Free Road Ends by Mary Lawson Page A

told herself, but the dread remained. She must have fallen asleep then, sitting upright in the chair, because she seemed to be having a conversation with someone, and then she realized that the librarian was bending over her and saying gently that it was half past five and the library was closing.
    It was pouring rain and dark as midnight outside, but when she was still some distance away she saw that there were lights on in number 31 Lansdown Terrace. Relief rushed through her. The doorstep was empty but surely that meant someone hadtaken the suitcase inside. Maybe it was Cora, Megan thought. Maybe she’d got home before the others and had seen the luggage label and given a shriek of laughter, knowing it was Megan’s. She’d be in the kitchen now, preparing supper for the two of them.
    As she got closer she heard music thudding out from the house, very loud. Maybe that was what caused the dread to seep back into her. She went up the steps to the front door and stood for a moment, her heart thumping the way it had earlier in the day. Then she knocked. For a minute there was no response, and then she heard footsteps and the clicking of a lock and the door was opened by a girl with white lipstick and huge feathery eyelashes. She was smoking a tiny cigarette and wearing one of those infinitesimally small skirts. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and said, “Yes?”
    “Is Cora here?” Megan said, loudly, to be heard over the music.
    There was no way she could have known what the girl was going to say but she did know, nonetheless.
    “Who?” the girl said.
    “Cora Manning,” Megan said without hope. “She lives here.”
    She was suddenly so tired she was afraid she might fall down.
    “Are you from the United States?” the girl asked curiously.
    From somewhere inside the house someone shouted over the music, “She moved.”
    Megan leaned around the girl and shouted, “Where did she go? Do you know?”
    Another girl appeared. She was tall and skinny and wore glasses so big she looked like a bug, but she looked nice, Megan thought, and not as dim-witted as the first girl.
    “She left a couple of weeks ago,” the second girl said. She leaned against the wall beside the door. Behind her, two bicycles were leaning against the wall too, acting as coat racks. “You a friend of hers?”
    The music thumped. The singer wanted satisfaction about something and apparently couldn’t get it.
    “Yes,” Megan said. “She invited me to come over. From Canada. Have you seen a suitcase?”
    The girl said, “What—you mean you’ve just arrived? From Canada? Just now?”
    The first girl wandered off, twitching the tiny skirt in time with the music.
    “This morning,” Megan said. She felt sick. Surely no one would have stolen it. Surely they wouldn’t. “I left my suitcase here. Right here, outside the door.”
    “Probably got nicked,” the girl said. “Come in, we’ll ask the others.”
    There were a surprising number of others, six or seven at least. They were in a spectacularly untidy room off the hall, squashed together on a battered sofa or sprawled on cushions on the floor, watching television through a haze of cigarette smoke. It was impossible to hear what the characters on the television were saying over the pounding of the music, but it didn’t seem to worry anyone. They all looked half-asleep.
    “Has anyone seen a suitcase?” the girl with the glasses shouted. Several heads turned towards them.
    “Dark brown,” Megan said desperately. “And very big. Has anyone seen it?”
    “Hey!” one of the boys said, focusing on her with vague interest. “How’s the war going?”
    “What war?” Megan said.
    He laughed. “Nice one! ‘What war?’ The little one you lot got going in Vietnam.”
    “Oh,” Megan said. “I don’t know. I’m not American.”
    “What are you then?” he said, sounding annoyed.
    “Leave her alone, Zack,” the girl in glasses said. “She’s just arrived and she’s lost