BETH THOMAS
His Other Life

Copyright

AVON

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2015

Copyright © Beth Thomas 2015

Cover images © Nikki Dupin 2015

Illustration © Helen Musslewhite 2015

Beth Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007544844

Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780007544837

Version: 2015-01-08

Dedication

For my Babbagee.

You may be a sour-faced puss,

but it’s not your fault.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Keep Reading …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Beth Thomas

About the Publisher

ONE

There’s a text on my husband’s phone. It’s lying on the counter near the kettle and I just heard it vibrate. He’s turned the sound off, probably thinking I wouldn’t hear it – that’s the only reason someone would put their phone on silent, right? – but I still can. It sounds like an automatic gun; our neighbours probably heard it. Pam and Mike next door are no doubt up off their sofa already, frantically dialling three nines before you can say Crimewatch.

I look over at the phone but it’s face down, probably so that it doesn’t light up noticeably when texts or calls arrive. Bit of a pointless precaution if you ask me, given that it sounds like a horse falling downstairs. Maybe it’s also a precaution against someone – well, let’s be honest, me – getting a glimpse of the name of anyone who might call or text.

Eventually the glasses and cutlery stop rattling from the aftershocks and I glance over at hubby to see if he’s noticed. Of course he’s noticed; the house shifted on its foundations. But he’s not going over there to read the message, or even check to see who it’s from. Why is that?

‘I think you just got a text,’ I say über-casually, then pick up a tea towel and saunter over to the draining board. ‘Want me to see who it was?’

He’s working on getting a particularly stubborn bit of baked cheese off the side of the lasagne dish and doesn’t look up: this job apparently requires full concentration. ‘Oh, did I? No, no need,’ he says lightly. ‘I’ll have a look in a minute.’

I nod slowly. ‘Oh, OK.’

Adam finishes the dish, carefully rinses the soap off under the cold tap, then places it gently upside down on the draining board. He empties the washing-up bowl, turns it over, wipes its base, then wipes the excess water from the draining board. Finally he turns and walks to where I’m listlessly drying a wine glass. He’s smiling as he reaches out towards me but I don’t move. As soon as his fingers touch the tea towel in my hand, they stop approaching and intertwine themselves into the fabric, drying off.

‘Great grub, Gracie,’ he says, then grins and raises his head to look at me. ‘And I’m pleased to announce that the Wife of the Year award goes to …’ He performs a miniature drum roll with his index fingers on the kitchen side. ‘Oh, well, no surprises there, she’s been the hot favourite right from the beginning, it’s last year’s winner, it’s Mrs Grace Littleton!’ He raises his arms and makes whispery crowd cheering noises in the back of his throat, while glancing around the kitchen at his imaginary audience. I smile at him, charmed by his boyishness as usual, and, for the moment anyway, the mysterious text message goes out of my head.

‘Come on,’ he says, jerking his head towards the door, ‘let’s watch the lottery. Did you get the ticket?’

‘Yep, it’s in my bag.’ I retrieve the ticket from my handbag on the kitchen chair and follow him into the living room.

Adam and I have been married just a year – today is our first anniversary actually. We exchanged presents over dinner. One year is paper – I know this because I Googled it a few days ago – so I bought him a book called Keeping the Magic Alive: How to Get and Give Satisfying Lifelong Sex by someone called Dr Cristina Markowitz. On the front there was a full-colour photo of a pair of gorgeous naked models pretending to be a satisfied married couple, and the whole thing was wrapped in clingfilm, presumably so that people couldn’t sneak into Smiths when they ran into difficulties, read up on a couple of tips, then dash back home again to finish the job. There was a nasty moment when I was paying for it involving Chloe on the till holding the book up in the air and shouting at top volume down the store ‘BRYONY! HOW MUCH IS THE SEX BOOK? BAR CODE WON’T SCAN’, but eventually I’d carried it home (in my fingertips, like a hot coal) and wrapped it in cool blue shiny paper, releasing a tense breath once it was finally sheathed. A small part of me half expected the steamy photo on the front to burn through the wrapping paper, like the lost Ark of the Covenant, leaving a naked-body-shaped scorch mark on the outside.

I’d grinned as Adam opened it earlier, hoping he’d get the joke. I thought it was absolutely hilarious that someone had written a book about it, and more than that, that somewhere people were actually sitting down and reading it. ‘Ooh, look at this one, Steven, do you think we could manage that?’ ‘Oh I don’t know, Barbara, I’ve got that presentation tomorrow. What else is there?’ For crying out loud, people, stop reading books about it and do it!

Adam looked at me quizzically once he’d unwrapped it. ‘Wow. Um, you trying to tell me something, Gracie?’

I broke eye contact as I answered. ‘No, no, of course not, but don’t you think it’s hysterical? I mean, imagine Steve and Barb in bed together flicking through the pages …’

‘Who are they?’

I frowned. ‘No, no one, just imaginary people, I’m just pretending.’

‘Oh right.’ He opened the book at a random page and read in silence for a few moments. ‘Very interesting,’ he concluded, then closed it and laid it on the table. It practically sizzled when it touched the surface. ‘Thank you very much.’

I was disappointed. He had completely missed the joke. ‘You’re welcome.’

If I’m completely honest, I was also hoping he might read it. The couple on the front looked like they were having such a tremendous time, and I so wanted to experience that. Even though we’d been married an entire year – or only a year, whichever way you look at it – Adam and I did not partake of the old horizontal refreshment all that frequently. From what I’d seen in magazines and films, newlyweds were supposed to be at it like they were stuffing turkeys every day, with great big grins on their faces and sweaty, shiny bodies. But this was not my own experience. ‘Hardly ever’ was closer to my magic number. Of course, films are fiction, and those magazine interviewees could have been exaggerating, knowing that what they said was going to become public knowledge. They probably were – their mates would see it. But even allowing for that, I still felt short-changed.

My present was a gorgeous bunch of carnations, with guaranteed freshness for seven days. I’d put them in a vase immediately and placed them in the centre of the table. ‘Lovely, thank you.’

He’d smiled, pleased with my reaction. ‘No problem. Shall we eat?’

We haven’t won on the lottery again. I never expect to, and would be happy to stop doing it altogether – it seems so greedy when we already have so much – but Adam always wants me to buy a ticket on the way home. ‘It’s fun,’ he says, ‘something for us to enjoy together.’ I’m completely in favour of that, so I oblige, week after week, stopping in at the newsagents on the corner of our street on my walk home from town every Friday. The bloke behind the counter recognises me now, and has started to pre-empt my request with a ‘Still not won, then?’ remark. It irritates me probably more than it should.

After the lottery results, we watch a cheerful film about a man whose daughter is kidnapped and sold into prostitution, and then we decide to call it a night.

I’m in the kitchen finishing off the clearing up and, as I’m wiping down the tiles behind the sink, I remember suddenly Adam’s text from earlier. He hasn’t been in here since then so his phone must still be over on the counter by the kettle. I could have a very quick look at the preview, just to find out who it’s from. I won’t actually open it and read it, I’ll literally just look at the name. Of course, the first part of the message will be visible in the preview as well anyway, so it won’t matter if I read that bit – anyone could see it as it’s on display so it can’t be that private, and I won’t be able to help it. I glance up at the kitchen door, listen carefully for a few seconds and, hearing nothing, I move quickly over to the kettle and start hunting around. The phone must be here, but I discover straight away that it’s not where I remember last seeing it. I look behind the kettle but of course it’s not there either. I check the entire length of all three kitchen sides, in the sink, behind the microwave and have a cursory glance into all the cupboards, but it’s not to be found. Where the hell is it? Adam has definitely not come back into the kitchen since we left to watch the lottery earlier, so how could it have moved?

Unless. A dart of frustration shoots through me briefly. He did get up once during the film, to go to the loo. ‘Ooh, pause it a second,’ he said, ‘need a wee.’ Then he was up and out of there like his trousers were on fire. Strange for him to move like that, just for a wee. But now it’s obvious: he must have suddenly realised his phone wasn’t in his pocket, and rushed to pick it up from the kitchen on his way upstairs. Bloody hell, that was probably my only chance to find out who the text was from. Although the three times that I’ve actually managed to get my hands on his phone since I’ve known him, it’s had an impossible-to-break screen lock code on it. No amount of combinations of his birthday, my birthday … well, they’re the only two things I’ve tried, to be honest, as I have no other information to go on. But I couldn’t unlock it. It might as well have been in a box, locked inside a safe with a secret key, buried underground, for all the good it did me.

But there’s always the chance that the lock won’t be on. That’s what keeps me going.

When I get upstairs, he’s already in the bedroom, but no sound is coming from the room. I remember to step over the penultimate stair to avoid making it creak, then stealthily cross the landing and peep into the bedroom through the crack of the door. Sure enough, there is Adam, standing motionless at the end of the bed, staring down at the screen of his mobile phone, the light from it illuminating his face bluish white. He’s not replying, not smiling, not reacting at all to what he’s reading. Unless you consider his non-reaction as a reaction in itself. It’s spooky actually, his complete lack of response to this message. He’s utterly immobile, as if frozen.

‘Ooh, it’s a bit chilly in here,’ I say, blustering in. I’m rewarded by him jumping guiltily and slipping the phone fluidly into his trouser pocket as he turns to me with a smile. I feel a small leap of hope: he didn’t get a chance to delete the message.

‘Come on then,’ he says, as if nothing has happened, ‘let’s get into bed and warm each other up.’

A little spark of excitement fires in my lower belly at these words, and I shed my clothes in a single movement. This is it – it’s our anniversary, when better to indulge in a little happy dancing than tonight? Once we’re under the covers, he moves close up behind me, his knees just brushing the backs of my thighs. My belly starts squirming as I feel his hot breath on my neck, then I shiver as very gently he places his freezing hands flat against my back. Then he turns them over and presses their cold backs to my skin. ‘Ooh, that’s lush,’ he murmurs, then turns them over again.

Everyone thinks Adam is out of my league. They don’t actually say it – not to me anyway – but I can see it in their eyes when they look at us. Even my own mum, for God’s sake. She kind of glances from me to him and back again, then gives a tiny uncomprehending shake of her head before turning away. She thinks I haven’t noticed, but of course I have. My sister Lauren fancies him rotten and wouldn’t hesitate to betray our sisterly bond if she ever got the chance. I’m not sure I’d even blame her. Adam is tall and handsome and successful and charming and everyone adores him, my family in particular. That’s not to say they don’t adore me. Of course they do. They’re always ‘Oh Gracie, you’re so funny’ and ‘Isn’t Gracie just fantastic?’ and ‘You look pretty today, Gracie.’ But when I first brought Adam home to meet everyone on take-away night three years ago, it was a family bucket of shock and awe all round.

‘Hi everyone,’ I said proudly. ‘This is Adam.’

They looked up as one from what they were doing – watching Doctor Who, I think – and stared open-mouthed at the golden Adonis that had dropped from Mount Olympus to stand at my side. There was a brief hiatus during which the Tardis materialised noisily, then Mum and my brother Robbie were scrabbling for the remote – ‘Pause it, pause it, quick, who’s got the thing, who’s got the cocking thing?’ ‘I’ve got it, Christ, stop pressuring me, I’m doing it!’ – Lauren was standing up slowly, trying to look like Pussy Galore; and Dad leaned back in his chair with a satisfied grin, as if to say, ‘finally’.

Adam looked coolly at everyone in turn, appraising, taking in, sizing up; and then, with a slow nod, said, ‘So. You’re the ones.’

‘The ones who?’ was the general enquiry that came from everyone. He paused before answering, so his statement had maximum impact. ‘The four people in the world who think Doctor Who is worth watching.’

Adam was my landlord. Don’t worry, no impropriety took place, a tenant dating her landlord; I’ve Googled it and there’s nothing that says it’s inappropriate. It’s not as if he took advantage of me while I was renting a room in his house or anything hideous like that. No strategic holes in bathroom walls, no cameras planted in my room, no sleaze; just a shop on the high street. I’d gone in there a few months earlier to enquire about a flat I’d seen advertised in the local paper. My friend Annabel Price had lived there after having her illicit baby when the rest of us were still in the sixth form, and we all used to pile round after school and pretend to be grown-ups, alternating between consuming coffee and cigarettes on the fire escape, and holding the baby; while somewhere in the background Annabel sobbed into her sterilising tank.

I knew that hideous little place, I knew its mouldy walls and its stained carpets and the latent nappy smell and when I saw it advertised a thrill of excitement went through me and I got a fatalistic sense that it had been waiting for me. I was twenty-four at the time, so it was aeons and aeons since I’d left school, and here was a chance to relive those heady days. I’d had no desire at all to leave my parents’ place until that moment; but for Annabel Price’s flat, I knew I could make the break.

Adam was sitting at the single desk in his tiny office, which was squeezed in between the East of India and the dry cleaners. It had a plate-glass front with his name, ‘Adam Littleton’, etched onto it in an arc, and underneath it said ‘Estate Management’. It was very impressive. It was August and the sun was shining straight through that enormous window covering the floor with a gorgeous golden carpet, so inside was barbarically hot. As soon as I stepped through the door, my instinct was to run from the fire, but Adam looked at me and smiled, so I stayed. I did want that flat, after all.

‘Hi, how can I help?’ he asked straight away, standing up and coming around the desk, allowing no chance at all for the potential customer – me – to change their mind and leave.

I scanned the properties displayed on the walls, hoping to see the advert for the flat that had appeared in the paper. A small desk fan was rotating ineffectually on the desk. ‘Um, I saw a flat, in the paper …’

‘OK. Which paper was it?’

I blinked. I had been expecting him to ask which flat it was. ‘I think it was the Herald. It was a one-bedroom …’ But in that very small space of time, like a magician, he’d produced a sheet of paper from somewhere and was holding it out to me to check.

‘Is this the one?’

I moved forward and took one end of the paper. ‘Yes, that’s it.’ I looked up at him. ‘Is it still available?’

He whipped the paper away dramatically. ‘You don’t want to live there,’ he said, theatrically screwing up the sheet of paper and tossing it backwards over his shoulder, ‘it’s a dump.’

‘Oh, well, no, the thing is—’

‘Now, I’ve got something for you that’s a lot more suitable,’ he said, rubbing his hands together and opening and closing his fingers. ‘A much nicer place, coming on in a few days.’

‘But I don’t—’

‘Take it from me, you won’t believe your eyes when you see this.’ He focused on my eyes for a split second longer than necessary, rubbed his hands together again and flexed his fingers, then delicately reached into his top jacket pocket and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper. It was approximately the size of a postage stamp.

I stared down at it in the palm of his hand, then looked up at him and pressed my lips together. ‘I’m sure it’s lovely, but I don’t think it’s big enough for me.’

There was a second’s pause, then he burst out laughing, throwing his head back and guffawing fruitily, then leaning forward and clutching his tummy. It all felt a bit … exaggerated, as if he was trying to give me the impression that he thought I was hysterically funny, rather than actually thinking I was hysterically funny.

As I waited for him to calm down, waves of heat started to pour over me and I could feel sweat beading out everywhere. Eventually he stood up again and wiped his eyes, puffing out a couple of ‘whoo!’s and nodding appreciatively at me. ‘Oh my God, that was hilarious!’ he proclaimed. ‘You’re very funny.’ Incredibly, he still looked cool and dry, in spite of the heat.

‘Thank you. Um, can I just find out about the—?’

‘So this property is not even being advertised yet,’ he cut in, and began unfolding the sheet in his hand. ‘It’s so much more you, if you’ll forgive me. Classy, attractive, modern and stylish. I think you’re going to love it.’

I tried to raise my eyebrows sceptically, to indicate that I was not the type to succumb to mindless flattery. But inside my mind was jumping up and down and squealing, ‘He thinks I’m attractive!’

And he was right, the flat did look lovely. Obviously very recently decorated; new bathroom and kitchenette; brand new carpets everywhere; light, spacious rooms. It was definitely going to be far more than I could afford. ‘There’s no price on here,’ I pointed out, searching through the information sheet. ‘How much is the rent?’

‘Same as that other place.’

I widened my eyes. ‘No way!’

He nodded decisively. ‘Totally way.’

I stared down at the photos. ‘I don’t believe it.’ I looked up at him and found his eyes on me. He thinks I’m attractive! ‘It does look gorgeous,’ I said, holding out the sheet of paper towards him, ‘but I’m not sure it’s what I’m looking for.’

‘In what way?’

He was so abrupt, I was a bit startled. ‘Oh, um, only that it was that flat in the paper, on Hardwick Road, that I wanted specifically. I like it.’

‘But why would you want somewhere shabby like that when you can have this beautiful new place for the same money?’ He actually scratched his head. ‘It just doesn’t add up.’

I thought about it for a moment. He did make a very good point. But I had been so happy in Annabel’s flat, all those years ago. ‘No, well, it does for me. So, is it available?’

He leaned against the edge of the desk and put his hands down on either side. ‘Look, um, Miss …?’

‘Grace. Just call me Grace.’

‘OK, Grace. I’m going to make an assumption about you, if you’ll allow me. You’re planning on moving into this flat on your own, right?’

‘Well that’s fairly evident, seeing as I’m here on my own.’

‘Right. So you’ll be living there alone. What will you do if you need to change a fuse? What if the pipes burst? What if the electrics cause a fire? Supposing you need to re-plaster somewhere, or grout something. What will you do?’

I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, although a seed of anxiety was germinating inside me. ‘Isn’t all that down to the landlord?’

He smiled smugly. ‘Not everything, Grace. Not decorating. Not emergency repairs in the middle of the night. Even if he does take responsibility, he’s got to get there, hasn’t he? What if you’ve got water flooding through the ceiling at three a.m., destroying all your belongings, soaking the carpet and the plaster, putting you at risk of a ceiling collapse? What will you do then?’

I hadn’t really thought about any of that, and was now fully gripped by panic. But I certainly didn’t want him to know it. I’d have to Google what to do later. ‘I’ll do the simple things myself and get my dad to do the rest. Why?’

He shook his head patronisingly, as if no way in hell was I ever going to cope with anything. ‘Wouldn’t it just be easier if you got a place that didn’t need anything doing to it? So you’d never have to worry about anything or think about anything or pay for anything?’

Fifteen minutes later, we were looking round the new place. Turned out to be his own flat, just above the shop. I wandered around the large cream rooms and compared them mentally to Annabel’s woodchip and cramped kitchen. I had to admit, this place was attractive. An hour after first walking into Adam’s shop, I’d signed the contract and agreed to meet for dinner the following evening. Adam told me months later that as soon as I’d walked in, he wanted me to rent it. He liked me that much, that quickly.

The next day is Sunday and we have a long lie-in then wander round to the pub for their very reasonable carvery lunch. The broccoli is over-cooked, and the spuds are still cold in the middle, but it is so reasonable, and so convenient.

‘How’s your meal?’ Adam asks me, enthusiastically forking turkey into his mouth.

I nod. ‘S’fine.’

He nods back. ‘I love this place. Don’t you? I mean, it’s so great. All this food, at this price, and just round the corner.’

When we come out after dinner, it’s started raining so we run shrieking back to our house then snuggle up on the sofa to watch a romance about a woman whose husband gets killed so she slaughters everyone responsible.

The text message is on my mind all day. And all the next day, while we’re both at work. All week, in fact. Repeatedly I try to get on my own in a room with the phone, but fail because the phone is always in Adam’s possession. He doesn’t let it out of his sight for four days straight. Then, on Thursday evening, he takes it out of his pocket to answer a call from his mum, and at the end, after clicking it off and closing it down, he distractedly places it on the kitchen table. I freeze. I am electrified, and my eyes immediately zoom in on it lying there as he walks away. It’s exposed, vulnerable, and I need to attack. We move around it, preparing the dinner, back and forth across the kitchen, and I’m acutely aware of it the entire time. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s permanently in my periphery, the only thing I can see. When will he leave the room? He must need the toilet eventually – surely he will leave it there when he goes? It would look very suss if he goes off upstairs for a wee and stops at the table on the way to pick up his phone. Surely he would want to avoid arousing my suspicion like that?

‘Gracie?’

His voice finally breaks through my reverie. ‘Hmm? Sorry?’

‘Wake up, dolly daydream. I’ve asked you three times to put the kettle on for the gravy. You’re miles away.’

‘Oh, sorry, just thinking about Dad. You know his birthday is coming up. I’ve got no idea what to get him. What do you think?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, you’re good at that kind of thing, I’ll leave it to you.’ He turns away. ‘Just popping to the loo.’

I nod, watching in horror as he moves back towards the table. ‘Um, do you want a drink, Ad? How about a beer?’

He stops, turns back, looks at me. I hold my breath. ‘Yeah, OK, thanks.’ He turns back to the table and takes the final two steps to get there, then scoops up the phone and without breaking stride slips it into his pocket. Then he’s through the door and on his way upstairs.

Friday night comes around again and I’m home first, as usual. We’ve already agreed we’re having take-away tonight, so I’ve got no dinner preparations to make. The house is stifling, and the first thing I do is unlock the sliding back door and push it open. It makes no difference; the gentle breeze on the street hasn’t made it to our enclosed garden, and the heat and I move around the yard sluggishly in oppressive waves. I head back inside to wash up the breakfast things, straighten the cushions on the sofa, twitch the curtains. I’m just killing time until he comes home, but I have literally nothing to do and I can’t relax.

‘You need some hobbies,’ Mum is always saying. ‘Why don’t you take up knitting?’

Yeah, I know what that means. There’s absolutely no way I’m having a baby yet. Not with Adam, anyway.

I stop, midway through a pointless wander across the hallway. What the bloody hell does that mean, ‘not with Adam’? Who the hell else will I have a baby with? He’s my husband, isn’t he? I know I definitely want kids some day, so what am I actually thinking? That when the time is right, I’ll go off and do it with someone else? Of course not.

Although the chance to get pregnant in the first place would be nice.

When the phone rings in the living room a few minutes later, I’m standing in the kitchen staring into the fridge for some reason. I slam it shut and move swiftly to the living room, grateful to have a purpose at last. Just as my hand reaches out to grab the receiver, I hesitate. It’ll only be insurance sales after all; they’re the only people who ring the landline any more. Well, pseudo-people. No actual fingers press actual keys.

The answer phone clicks on and plays its message, and after the beep I wait to hear the usual spooky silence of the computer checking to see if anyone is there and then giving up and going down the pub. But instead I’m shocked to hear the sound of a man’s deep voice coming into my living room from the speaker.

‘Hello Adam, it’s Leon. Long time no see. Betcha didn’t expect to hear from me again, did you? Come as a bit of a shock, has it? Ha, I bet it has. Just thought I’d give you a call, let you know I’m in the area – nearby actually. Very nearby. Would only take me two minutes to get to your place from here. Piece of cake. I’m gonna try to catch up with you very soon. Don’t worry about calling me back, I’ll be in touch.’

The phone clicks as Leon replaces the receiver, and the room falls silent. In my mind I could hear the italics in his voice, particularly as he said those two names, as if just in saying them he was trying to make some kind of point. But what point could he possibly be making? And why? And, by the way, who the fuck is Leon? We’ve been married a year, how come Adam has never mentioned him to me before? I know everything about him, all his friends, all his old jobs, where he used to live, everything.

Ha ha ha. That’s just me being sarcastic with myself. I, of course, know none of those things. A creepy phone call from a weirdo called Leon should not be remotely surprising, considering what I do know about Adam.

I don’t have any more time to consider it now as I hear Adam’s car on the drive. He’s home. I walk away from the phone and go into the hall to greet him, as I always do.

‘Hi there,’ he says as he sees me. ‘Good day?’

I nod. ‘Yeah, not bad. You?’

He nods too. ‘Yeah, good.’ He starts up the stairs and I follow behind. ‘Finally sorted out that three-bed semi in Whitlow.’

‘Oh good.’

‘Yep. The owner can’t believe it. He thinks I’m a god!’ He starts to change his clothes.

I sit down on the bed and watch as, god-like, he folds his dirty shirt in half, then in half again, then places it carefully into the laundry basket behind the door. As he straightens the creases in his trousers before hanging them up, I remember the call from earlier.

‘Oh, there was a call for you.’

‘Yeah?’ He’s dressed again now and heads back downstairs. Dutifully, I follow behind. ‘Chinese or Indian?’

‘Neither, actually. He sounded English, I think. Possibly London or home counties …’

I come into the kitchen where he’s standing with the East of India’s menu in one hand and the Moon Hung Lo’s in the other. ‘What?’

‘Oh, sorry, I thought you meant … Um, we haven’t had Chinese for a while, have we?’

He bounces the menus up and down in his hands as he looks at me with a smile. ‘No, that’s true, but I’m really in the mood for a good curry tonight. What do you think?’

What I think is that we haven’t had Chinese for a while, and actually I would run through our street singing ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ wearing nothing but a splash of perfume and three gold tassels for the chance to eat sweet and sour chicken balls, just once. But I nod and smile nauseatingly. I despise myself sometimes. ‘OK, yes, curry would be lovely. Thanks.’

‘Cool.’ He puts the menu down on the kitchen counter and brings his phone out of his pocket. As always, I feel a stab of … something when I see it. Or at least, my eyes do. They kind of jolt to attention as it comes into view, like a dog spotting a squirrel. Adam scans the menu, looking for the restaurant’s phone number. ‘Did you say there was a call for me?’

‘Oh, yes, there was. Someone called … Leon …’

His head snaps up, the hand holding his phone frozen in mid-air. ‘Who?’

I manage to drag my eyes away from the phone to focus on Adam. His usual air of ease and nonchalance is gone abruptly, replaced by an intense stark alarm. ‘What’s up?’

‘Who did you say called?’

I frown, hesitating before speaking to let him know I’m not pleased with how he’s behaving. If I’m brutally honest, I also do it to torture him, just a teensy bit. ‘It was Leon.’

He brings his face closer to mine. ‘What did he say?’ He’s speaking slowly, his hands still not moving.

‘Um, well he said something about being in the area—’

‘Shit.’

‘—and that he would see you soon.’

‘Oh shit. Anything else?’

By now, the phone is back in his pocket and the take-away menu all but forgotten. My stomach notices this and gives a loud growl in protest.

‘You can hear for yourself – it’s on the answer phone.’

Adam bursts into life, turning and marching rapidly into the living room. Seconds later I hear the answer phone message playing, that deep gravelly voice filling our cosy living space like a bad smell. When it reaches the click at the end, there’s the sound of a small movement, then the beep and the voice comes on again. ‘Hello Adam …’ At the end, Adam plays it a third time, and then a fourth, until my head is filled with that horrible raspy voice, pointedly saying my husband’s name, over and over.

I walk quietly into the hallway and peer through the open door into the room; Adam is staring at the phone, unmoving, apparently frozen. Thinking hard? Undecided? Then in a sudden dart he looks up, catches my eye, and hurries past me, up the stairs. ‘Who’s Leon then?’ I ask pointlessly, running after him. He strides into our bedroom, but before I can catch him up, he’s out again, passing me on the stairs as he runs back down.

‘Oh, no one. Just someone I … used to work with. Years ago.’

‘Oh, right. So why are you so pissed off?’

He stops in the hallway and turns to face me. I’m standing on the bottom stair still, so for once we’re about the same height. He puts his hand out and gently touches my cheek. ‘I’m not pissed off, Grace. Not really. I don’t like the bloke, we fell out at school and I wasn’t expecting ever to hear from him again. That’s all.’

‘I thought you said you used to work with him?’

He puts his arm back down and puts his hand into his pocket. ‘Yeah, that’s right, I did, we worked together for a while after we left school, but we didn’t really have much to do with each other.’ The hand in his pocket reappears holding the car keys, and he jingles them a bit, distractedly. ‘He’s a bit of a prick, to be honest.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah. World-class knobhead.’ He looks at his watch then back at me, and smiles fondly. ‘OK, well, I’m off to get the food.’ He leans towards me, one hand round the back of my neck, and kisses me. As we break apart, he stays close, his thumb gently stroking my neck. ‘Don’t worry about him, Gracie. He’s nothing.’

I nod. ‘OK.’

He stares into my eyes for a few moments, kisses me again, then draws away and moves to the door. ‘Warm the plates up, sweetheart, I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

He wasn’t.

TWO

Twenty minutes after Adam left finds me pacing the living room. I’ve put plates in the oven, got some wine ready and selected a few DVDs for him to choose from, but that only took a minute or two. Now I’m walking from the back window to the front, lifting up the curtain, peering out at the street then turning and walking to the back again. There must be a long queue in the Indian. And of course we never actually got round to ordering the food so he will have to wait while it’s prepared and cooked. It could take, ooh, at least, I don’t know, half an hour. But it’s already been … Never mind, never mind, if there’s a queue he could wait fifty minutes, easily. An hour, even. It’s possible. Maybe he’s had to try a few different places. Maybe he’s bumped into someone he knows and has lost all track of time. Maybe he’s bumped into Leon.

After about two hours, I’ve stopped pacing and am now sitting on the edge of the sofa, rocking backwards and forwards and occasionally biting the hard skin around my fingernails. I’ve got my own mobile phone loose in my hand but it’s as good as useless when the one, the only person I want to contact has apparently switched his phone off. That sodding phone of his, full of mysteries and unknowns, always always with him, constantly lighting up and vibrating all over the place; but now, when I really need to use it, when it will be of more use than it ever has been before – to me, anyway – it’s in his pocket in complete darkness. Oh my God, why would he do that? Why would anyone? What’s the arsing point of having an arsing mobile if it’s arsing switched off, for arse’s sake?

I did wonder whether it’s not switched off at all, maybe he simply hit a black spot or whatever it’s called, so I’ve texted, Facebooked and WhatsApped him too. That way, if he does happen to get a fraction of a second of signal, he’ll see my messages. At least then he could try to call me from a phone box, to put my mind at ease.

But he’s called me before from the East of India. Or rather, I’ve called him there before. I know I have, I remember it. He forgot to ask me what I wanted, so I rang to tell him, to make sure he didn’t come back with a vindaloo for me like the first time, when he didn’t know I don’t like spicy food. Which means I know there’s no black spot there. Which means he’s turned his phone off.

Unless he didn’t go to the East of India …

I jump up out of frustration, wanting to shout angrily at Adam, wanting to shriek at him, wanting to throw my head back and scream at the ceiling. But I don’t. Of course I don’t. I turn down the bubbling volcano of fury that’s threatening to erupt and try to think clearly. Why would he be taking so long? Did he go somewhere else? Or has something happened to him? Something … bad?

I walk over to the answer phone and listen to Leon again. I don’t know why, the message isn’t going to tell me where Adam is. But I have to keep hearing it. It seems connected to his prolonged absence somehow. Or is it simply a pleasant message from an old friend, wanting to catch up? It doesn’t sound like it to me, but then my opinion is not really objective. I have my own feelings about Adam that colour every interaction he has with anyone else.

I press play yet again. ‘Hello Adam, it’s Leon …’

Something about that unknown point he’s making when he says their names now sounds a bit menacing. Or am I imagining things, bearing in mind Adam went out for food over two hours ago and still hasn’t come back?

I start suddenly. A car. There’s a car pulling onto the driveway. Oh, thank God. He’s safe. A giant flame of rage roars into life in me suddenly, along with my almost forgotten hunger. But why the fuck did it take him so long? I clench my jaw, my fists, and every other muscle in my body. Even my eyelids go rigid. Ooh you secretive sod, do you have some explaining to do. I charge over to the window and yank back the curtain. It’s almost completely dark by now and I have to press my face to the glass to see out. My own face, distorted by a vicious snarl, lunges at me in the blackness. Where’s the car? Where’s that prickish little car? There’s nothing on the driveway yet so I look at the road, to see the silver Corsa with its reversing lights on. But it’s not there. There’s only one car there and it’s an ordinary blue car, simply driving past. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t discharge my husband, rescued after a cam belt disaster. It doesn’t yield anything.

I drop the curtain and drop my hands and a small sound comes out of me. The hunger disappears, forgotten again, but the anger doesn’t. In fact, the anger starts to swell again and turn white, blinding white, expanding inside me until I feel I can’t contain it any more and I put my hands on my head and shout ‘AAARRRSE!’ as loudly as I can. It comes out a bit screamy – ‘AAAAAAAHHHHHSE!’

When I stop, the house falls instantly silent. Supernaturally so. Like all the things that usually make a noise also suddenly stop. The fridge isn’t humming, no pipes are clunking, there’s no creaking, clicking, ticking or cracking. Everything is completely and utterly still. The house feels like it’s waiting.

That’s it, I’m calling Ginger. I’ve wanted to for over an hour already but managed to convince myself not to; managed to convince myself I was over-reacting. But she’s my best friend in the whole world, she’ll know whether I’m over-reacting or not. I spend the next few minutes rooting through my handbag, then frantically running from room to room looking for my phone, before remembering that it’s already in my hand. I close my eyes. I growl a bit at myself. Come on, focus.

Ginger isn’t ginger, actually. She has gorgeous, shiny brown hair, and her name is in fact Louise, but because her baby brother Matthew once painted her whole head red with poster paint when they were tots, she’s been Ginger, or Ginge, ever since. She answers on the second ring.

‘Hey, Gee, how’s you?’

I open my mouth and a kind of whimpering sound comes out.

‘Grace?’

‘Ginge …’ It comes out as a breathy sob.

‘On my way,’ she says simply.

There’s a sharp pain in the side of my head and I realise suddenly that I’m pressing the phone too hard into my ear. I ease it away and my ear throbs with the rush of blood.

So now I have about fifteen minutes to wait until she gets here. It’s a huge relief to wait for something that has a definite and predictable ending. Although Adam going to the Indian take-away was in that category originally. Now that he’s been gone for over three and a half hours, I’m starting to wonder if …

I halt that thought mid-way. Of course he’s coming back. That’s just mad thinking. His car’s broken down and his phone’s out of battery. That’s all. I’ll feel ridiculous in about one minute when he arrives in a taxi. I pull the curtain back for the thousandth time, more slowly now, not really able to convince myself any longer that this time he will be there. Sure enough, yet again there’s no taxi. No AA recovery lorry either. Not even a police car. No one at all.

‘Right, so what’s going on?’ Ginge demands as soon as she’s in through the front door. She’s business-like and determined but when she looks at my face she falters. ‘Good God, Gee, what’s happened?’

‘It’s Adam …’ I begin, but immediately she starts nodding meaningfully. I stop and frown. ‘Why are you nodding like that?’

‘What do you mean? How else am I supposed to nod? It’s a fairly standard gesture. Internationally recognised.’

‘No. Ginge. Why are you nodding at all?’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I’m listening to you. What’s your point? Tell me what he’s done, for Pete’s sake.’

I narrow my eyes. ‘Why would you assume he’s done something?’

She looks momentarily discomfited and moves her head back slightly. ‘Well, hasn’t he?’

I think for a second. Has he? Ginger moves her head forward again and raises her eyebrows, waiting. Suddenly, I feel like I don’t want her there. She’s irritating the crap out of me and, as I look at her freckly face peering at me, a very large part of me wants to slap it. I can actually feel my arm start to move backwards so I stop it and clench my fists.

‘He went out to get a pasanda about—’ I glance at my watch – ‘nearly four hours ago.’

‘And?’

I shrug. ‘There is no “And”.’

She frowns. ‘I don’t get it. Where is he now?’

‘That’s the point. I don’t know. He hasn’t come back.’

She stares at me for a second, her eyes widening. ‘Oh, fucking hell.’

Within minutes she’s made tea for us both and installed me on the sofa while she phones round all the hospitals in the area. There’s only one in our town but she phones the two neighbouring towns too, just in case. I know he’s got ID on him so someone would contact me if he’s been admitted, but at least it feels like we’re doing something.

‘Dead,’ Ginge says, clicking her phone off and palming it.

‘Wha-at?’

‘A and E. They’re all dead. Nothing’s happening anywhere apparently.’

‘Oh. Right.’ I’m not sure whether that’s a relief or not. No, it is. I mean, yes, of course it is. A huge relief. Except I still don’t know a single thing. At least I would have known … something if he’d been admitted somewhere. I look up at Ginge. ‘So, what now?’

She fiddles with her phone for a second, then comes over to sit next to me. ‘I think it’s time to call the police.’ She puts the phone into my hand and we both stare down at it.

‘You suggesting we call Matt?’

Matt is Ginger’s little brother. He’s a local PC, or DC, or PCSO or something now. Last time I spoke to him he was a silent, skeletal seventeen-year-old with dyed black hair and a nose ring. According to their mum, Mrs Blake, he ‘got in with the wrong crowd’ back then and barely came home for a few years, then apparently turned things round and joined the force. The thought of speaking to a policeman is made a bit less terrifying if it’s a geeky, awkward, slightly familiar stranger with pimples rather than an intimidating, black-coated stranger with a notebook.

Ginger shakes her head. ‘No, I mean the real police.’

‘What’s he then? Toy Town?’

‘No, silly. I just mean you need to report it. Officially. Not just get Matt round here for a cuppa.’ She pauses. ‘Much as I’m sure he’d be up for it.’

I think furiously for a few seconds. Ginger and I have known each other since school, back when we had to pad our bras and smoke to look older. Now we work together in a costume shop called DisGuys and DisGirls in the main pedestrianised part of the town. I’ve been there four years; she’s been there six. She’s kind of the assistant manager or something. Unofficially of course. She doesn’t get paid a higher responsibility allowance or anything. She just has control of the keys and the cashbox when Penny is away. It’s only a set of keys and a cashbox, but it gives her the edge over me when it comes to taking charge of a situation.

I push the phone towards her. ‘You do it.’

‘No, Grace, I can’t, can I? It’s your husband, you’re going to have to do it yourself.’

‘You could pretend to be me.’

She widens her eyes, as if in … revulsion. Or do I imagine that? ‘No, I absolutely could not do that, come on now.’

I stare at the phone in my hand; its smooth, shiny surface and pleasing heaviness have never looked more menacing. I so don’t want to do this. I’ll feel silly, like I’m wasting their time. It’s only been a few hours. I look up at Ginger. ‘We can’t report him yet though, can we? Doesn’t he have to be missing for twenty-four hours first, or something?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘It’s one of those things that everyone knows, isn’t it? You have to give them time to get over their sulk, or affair, or secret surgery, or whatever, and come home of their own accord. We’ll just be wasting their time.’

She shakes her head and looks at me the way a traffic warden looks at a car on double yellows. ‘I think you’ve been watching too many crime dramas, love. It’s not like that in real life.’

‘How do you know? Have you reported someone missing before?’

She puts her hand on my arm. ‘Hey, come on. You can do it. Just dial the number, say what’s happened, and that’s that.’

Turns out it’s actually quite difficult finding the right number to ring. I’m thinking 999, but Ginger says that’s emergencies only and I say well what the fuck is this if it’s not an emergency and she says it only means it’s for an urgent kind of emergency like a crime actually happening at that moment and I say well maybe it is how the hell can we possibly know that we have literally no clue what’s happening or happened to him that’s why we need to ring and she says actually I think we’ve both got a bit of an inkling to be honest haven’t we and I say what the hell is that supposed to mean and she says nothing sorry didn’t mean anything and then she goes into the other room to see if she can find a Yellow Pages in the kitchen drawer.

‘I’ve rung them,’ she announces softly, coming back into the room a few minutes later. I’m standing at the window again, peering out. A cat is brazenly washing itself at the end of our driveway, apparently very confident that it’s not going to get flattened by a returning Corsa any time soon. I turn to look at Ginger and nod, weak with gratitude. Thank God that’s done and I don’t have to face them or answer any horrible questions.

‘They’re on their way over,’ she goes on. ‘They want to ask you some questions.’

So twenty minutes later the police turn up and I tell them what happened with Adam and the East of India, and then they interrogate me about his likes and dislikes and habits and hobbies and friends and associates. Once I’ve explained his line of work and the location of his office, I know that there is very little more I can say, so I watch them closely as I answer: they’re very nice and softly spoken and write down the answers I give in their little black notebooks, but I notice their expressions, the furtive looks they’re giving each other, the barely concealed surprise or contempt or impatience with me as I tell them the things I know about my husband.

‘OK, Mrs Littleton, I need to know who your husband’s work associates are?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Just one or two of them, then. His main contact. Don’t worry, we can probably find out the rest.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘OK, not to worry. Who are his drinking mates? And we’ll need their addresses, if you can remember them?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh. Well, just his best mate then?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know.’

There’s a very brief pause and the two officers glance at each other. ‘OK, never mind. Where does he drink? What are his hobbies? Where did he go to school? What sport does he follow? Which team does he support?’

I look at them both, and then at Ginger. ‘I don’t know.’

There’s an awkward, slightly longer silence. Then the female officer leans towards me. ‘Can you try, Grace? Think really hard. Has he ever mentioned anyone, or talked about a place, the name of a pub, a street even?’

I’m already shaking my head because I know I don’t need to think hard about this. There’s no point. He has kept everything about himself completely shut off from me, right from the very start of our relationship, right from that moment I stepped into his office looking for a flat to rent. I have tried and tried to find something out about him – asked his mum and step-dad, checked his post, tried to sneak a look at his phone – but I’ve never got anywhere. His mum and step-dad, Julia and Ray Moorfield, just say, ‘Ah, you’ll have to ask Adam about that, lovey.’ All he told me about his real dad is that he’s no longer around, then closed the conversation off definitively. ‘What more do you need to know?’ he said, when I questioned it. And then peered at me, as if I was under a microscope, somehow managing to make me feel horrible for asking. ‘He’s not around any more, that’s that. Jesus, Grace, do you have to know every single minute detail about all your friends’ lives? Is that who you are?’ His post is always generic bills or advertisements. His phone is completely and permanently inaccessible. The absence of any information about him has become like a third person in our marriage. The single piece of information that I do have about Adam is that I have absolutely no information about him.

‘Adam never talks about his past, or his work, or what he does when we aren’t together. He just doesn’t.’

‘And you don’t question that?’

‘No. Why would I?’

‘Well, doesn’t it strike you as odd that the man you married apparently has no friends and no past?’

I open my mouth to answer, but close it again when I realise I have nothing to say. How can I tell them that it has struck me as odd every single second of our marriage? How can I possibly confess to the fact that I was so amazed that someone like him had chosen to marry someone like me that I was terrified to look too closely at any cracks in the façade? That I tried to ignore the nagging doubts about him that wouldn’t leave me alone? That I made myself ignore them? Worse, that I got used to it?

Eventually I shake my head. ‘Not really. We’re happy, just the two of us.’

‘So who was your best man?’ the male officer barks at me now.

I turn to look at him coolly. ‘Adam’s step-dad.’

‘Oh, you’ve met his parents then.’

‘Look, I don’t think we’re achieving anything here,’ Ginger butts in at this point. ‘Why don’t I take you upstairs and you can look at Adam’s room and personal belongings? There might be a clue there.’

The male officer stares at her, then gives one curt nod. He gets up and follows her out of the room and we hear them going upstairs. I turn to look at the female officer and I can see that she’s readying herself to use this opportunity to get more out of me that I might have been reluctant to admit in front of her confrontational colleague. She’s wasting her time.

‘Is there anything else you can think of, Grace?’ she says very gently. ‘Anything at all? A first name, a glimpse of something you might have seen on his phone? A street he was maybe interested in …?’

With a jolt I remember the answer phone. ‘Oh, yes, there is one thing. I completely forgot about this. A man left a message on the answer phone today. A Leon.’ I get up and walk over to the phone, then press play on the machine.

‘Hello Adam, it’s Leon.’ That horrible, deep, gravelly voice seeps out of the speaker into my life again. ‘Long time no see. Betcha didn’t expect to hear from me again, did you? Come as a bit of a shock, has it? Ha, I bet it has. Just thought I’d give you a call, let you know I’m in the area – nearby actually. Very nearby. Would only take me two minutes to get to your place from here. Piece of cake. I’m gonna try to catch up with you very soon. Don’t worry about calling me back, I’ll be in touch.’

The officer listens raptly as the message plays. When it finishes she asks me to play it again and furiously scribbles in her notebook the entire time. Then she asks me if I can give her the tape. I blink and wonder how old she is.

‘It’s a digital machine.’

She stares at me, as if she doesn’t understand what that means.

‘There’s no tape,’ I elaborate.

‘Oh, God, silly me,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I’ll need to take the whole machine then, please.’

I unplug it and put it in a bag for her and then Ginger and the male officer come back downstairs.

‘Anything?’ I ask them both as they arrive in the room. Ginger shakes her head but the male officer is looking expectantly at the carrier bag containing the answer phone.

‘Something interesting?’ he asks her.

‘Could be,’ she nods. ‘Message on the answer phone, left this evening, just before Mr Littleton left the house.’

‘Uh huh, uh huh.’ He’s nodding approvingly, looking knowledgeable, but I’m sure the answer phone message won’t give them anything other than the overt words in it that we’ve all heard. Someone called Leon phoned and left a message. That’s it, nothing more. Big dumb policeman is probably just showing off since there’s really little point in taking the machine with them. No matter how many times they listen to it, that message won’t tell them anything.

‘We’ll have a look into your line records,’ PC Burly says suddenly, interrupting my train of thought. ‘See if we can find out where that call came from.’

Of course. I didn’t think of that.

‘Has the phone rung or been used at all since that message arrived?’

‘Um, no, I don’t think so.’

‘Well that’s something anyway.’

‘Right.’

‘Last thing, Mrs Littleton. Do you know where your husband keeps his passport?’

‘Why?’

He tries to smile reassuringly but it doesn’t go very well. ‘Let’s just see if it’s still there.’

‘Yes, sure, it’s in the same place as mine.’

I take them all back upstairs into the spare room and pull open the drawer in the bureau where the passports are kept and we all stand motionless as we stare silently down into it. Lying there amongst the travel insurance documents and the suitcase tags and some old pens and batteries and foreign plug adaptors is one single solitary passport, abandoned amongst the detritus, ungrabbed, unincluded, unwanted.

‘That lying little shit,’ Ginger spits venomously behind me, neatly summing up my thoughts exactly.

THREE

When I was fifteen, I had a friend at school called Kate. She joined our school in Year Ten because her mum found condoms in her dad’s jacket. Kate was pretty unhappy about the whole thing – moving house, changing schools, arguing parents – and made very little effort to make new friends, but she was clever and pretty so inevitably she became popular anyway. She didn’t pay much attention to me of course. I was good at French and English and she was good at tennis; I was friends with Ginger Blake and Maria Stavronopoulous, she was friends with Ryan Mitchell and Daniel Williams. But one day when Maria was away visiting family and Ginger was off sick, Kate came and sat next to me in Sex Ed. It was like Kate Middleton calmly sitting down next to you in the Asda café. She said ‘Hi’ to me so naturally it was like we were already close. So we started chatting and I found out that she was actually a really nice girl and we became good friends and stayed that way until we finished school.

Ha ha. That’s my sarcasm again. Kate, I think, was quite happy to be friends with me now and then, so we would get together at weekends and go out in the evenings and paint each other’s nails. But when I really needed her, when Ajeet Johar snogged Stephie Morrison in the geography room, or when I was off school for six weeks with glandular fever, she was nowhere to be seen. By me, anyway. By all accounts Stephie and Ajeet saw plenty of her during those two six-week periods of black misery – known in our family history as The Dark Ages and The Dark Ages Two: The Return.

I wasn’t really surprised and didn’t even feel particularly let down. Her being friends with me was extraordinary, remember. I was so grateful that she had chosen me at all, even on a superficial level, that I was happy with what I had. Ginger and Maria came and sat by my bed and brought me magazines and chocolate and DVDs for both of my teenage crises, and that was fine.

Marriage, on the other hand, is a different story. By definition, it can’t be superficial. I Googled the definition, months ago, so I know. Two people, choosing each other above all other human beings on the planet, to go through the rest of their lives with, to support, confide in, listen to, help. Or, you know, something like that. I’m no expert but that sounds like the opposite of superficial to me. I heard once that marriage is a gift through which husband and wife may grow together in love and trust, united in heart, body and mind, but I don’t know if I believed it then, and I’m pretty sure I don’t believe it now.

The funny thing about someone in your life walking out of it without telling you they’re going is that you don’t know how to feel. Or rather, you feel so many different things, they all get blended up together so nothing is distinguishable. You end up with a kind of brown plasticine of emotion. A sludge of feeling. I’m upset, of course, and hurt. But also empty, lost, scared – for him and for me – mystified, curious and angry. Furious actually. Curious and furious. I swing from screaming ‘I HOPE THAT FUCKING SECRETIVE LITTLE TOSSER NEVER COMES BACK!’ to thoughtfully pondering ‘I wonder what on earth has happened to him.’ I hate him with a pure, scalding stream of loathing; I love him like I never did before. I hope he stays away forever; I yearn for his return with every single molecule of myself.

I spend stupid amounts of time Googling ‘missing husband’. Mostly there are news articles from around the world talking about murdered wives or bodies being found. One actually makes my toes curl as it describes a poor woman collapsing after finding her missing husband in the local hospital morgue.

A sound comes out of me and I’m not sure if it’s a sob or a laugh. But then the air gets stuck in my lungs and my face crumples and I have to blink very quickly for several seconds to stop myself from believing that have anything to cry about.

For the first three days I don’t sleep, I don’t eat, I don’t go to work, I barely see anyone. I feel like I’m in suspended animation, like sitting motionless in HG Wells’ time machine, watching the world spin by faster and faster, plants growing, dust collecting, things getting older and everything moving on and changing except me. It’s like breathing in and not breathing out again. I’m tense with a feeling of imminent onrushing change, my adrenalin levels dialled up to maximum, my fight or flight reflexes poised and waiting for whatever is coming, to come.

But it doesn’t. The only thing that comes is the police. A bland, quiet officer called Linda Patterson who says she’s my family liaison person while the investigation is underway.

‘If you can find a key to his offices,’ she says, ‘that would be very useful. We’ll need to have a look through his paperwork. Also I’ll need a full description of the car …’

I stand at the window staring at the street, watching the comings and goings of all the neighbours, all the neighbours’ visitors, all the neighbours’ deliveries and collections. But no one and nothing arrives here. Apart from a purse that I ordered last week on eBay. It’s completely gorgeous, covered in black sequins.

On the fourth day I wake up alone in my – not ‘our’ – double bed, look at the empty space next to me and think, The toad’s not coming back, is he? The universe answers with a resounding silence, which I take to be confirmation, so I get up, get showered, and go to work. At least, I go to the shop. It will be good to see Ginge, but frankly helping someone decide between the Abraham Lincoln or the Scooby Doo outfits has never seemed more trivial.

‘Oh my God,’ Ginger says when she sees me, and walks over to me as rapidly as she can in a narrow Nefertiti dress. ‘I didn’t expect to see you back for a few weeks. Are you OK?’

I shrug. ‘No. Yes. I suppose so. Massively pissed off, a bit unhinged maybe, but OK. How are you?’

She stares at me, obviously weighing up the likelihood of me genuinely being OK versus the possibility I’m lying about it and likely suddenly to explode into a full-blown Hulk episode and smash the shop up. That would seriously piss off our boss, Penny, especially with the front of shop displays looking as good as they do right now. After a couple of seconds, she evidently decides I’m safe and may be allowed to stay. She angles her head as she concocts an answer to my enquiry. ‘I’m not bad, considering I’ve been dead for three thousand years and feel like I’m going to tip over in this ridiculous dress.’

I glance around me at the old familiarity of the place – the shelves of plastic fangs and bloody daggers; the disembodied zombie heads; the grotesque Golem masks – and feel comforted. The world around me starts to reassemble itself into something normal, something recognisable, and it makes me feel more real. Then Ginger moves closer and assumes a serious expression. ‘Seriously though, Gee. Do you honestly think you’re up to being back at work already? I mean, what’s happened is ghastly – do you think you can cope with this too?’ She pulls on the Nefertiti head-dress and straightens the attached hair on her shoulders. ‘I’m worried you might struggle.’

I shake my head. ‘No, I’m sure I’ll cope. I’m OK.’

‘Really?’

I nod. ‘Yes, really. I didn’t think I would be, and I’ve had my moments the past four days, believe me, but I’m not broken, just a bit winded. Being at work will give me something to do and something else to think about. The bills still need to be paid, don’t they? And if he ever does turn up again, nothing short of a kidnap and torture or serious amnesia would make me take him back.’

‘Right on.’ She pauses. ‘How about two broken legs?’

I shake my head. ‘He’s got a mobile, hasn’t he? And if he hasn’t, someone else will have, broken legs or not.’

‘Broken arms?’

‘Hands still work.’

‘Broken fingers?’

‘Dictation?’

‘Of course. What about a fever? You know, delirious with it, couldn’t say his own name, let alone find his way home?’

‘That comes under amnesia. No, I’m holding out for kidnap and torture. That’s the favourite.’

‘Agreed.’

She’s distracted by a customer at this point and I go and change into the Texas Chain Saw outfit, thinking about how generally OK I am feeling. Naturally when I think about Adam and the missing madras (I really did want Chinese anyway) all the fury and confusion and resentment start to boil and fester inside me again, and there’s a danger of it bubbling up to the surface and spilling out in the form of shrieky, shop-smashing rage. But the funny thing is, if I don’t actively think about it like that, it’s not at the forefront of my mind at all.

‘Seriously,’ Nefertiti hisses at me, eyeing my costume, ‘is that really what you’re wearing?’

I glance down, then nod at her. ‘It felt right.’

I watch for the next twenty minutes as she totters in teeny tiny steps backwards and forwards to the stock room for a Fred Flintstone, then a Mr Blobby, then a Men in Black, then back to Fred Flintstone again. The scene is completely absorbing. Ginger is smiling sweetly with her ‘Here you go’s and ‘How about this?’s, but I know her teeth are gritted and it makes me want to giggle. Thoughts of Adam are in my mind, simmering, but they’re not overwhelming and they’re certainly not crushing me.

Eventually it’s settled – London Beefeater – and the difficult customer leaves us in peace.

‘So what’s the latest from the police?’ Ginger asks me as she puts Fred and Blobby back on the rail.

‘Nothing much. They’ve got the car details and they’re going through some of his business stuff from the office, but I get the impression they’re not that bothered about it.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘Because he’s an adult man who drove off voluntarily. No one lured him into a car with promises of sweets or puppies, there’s no jerky CCTV footage of him getting into a taxi at two in the morning, they haven’t found his jacket and shoes on the beach or by a railway line, his car hasn’t been discovered at some M1 services with a sinister blood smear on the passenger seat …’

She puts her hands up. ‘OK, yes, I get it. What I mean is, why are you getting the impression they’re not bothered?’

‘Oh, right. Well, they’ve only been round to see me once since that first time. There are no updates, no one calling in to check on me. I don’t know, it all seems pretty half-hearted to me.’

‘And you have plenty of experience of what happens in these circumstances, do you? I mean, this is half-hearted compared with …?’

I think about that a moment, then nod slowly. ‘Yeah, good point, this is probably just the way it’s done. I don’t know why I was expecting more.’

‘Look, Gee, you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. Maybe they’ve set up an incident room or something. There could be a team of five or six people working on it, going door to door or sifting through his work stuff. There’s probably far more happening than you’re aware of.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And maybe they’re so busy they haven’t had time to update you on anything. They won’t update you until they have something concrete to tell you anyway, will they?’

‘No, probably not.’

‘Do you want me to ask Matt to pop round and see you? He’ll probably be able to tell you a bit more. From the police perspective. He might even have some inside knowledge that the investigation team would never tell you.’

‘Really? Wouldn’t he get into trouble for that?’

She shrugs. ‘Who’s gonna know? And anyway, what’s gonna happen to him, someone calls the police?’

I look up at her gratefully. ‘That would be good. Would you?’

‘Course I would, stupid. Happy to.’

‘Do you think he’ll mind?’

‘No, I’m pretty sure he won’t mind.’

‘And you’ll be there too, right?’

She smiles and rubs my arm. ‘Yes, Gracie, I’ll be there too.’

I give her a quick hug. ‘Thanks Ginge.’

‘No probs.’

‘And … sorry for sulking … a bit.’

She rings Matt during her lunch break and he says he can pop over tonight. Lucky for me that he’s free so soon. Ginge comes home with me after work to wait for him. And eat my food.

‘I think it’s only fair that if I cook something, I should be allowed to eat some of it,’ she says around a mouthful of sausage.

‘Totally.’

We’re slobbing it – understandable in the circs, I think – and eating our dinner on trays on our laps. As we eat, Ginge is glancing around the room checking out all the pictures of Adam and me that are everywhere. Us at my sister’s twenty-first birthday party last year; us feeding goats on our honeymoon in the Cotswolds; us having Christmas dinner at his parents’ house. Something occurs to me suddenly and I slam my hands to my head. ‘Oh my God!’

‘Oh my God what?! What is it?’

‘Adam’s parents! I haven’t even told them what’s happened! Oh arses, this is terrible. He’s been gone for four days, he could even be dead …’

‘He’s not dead.’

‘… and they don’t even know anything odd has happened.’ I turn to look at Ginge, my eyes wild. ‘They might even have heard from him by now! God, maybe they know something, maybe he’s explained everything to them and told them to fill me in the moment I got in touch with them …’

‘Gee …’

‘… which he would have expected me to do that same night.’

‘Gee, listen.’

‘But I didn’t, I completely forgot about them. Bloody hell, Ginge, what sort of person does that make me?’

‘It makes you the sort of person that’s going through a pretty terrible ordeal, that’s all. It’s completely understandable, given what you’ve had to deal with, stop stressing.’

By now I’m up off the sofa pacing the room, each fist clamped around a handful of hair. It’s still attached to my head, don’t worry. I’m not quite there yet.

‘I can’t stop stressing, I’m a terrible, awful, horrible person.’ I lunge towards the phone but Ginger is already up and grabs my arm.

‘Stop!’ she says, almost shouting. ‘Seriously Gee, stop acting mad.’

‘I’m not acting mad!’ I halt in my tracks. ‘Am I acting mad?’

‘Yes. Oh, I don’t know. Just for God’s sake calm down and listen.’

I do a ‘relax’ thing, making a concerted effort to breathe deeply for a few seconds with my eyes closed, and actively loosen my arms and shoulders. ‘OK. What?’

‘The police will have let Adam’s parents know. You don’t need to worry about that.’

I stare at her. Of course they would have. Relief floods through me. ‘Oh, thank God. Yes, of course they would. Jesus, I’m such a plank!’

‘No, you’re not, you’re just not thinking straight at the moment.’

‘I’m really not.’ Another sudden thought. ‘Do you think they’ll have let my parents know?’

Ginger bites her lip and breaks eye contact. ‘I don’t know. They might have. Depends if they’ve been round to see them already, I expect … But no, if they’d already been round there to ask questions, your mum would have phoned you after, wouldn’t she? So they probably don’t know yet. Good idea if you call them and let them know first. Otherwise it’ll come as a bit of a shock when the boys in blue turn up on their doorstep …’ She tails off and watches me. ‘What’s up?’

I’m pacing again, rubbing my head and face, and I stop and turn to face her. ‘Ask questions? What do you mean, ask questions? Why would the police need to question my parents at all? I mean, Adam is just their son-in-law, there’s no other connection, they’re not going to be able to tell them anything. He just drove off, no one knows what happened to him – well, I expect someone does, somewhere, probably Adam himself in fact, the lying SCUMBAG!’ – I shout the word out, as if somewhere he can still hear me – ‘but my mum and dad certainly don’t know, why would the police even bother with them?’

Ginger walks across to where I’ve stopped and takes hold of my upper arms. ‘OK, now I want you to try and be calm about this. Will you? Are you calm?’

Her words shoot darts of panic into me and my agitated heart dials up a notch. ‘Christ Ginge, what do you know?’

She shakes her head. ‘Nothing, nothing like that. I’m only guessing here. Matt will be able to—’

‘Guessing about what?’

She takes a deep breath.

‘What Ginge? What is it?’

‘Thepoliceprobablythinkyoudidit!’

There’s a brief but grotesquely tense silence as her words and all their ramifications make their way into my brain.

Ginger is shaking her head, plucking at my arm. ‘No, no, that sounds awful. I don’t mean … What I mean is, it will be one of their lines of enquiry. That’s all.’

The police probably think I did it. That’s what she said. They think I did it. But Adam has disappeared, so what do they think I … did …? If anyone did something, the thing they think someone, anyone, did, must be … I feel all the blood drain from my face and head, and sway a bit where I’m standing. They think Adam is dead.

‘Oh God, Gracie, I’m so sorry …’

I shake my head and frown at her. ‘No no. That’s not … He isn’t …’ I look up frankly into her face. ‘You think they think he’s been … done in? And that I was the one who … did … him?’

She shakes her head again. ‘No, no, I don’t think they think that. It’s just one of the possibilities they have to consider, when someone—’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘Oh my effing God, no way!’ She flies at me and seizes me in a tight hug. ‘You think I’d be here right now, calmly eating caramelised onion sausages if I thought you were a violent, psychopathic killer capable of ending your own husband and coolly vanishing the body?’

‘No, no, I suppose not.’

‘Damn straight.’

I think for a few seconds. ‘So you don’t think I killed him.’

‘I do not.’

‘But you do think he’s dead?’

She looks at me sidelong and gives a wry smile. ‘Of course he’s not effing dead. Although he sodding well deserves to be, after this. Little shit.’

I close my eyes and release a breath. ‘It’s such a massive relief to hear you say that. I mean, I’ve been feeling so sure he’s alive, but if the police think he’s dead, and then if you did …’

‘Don’t worry. Matt’s told me it’s fairly standard for the police to think along those lines when someone is inexplicably no longer around. They have to think worst case scenario, don’t they?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Yeah. But that doesn’t mean that they necessarily really actually think it.’

A sudden loud bang on the front door makes us jump and we both turn to stare wide-eyed in the direction of the hallway. Goosebumps rise on my arms and shoulders.

‘Who. The fuck. Is that?’ I breathe, reaching out blindly to grab Ginger’s arm. I can almost believe it’s murdered Adam, head caved in and dripping with gore, returned from the grave to seek revenge on the one who ended him.

‘It’s Matt,’ she says, and gets up to let him in.

I eat the last piece of sausage then put my knife and fork down on the plate, and the plate on the floor. It’ll be nice to see Matt again. Haven’t seen him for years and I was always fond of the kid, in a big sister kind of way.

‘Here he is,’ Ginge is saying, coming back in. And filling the doorway behind her, even without his hat on, is a giant policeman. I stand up, because my neck is aching looking up at him. It doesn’t make much difference.

‘Is this … Matt?’ I ask the room, sounding painfully like an ancient auntie who hasn’t seen him since he was four. He’s recognisable, with the same black hair, brown eyes and large chin, but now there’s stubble where before there was only razor burn. His piercings are gone, as is the eyeliner, and his neck and shoulders look vast. It’s as if he’s been in a grow bag since I last saw him, and reconciling the two images is almost impossible.

‘That’s me,’ he says in a very deep, proper man’s voice. ‘Hi Grace. Long time no see. How are you these days?’ He closes his eyes briefly. ‘I – I mean, obviously I know that you’re not … That is, you know, of course, you must be absolutely …’ He stops. Takes a deep breath. Tries again. ‘I’m so sorry about … you know, what’s happened.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Sit down, Matt,’ Ginger says suddenly. ‘Grace and I’ll make a cuppa.’

She grabs my arm and practically drags me out of the room into the kitchen.

‘I can’t believe that’s the same gawky lad I used to know,’ I’m saying as she bustles around getting cups out and filling the kettle. ‘He’s a lot taller in black, isn’t he?’

‘Look, I want to say something,’ she says really quickly, rooting through the cupboard to find some tea bags. ‘It’s about Matt.’

‘Right?’

‘I don’t want him to …’ She breaks off, looks round, then steps lightly over to the kitchen door. She peers out into the hallway then silently closes it and turns round again to face me. ‘Matt’s already told me that the first thing the police will do is try to work out whether or not Adam is dead, and that they’ll be looking principally at you.’

‘Oh, yeah. I’d almost forgotten about being a murder suspect. Thanks for reminding me.’

‘The thing is, he probably shouldn’t even be here, let alone tell you anything.’

‘Oh. Really? Why not?’

She widens her eyes. ‘Coz you’re a suspect. Matt’s not directly involved in the investigation, it’s not his section. But even if he was, he couldn’t be because he knows you personally. And of course he’s my brother and I’m the best friend. It’s a link that could be used by a good solicitor to muddy the waters in the event of a prosecution.’

‘Oh right. I see what you mean.’ I pause. ‘No I don’t. Are you talking about if they prosecute me?’

‘Well, yes, but it won’t happen because …’

‘Of course it won’t happen because he’s not dead and even if he was – AND I HOPE HE FUCKING WELL IS – I didn’t kill him.’

‘I know …’

‘So this scenario you’re talking about, where my link with the police, through you and Matt, is used by a solicitor to … what was it again?’

‘Muddy the waters.’

‘Right. What you’re actually talking about is my solicitor. Getting me off.’

She shrugs. ‘Yeah. But we all know that’ll never happen because you didn’t do anything.’

I stare at her and the absolute horror of what she’s saying starts to sink in. The police could somehow, in some monstrous, inconceivable twist of misunderstanding, misdirection and mistake, decide that Adam is dead; and by disastrous coincidence after shocking inaccuracy, could find me responsible for it. And then, in an almost unimaginably horrific runaway trial involving spurious witnesses and mistaken identity, I could actually get sent down for it.

‘Grab the digestives,’ Ginger says, heading back towards the living room.

As we walk back in, Matt stands up and his bulk practically fills the room.

‘You don’t have to stand up whenever we come in, Matthew,’ Ginger says, handing him a mug.

‘No, hah, I know. Sorry.’ He sits.

‘So,’ she says. ‘Tell Gracie what’s going on.’ We both sit down facing Matt, as if he’s the entertainment.

He nods at Ginger, then looks over at me and lowers his chin. ‘There really isn’t much to tell you,’ he says, his voice reverberating around the room. It’s the deepest voice this room has ever experienced. Adam’s voice was much lighter. Not feminine, but much less … manly. He was more refined; but there was less of him.

Why am I thinking of him in the past tense?

‘Right,’ I say, to encourage Matt. So far, it seems like a waste of time him being here.

‘But I can find stuff out for you, pop in on my way home if there’s anything.’

‘Great. Thanks.’

‘Is that it?’ Ginger demands. ‘I thought you said you’d heard something interesting this evening.’

‘Oh yes, I did. Sorry, I was forgetting you hadn’t heard it yet.’ He turns to me again and assumes a funeral face. ‘They found the car, Gracie.’

The shock of this hits me almost physically and tea slops over the side of my mug onto the floor. For a second my throat seizes, but my brain can’t formulate a coherent word anyway.

‘Where?’ I finally manage.

‘Church car park in a little place called Linton. About three hundred miles from here.’

‘Linton? Where the hell is that? I’ve never even heard of it.’ I look at Ginger helplessly but she just shrugs. I turn back to Matt. ‘What does this mean?’

Matt shuffles forward on his chair a little, bringing himself an inch nearer to me. ‘Look, it’s OK, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. All it tells us for sure is that the car is there.’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘Oh, right. OK.’

‘Matt,’ Ginger hisses at him.

He glances at her and she rolls her eyes towards me, so he looks back. ‘What I mean by that,’ he says hastily, ‘is that that is all it tells us definitively. I mean, yes, it could mean that he drove it there himself and abandoned it. Or he was taken there. Or he was meeting someone there and never got back to the car. Or is still intending to return to it, but something is preventing him.’

‘All right,’ Ginger interrupts, putting her hand up.

‘Or,’ Matt goes on, regardless, ‘it could also mean that someone stole it, and has abandoned it there. I mean, it’s unlikely that someone else drove it there, with him in it. That’s quite a risky thing to do, if you’re abducting someone …’

‘Because of the DNA,’ I whisper reverentially.

‘It’s more to do with the CCTV cameras actually. They’re everywhere these days. And speed cameras. You can be caught dozens of times every day, more if you’re going a long distance. Now they know roughly what route it was on, the face of whoever drove that car to that car park will soon be coming out of a full colour printer in the station. And if it’s not your husband, things will … change.’

‘What if he wasn’t abducted? I mean, someone else was driving, but Adam went along willingly?’

Matt nods. ‘Of course that’s another possibility. They’ll be considering it. They’ll know much more when they get the photo of the driver.’

‘What was in it?’ Ginger says quietly. ‘I mean, in the car. Was his wallet in it? The passport? Money, jacket. You know.’

Matt turns to her and shakes his head. ‘Nothing, that I know of. I don’t know everything of course. This is just what I’ve managed to pick up, chatting to people in the station. But no one has mentioned anything being left in it.’

‘What about a curry?’ I ask faintly. ‘Was there any take-away curry in the car?’

Matt frowns and smiles at the same time. ‘No, no, I don’t think so. Why?’

I shake my head, then drop it into my hands. For some reason, that’s the most upsetting thing about the car being found. If there had been cold take-away boxes in there, I’d know that he had been planning to come home again, but events had somehow prevented that. But the absence of even a whiff of steam or a splash of korma sauce on the upholstery means only one thing. He left the house that night knowing he wasn’t coming back.

FOUR

‘I get it,’ Ginger says, reaching across and rubbing my arm. ‘I totally get it.’

Matt’s mystified. ‘Well I don’t. What’s the curry got to do with anything?’

‘I’ll tell you later,’ she says quietly and I can feel some movement above me, as if she’s shaking her head emphatically, or making cutting motions across her throat to shut him up.

‘Oh,’ he says, ‘right. OK. Listen, Gracie, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but in these sorts of cases they almost always come back.’

I raise my head to find him staring at me earnestly. ‘Really?’

He nods, slowly and sadly. ‘Oh, yes, definitely. He’s driven himself off, he took his passport and wallet, that was forethought. It’s incredibly unlikely that he’s been taken under duress.’ He smiles encouragingly, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘I’m sure he’s fine.’

I move my head slowly from him to Ginger, lock eyes with her briefly, then turn and look back at Matt. ‘I arsing well hope not.’

Matt stifles the flicker of a smile when he hears this. ‘Oh … kay. Well, I suppose that’s an understandable reaction.’ He looks over at Ginge. ‘OK to use the loo?’

When he comes back in a few minutes later, he doesn’t sit down again but says goodbye from the doorway. ‘Work in the morning,’ he says. ‘Really great to see you again, Gracie. I’m sure everything will turn out fine.’ Ginge gets up to show him out, even though it’s a very simple journey straight through the hallway to the door, and he’s a policeman so really ought to be able to find his own way. There’s some loud whispering from that direction for about half a minute, but I can’t make out any of the words.

I stay in a state of – I don’t want to say shock; let’s say, severe disappointment – for the rest of the evening. Everything that I thought I knew about my marriage, everything I’d felt, was turning out to be absolutely true. My feelings of unease and lack of faith, feelings that I had tried to squash, telling myself I was being ridiculous because of my own insecurity, were spot on, it turned out. The mystery surrounding my husband, the lack of information, the apparent absence of friends or colleagues, was not just me being paranoid and could not simply be discounted. Who knew?

Ginger dumps our cold tea in the sink and opens a bottle of wine I didn’t know I had.

‘Get some of that down you,’ she says, handing me a large glass.

‘Are you sure it’s the best idea in the world at this point to give alcohol to someone whose beautiful husband has buggered off to who knows where?’

She barely pauses. ‘It’s Merlot, not meths,’ she says, ‘chillax.’ Then she tips her head back and pours in the wine.

We go back into the living room and Ginger curls up round her wine glass. She looks at me frankly. ‘You do know why Matt’s secretly pleased that your husband’s gone, and secretly miserable that he’s probably completely fine, don’t you?’

I frown, trying to make sense of this. ‘Not sure I do, actually.’

She shrugs. ‘Well, if you don’t know by now, I’m not telling you.’ She takes another large slug of wine. ‘I think you need to see Adam’s parents.’

I’m still wondering about what she said about Matt, but the notion of seeing Ray and Julia sweeps it away completely. ‘Yes, I know. And mine. Don’t really want to phone them about this, better in person. I’ll do it tomorrow. Is Penny in tomorrow?’

She shakes her head. ‘Nope. Still in Italy.’

‘Great. Do you mind if I don’t come in? I can’t believe I’ve left it this long.’

‘Course not, no problem at all. Take as long as you want, I can manage on my own in the shop.’

I think it was the wine talking.

Ninety minutes later, she’s in the recovery position in my spare bed, and there’s a strategic bucket on the floor directly beneath her face.

‘I’m sorry, Gracie,’ she says quietly with her eyes closed. ‘I’m really really sorry …’

‘S’OK.’ More to myself, really. She’s already unconscious.

Finally I’m on my own. Back downstairs I open up my laptop and Google Linton to see if I can work out why Adam went there. Why he would blithely disinter himself and heartlessly abandon the life we built together to go off on his own for some foul, selfish and probably illegal reason, the lying, deceitful little—

Oh, it’s lovely! A completely beautiful, picturesque little village in North Yorkshire, not far from Skipton, apparently. There’s a stream with stepping stones, cottages everywhere, pretty little bridges and even a waterfall. I lean closer to the screen and narrow my eyes at the photos. This quaint, rural scene, full of sheep and fields and really wholesome bread, is hiding something evil. Lurking somewhere underneath, just around the corner, out of sight, are ugliness; treachery; pain. And possibly violence. I click on the map and print off directions; then shut down and go to bed.

My dreams are full of breaking glass and squealing tyres but when I wake up I can’t remember anything specific. The clock says it’s 06:34 so I definitely need at least another week of sleep, but apparently my body has decided it doesn’t want to go through any more dreams like that so it actively refuses to go back under. After half an hour of trying, I pull the covers back, swivel myself round and stand up. I feel achy and unrested, as if I’ve spent the whole night tensed up and anxious somewhere. It reminds me of that old fairy tale about the princess whose shoes are always worn out when she wakes up in the morning because she’s been secretly dancing all night without waking up. Except I feel more like I’ve spent the night waiting for surgery than at a party.

I trudge downstairs in my dressing gown and put the kettle on. I’m not looking forward to today at all. First thing I’ve got to do is ring both sets of parents and make sure it’s OK to visit today. Then I’ve got to visit them. It’s day five, and the ramifications of Adam’s disappearance just keep on growing.

Adam’s mum and step-dad are only a fifteen-minute drive away, but we hardly ever see them. I think they were last here for dinner about two months ago, and before that it must be a year. Adam is obviously not close with them, and that suited me just fine. His mum, Julia, is a bit odd, somehow. Like she’s not really there. Or you’re not. I was never quite sure which one of us she was oblivious to – it varied. Sometimes she would hardly acknowledge my presence and pay more attention to the blank wall behind me; sometimes she would be over-the-top gushing with affection and enthusiasm. ‘Lovely Gracie, fabulous Gracie.’ Made it very uncomfortable for me, on every occasion; I couldn’t work out whether to try to interact with her or not.

‘Is your mum OK?’ I stupidly asked Adam after the first time I met them. That time she had been almost entirely silent and extremely distractible. Adam’s step-dad, Ray, had cooked a lovely roast lamb and was serving it at the table while Julia threw three glasses of wine into herself. She was leaning for the bottle to refill again when her hand suddenly froze, mid-reach. I glanced at Ray and Adam, to see if they’d noticed, and they were both locked in position – Ray carving the joint, Adam pouring drinks – but had turned their heads to stare at her. Ray had even said, ‘Julia,’ quietly, almost like a warning. Eventually she dropped her hand, and the two men relaxed again and continued with what they were both doing.

At that point in our relationship, I still expected Adam to be open with me about himself and his family. I thought he would put his arms round me and tear up while he told me sorrowfully that she had some syndrome or other, something on ‘the spectrum’. Or that she was maybe bipolar or clinically depressed. On medication for something at the very least. Probably not a very tactful way of asking, but we’d been home for an hour by this time and he wasn’t volunteering it.

‘Yes, she’s absolutely fine.’ He flashed a brief smile at me, then turned directly back to the film we were watching.

Alarm bells started clanging instantly. He’d shut down – what became his go-to response for any enquiry at all into some part of his life that wasn’t to do with me. A solid and unyielding rebuff. A dead end.

‘Oh. Well that’s good,’ I said weakly. His closed-off demeanour – arms folded, head turned pointedly away – told me not to pursue it, so, mystified, I let it go. But I dreaded the next time we went and was very relieved that it didn’t come up again for several months.

But she’s his mum and I’m his wife, it’s almost a requirement that we meet up and console each other in these circumstances. I wish I knew how to behave around her, especially now, but Google has been utterly useless in that respect. Of course Julia will be missing him too, and may even look at me as the last remnant of her vanishing son. Oh God. I hope she doesn’t think that I think about her like that. That I’ll want to snuggle in her arms and talk about ‘Adam the baby’ and ‘Adam the handyman’ and ‘Adam the party animal’ and laugh and then cry together. I have no inclination whatsoever to see her, but it would look odd if I don’t go. So go I must.

From upstairs there’s a thump followed by a kind of groaning sob. I grab a glass of water and go quickly up to the spare room to find Ginger kneeling in front of a small pool of red wine. There’s a glass on its side beside her. She looks up at me like a dog in front of a fouled rug.

‘I’m so sorry, Gracie,’ she says quietly, and closes her eyes.

‘No point asking you how you are today then?’

She answers very softly without opening her eyes. ‘Let me sort it out. Got any white wine?’

I smile. ‘Thank you for the thought, but I’m not bringing wine anywhere near you today.’

‘Alka-Seltzer might be a better idea.’

‘Haven’t got any I’m afraid. Oh Ginge, what were you thinking?’

‘I know, I know, I’m an effing idiot, don’t tell me. How long had that bottle of wine been there anyway?’

‘No, you’re not blaming the wine. It’s Adam’s—’ I pause, correct myself – ‘it was Adam’s, so it was definitely a good one.’

‘Good God, Gracie,’ Adam’s voice says in my head, ‘what the hell have you bought?’

‘It’s wine. I thought it would be nice with the—’

‘No it isn’t. Jesus, this will probably taste like nail varnish remover, not wine. How much was it? A fiver? We’re not drinking that.’

I smile at Ginger now. ‘You tipped nearly the whole lot down your throat all by yourself. And half a bottle of gin.’

‘Don’t talk about it.’

I get her cleaned up and put her to bed on the sofa with some dry toast, a jug of water and the bucket. The shop will have to stay closed today. Penny won’t mind; it’s more of a hobby for her anyway, her husband is a multi-millionaire businessman supplying toner ink to dry photocopiers around the country. Besides, she’s in Italy.

‘What’s Fletch up to today? Can he come and look after you?’ Simon Fletcher – known affectionately as Fletch by anyone who has any affection for him – is Ginge’s current boyfriend. She always introduces him like that – ‘This is Fletch, my current boyfriend’ – even though they’ve been together over three years.

‘What? Aren’t you looking after me?’

‘No, you know I can’t. I’m going to see Julia and Ray today, then Mum and Dad. Shall I call him?’

She pouts from the sofa. ‘No point, he’s working.’ Fletch sells drugs for a living. He works in telesales for a large pharmaceutical company. She rolls over and faces the back of the sofa, so I start walking out of the room to go and get dressed. A whispery voice reaches me at the door: ‘Can you get my phone, please? I’ll text him later.’

I wait until after I’ve showered and dressed before ringing Julia and Ray. Ginger is snoring on the sofa so I take my phone out into the kitchen to call, but spend almost half an hour procrastinating with the washing up and cleaning first. Eventually I give myself a mental slap and am just about to dial when my phone starts ringing all on its own, making me jump.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello? Sarah?’

I puff out a ‘Huh.’ Haven’t been called that for a long time. Ginger and I became best friends virtually on day one at secondary school because her nickname was Ginger and mine was Grace. Long story, but there was a legendary incident when I was about nine when I knocked an entire display of soy sauce over in Sainsbury’s. Kind of tripped multiple times. Hey, it got very slippery very quickly. My dad dubbed me Grace at that point, and it stuck. Ginger and I both corrected our Year Seven teacher at first registration, then caught each other’s eye and grinned. I don’t think anyone at school ever even got to grips with our real names, we used them for such a short time.

But no one calls me Sarah any more. Not even my family. I haven’t gone by that name for sixteen or seventeen years, at least. I literally don’t associate with anyone who still calls me that, and apart from my passport and marriage certificate, everything I have is …

Suddenly I feel cold tendrils snaking up my spine and my heart rate speeds up. There’s something off about this call, and it can’t be coincidence that my husband vanished into the night five days ago. This is it, I think to myself. This is the moment when I find out what’s going on and my world crashes around me.

My fingers wrap around the phone more tightly and I press it to my head. ‘Yes, speaking. Who is this?’

‘It’s Leon, Sarah. I’m a friend of your husband’s. Is he there, by any chance?’

Ice-cold air seeps out of the phone and sends chills all the way through me. I think furiously about what this means. Should I answer him? Tell the truth? Lie? I have no idea. I had thought that Leon was involved in Adam’s disappearance, because of the message left on the answer phone the day he vanished; but now he’s ringing asking for him again, apparently not realising that he’s disappeared at all. Is Leon just a coincidence, then?

Or is Leon lying?

‘Hello?’ the voice comes again. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Um, yes, sorry, I’m here.’ I run my hand through my hair a few times as I think. What should I do, what should I do? Then something occurs to me. ‘How did you get this number, Leon?’

There’s a deep, throaty chortle. ‘Sarah, you’re starting to sound a bit suspicious of me suddenly. What do you take me for, some kind of criminal? Your husband gave it to me, of course.’

‘Oh, right. Of course.’ Now I’m thoroughly panicked. If Adam did give this person my mobile number, surely he would have said my name was Grace? He knows my real name of course, but only because I told him. He has never known me as Sarah, or called me that. It would be unnatural for him to tell someone his wife was called Sarah. That would just be weird, and of course nothing Adam did was ever weird. Ha ha.

But now there’s a tremor starting somewhere in my belly and I’m not sure if it’s anger, fear, desperation or hunger.

‘I’m afraid he’s not here at the moment,’ I say, if only to end the awkward silence that’s growing larger by the second. Leon must be thinking something’s up by now. If he wasn’t already. Which he obviously was. ‘Can I give him a message?’ God alone knows why I’m saying this. I can’t give Adam a message any more than I can give him a punch in the kidneys.

There’s a long pause from the other end, accompanied by some deep, slow breathing. ‘I don’t think so,’ Leon rasps eventually. ‘I really need to see him myself. When is he going to be in?’

I can feel my eyes widening and my breathing starting to quicken as fear-fuelled adrenalin floods my system. ‘Um, I’m not sure …’ I know I’m in fight or flight mode. Even though the perceived threat is on the other end of the phone, in an unknown location, the fear I’m experiencing is no less real just because Leon isn’t in the room with me. Everything about this call feels like a threat, and I start to glance around me, planning my escape. Or looking for a defensive weapon. My eyes land on the knife block and just as my hand is closing round the large bread knife, there’s a robust knock on the front door. I practically scream out loud where I am, right there by the toaster, and the knife block falls over with a clatter. I spin in place, heart thudding, to face the door. Through the opaque glass panels in the door I can see a dark, formless shape, indistinguishable as either man or woman, hunched and heavy. The top part of the shape swivels slightly as I watch, turning to look around it, observing its surroundings. Yet again it feels like the undead Adam, returning to me grey and cold and dripping with lake water.

‘I’ll get him to call you,’ I manage to croak. I need to be free of this call so I can focus on my fear of the front door. One frightening thing at a time is all I can handle. If that, actually. ‘What’s your number?’ I’m staring at the door as I advance slowly towards it.

‘No, don’t do that,’ the gravelly voice says. ‘I’ll call again. Soon.’ And finally, thankfully, the phone clicks off. I put it quickly down on the kitchen counter like a ticking bomb, then turn to face my next fear. I want to take the bread knife, but it could be awkward to answer the door holding it if it’s the postman, so I leave it there. As I walk down the hallway, my gaze is fixed on the lumpy shape behind the glass, and when I reach for the door catch, the image of a bloated, sallow-skinned Adam comes back into my head, and my hand hesitates in mid-air. I close my eyes. It won’t be him at all, in any condition, I tell myself, least of all a walking corpse. I’m just being ridiculous. My hand trembles a little as I’m opening the door, so I grab my arm with my other hand.

As soon as the door opens fully, I see it’s the female police liaison officer that was here before, Linda. She smiles at me, then frowns as apparently I go a bit pale.

‘You all right, Grace?’ she says, stepping nearer. ‘You’ve gone a bit pale. Are you poorly?’

‘No, no, I’m fine. I just thought, when you knocked …’

She smacks her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God, I’m so insensitive. I’m really sorry. Missing husband, unexpected visits from the police, of course you thought the worst.’

She has no idea.

‘I really am very sorry.’ She puts her hand out and gently squeezes my arm. ‘I did try to call your mobile from the car, but couldn’t get through. Not that that’s any excuse. I promise next time I will wait outside in the car until I’ve spoken to you on the phone. That way, you’ll always know I’m coming, and then if anyone ever turns up unannounced, you’ll know it’s because …’ She trails off and looks away. ‘Ahem. Anyway, you’ll know when I’m coming. OK?’

I nod wordlessly.

‘Can I come in then?’

As we walk along the hallway, Linda starts to go into the living room because that’s where we went last time she was here.

‘No!’ I almost shout, and block her path.

She looks at me sidelong. ‘Something wrong?’

‘No, nothing, just my friend, passed out drunk in there.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. She hit it a bit hard last night.’

‘Any reason for that?’

Bloody hell, you can really tell she’s a copper. I just manage to stop myself in time from saying that we had the news about Adam’s car last night. Matt told me off the record yesterday, from what he’d overheard in the stationery cupboard or something, so I can’t let on he’s said anything because it will probably get him into trouble. ‘Don’t think so. Quite standard for her. Plus, you know, this whole situation …’

‘Having a tough time, is she?’

I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Would she be happier if it was me sweating red wine on the sofa in there? I decide not to answer and just shrug as we go into the kitchen.

‘OK, well. I’ve got some news for you,’ she says, sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘Come and sit down, Grace.’

My heart starts thudding in a dart of panic, but then I realise that she’s probably about to tell me officially about Adam’s car. I arrange my features into what I hope says, ‘Oh Christ what is this news you’ve come to tell me is it good or bad I don’t think I can take any more,’ and sit down in the chair next to Linda. ‘What is it? Have they found him?’

She narrows her eyes at me then, as if she’s found what I’ve asked a bit odd. Or is struggling to understand it. ‘Nooo,’ she says slowly. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe because my husband has vanished into the night and I was kind of hoping involving the police might lead to him being found.’ I widen my eyes. ‘Was I wrong?’

She takes a deep breath and releases it in a sigh. ‘No, Grace, you weren’t wrong, we’re obviously doing what we can to find him. It looks like it’s going to take a bit longer than we thought, though.’

‘Why? What’s changed?’

She presses her lips together and tilts her head on one side. I think she’s trying to look like she’s compassionate. ‘We’ve made a discovery, Grace. It’s what we were hoping for, a lead of some description, but now that we’ve found it, it’s turned out to be a dead end.’

‘Oh for the love of God, tell me already!’

She flinches a little, then resumes her calm, compassionate look. ‘It’s the car, Grace. We’ve found Adam’s car.’

She freezes at this point, with her head still tilted, her eyebrows still drawn together. I can tell that in her head she’s hearing the EastEnders theme tune starting. But this isn’t a cliff hanger, I already knew about it.

‘Oh. Right. I see.’

She almost imperceptibly narrows her eyes again. ‘Don’t you have any questions?’

‘Oh, er, yes, yes, of course I do. I mean, this is a bit of a shock so I’m, you know, I’m a bit … out of …’ I pause. Come on, Gracie, get it together. ‘Was there anything in it? Any evidence? A lead?’

She shakes her head. ‘Nothing obvious, I’m afraid. It’s being examined by our forensics team at the moment, though, so we might know more eventually.’

‘Oh, right.’ I nod thoughtfully, aware that she is scrutinising my reaction, not entirely sure that I’m coming across as convincing. ‘No curry then?’

‘No, love, not so much as a poppadum.’

‘Right. The bastard.’

She smiles. ‘Anything else you want to ask?’

Her face is enigmatic. It makes me think there is definitely something else I should ask. And if I don’t ask it, this could be one of those disastrous coincidences or shocking inaccuracies that pile up and pile up and ultimately find me languishing behind bars for the next forty years. Come on, Gracie, think! What else do I need to know? What did Matt tell us last night? The car was found, it had no curry in it …

‘Oh, I know,’ I burst out. ‘Where was it found?’

So she tells me about Linton and I ask where that is and she says North Yorkshire and I say I’ve never heard of it and hope to God she doesn’t see the print-out of the directions from Google Maps that’s lying on the kitchen side near the bread bin.

Just before she leaves, she tells me that there’s been no break-in at Adam’s work premises, so no lead in that direction either. I nod and say, ‘OK’, and eventually she goes. As I watch her little police Clio speeding off up the road, I spot Pam’s head from next door looking out of her side window at me. She’s not being remotely discreet as she spies, with the net curtain pulled all the way back so her shiny white china figurine of two people dancing is completely visible. What room is that? Must be a study, or possibly a side window in the dining room. Either way, she didn’t just happen to be in there at ten o’clock in the morning; she’s gone in there deliberately to have a good old look out of the window at the catastrophe that’s befallen me so she can report all the interesting bits back to Mike later.

‘Oooh, there was another police car there this morning, Mike, must be something really bad, mustn’t it? For them to be there again today like that, can’t just be a parking fine or something.’

‘Yeah, you’re right, love. She’s probably executed him and hidden his dismembered body in black bags under the upstairs floorboards. Pass the gravy.’

I deliberately lock eyes with Pam to make sure she knows I’ve seen her looking, but she doesn’t turn away in shame or embarrassment. She just keeps on staring, as if she’s trying to memorise every little detail about me. Probably thinks she’s going to have to give a description to the police at some point in the future. I raise my hand and wave sarcastically. She waves back, then glances at her watch. ‘She waved at me, officer, it was exactly ten oh five.’

Christ. I shake my head and go back inside, closing the door behind me with relief. I actually do feel a bit like a murderer desperately trying to hide what I’ve done from a prying detective. I’ve got away with it this time, but I know I won’t be so lucky in the future. It’s time to move the body …

‘Oh my fucking God, what the crying out loud is this?’ comes suddenly from the living room, followed by some rather fat, throaty laughter. I hurry in there to find a newly conscious Ginger sitting up on the sofa and giggling delightedly over a copy of Keeping the Magic Alive: How to Get and Give Satisfying Lifelong Sex by Dr Cristina Markowitz.

FIVE

As soon as Linda has left, I realise that I completely forgot to tell her about Leon’s phone call, so Ginge and I spend the next twenty minutes hunting throughout the entire house, swearing and stamping and throwing things around until I eventually find Linda’s business card on the coffee table under the sex book.

‘You must have put the bloody book down on top of it!’

‘Well I can’t believe you didn’t look there!’

‘I thought you had!’

‘I distinctly remember you saying that you had.’

So anyway, I ring Linda’s number and leave her a message about Leon calling me and ask her to ring me back to discuss it.

Which leaves me with some nice empty free time to call Julia and Ray.

Ginge makes herself a large bowl of Shreddies and goes back to the living room to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark on DVD. I take my phone into the kitchen and sit down to make the call. Julia answers on the first ring. Was she sitting by the phone, waiting for news?

‘Hello?’ Her voice is breathy, expectant.

‘Hi Julia. It’s Grace.’

‘Oh. Grace.’ Definite disappointment.

‘Listen, I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to ring you. I’ve just been a bit … Well, you know. How are you doing?’

There’s a very brief pause as Julia processes the fact that it’s not Adam on the phone, or the police, or anyone with any information about what’s happened to him or where he is. Then she takes a deep breath in, and starts to speak, and what she says next disturbs me almost as much as Leon.

‘Oh, love, it’s so kind of you to ring. It’s so terrible, isn’t it, this whole thing? I just can’t … I just can’t think … But listen, Grace, I’ve had an idea. About three this morning, I’m sitting in the kitchen, OK, and I’m trying to work out the answers to the crossword, only the coffee time one, I never get the hang of those cryptic ones, they don’t make sense, do they? And of course the neighbour’s dog is barking – must have been shut outside again. I hate that, drives me totally bananas. On and on it went, bark bark bark, and then the occasional howl. Poor thing. Good job I was awake anyway, otherwise it would’ve woken me up. Anyway, it goes on and on and suddenly it starts to sound different, not like barking any more but more like someone whispering to me, over and over, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. What do you make of that?’

This is the most she’s ever said to me. My ears are thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, we weren’t ready, can you start again?’ I blink. ‘Um, well, I don’t …’

‘It must have been Adam! Mustn’t it? I was thinking, you know, that it was probably definitely him, wasn’t it, trying to contact me, don’t you think? From the other side, or wherever he is, I mean. Because of course he would try to get in touch, wouldn’t he, if he could. He’d definitely try and contact me, I know he would. I’m his mum after all, aren’t I?’

I can’t answer for a few moments. There are so many things about this outburst that have surprised me, I’m not sure which one to react to first. She called me ‘love’. She thinks Adam’s dead. She’s not sleeping. She thought she heard Adam trying to contact her in a dog’s bark. She thinks Adam’s dead.

‘Julia, he’s not even dead.’

There’s a brief pause during which I can hear pages turning, or paper shuffling. Sounds like she’s looking through a newspaper. ‘Oh, my love, no, no, no, I know that. It’s just we have to, you know, consider every alternative, don’t we? I mean, if he did try to contact me, somehow, from wherever he’s been taken, I’d want to try and get back in touch, you know, to try and find out what … or who … you know …’

Ginger appears suddenly in the doorway and gestures at the phone, making ‘Who’s that?’ movements.

I mouth ‘Julia’ at her, and roll my eyes. She grins and makes drinking motions with her hand, then crosses her eyes and sways. I shake my head and look away. Ginger’s theory for Julia’s erratic behaviour is that she’s an alcoholic, or a drug-oholic, or sniffs glue or marker pens or air freshener. I don’t agree. Well, I’m not sure what I think, but I’m pretty sure I don’t think it’s stimulants.

I remember my birthday last year, when we’d all gone out for a meal. Ginger was completely psyched-up about seeing what Julia was likely to get up to, and arrived at the restaurant in a high state of anticipatory tension. She kept looking around for Julia, longing for her to arrive, wondering when she would. She had brought Fletch along, of course, and they were being loud and demonstrably loving with each other, in a mutually abusive kind of way. Adam and Fletch always seemed to get on, in the way that men whose girlfriends are close are forced to. Adam used to smile and nod and clutch Fletch’s shoulder, but I’d sometimes wished he’d join in with their banter a bit more.

‘All right buddy!’ Fletch always said when he and Adam met. ‘Still alive then?’

‘Hello, Fletch. How’s things?’

‘Living the dream, man. Doesn’t get much better, does it, eh?’

‘Damn straight,’ Ginger cut in at this point, punching Fletch’s arm. ‘Just remind yourself every ten minutes how bloody lucky you are, you snivelling wretch.’

‘Gotta love her, the whore,’ Fletch said with an affectionate smile.

We were in the Harvester because it was simple food with large tables, not too intimate. The four parents sat together at one end of the table, while we four youngsters sat at the other end. Adam and I were in the middle, effectively screening his parents from Ginger and Fletch. A sour expression had appeared on Ray’s face the second he’d heard the night before that Fletch was going to be there, and now that he could see him, it was only getting worse. His hands were starting to fist-up, probably without him even realising it. Ray watched Fletch; I watched Ray; Ginger watched Julia. Fletch and Adam, oblivious to all of it, had a conversation about Arsenal.

The reason behind Ray’s hostility was that the first time Julia had met Fletch, something very odd and uncomfortable had happened. It was another occasion, someone’s birthday – probably Adam’s – and he’d brought Ginge and Fletch over to where Julia was standing, to introduce them. Julia had not even acknowledged Ginger. She had kept her gaze firmly locked on Fletch’s face the entire time. And as Adam had said, ‘This is Gracie’s friend, Fletcher’, she had sidled in very close to Fletch and put her hand on his chest.

‘Fletcher,’ she had breathed huskily. Fletch’s head had moved back almost imperceptibly. ‘It’s so very lovely to meet you.’ She had put her nose even closer, practically touching the skin at Fletch’s neck, and had taken a deep breath in through her nose. ‘Mmm, you smell lovely.’ She hadn’t moved then for another four or five seconds, but had carried on staring straight at Fletch’s neck, which was just about at eye level for her, lost in some kind of trance. Or overpowered by his liberal use of Lynx. Ginger and I glanced at each other, wondering what to do, and I remember the panicked look in poor Fletch’s eyes, like a small animal in a snare. He thought he was going to be consumed. Eventually, Ginger pulled on Fletcher’s arm, saying, ‘You can move, you know’, and Julia had wandered hazily away.

‘Oh my God, how gone was she?’ Ginger had stage whispered, then giggled. Adam had tried, unsuccessfully, to eviscerate her with his eyes, before stalking off after Julia.

So a few months later on my birthday, Ginge had been fidgety with interest, waiting to see what was going to happen. ‘Oh God, I hope she gets stoned again,’ she kept repeating, much to Fletch’s annoyance. ‘Oh shut up moaning, Fletcher. Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it.’

‘I fucking well didn’t,’ he snarled, and opened his mouth to elaborate on the awfulness of it all. Then closed it abruptly as Adam joined us.

‘What are you all talking about?’ he’d asked, taking his jacket off.

Ginger had grinned. ‘Remember on your birthday?’ she started, but I couldn’t let her continue.

‘Yeah, remember that delicious tiramisu I had?’ I cut in. ‘I was just wondering if they did anything like that here.’

Ginger had frowned at me, but I ignored it. Talking about Adam’s family was completely off the agenda. Particularly his mother. I didn’t need that lesson twice.

‘Um, Julia,’ I start now, not because I have anything at all to add to this awkward rambling, but just to cut her off so I can ring my own parents, ‘do you want me to pop round and see you both? Today? So we can talk about this properly?’

There’s a brief pause, then she’s off again. ‘Oh, yes, yes, it would be wonderful to see you, love. I want to talk to you about my idea, Ray won’t listen, he’s just gone into a trance, with his headphones on, you know, that’s his way of dealing with things. But he’ll definitely want to see you too. Yes, it will help to have you here. When are you coming?’

I close my eyes. I have never been to Julia and Ray’s place without Adam. In fact, I’ve never been in their company without him. I offered to go out of duty, really, and didn’t really expect her to take me up on it. She’s never shown much interest in me before. But at least we’ll have a good, solid conversation starter. ‘I’ll leave as soon as I can,’ I tell her. ‘Probably within an hour.’

After we’ve hung up, I realise I don’t have any means of getting there as my normal ride is currently languishing in Linton, so I sit down on the sofa next to Ginger, who is now glued to SpongeBob SquarePants.

‘Ginge, you’ve got to drive me.’

She turns to me with her thirteen-year-old’s face and says, ‘Why do I? And more to the point, where?’

‘I’ll tell you in the car. Come on, make yourself decent. You can use my toothbrush.’

Twenty minutes later, we’re pulling up outside the house. I had to drive in the end, as Ginger claimed to be too ill. We get out of the car slowly and carefully – Ginge with a poorly head, me with almost overwhelming reluctance – then stand together on the pavement for a few moments, trying to get up the nerve to go in. At least one of the people inside that house is going to be sympathetic to Adam’s position here, and I’m not sure I can stomach it.

‘Don’t just stand there like buffoons,’ Ray says suddenly from the front lawn, ‘come inside. Julia’s desperate to see you.’

We both start a little, neither of us having spotted the grown man standing right in front of us. We both greet him with a dutiful cheek-peck, and follow him in through the open front door. As we enter, I feel immense gratitude for the fact that Ginger is here with me. I’m not one of those selfless kinds of friends for whom a descent into hell is made more bearable by the knowledge that at least all their friends and loved ones are not there to endure it also. I need as many people around to support me as I can get.

Ray leads us into the living room, and there in front of us is Julia.

I’m shocked at the sight of her and find myself staring to take it all in. She’s absolutely immaculate. She is dressed smartly and conservatively as usual in navy trousers, a pale pink blouse and a navy and white patterned scarf looped loosely round her neck. Her hair is washed and smooth. Her make-up is flawless. Her hands, one on her chest, even have polish on the fingernails. There isn’t one thing out of place. I am absolutely staggered.

‘Hi Julia,’ I hear Ginge saying next to me as she moves forward to kiss Julia’s cheek and give her a brief hug. Oh, yes, good idea. Can’t believe I didn’t do that first.

‘Hi Julia,’ I say then, and move in to repeat Ginger’s actions. ‘How are you doing? You look very well.’

‘Oh I’m not well, Gracie, I’m not at all well. How could I possibly be? I’m a complete wreck.’

She really isn’t. ‘Oh dear …’

‘Well what did you expect? Of course I’m going to be a mess, my only son has disappeared off to who knows where, probably dead in a ditch somewhere, or dying, panting his last breath right now, this very second, wishing his mummy would just come and get him and take him home.’

‘Now what would you two girls like to drink?’ Ray cuts in jovially at this point and we both turn to find him grinning in the doorway. ‘Tea? Or something stronger?’

‘I’ll have one, Raymond,’ Julia replies, and I notice for the first time that the hand not pressed dramatically to her chest is wrapped firmly around a glass. She holds it out to Ray. ‘Water please.’

Ginger glances at me as if to say, ‘Water? Really?’ but I think that’s unfair. Julia’s had a terrible shock and anyway it could well be water. I turn to Ray gratefully. ‘A cuppa would be lovely, thanks Ray.’ I go over to the sofa to sit down, and thankfully both Ginger and Julia follow suit.

‘I’ve not been sleeping, I’ve not been eating, I must look like skin and bone by now,’ Julia announces. ‘I must look like absolute death.’

Ginger and I both make the soothing sounds of denial, while discreetly taking in Julia’s healthy, fresh-faced youthfulness and groomed coiffure.

‘No, no,’ she insists, ‘I look dreadful. I’m grey, I’m sallow, I’m shadowy and I’m thin.’

‘You’re really not—’

‘I am.’

There’s a brief pause while Julia tips her completely empty glass back as far as she can and sucks the air out of it, as if she might absorb some fumes from it that she’s missed before. I’m longing for Ray to come back so that I can at least hold a cup of tea.

‘Did Gracie tell you about my idea?’ Julia bursts out again, addressing Ginger.

‘Um, no, she didn’t.’ Ginger turns slowly to me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Gracie?’

‘I didn’t … I mean, I haven’t … It wasn’t …’

‘I had a vision, you see,’ Julia goes on, undaunted. ‘Well, no, that’s not right, it wasn’t really a vision. It was more a kind of … auditory vision. If that exists.’

‘An ausion?’

‘Shut up, Ginger.’

‘What was that? What did she say?’

‘Doesn’t matter, Julia. Go on.’

‘Well. Yes, I heard this noise. During the night. I couldn’t sleep. I haven’t been able to sleep properly since … Well, since everything happened with, um …’ She glances up at me and for a horrible moment I’m convinced she’s forgotten her own son’s name. ‘Um …’

‘Adam?’

‘Yes, of course Adam, who do you think I meant? For God’s sake, Grace, I know my own son’s name.’ She tuts loudly. ‘It’s going to take more than five days for me to forget him.’

At this point, an angel of mercy appears in the form of Ray bearing a tray with two mugs and a glass on it. He dispenses the drinks silently, gives me a smile and a wink, then retreats to the other end of the room. There’s an armchair there with a lamp above it, and a low bookcase full of thick, difficult volumes. This is Ray’s refuge; not for him the garage or shed.

Julia takes a large gulp from her glass of ‘water’, closes her eyes briefly and then looks back at us excitedly. ‘So after I’d heard Adam calling to me during the night, I got this idea. I can’t imagine why we haven’t thought of it before, actually. All this time we’ve been wondering what on earth has happened, and the answer is staring us straight in the face.’

‘He’s only been gone five days, Julia,’ I interrupt. She’s acting as though he disappeared months ago and no one’s done a thing to find him.

‘Wait,’ Ginger says quietly to me. ‘He was calling to her?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

She raises her eyebrows. ‘Total fruit loop.’

‘Look, anyway,’ Julia goes on, her eyes getting wider and wilder, ‘here’s my idea. I’ve read about these people, investigators, they find people who’re missing. Psychics.’ She points vaguely across the room. ‘They’re in the paper, everywhere. We’ll get one of them to maybe sniff his toothbrush or handle one of his biros or whatever it is they do and then they’ll be able to sense him or something and find out what happened to him. Oh Gracie, this is the answer, don’t you think? She’ll be able to see where he went, and then we can find him. It’ll all be over, Grace. Won’t it?’

Ginger says, ‘A psychic? Seriously?’

Ray says, ‘Bloody ridiculous.’

I say, ‘He’s not dead, Julia.’

‘No, I know, but—’

‘What use is a psychic if he’s not dead?’ Ginger again.

‘Julia, a psychic is not the answer, whether he’s dead or alive.’ I glare at Ginger. ‘We just have to let the police do their investigation, the traditional way, with computers and cameras and evidence. No sniffing of toothbrushes or handling stationery need be involved.’

She’s momentarily flummoxed, but then rallies and starts in again. ‘No, no, no, the thing is they don’t need to be dead for these psychic investigators to find them. They can find anyone, no matter how long they’ve been missing, whether they’re alive or dead. It’s just easier if they are dead, that’s all.’

‘I’m starting to agree with that.’

She continues as if she hasn’t heard me. ‘This is just perfect, though, Grace, you do think so, don’t you? I mean, the psychic will be able to tell us whether he’s … you know …’

‘Still alive?’

‘Well. Whether he’s well.’

I sigh. ‘So even assuming that this actually works and that some stranger has some kind of spiritual communion with his underpants or something and tells us that he’s well. How will that help? What possible good can that do?’

There’s a moment’s absolute silence. Then, ‘How can you say that?’

I shrug wearily. ‘Oh it’s simple, Julia. Finding out whether he’s well or otherwise doesn’t make things any easier, does it? We still wouldn’t know where he is or whether he’s coming back.’ I look at her frankly. ‘Or why he left in the first place.’

She gawps at me in apparent horror and, as flaky as she is, she still manages to make me feel like the worst person in the world. A family trait. I open my mouth to say something soothing, something conciliatory, but as I watch, her face morphs slightly into a harder, less pitiful version of itself. Her eyes narrow, her jaw sets, her lips thin. It’s as if she’s just drunk a potion of some kind.

‘You actually think it won’t do any good to find out whether or not he’s well? As if it doesn’t matter in the slightest to you whether he’s alive or dead?’ Her voice is low and quiet now, and much more measured. There’s more than a hint of steel in it. She snorts out a puff of air. ‘Well that just goes to show the absolute difference between a mother and a wife, doesn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, it does, Julia! Of course it’s different for both of us.’

‘Oh, really? Would you like to explain that to me? Because as far as I knew, we both loved him. Didn’t we? Or maybe you think I didn’t love him as much because he was my son, not my husband? Maybe you think he loved you more, because you were his wife? Or maybe you’ve given up on him?’ She pauses a moment, then adds, ‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘Well that’s unnecessary,’ Ginger butts in. I glance at her nervously, then look back at Julia. She’s swivelled her head and is now staring in fury at Ginger.

‘You don’t have a flipping clue,’ she says in a voice so low it reminds me weirdly of The Godfather. I expect her to come over all Sicilian suddenly. ‘You’re not a mother and never should be. Us mothers know stuff about life that ordinary people like you can’t dream of.’

I’m getting chills and have to fight the urge to look over my shoulder defensively. ‘Julia, I’m not in competition with you …’ I say, but I get the sense that what I’m saying is bouncing off her like vodka on wool.

‘Anyway,’ she goes on, turning back to me, ‘as the wife, it was you he left, not me. You obviously failed him in some way. And now thanks to you, we all have to suffer.’ She rolls her eyes, then takes a deep swig from her glass. Apparently the venom in her words has dried her mouth up.

‘Julia,’ I start to say, a bit quietly, if I’m honest. At this point in my life, I should be raising my voice, taking a step forward, maybe pointing a finger, defending myself. Adam’s not here, I don’t have to worry about upsetting him at this moment. But Julia’s words have sliced into me, drilled directly down into my gigantic reservoir of insecurity, and it’s bubbling up. A geyser of tears is threatening to erupt, and I sidestep towards Ginger. She turns her head, sees my face, and moves towards me too, so that our arms are pressed together. Right now, I feel, yet again, the most enormous gratitude for her presence in my life, and in this room.

‘It’s OK, Grace,’ Ginger says between gritted teeth, her eyes locked on Julia’s the whole time. ‘It’s absolutely fine. I’m sure in a moment Julia is going to realise how vile and unpleasant she’s being, and how completely unfair and unjustified that appalling accusation is. Aren’t you, Julia?’

Julia doesn’t move or speak for a couple of seconds. Then she blinks, her face crumples and she staggers backwards, her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh …’

Ginger coolly watches her, still without moving, but I step forward and grab her arm. Finally I feel like I’m some use. ‘Come on, Julia, come and sit down.’

I guide her to the sofa and she sits down heavily, leaning her head back and immediately closing her eyes. ‘I’m so tired,’ she says on a long exhale.

‘I know. You’ve been through a lot.’ I hear Ginger ‘pah’-ing behind me, but I ignore it. ‘Why don’t you try and have a little snooze now?’

Julia opens her eyes and shakes her head. ‘I can’t sleep,’ she says quietly. She searches my face. ‘He is dead, isn’t he? Do you think he’s dead?’

‘No, he’s not dead,’ I say with certainty, ‘don’t worry about that. Have they told you they found his car?’ She nods. ‘Well, then, you know that there was nothing in it, no blood, no smashed glass, no vindaloo. His passport is gone. There’s no disturbance at his office, nothing seems to have been taken, although they haven’t finished looking at it all yet. But even before they do, it’s pretty clear to me that …’ I hesitate. I still can’t decide whether Adam going voluntarily is better or worse than him being taken by force. From a wife’s point of view, it’s miles better if he was wrenched roughly away against his will, fighting against his captor, struggling with every part of him, desperate to return to his true love; rather than simply deciding to piss off and please himself. No, that’s wrong, because surely a good, loving wife would selflessly want him to have chosen this? Because she would not be able to stand the idea of him being hurt? I find I kind of like the idea. Which is a paradox because if he has been forced away, and hurt in the process, there’s no need for me to hate him. Is there?

Julia is still staring at me with desperation in her eyes. I put my hand on her arm. ‘Don’t worry, Julia. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that he’s completely well, given all the facts. That he left of his own accord, for reasons unknown.’

‘But—’

‘And anyway, no body has been found, has it?’

She gazes at me with liquid eyes, that lost-puppy look back on her face. ‘Yet,’ she says.

Fifteen minutes later, Ginger and I are back in the car, heading home.

‘Well, it’s not substance abuse, is it?’ Ginger says, ending the five-minute silence during which we both absorbed what just happened. ‘The woman is completely off her rocker.’

‘Oh, don’t say that, Ginge. I feel sorry for her.’

Her head snaps round to stare at me. I’m driving again, so I can’t stare back. ‘Do you? Really?’

‘Well yeah, course I do. She’s absolutely destroyed.’

‘You think?’

I risk a sideways glance. ‘Don’t you?’

She shrugs. ‘I think it’s an act. I think she’s faking the whole “I’m-so-upset-about-my-son-going-missing-I’m-turning-into-a-certifiable-dingbat” thing.’ She pauses and I can see she’s staring at me. ‘Don’t tell me you fell for it?’

‘Fell for it? Well, if you call believing that she’s genuinely devastated by Adam’s disappearance “falling for it”, then yeah, I guess I did. Why didn’t you?’

Another shrug. ‘I dunno, really. Just didn’t ring true to me.’

‘You think she’s not upset at all? That she couldn’t care less?’

‘No, I didn’t say that. Obviously she’s upset. Who wouldn’t be? I just think … I don’t know. It almost seemed like she …’ She moves her head a little. ‘As if she wants him to be dead.’

‘No way!’

She nods. ‘Yeah. Didn’t you get that? All that breathy, “He’s dead, isn’t he?” stuff. And almost wanting a body to be found. Bit odd, I thought.’

‘Well, you’d be odd if you’d been through what she’s going through.’

‘No, I don’t think I would. I think most people would be anxious as hell, but trying to keep hopeful.’ She glances at me. ‘Like you are. He’s a grown man, after all. He’s not exactly vulnerable.’

‘But it doesn’t make sense. Why would she want that? She’s his mother.’

‘Who the frick knows? All I know is, something was off.’

I think back over our strange encounter again, but all I can see is a woman deranged by some pre-existing problem that I can’t identify, coupled with massive stress, sleeplessness and grief. But I’ve never been any good at reading between the lines, or spotting subtle things. I tend to believe whatever I’m presented with. Maybe I’m naïve. Maybe I’m stupid. Turns out I was stupid to marry Adam, that’s for sure. Probably. Maybe I need to start questioning my reality a bit more. Maybe if I’d done that a year ago, I wouldn’t be here now.

‘Oh, and one more thing,’ Ginger says now, turning all the way round in her seat to face me. ‘This grieving, desperate mother, this woman who you want to believe is going mad with determination to cling to the idea that her son is still alive, still loves her, and will come home again one day.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, why the hell would a woman like that refer to her son the whole time in the past tense?’

SIX

I have no answer for that. Initially, I was convinced that Ginger had got it wrong, but remembering my conversation with Julia just now, I realise that she’s right. There’s no sound in the car for a few minutes while I think about it and Ginger nods off.

‘So what does that mean?’ I ask eventually. ‘Do you think Julia knows something we don’t?’

Ginger jerks awake at the sound of my voice and looks around blearily. ‘Whassay?’

‘I said, your theory about Julia talking about Adam in the past tense. Do you think she knows something?’ I remember her addition of the word ‘yet’ after I reminded her that no body has been found, and instantly my flesh contracts and covers itself with goosebumps. Again.

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