what he’d said. But still Scott believed it would be his relationship with Issie that won through.

I might be the one who told the police the truth, but I am also the one who has visited Issie every week. Meanwhile Scott has flown over no more than three times in the last year, enduring half-hearted conversations that neither of them wanted to be part of. He hasn’t seen his daughter in over three months.

After two hours, I gather my things and make my way to the prison where I wait for her to be led out. It is a cold day but the sun has broken through the clouds by the time she appears in the doorway. I tell myself to keep breathing as I hold up my hand in a wave.

Issie stops when she sees me. It feels like an eternity passes before she lifts her hand back in response. A small smile hangs off the edge of her lips. It takes me back to when she walked away from me, through the gates at Gatwick airport.

I hold out my arms and she walks over to me, allowing me to wrap them around her and pull her in for a hug. She stays there, even as I kiss the top of her head. ‘Hey, darling,’ I whisper.

‘What time is our flight?’ she says when we eventually pull apart.

‘Six o’clock,’ I tell her. ‘We’ve got a couple of hours but we can go straight to the airport.’

Our relationship has improved over the last year. Bit by bit, I have seen the old Issie coming back to me, the one who is confident, who wants to work hard and go to art school. The one who isn’t defined by the things that make her father who he is.

I don’t know if she forgives me. Maybe she never will. It is a conversation I will have when we are home, but I’m also working on forgiving myself.

In the airport I grab us both a coffee. Issie sits beside me, hunched over her phone, furiously poring over snapchats and messages, drinking in everything she has missed.

‘Is that Dylan?’ I say, pointing to a photo. The image is swiftly replaced as Issie shrugs, placing her phone face down on the table as she picks up her coffee.

‘He’s met someone else,’ she tells me.

I nod, not quite knowing what to make of her interest as I study her reaction, trying to figure it out. Is she angry about this? She chews down on the edge of her coffee cup, her mind a million miles away and I watch the way her eyes narrow. ‘What is it?’ I say.

She shrugs again but won’t look at me.

‘Are you angry that his life’s moved on?’ I guess this is only natural.

‘I’m angry because it’s his fault,’ she murmurs.

‘His fault?’

‘He didn’t want to see the view,’ she says. ‘He only took me up there because she wanted to go. He was always trying to make me jealous.’

‘Issie?’ I say. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Beatriz. He was flirting with her, trying to make me jealous. She asked him for a lift. She didn’t even know I was going with them until I got in the car. In the back of the car,’ she spits.

‘You said you didn’t know her,’ I say, gaping at my daughter.

‘Yeah, well,’ she murmurs. ‘I didn’t, not till that night.’

I feel a fluttering of something tightening my chest, something I can’t put my finger on, or rather that I don’t want to dwell on.

An announcement is made, a call for our flight, telling us to go to our gate. Issie is getting up, downing her coffee and gathering her bags. ‘Come on then, Mum,’ she says.

I nod, silently, following her in picking up my belongings and then trail her through the crowds as we make our way to the gate.

I don’t want to think about it but I cannot help myself, a tiny thought creeping in to my head. It was an accident. Of course it was.

We reach the gate and she stops. I frown as she turns around and for a moment I do nothing but stare at her, searching for who she is. A stranger, who I don’t know at all. Or my girl, who I love. Who I need to believe.

She smiles at me then, cocks her head to one side. ‘We’re going home,’ she says softly, her eyes are filled with tears and I make a decision in this moment.

‘We’re going home, sweetheart,’ I smile back.

Acknowledgements

I am so excited to finally be sharing Someone Is Lying with you. It has been a long time coming as this is a book I wrote in 2023. In some ways it is one of the hardest I have written, as the second draft took a major U-turn and I ended up scrapping and restarting 60 per cent of the book. But it was all for the best. I love how the story has turned out and I hope that you loved it too.

And, on this note, I want to thank you for buying it, reading it and sharing it. Thank you to all the book bloggers and journalists, and the readers who spend time reviewing it online too, as this undoubtedly has a huge impact on new readers and sales.

The idea for the story came about from listening to too many true crime podcasts, and in particular I want to mention the team at RedHanded: they have kept me enthralled throughout many a car journey. There is some inspiration from tragic true stories but, as you will realise now you have read it, this isn’t what Someone Is Lying is about.

As research for Jess and Issie’s trips, I spent a wonderful weekend in Lisbon with my beautiful friend Deborah Dorman. I now fully realise why writers base their books abroad. While nearly all of mine are based along the south coast of England, and for now they will continue to be, we had so much fun in this gorgeous city. Please note that any representation of the Portuguese police in this book is entirely fictional.

As always I am eternally grateful to my amazing agent, Nelle Andrew, who has been with me on this journey for the last seven years. I couldn’t imagine doing this without you by my side. To my wonderful editor at Cornerstone, Emily Griffin, who turned the book around and edited it before leaving to do something more important (become a mum!). And therefore thank you to Claire Simmonds, because I couldn’t ask for someone more dedicated and insightful to step in and look after me. It’s a joy to work with every one of you.

To the wider publishing and agency teams who have been crucial in making this book a success. At PRH, many thanks to Rachel Kennedy, Hana Sparkes, Jess Muscio, Issie Levin, Alice Gomer, Emily Harvey, Jade Unwin, Kirsten Greenwood, Phoenix Curland, Emma Grey Gelder, Faye Collins, Rose Waddilove, Anne O’Brien, Jane Howard and Gray Eveleigh. And, at RML, to Rachel Mills, Charlotte Bowerman and Alexandra Cliff.

As always there are some very special and helpful people who deserve a big mention. And firstly, I have to send huge amounts of gratitude to Chris Bradford, who has enabled me to tackle crime writing with his knowledge and insights and being permanently on the end of the phone whenever I have questions. Chris, this one is dedicated to you and I mean it when I say I could not have written any of my books without you. I really do appreciate your time.

Also, thank you to those who have helped me with more personal questions: Louise Yadave and Tracy Gray, I really appreciate your generous time and honesty. You have both given me so much that has hopefully made this story more personal and true.

Finally, as always, I would like to thank my family for their constant love and support. To my mum, who continues to be one of my very early readers and who is so proud of everything I do. My husband, John, for your encouragement and unwavering belief and for making me a gorgeous new office in the garden. And to my beautiful children, Bethany and Joseph. I am so proud to be your mum. Thank you for supporting me so that I can do what I love.

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

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www.penguin.co.uk

First published by Penguin Books in 2025

Copyright © Heidi Perks, 2025

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover image © Silas Manhood / Trevillion
Cover designed in-house by Emma Grey-Gelder
Trevillion (SMD179361) with extra figure supplied directly by Silas

ISBN: 978-1-804-94647-3

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Table of Contents

- About the Author
- By the Same Author
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue

- PART ONE

- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen

- PART TWO

- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty

- PART THREE

- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Chapter Twenty-Four
- Chapter Twenty-Five
- Chapter Twenty-Six
- Chapter Twenty-Seven
- Chapter Twenty-Eight
- Chapter Twenty-Nine
- Chapter Thirty
- Chapter Thirty-One
- Chapter Thirty-Two
- Chapter Thirty-Three
- Chapter Thirty-Four
- Chapter Thirty-Five
- Chapter Thirty-Six
- Chapter Thirty-Seven

- PART FOUR

- Chapter Thirty-Eight
- Chapter Thirty-Nine
- Chapter Forty
- Chapter Forty-One

- Acknowledgements

- Copyright