Don't Come Looking by AJ Campbell (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

it out. This isn’t helping anyone or solving anything.’ I prise them off each other like a couple of pieces of stubborn Velcro. ‘What’s got into you two?’

Annie shakes her shirt back into place. She straightens the collar and rubs the scratches on her neck. ‘Get out of my house. Both of you.’ Her voice is shrill, piercing like a whistle. ‘Get out.’

Sasha grabs the laptop and rushes to the front door, peering over her shoulder as if frightened Annie might chase after her. ‘Hang on, Sasha!’ I call out. But she’s not listening.

I follow her into her house and Marc’s office, where she plugs in the laptop and asks it, ‘What else are you hiding?’ She looks at me. ‘We might find a clue on here about what’s happened to Marc.’ With hands shaking as much as her voice, she lifts the lid. The screensaver of her family smiles back at her. A pitiful whimper escapes her mouth. ‘I hope he uses the same password as his computer.’ She enters 7June2001. ‘Thank God for that.’ She sighs. ‘I don’t even know what I’m looking for.’

‘Here, let me look,’ I say.

She slides the laptop over to me. It hasn’t been wiped like the computer, but it certainly appears to have had a good clean-up. Desktop files cover the family holiday screensaver. I open up several of them. Nothing untoward arouses my interest. I click on Finder and have a browse. There’s surprisingly little saved. Clicking on Trash, I find nothing. Strange?

‘Mum.’

Sasha mutters, ‘Not now, Hannah.’

‘Mum, where are you? I need your help.’

‘You go,’ I say.

‘I’ll be straight back.’

I open Outlook and browse through the emails. There are only twenty or so sitting in the inbox. Someone has had a good tidy-up of them. Who has been busy? Luke? Or perhaps Marc has been accessing his emails from another device? I scan through them, picking out a series of autoresponders from a place called the Green Tree Clinic all delivered within the last week. They have all been opened. I click on each to find a welcome to their online mental health counselling.

Sasha returns as my phone buzzes. I remove it from my back pocket. It’s Rob. ‘I need to take this,’ I say, stepping outside the room to take the call. He needs to know about JJ Harper’s involvement with Art.

‘Finally. I was getting a bit bored of telephone ping-pong,’ Rob says.

‘It may have slipped your notice, but I am on annual leave.’ I stare at Sasha through the doorway. Her fingers stab the keyboard.

‘I know, but I needed to ask you where you’ve filed the Carlisle report. Arthur wanted me to make some amendments. Don’t worry, I found it. And now something else has come up I thought you’d want to know about. Your friend, whose husband walked out.’ He pauses.

I turn my attention to my colleague. ‘What about her?’ I whisper.

A high-pitched moan sounds. I pop my head around the office door. Sasha, ghostly-white, grabs hold of the desk to steady herself as she stumbles towards me.

‘Don’t go anywhere. I’ll call you straight back,’ I say, and end the call.

I step into the office. With her mouth gaping open, Sasha stares at me as if she’s just witnessed a car crash and proceeds to vomit gin-smelling liquid across my trainers.

I do a double take at the laptop, unable to believe the image before me. Sasha reaches out, grabs the bin beside the desk, and continues to retch. I step back against the wall, unable to release my gaze from the image smearing the screen of a half-naked Marc in bed with an equally half-naked Luke.

Thirty-Six

‘This can’t be real. It can’t be,’ Sasha says, wiping her mouth with her wrist.

I stare at the screen. Marc and Luke are lying on their sides, facing each other as if deep in a conversation no one else should hear. Along with the smell of vomit wafting up from my trainers, the image cramps my stomach. Luke has his hand on Marc’s chin as if he is stroking it. Sasha and Marc’s blue patchwork throw covers them both from the waist down. No wonder Sasha has been sick.

How could you, Marc? You are a happily married family man.

Were – were a happily married man.

I sigh heavily with the ever-increasing realisation that rarely do we truly know anyone.

‘In our bed too,’ she whimpers. ‘Get rid of it. Destroy it. I never want to see it again.’

‘Mum? Where are you?’

‘When will they ever leave me alone?’

My eyes dart from her to the screen. I rush to click the laptop shut as Harry appears. He steps backwards. ‘What is that smell?’

‘I’m not feeling well,’ Sasha says.

He sniffs. ‘It stinks of alcohol. Have you vommed?’

‘Harry, not a great choice of words,’ Sasha says.

He bends down and puts his arm around her. ‘Come and sit down, Mum.’

She shakes him off. ‘No, I’m fine.’

‘Mum, you’re not well.’ He tries to make her sit down, but she worms away from him.

‘I’ve got stuff to do. What is it you want?’

‘I feel bad asking you now.’

‘I’m fine. What is it?’

‘Can you pick me up from town tomorrow evening? A group from school are going out. I said I’d go for a while.’ He looks at me, then at Sasha as he registers the laptop. ‘You found it. Where was it?’

‘In the filing cabinet.’ Sasha’s pale face flushes.

‘It can’t have been. I checked there when Dad first disappeared.’

‘It was. I was looking for some paperwork and found it.’

Confusion squeezes his temple. ‘I went through those drawers one by one. You were standing there. Don’t you remember?’

She takes a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. ‘You didn’t look hard enough. It was there.’

‘I know what I saw.’

‘You are mistaken.’

Oh, how people weave webs of lies. Each one threaded so tightly around the next until the mess they’ve created becomes impossible to unravel. I’ve seen it so many times.

Sasha closes her eyes and slowly breathes out. ‘Please, Harry. Go and carry on with what