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With a stab of her finger, Lucy erases him.
Miss Clay summons Ellie Russell to the door, sweeping the playground for Ellie’s mum.
‘Message two, received today, 10.04 a.m.’ Again, the voice changes. ‘Hey, Lucy, Graham Covenant again. Didn’t want you to miss out on—’
Swearing, Lucy consigns him to the ether. Kids are streaming out steadily now. The air fills with screams and shouts.
‘Message three, received today, 11.26 a.m.’
‘Hi, Lucy…’
That voice belongs to Ed, Billie’s boyfriend. From his words, it seems they’re having problems again. Lucy can barely tune in. She saves the message, skips ahead. At the door to Fin’s classroom, Miss Clay spots her and waves.
‘Message four, received today, 12.17 p.m.’
Crackles on the line. Clicks and whistles.
‘…Lucy…’
2
It’s him. It’s Daniel.
And yet something in his voice – dark,alien– isn’tDaniel at all. In an instant, Lucy knows she’s utterly unprepared for how bad this might get.
Around her, the playground darkens. The sound of children’s voices fades. Time slows, then stops completely. Parents and offspring become graveyard statues welded to a tarmac sea. Colour seeps from their skin, their clothes. Lucy feels no wind in her hair, no speckling of rain on her cheeks. Her heart doesn’t beat. The blood in her veins doesn’t flow.
The phone is clamped so tightly to her ear that the hiss and burr of static fill her head. She concentrates hard, as if by deciphering those electronic shrieks she can divine Daniel’s location, his intent. She hears wind, or what sounds like it. A chaotic symphony of whistles and chirrups, as if the broadcast is reaching her from deep space.
Lucy feels sure the connection is about to drop entirely. And then, with a buzzing that makes her wince, the clarity on the line is restored and she hears something else, something she didn’t expect, another voice, fainter than the first, one that she recognizes as clearly as her own: ‘Daddy, no—’
3
The world opens beneath her feet. Lucy feels herself falling.
Around her, time pulls another trick. Because now it’sherreality skidding to a halt, while everything else stirs back to life. Colour pours into those it abandoned. Movement returns to those it left.
Lucy’s knees strike the tarmac, twin gunshots of pain.Sounds of delight rush into the playground. Screams and laughter and high-pitched chatter. ‘Fin?’ she asks, dumbfounded. But this is a recording, not a live connection. Her son can’t answer from three hours in the past. And yet she can’t help calling his name. ‘Fin!’
A scream follows that burns her throat.
In the playground, kids stop their games. Shocked parents pivot towards her.
The static in Lucy’s ear dies, replaced by the measured tones of the voicemail assistant: ‘To hear the message again, press one. To save it, press—’
Noemie crouches at her side. ‘Hon, what is it? What’s happened?’
But all Lucy’s attention is on Fin’s teacher.
Miss Clay is walking across the playground, a riot of orange legs and yellow tartan. ‘Mrs Locke?’ she calls.
Lucy shakes her head, but she can’t deny her identity. Nor the news she knows is coming.
‘Are you here for Fin? Did his dad not tell you?’
Fighting her dizziness, she forces herself upright. Her stomach grips so hard she thinks she might be sick. ‘Where is he?’
Miss Clay takes a step back. ‘Mr Locke came by mid-morning. Said Fin had a dentist’s appointment you’d forgotten about. He signed him out and off they went. That’s OK, isn’t it? I mean, you guys, I didn’t …’