Page 75 of The Friend Request

‘Kim knows more than me,’ he says to PC Heywood. ‘About this man. He grew up here. They were together as teenagers, and he’s been contacting her again. As I’ve already told you, she kept it from me for weeks. He could be the one who’s taken Olivia.’

The kitchen is very still. PC Heywood looks at me. The male officer looks at me. Alex looks at me.

And the note is right there in my pocket.

NO POLICE.

YOUR CHILD’S LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.

I read those words standing in a ruined sitting room with glass on the rug and cold air pouring through the broken window. I read them in Jeff’s Land Rover on a dark verge with my daughter’s face behind my eyes. I read them at every red light and every junction, over and over, until they stopped being words and became a sound – a low, steady hum beneath everything, a warning I can feel in my bones.

The person who wrote that note has Olivia. The person who wrote it walked up to a cottage in the middle of nowhere, circled it in the dark, tried both doors, and threw a brick through the window. That person got close enough to my daughter to make her leave her house willingly, on foot, without a fuss. He’s patient. He’s close. He planned this.

And he told me not to do exactly what Alex is asking me to do right now.

If I say Ross’s name, these officers will run it. They’ll search for him, find him, pull him in. They’ll knock on doors and make calls and leave a trail a mile wide, and Ross will know we’ve involved the police. Ross knew where I was staying in Wales, he knew how to gain my daughter’s trust. He knew when she’d be free to leave the house. He might be watching us now, but if he isn’t – if there’s any chance he doesn’t yet know the police have been called, Olivia is still safe.

The note said no police.

PC Heywood speaks gently. ‘Mrs Stiller. Kim. Who is this man we should know about?’

I look at Alex. I look at the officer’s pen, poised above the page, ready to write a name that will set everything in motion.

I think about my daughter. Thirteen years old. Long-limbed, always in those oversized hoodies, hair she’s started caring about but still forgets to brush. The way she rolls her eyes at me and then curls up beside me on the sofa ten minutes later. The way she says ‘Mum’ – two versions, one for when she wants something and one for when she’s frightened, and I can tell the difference from another room.

I would do anything for her. Anything.

Even this.

‘That’s nothing,’ I say. ‘The truth is, I kissed a guy in a bar and made it sound like I had some sort of stalker to make it easier for my husband to forgive me.’

Alex goes rigid beside me. I can feel it – every muscle in his body locking at once, his knee pressing hard against mine under the table, his breath catching.

‘Kim, why don’t we⁠—?’

‘My husband’s upset,’ I say, staring at PC Heywood and not at Alex, because if I glance at him I’ll break. ‘We’re both upset. He’s confused. There’s no old boyfriend, the guy I kissed was a stranger, nobody. I don’t know who broke into the cottage. And I don’t know where my daughter is.’

My voice is level. Steady. Not mine.

PC Heywood holds my gaze for too long. I can see her weighing it – the unspoken name, the husband insisting and the wife denying, the missing child between them. She writes something on her pad. The male officer shifts by the back door. Alex’s breathing is audible now, short and controlled, the sound of a man biting down on something he can’t swallow.

‘All right,’ PC Heywood says. ‘Let’s focus on Olivia.’

She turns the page and starts asking about recent photographs, clothing, known friends, usual routes. I answer. I answer everything she asks, clearly and calmly, because I can do that – I can be the mother who helps, the mother who cooperates, the mother who gives them what they need to search.

Alex doesn’t look at me again. He sits beside me with his hands on the table, his jaw clenched, and his silence fills the kitchen like pressure before a storm. He’ll ask me the moment they leave. He’ll corner me in the hallway, or the bedroom, or the dark space between the landing and our daughter’s empty room, and he’ll want an answer I can’t give.

But that’s later. That’s not now.

Now there is only the note, and the lie, and the small, terrible hope that I’ve made the right choice.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The front door closes, and the house goes quiet.

The patrol car starts up outside, the low rumble of the engine as the officers pull away from the kerb, and then nothing. No radio, no voices, no footsteps on the path. Just the silence of a house with a child’s bedroom sitting empty upstairs.

Alex is standing by the sink.