“So where is she then?” Ed massaged his unshaven beard and his face hurt.
“I was rather hoping you’d tell me,” Jemma snapped. She was stomping about her flat and was unnaturally purple in the face.
Ed hung his head farther. “I thought she was here.”
“Well, she isn’t. So now what?”
Neil fidgeted uncomfortably, his leather biker’s trousers squeaking inappropriately against Jemma’s Conran leather chair. Ed noted his brother’s sneaky looks at his sister-in-law’s own bottom, clad in 1960s leather hipsters.
“What about ringing your parents?” Ed suggested.
“To say what? That you’ve temporarily misplaced their daughter?”
“She might be there,” he reasoned.
“And she might be under a bus, for all you care!” Jemma ranted. “Ed, how could you be so callous? She is the mother of your children.”
“I know, I know,” he pleaded. “And if I could find her, I’d make it up to her.”
“You let her walk out into the night, into the rain, without her handbag, without her phone. She could be anywhere.”
“I know.”
“She could have drowned in the canal.”
Ed looked alarmed. “What canal?”
“Any canal!”
Ed gnawed the skin at the side of his finger. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“Are you mad?” Jemma said. “London is full of lunatics.” She gave him a searing look. “Bits of her could be in a bin bag in some seedy backstreet.”
He could feel his blood turning to one of those Slush Puppies that Elliott was so fond of. “And she definitely didn’t come here?”
Jemma shook her head. “I was here all night. Not a peep.”
“She can’t just have vanished,” Ed said. “Do you think I ought to call the hospitals or police? Isn’t that what you do when someone goes missing?”
“She didn’t ‘go missing,’ Edward, she was thrown out after a domestic argument. The first thing the police will do is dig up your patio.”
“Oh shit.”
“Oh shit, indeed,” echoed Jemma.
“Did she tell you anything about this bloke? This…Christian?”
“Of course she did. I’m her sister.” Jemma held her hand to her heart. “She tells me everything.”
“And…?”
“And, nothing! It was a silly flirtation. A bit of fun. Lord knows, she needs it.” Jemma looked accusingly at Ed, and he wondered what else Ali had told her. “He’s a boy,” she added. “A child.”
“Is he?”
“If you’d taken the time to talk to her instead of going off at her like a bear with a sore bum, you would have known too. He has a crush on Ali. A silly schoolboy crush. You’d have probably had a good laugh about it.”
Ed somehow doubted it. The image of a schoolboy drooling over his wife didn’t strike him, on any level, as rib-ticklingly amusing.
“Shall I put the kettle on?” Neil said brightly.
“I think that’s a splendid idea, Neil,” Jemma said, as if he’d just announced that he’d solved the riddle of the meaning of life rather than resorting to the usual lame British answer to a difficult situation. A nice cup of tea. Ed tutted to himself. Jemma turned off her scowl and smiled widely at his brother. “I’ll show you where everything is.”
Jemma breezed out toward the kitchen, which was all chrome and steel and white tiles and looked like a trendy morgue with tea-making facilities. Neil followed with a leery wink at Ed, his clonky motorcycle boots at odds with the streamlined elegance of the rest of the flat. This wasn’t a home, this was a house. A show house, with nothing out of place. It was small, compact to the point of being cupboardlike and the epitome of style. There were no sticky fingermarks on the wall, no curled-up drawings stuck to the fridge produced via a cunningly shaped potato dipped in paint; there were no toys, Rollerblades or skateboards booby-trapping the floor. The atmosphere that Jemma had tried to create meant that it lacked any form of atmosphere at all as far as Ed could tell. But then, he’d lived in a house that resembled Laura Ashley crossed with Hamley’s toy store for so long that he’d forgotten what life was like pre-clutter. He hoped the boys were all right. Perhaps he should give them a quick ring and check, but then that would clog up his mobile and there might be a remote chance that Ali could ring just at that second.
He’d sworn them both to good behavior. Thomas was no problem. Ed had left him sitting wanly in a warm bath with instructions to go straight back to bed. His twelve-year-old son was the epitome of good behavior and would, no doubt, grow into a model citizen whose only attempt at rebellion would be to join the Freemasons when he reached forty. Elliott, at the tender age of four, was a lost cause, however. Ed was already dreading the time he’d turn seventeen and would be let loose on cars. Real cars. The things he managed to do with his toy ones defied description—he’d had to have bits of them surgically extracted from virtually every orifice of his body so far, and the nearside tire of an Aston Martin DB7 proved particularly tricky. Ed had thought of tying Elliott to a chair while he was out, but Social Services are funny about that sort of thing these days. Instead, he had warned his youngest child not to move, touch or jump over anything in his sternest possible voice, promised not to be too long, then had left for Jemma’s on the back of Neil’s bike in a shower of gravel.
Fat lot of good it had done him, Ed thought, while he waited for tea he didn’t want. There was a lot of hilarity coming from the kitchen, which Ed didn’t feel that the circumstances warranted, but he appreciated that he was sulking and it wasn’t acceptable to expect everyone else to sulk with him. It was the old adage—smile and the whole world smiles with you. Sulk and everyone thinks you’re a sad, old git.
So when Neil and Jemma came back in with the tea, Ed took it and smiled, although he didn’t want to be here now. He wanted to be at home and waiting for Ali to come back. Surely she would? Wouldn’t she?