Page 93 of Two Hit Wonder

It was absurd. It was completely absurd. Mo wouldn't take a train to Scotland on her own. Mo couldn't even take the tube without complaining about how long it took. Mo thought anything north of Birmingham was basically the Arctic.

But nothing else made sense. And Mo had been so angry lately, so unreachable, and the last thing Iona had done was scream at her about being a brat. The words felt like glass in her throat now.

"I'll call Maeve," Iona said.

She hung up and found Maeve's number with fingers that didn't want to cooperate. She pressed call and held the phone to her ear, willing Maeve to answer, please answer, just this once answer the bloody phone.

It rang. And rang. And rang.

Then: "This is Maeve. Leave a message or don't, I'm not particularly fussed either way."

The voicemail beeped.

Iona opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She ended the call and stared at the screen, at Maeve's name, at the empty silence of the flat around her.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The girl standing at the gate looked like she'd been dragged backwards through several hedges and at least one ditch. Possibly through a field as well.

Maeve had been in the kitchen, failing to make herself anything that might be construed as nutritious and considering eating cereal for the third day in a row for dinner when she’d heard rustling in the garden. She’d been expecting Eejit, come to beg for a snack, or, more likely, a bite, but when she glanced out of the window, she instead found a bedraggled teenager staring at the cottage like she wasn't sure whether to knock or run.

"Mo?"

She was out the door before her brain caught up with her legs.

Mo's jeans were creased and mud-splattered. Her hair had escaped whatever style it had started the day in and was now attempting several styles at once, none of them successful. She had a rucksack over one shoulder and an expression that was trying very hard to be defiant but kept slipping into something closer to terrified.

"Hi," Mo said.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Nice to see you, too."

Maeve looked past her, half-expecting Iona to materialize from behind a hedge. The lane was empty. No car. No taxi. Just Mo, standing there like she'd walked out of a fever dream.

"How did you even get here?"

"Train. Then a bus. Then I walked." Mo's chin lifted. "It wasn't that hard."

"It's a four-hour journey. More, with the bus."

"Five and a half, actually. The bus was late."

Maeve stared at her. Mo stared back. "I suppose you’d better come in."

Mo followed her inside, and Maeve’s brain ran at a hundred miles an hour trying to figure out just what the hell was happening here. Mo. Here. In her cottage. What… She took a breath and still couldn’t quite make sense of it. So instead she put the kettle on. "Tea? Coffee?"

"Tea, please." Mo sank into a chair at the kitchen table, her rucksack still clutched to her chest like a shield.

Maeve's brain was slowly starting to work again, which meant it was starting to panic. Shit. Iona. "Does your mother know you're here?"

Mo's silence was answer enough.

"Right." Maeve held out her hand. "Phone."

"It's dead."

"Then we'll charge it while I call her. Give it here."