Page 63 of Perfect Strangers

She sat down on the side of the bed and picked up the room’s phone.

‘What are you doing?’ said Josh.

‘It’s gone eleven and my mum gets into Heathrow any time now, I’m going to call her, tell her I’m okay.’

Josh walked over and took the receiver from her.

‘Not a good idea,’ he said, putting it back in its cradle. ‘The police could be monitoring her calls and trace it straight to this room.’

Sophie looked up at him.

‘But you said they weren’t looking for me.’

‘I said it wasn’t likely, but we don’t know what’s happened since yesterday, do we? It’s safer if we stay off the grid for a while.’

‘But I want to tell her I’m okay.’

Josh sighed and rubbed his chin.

‘Does she have an email address?’

‘Yes. I don’t know how often she uses it, though. She’s not exactly a fifteen-year-old girl.’

‘We can find an internet café and you can email her. Perhaps contact the police inspector who interviewed you too.’

‘Inspector Fox? I have his business card in my purse.’

‘Given that you disappeared straight after you had your flat turned over, it’s probably a good idea to tell him you’re okay, save him sending out a search party. Not that I think he would.’

‘But can’t the police trace us from the internet café?’

‘Possible, but by the time they find some grotty shop in the back of a newsagent’s, we’ll be long gone.’

Sophie looked around the suite anxiously.

‘We’re leaving?’

Josh laughed.

‘Make the most of it, Miss Aniston. As soon as we find out what we need, we’ll be moving on.’

Sophie nodded, not daring to admit she was disappointed.

20

Ruth rapped impatiently on the oak door. Where the hell was everyone? she thought, stepping back and gazing up at the bedroom windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sophie Ellis’s mother. With no sign of life i

nside, she took a moment to admire the architecture; Arts and Crafts, she thought idly, remembering a coffee-table book she had once read on the movement. Red brick, with a sloping burnt-orange slate roof, tall narrow windows and towering chimneys, it was the sort of thing they tried to imitate on estates in Chicago and Philly, but somehow they always managed to turn it horribly twee and Stepford Wives-y. The real thing, however, was impressive, if a little faded round the edges. The Ellis family obviously had money.

She knocked again, harder, harder than was probably necessary, as she was still pumped with emotion from her earlier argument with David. On the journey to Cobham she had been going over and over her decision to move in with him. Had it been the right one? So far, their relationship had worked when they had kept their distance. Proximity created intimacy – maybe too much, too soon.

‘Goddamn it,’ she said, focusing back on work, and pressing the doorbell once more. She supposed she could have spoken to Julia Ellis on the phone – or at least called first – but she had wanted to leave the office and drive out to Surrey to clear her head, to give her time to think.

It had been the right decision. She had been surprised how green and, to her eyes, rural it was out here, where Greater London melted into the rarefied commuter belt of Surrey. Wooden bus shelters, iron signposts, pubs with names like the Bull and Gate or the King’s Head, and a noticeably slower pace of life, had gone some way to improve her mood.

Ruth walked around to the side of the house and tried the garden gate. It clicked open. Well, that wouldn’t happen in London, she thought with a smile.

‘Mrs Ellis?’ she called, walking past a rose trellis and into the garden. ‘Anyone there?’