‘What… what do you want to know?’
‘Everything. Start from the beginning.’
Before she did so, she snorted the snot away from her nose, cleared her throat, and sat upright, composed.
‘Come on, El,’ she told herself. ‘Come on. You’ve got this.’ She gave a shake of her head, slapped her cheeks a couple of times, and then suddenly her face fell flat, as if she’d become a different person. The shuddering had stopped, the rapid breathing, the tears, the sniffling – she had even stopped playing with the tissue paper. Somewhere in her brain, she had flicked a switch and now she was the epitome of calm and resolve. ‘We’d arranged it ages ago. It’s one of our things. Right before the new summer holiday season starts, we spend the couple of weeks beforehand going out and celebrating, enjoying ourselves because we know we won’t be able to for the next couple of months. The season’s so full on that we aren’t always able to catch up or meet up, and it’s even more difficult when some of us are in different countries. We have these nights as our last hurrah, if you want to call it that. And last night was no different. It was me, Ange, Xan, and Zoë. The four horsewomen, we call ourselves. We’ve been together for years. Ange and I went to school together and went into the industry at the same time. Then we met Xan and Zo when we were working with TUI. Fortunately, most of the time we’re all based at Southend Airport or Stansted, so we’re never too far from one another during the off season.’
‘Where did you go last night?’ Tomek asked.
‘Memo, in Southend.’
‘What time did you get there?’
Elodie pulled out her phone and unlocked it. For a few seconds, she scrolled through the device, searching for her answer. ‘Ten fifty-three,’ she said. ‘Zoë and I went in first to get the drinks while the others wanted to get cash out.’
‘What time did you leave?’
More checking of the phone. This time, she flipped the screen round to show him. ‘One fifteen am,’ she said. On the screen was her Uber app, with the name of the driver, the exact time they’d been picked up, and the route they’d taken home. Tomek reached out for the device and took it from her. He observed the map, noting all the local landmarks and the points at which they’d stopped.
‘Am I right in thinking you dropped Angelica off first?’
Elodie nodded. ‘She lives closest.’
‘And the rest of you?’
‘I’m the farthest away. Well, actually, no, that’s not true. Xanthia lives the farthest away, but she stayed round Zoë’s last night because she’s all the way out in Chelmsford and none of us earns enough money to be able to pay for the cab all the way back to there.’
Tomek passed the phone over to her. He wondered how Chey and Rachel were getting on, speaking with Angelica’s other friends.
‘Were your friends all as drunk as you?’ he asked.
Elodie slotted the phone between her leg and the side of the sofa and wrapped her shawl around her tighter.
‘We were all pretty drunk. We’d had a couple at the Last Post before going to Memo. But out of all of us, I’d say Ange was the drunkest. I mean, I’ve seen her at her worst, and she was very near that.’
‘At her worst, how?’
Elodie’s eyes fell to the floor, where she hesitated, lost in thought. ‘These guys just kept buying her drinks. About four or five of them. I’d lost count at one point, stopped caring. But she was all over them, grinding, dancing.’
‘Does that happen often?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe. She always gets the most attention on nights out. It’s like all the men just flock to her, like she’s got some sort of cock signal that calls out to all the arseholes. But she never does anything with them, never kisses them or anything. She likes to tease them. She’ll let them buy her a drink, and then she’ll move on to the next one. It’s a cheap night out, but it’s also stupid. I’ve warned her so many times about the dangers of it. That’s why we always go out together and look out for each other.’
Tomek sensed there was something Elodie wasn’t sharing.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, last night, there was this guy, right? Tall, dark and handsome – her type, down to a T – all covered in sweat and his eyes as wide as the fucking DJ’s decks, right? He comes up to her at the bar and tries to spike her drink. I didn’t see it, but Xan did. We tried telling someone but nobody listened to us, so we moved to a different part of the club. He found us a couple of minutes later and went straight back to Ange. He was besotted with her, like he had a hard-on and wanted to rub it out against her.’
‘But you didn’t let him?’
‘I wish. We told her he’d tried to spike her drink earlier, but she didn’t care. She told us to trust her and then she went off with him, dancing with him, grinding all over him.’
Tomek tried not to imagine the twenty-nine-year-old Angelica gyrating her hips against a man off his face, because he was afraid the girl would transform into his daughter. While she was still only thirteen, he didn’t want to think about how that might be her someday – in as little as five years – putting herself in danger, at the mercy of disgusting men like the one Elodie had just described.
‘Did anything happen between the two of them?’ he asked.
‘No. We pulled her away and then we went home before anything could.’
‘How did he react?’
‘He followed us out of the club.’
‘Did he follow you in the cab?’
Elodie paused, staring into the carpet again. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see. We were so focused on getting ourselves out of there that I kind of forgot about him.’
Tomek made a note to visit the nightclub. They had a long time until it opened, but he could guarantee there would still be workers setting everything up for a Saturday night of alcohol-fuelled debauchery and antics.
So far, everything had made sense to him. The group had gone out, they’d had a good time, they’d come back home, and then in the time between getting out of the cab and turning up to work in the morning, Angelica had gone missing. She had left her home, and not returned.
‘Has she ever done anything like this before?’
It didn’t take long for Elodie to respond. ‘Loads of times.’
‘As in, she’s gone home, left the house shortly after in the middle of the night, and then no one’s been able to contact her?’
‘Oh! You meant that?’ Elodie scratched the back of her head. ‘She’s only done that a couple of times. Sorry, I thought you meant whether she’d danced with guys in the club before, because she’s always doing that. She’s always the one to make conversation with guys on a night out – it helps that they always come up to her in the first place, like I said, but she loves it.’
