Free The Stranger on the Train by Abbie Taylor

didn’t want to hear any more.
    â€œI’m sorry.” Rafe sounded subdued. “Really, I am.”
    Emma couldn’t answer.
    â€œHow are you doing?”
    How did he bloody well think?
    â€œI feel like the world’s biggest loser.” Rafe hit his fist off his rucksack. “I shouldn’t have left you. I should have pressed the alarm.”
    Emma said dully: “Why would you have? I told you not to.”
    â€œBut I shouldn’t have listened. You were in no state to know what you were doing.”
    Emma picked at a piece of rust on the railing. Beside her, Rafe shifted unhappily from foot to foot. One of those restless types who always had to be doing something. She didn’t attempt to make it easy for him.
    â€œWell,” he said at last. “I’ll go, then. Give you some peace.”
    He disappeared from the edge of her vision. More scuffling as he tried to fit his rucksack back through the door. On an impulse, Emma swung around.
    â€œWait.”
    â€œYes?” Rafe turned. In the light from the sky, his eyes were a peculiar color, so light brown they were almost golden.
    He’d tried to help her, she couldn’t deny that. It may not have worked, but at least he’d tried. It was far more than any of those other people, the ones who’d been outside the café, had done.
    â€œYou were in the police,” she said. “Would you know if there’s something they’re not telling me? Some reason they’re not looking for him properly?”
    â€œWhy would you think that?”
    â€œSomething’s wrong.” Now that she was saying it, it made her even more certain. “I don’t know why, but they don’t seem to believe me. The newspapers aren’t interested either. Ritchie wasn’t in the headlines this morning, and he’s a little boy who’s been kidnapped, he should be in the headlines. He should be. It’s like they think I’ve made the whole thing up. Why on earth would I do that? If Ritchie hasn’t been kidnapped, then where on earth do they think—”
    Her voice had been rising, and now it turned into a croak. She couldn’t finish the sentence.
    Rafe said: “I’m sure for something like this, a missing child, they’d be doing everything they could.”
    â€œThen why haven’t they found him?” Emma cried. “Why are they just here all the time, sitting in the flat instead of going out looking for him?”
    Rafe looked distressed.
    â€œSometimes you just need a lead. I’m assuming you’ve been over it all a hundred times? You haven’t missed anything, even something really small, that could help identify the person who took him?”
    â€œDon’t you think I’d have said if I did? I keep thinking about it. On and on and on. It’s all I think about.”
    â€œI know,” he said. “I know.”
    Emma turned away. It was hopeless. Hopeless. He was no good to her at all.
    â€œMaybe I should get a private detective,” she said, more to herself than to him.
    â€œI wouldn’t like to say.” Rafe sounded uncomfortable. Then he said: “What is it? What’s wrong?”
    Emma was gripping the railing, staring over the balcony. At the grid of streets, the cars, the rows of wheelie bins five floors down.
    â€œAre you all right?” Rafe asked.
    â€œSomething . . .” she said.
    What had it been? She thought back, trying to recap the last few seconds. They’d been talking about the police and then . . . what? What had put Antonia into her head, flashing by, so suddenly like that? She strained to pull the image back but it fled, tapering to a dot, like a rat showing the tip of its tail.
    â€œNo.” Frustrated again, she shook her head. “No. It’s gone.”
    â€œIt’ll come back,” Rafe assured her. “When you’re ready, if it’s important,