Free All That Follows by Jim Crace Page A

shakes his head, tries to drive the memory away. That final part is far too real, too near the truth, to contemplate again.
    Lucy should be calling soon. He’s almost eager for it now. Let’s get it over with. He sits down on the futon with his cell phone resting on the arm. While he waits, prompted by his success with tracing the Emmersons last night, he idly enters “TelecomUK” and types in “Sickert,” the name of Francine’s dead first husband. It’s something that for fear of finding nothing he hasn’t dared to do, at least in any depth, since Celandine’s original e-mail and phone accounts were canceled. Where should he start his search? He cannot specify a town or approximate a location code, a country even, but to satisfy the Web site’s insistence, he narrows the field and offers the initial C . All he is offered in return is “Too many results found. Refine your search.” This is not the way, Leonard thinks, closing the tab impatiently. He’ll not secure a lead that easily. Instead, he Googles “UK Only, Celandine.” It is the kind of given name a girl might either hate or love so much that she could never abandon it, no matter what. Francine’s daughter never claimed to dislike her name, as far as he can recall, although she disliked many things, given half a chance. In fact, as a teenager she decorated the ceiling of her bedroom with suspended models of flying swallows, the bird from which her name (in Greek) was taken. They even had to call her Swallow for a while. More than fifty thousand results pile and tile onto the screen, twenty-five to the page. He shuffles through the openers as quickly as he can, but everything is horticultural—the greater celandine, the lesser celandine, the marsh celandine, the edible celandine—until the fourteenth page, where there are links to a Celandine Café in Bath and a sailboat called Celandine for hire in Falmouth Harbor. He does not reach the fifteenth page. His cell phone rings, and it is Lucy, button-bright and punctual.
    “My God, that was so weird last night, about the bike,” she says, before Leonard has a chance to speak. “How did you know about the bike? Did I say anything? What did I say? I told my mum I’d had it nicked. I’d flogged it, though. Now she thinks some bloke has found it. Wow, that’s hilarious! Except it’s put me in a fix.”
    “Listen,” Leonard says.
    “I’m listening.”
    “Today.”
    “Midday, I’ll be there, yeah?”
    “I won’t be there. Sorry, Lucy, but I can’t.”
    “Don’t say you’ve changed your mind.”
    “I haven’t changed my mind. Your idea’s genius, it is—”
    “But? But?”
    But it’s too risky, Leonard wants to say. It might be safe enough for you. You’re just a lively kid who wants to rescue Dad. But I’m an adult and I have to be sensible, I have to be responsible. Except he dares not speak those words to her. Sensible. Responsible . Those are the words that teachers use on school reports for someone dull.
    “Francine isn’t up for it,” he says, though he says it softly, just in case his lie can fly the nine kilometers to where his wife works.
    “Oh, shit. Why not?”
    “Well, number one, it’s kidnapping a teenager, and that’s against the law, big-time … she says.”
    “But I’m the one that’s up for it. It’s my idea.”
    “I told her that. She says you’re just a child. I know, I know. She’s anxious that she’ll be held responsible. Even if it’s not kidnapping exactly. She could be done for wasting police time.”
    “That is fucking useless, isn’t it?”
    “All right, calm down.”
    “I don’t feel calm. I am pissed off.”
    “Well, don’t blame me.”
    “I’m not pissed off with you.” A pause. “So is she there?”
    “Francine?”
    “Yes.”
    “She’s gone to work.”
    “Why all the whispering?”
    “I promise you, she isn’t here.” He’s frightened of this girl.
    “Call her. Let me speak to her.”
    “There isn’t any