I Found You Read Online Free PDF Page A

kind of comment on how incredibly good-looking he is. Maybe say something about his resemblance to Ben Affleck. But the policewoman doesn’t; she merely tucks it into her notebook and says, ‘I’ll get it back to you, I promise. In the meantime, speak to his friends and family. His colleagues. Maybe someone there can shed some light.’
    After the policewoman leaves, Lily stands for a few minutes and stares out of the window. Below her is asmall car park. Carl’s black Audi A5 is there, where he parked it after their trip to the supermarket on Sunday. Just the thought of supermarket shopping with Carl makes her want to curl herself into a tight ball and howl.
    Then she turns to face their home. The flat that Carl chose for them, a brand-new flat in a brand-new development, the kitchen never used before they used it, the toilet still with a paper band across the lid. A brand-new place to start their brand-new life. With a heavy heart she starts opening drawers and searching through paperwork, trying to find the one small thing she didn’t know about her husband that might unlock the mystery of where he has gone.

Five
     
    The rain finally stops at five in the morning. The sun’s gentle ascent turns the sky silver-grey and the insolent clamour of birdsong and rasp of boats being heaved down the slipway brings Alice to consciousness. It’s a rough awakening. She fell asleep only an hour ago, having spent the preceding five hours in a state of heightened alertness, aware of every tonal shift in the background hum, every creak of the old house, every flicker of moonlight ricocheting off the surface of the sea beyond her window.
    It isn’t the first time there’s been a strange man sleeping in the studio. She’s rented it out to many strangers over the years. And to strangers much stranger than Frank. But at least she knew who they were, where they came from, why they were there. They had a context.
    But this man, ‘Frank’, he’d entered stage left, silently, without a script. Charming as he is – and he is, actually – it’s unnerving. The bits and pieces in his pockets revealed nothing other than that he’d travelled to Ridinghouse Bay from King’s Cross on Tuesday night and that at some other point in his recent history he’d spent twenty-three pounds in Robert Dyas and bought a bagel and a can of Coke from Sainsbury’s.
    He’d appeared in the kitchen after his bath, in Kai’s clothes, looking pink and raw and deeply embarrassed. His thick hazel hair was damp and wavy and he was barefoot. Lovely feet, Alice had noted. For the record. She’d watched him eating his pizza, seen him trying to control the impulse to stuff it down his throat with pure, wild hunger. She’d offered him beer and he’d looked confused for a moment, possibly trying to decide whether he was a beer-drinker or not. ‘Go on,’ she’d said. ‘At least we’ll know that about you then.’ So, he’d had a beer and it had been a tiny bit awkward, the four of them standing around eating pizza with a big scared man in a teenager’s hoodie. Hard to know what to say, really.
    When he’d gone to bed her children had all turned and looked at her with cold disapproval.
    ‘What’, Jasmine had managed eventually, ‘are you doing? Mum?’
    ‘Where’s your compassion?’ she’d said. ‘Poor man. No jacket. No money.’ She’d gestured at the kitchenwindow, at the fat, angry rain pounding off the glass. ‘In this.’
    ‘There’s other places he could have gone,’ Kai had added.
    ‘Yeah,’ she’d said. ‘Like where?’
    ‘I dunno. A B and B.’
    ‘He’s got no money, Kai. That’s the whole point.’
    ‘Yeah, well, I don’t see why that’s our problem.’
    ‘Jesus,’ Alice had groaned, despite knowing that her children were right, ‘you kids. You’ve got no human decency, have you? What do they teach you at school these days?’
    ‘Er, about paedophiles and conmen and voyeurs and rapists and—’
    ‘They do not,’