The Likeness

“I was. I was legless. I don’t think I’ve ever been that drunk in my life.”

“No you weren’t. If you had been that drunk-”

“We had all been drinking pretty solidly for most of the night,” Abby said evenly, cutting him off. “Not surprisingly. It didn’t help; I don’t think any of us got much sleep. The next morning was pure nightmare. We were so upset and wrecked and hungover that we were practically dizzy, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t even see straight. We couldn’t decide whether to call the cops and report you missing, or what. Rafe and Justin wanted to do it-”

“Rather than leave you lying in a rat-infested hovel till some local yokel happened to stumble on you,” Rafe said through a cigarette, shaking Abby’s lighter. “Call us crazy.”

“-but Daniel said it would look weird; you were old enough to go for an early-morning walk or even skive off college for the day if you wanted to. He phoned your mobile-it was right there in the kitchen, obviously, but still, he figured there should be a call on it.”

“He made us have breakfast,” Justin said.

“Justin managed to get as far as the bathroom, that time,” said Rafe.

“We couldn’t stop fighting,” Abby said. She had picked up the doll again and was methodically, unconsciously plaiting its hair, over and over. “Whether we had to eat breakfast, whether to call the cops, whether we should leave for college like normal or wait for you to come back-I mean, the natural thing would have been for Daniel or Justin to wait for you while the rest of us headed in, but we couldn’t do it. The thought of splitting up-I don’t know if I can explain it, how badly that idea freaked us out. We were ready to kill each other-Rafe and I were screaming at each other, actually screaming-but the second someone suggested doing separate stuff, I literally went weak at the knees.”

“Do you know what I thought?” Justin said, very quietly. “I was standing there, listening to you three argue and looking out the window waiting for the police or someone to come, and I realized: it could be days. It could be weeks; this could go on for weeks, the waiting. Lexie could be there for… I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I could get through that day at college, never mind weeks. And I thought what we should really do was stop fighting and get a duvet and curl up under it, all four of us together, and turn the gas on. That was what I wanted to do.”

“We don’t even have gas,” Rafe snapped. “Don’t be such a bloody drama queen.”

“I think that was on all our minds-what we would do if you weren’t found right away-but nobody wanted to mention it,” Abby said. “It was actually a huge relief when the police showed up. Justin saw them first, out the window; he said, ‘Someone’s here,’ and we all froze, right in the middle of yelling at each other. Rafe and I started to go for the window, but Daniel said, ‘Everyone sit down. Now.’ So we all sat at the kitchen table, like we had just finished breakfast, and waited for the bell to ring.”

“Daniel answered it,” Rafe said, “of course. He was cool as ice. I could hear him out in the hall: Yes, Alexandra Madison lives here, and no we haven’t seen her since last night, and no there’s been no argument, and no we’re not worried about her, just unsure whether she’s coming to college today, and is there a problem, Officers, and this note of concern gradually seeping into his voice… He was perfect. It was absolutely terrifying.”

Abby’s eyebrows went up. “Would you have preferred him to be a babbling mess?” she inquired. “What do you think would have happened if you had answered that door?”

Rafe shrugged. He had started fiddling with the cards again.

“In the end,” Abby said, when it was obvious he wasn’t going to answer, “I realized we could go out there-actually, it would look weird if we didn’t. It was Mackey and O’Neill-Mackey was leaning up against the wall and O’Neill was taking notes-and they scared the living shit out of me. The plain clothes, these expressions that told you absolutely nothing, the way they talked-like there was no hurry, they could take all the time they wanted… I’d been expecting those two eejits from Rathowen, and it was obvious straight away that these guys were not the same thing at all. They were so much smarter and so, so much more dangerous. I’d been thinking the worst was over, nothing could ever be as bad as that night. When I saw those two, that was when it hit me that this was only just beginning.”

“They were cruel,” Justin said suddenly. “Horribly, horribly cruel. They stretched it out forever, before they told us. We kept asking what had happened, and they just stared at us with these smug blank faces and wouldn’t give a straight answer-”

“ ‘What makes you think something might have happened to her?’ ” Rafe put in, doing a viciously accurate send-up of Frank’s lazy Dublin. “ ‘Did someone have a reason to hurt her? Was she afraid of someone?’ ”