Run Away by Laura Salters

Kayla, I’m so sorry,” she said, her words lulling with a gentle Yorkshire accent. Just like Sam’s. “This is so pathetic of me. I’ve never been such an emotional person but . . . losing your son . . . it just—­it ruins you.” Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, with grape-­sized dark bags underneath that betrayed her lack of sleep over the past ten days.
    “We don’t know that you’ve lost him for sure,” Kayla argued, albeit gently.
    “Oh, I know, love, but you know what they say about Thailand. Once you’ve disappeared there, you’re never coming back. Especially when there was so much blood, just from one boy . . .”
    “But I still think—­”
    “Come on, Kayla. There’s no use clutching at straws. You can’t lose that much blood and survive. Sam’s dad . . . I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s usually so hard. Steely faced. But not now. I’m the strong one of the pair of us these days.” A feeble laugh. “Sam took after me, you know. Always had his feelings on show.” Kayla winced at the past tense. It sounded like a fresh wave of tears had erupted behind Kathy’s eyes, but her face was dry. She had cried for so long that her body had abandoned all hope of trying to keep up.
    “That’s weird,” Kayla said. “In the past month, he never really . . .” She didn’t know how to approach the subject. She had no idea how much Kathy knew about her and Sam’s relationship. “I mean, he didn’t really talk about what was going on in his head. Kept his distance. Did he . . . did he talk to you about anything strange?”
    Kathy shook her head slowly, and not very convincingly. “Not really. He did seem a bit distant in the last six weeks, which wasn’t like him. The phone calls got a bit more abrupt, whereas usually he’d tell me every little detail. He spoke a lot about you, especially for the first month or so,” Kathy forced a smile. “But that’s why I didn’t think anything was wrong, Kayla, because I thought that if there was, he’d surely tell me.”
    Kayla nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I keep feeling angry at myself for not trying harder to make sure he was okay. But then I think that if anything were really wrong, like . . . like what the police are saying, he would have told me. We were pretty close.” As she talked, she was systematically destroying a discarded sugar wrapper in her fingertips. “I should have . . . I would have known.”
    “So you’d think. But one thing was a bit weird.” Kathy was staring out of the window, not focusing on anything in particular. “Sam was always good with money—­always. As a little kid, he would meticulously save every single copper he could in his piggy bank, until you physically couldn’t squeeze another penny in. He cried when I smashed it, so I bought him another, much bigger one. He just put all of the money from the first into that and kept saving. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” She sighed, taking a sip of what must have now been a rather tepid latte. “I guess it just took me by surprise when he phoned me a few weeks ago and said he needed to borrow some cash.”
    “He did?” This was news to Kayla. Sam hadn’t seemed particularly tight for money. Though he was rarely extravagant in his purchases, he would never turn down a meal out or a day trip for frugality’s sake.
    “Yes. He said he’d run out of funds quicker than he’d thought, and needed more if he was to follow the four of you to Cambodia after Phuket. I thought it was odd too, you know? He’d budgeted the trip so carefully. But I knew it must have been genuine for him to ask me. He knows I’m not exactly Richard Branson. I live in my overdraft most of the time. And considering how much he was asking for . . .”
    “How much?”
    Kathy pursed her lips and cradled her coffee cup between her hands. “Three thousand.”
    There it was again. That sudden sinking feeling in Kayla’s stomach that felt