WE DID IT on the sheepskin rug in front of the fire, not that the fire was lit.
It was us that generated all the heat.
She started by making me sit on the sofa while she stood in front of me and undressed, slowly and seductively removing every piece of her clothing, not that she had been wearing very much in the first place.
Then she made me stand up, and she undressed me.
“I still can’t get over all these goddam buttons,” she said, struggling to undo the fly of my trousers. But she managed it.
Our lovemaking was more measured this time, more sensual, and to my mind, far more satisfying.
We lay together naked for some time afterwards, side by side on the rug.
“That was lovely,” she said.
I snuggled into her. “It certainly was.”
My phone started ringing in the kitchen.
“I’d better get that,” I said, thinking it might be Georgina.
I jumped up and ran to the phone, catching it just before it went to voicemail. Amanda was the name of the caller, as shown on the home page.
“Hello, darling,” I said, answering it. But it wasn’t Amanda.
“Mr Newton,” said a male voice. “This is Darren.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Amanda has gone missing again.”
My heart missed a beat, or even more.
“When?” I asked.
“She popped out to get me some beers from the local shop just after seven o’clock, and she hasn’t come back.”
I looked at the digital clock on the electric cooker. It read 21.05. She’d been gone for two hours.
“Have you been out to look for her?”
“I went down to the shop, but they said she never came in.”
And she obviously didn’t have her phone with her because Darren was calling me on it.
“Had she taken anything?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Drugs.”
“Just a bit of weed.”
Me getting angry with him about that wouldn’t help the situation.
“Did she say anything to you before leaving?” I asked.
“She said that she’d only be a few minutes.”
“Did she take any money?”
“Only the fiver I gave her for the beer.”
“How about her car?” I asked.
“It’s still parked across the road. I’m looking at it now. And she’s not in that either. I looked. And the keys are still on the side.”
“Did she take anything else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What was she wearing?” I asked.
“Jeans and a black T-shirt.”
“Shoes?”
“Flip-flops, I think.”
It was hardly a dress code of choice if she was running away from him.
But how could anyone simply vanish in broad daylight? And it was broad daylight until almost ten o’clock at this point in June.
“Do not defy me. You were warned what would happen.”
Toni came into the kitchen, still naked.
“What’s wrong?” she asked in a whisper.
“Get dressed,” I said equally quietly, and she went back towards the sitting room.
“What should I do?” Darren asked.
“Stay right where you are, in case she returns. I will call you on this number later, but call me first if she comes back in the meantime.”
We hung up.
I stood there in the kitchen, stark naked, shaking uncontrollably, but not from cold. It was from fear.
Toni came back into the kitchen, now again wearing her yellow dress.
“What’s wrong?” she asked with a concerned look on her face.
“My daughter, Amanda, has gone missing.” I could hardly speak.
“Missing? How?”
I explained how she had gone out to a local shop to buy beers for her boyfriend, but had not returned to his flat.
“Where’s the shop?” Toni asked.
“In Didcot,” I replied. “It’s a local town about three miles away.”
“Do you think she might be coming here?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“You’d better get dressed, just in case.”
My phone rang again, and I grabbed it.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Dad. Have you scanned my passport yet?”
It was James.
“I’m just going to look for it now,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice calm. “I haven’t been back long from Ascot.”
“I texted you the agency email,” he said. “And also my postal address, to send it to me tomorrow. Don’t forget,”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Good. Must dash. Me and Gary are off to a party.”
He disconnected.
“What was all that about?” Toni asked.
“That was my son, James. He wants me to scan his passport and email it to a letting agency. He’s trying to rent a flat and they need to see his passport to prove he is who he says he is.”
“Why didn’t you tell him about his sister?”
“I don’t want to worry him. Not until we know what’s happened to her.”
Oh God. What had happened to her?
And was it my fault for allowing Potassium to win?
But how could I have stopped the horse from winning anyway?
I’d never had the chance to remove any weights from the jockey’s weight cloth, even if I’d wanted to—which I hadn’t.
I collected my clothes from the sofa and went upstairs. Toni came up with me, and while I dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, she had a wander around the bedrooms.
The house was basically rectangular, with a bedroom in each corner. There were also two bathrooms, built between the bedrooms on each long side. One was en suite to the master, and the other opened onto the landing, and was shared between the other three bedrooms.
“So what are you going to do?” Toni asked.
“About what?”
“Your daughter, of course. You need to call the cops.”
Did I?
“She’s not been missing for long enough,” I said. “They won’t do anything.”
“You need to call them anyway.”
“Let’s see if she turns up here first.”
Although I couldn’t think how she could get here. I knew that five pounds wasn’t enough to pay for a taxi all the way from Didcot. There were no buses in the evenings, and she surely wouldn’t walk three and a half miles in flip-flops.
I didn’t want to let my mind settle on the most obvious conclusion—that she’d been abducted again by Squeaky Voice.
“I think I ought to go out and look for her,” I said.
“But where?”
“I don’t know.” I could feel the panic rising in my throat, just as it had on Tuesday after I’d received the Do not defy me text message. “I just don’t feel I can sit here doing nothing.”
“How about finding your son’s passport?” Toni said.
“That will have to wait.”
“No. Do it now. Then it’ll be done, and it will also occupy your mind for a while to stop you panicking about your daughter. In the meantime, she might show up, either here or back with her boyfriend. What’s his name?”
“Darren,” I said. “And I don’t like him.”
She laughed. “No father ever likes his daughter’s boyfriend. It’s a given.”
“But Darren is very controlling, and he also gives her drugs. If Amanda has gone missing because she’s run away from him, I’d be delighted.”
“There you are, then,” Toni said. “Maybe it’s a good thing.”
But deep down, I knew it wasn’t.
James’s passport was more elusive than he had claimed.
I went through the top drawer of his desk, where he’d said it could be found, but it was nowhere to be seen. The drawer was absolutely crammed full of stuff. In the end I turned everything out onto his bed. But still I couldn’t see any passport.
I put everything back into the drawer, one item at a time, but there was definitely no passport present.
The desk had three drawers, and I opened the second one down. It was equally crammed full of stuff, all of it in a complete jumble. I tipped it all out onto the bed and went through it piece by piece. But there was still no sign of any passport.
The third drawer was deeper than the top two, and tidy by comparison. There were four large, black, hardback notebooks in a stack, and under them, a couple of printed leaflets.
I lifted the notebooks out and separated each one, flicking through the pages just in case the passport was hiding amongst them. It wasn’t.
As a last resort, I removed all the drawers completely, and there was James’s passport, at the back, at the bottom, leaning up against the rear panel.
“There you are,” I said, relieved.
I reached in and picked it up.
“Found it?” Toni asked, coming into the room.
“Finally,” I said, holding the passport up triumphantly. “It must have fallen down the back from the overfull top drawer.”
“What’s all this?” she asked, waving a hand at the stuff still lying on the bed.
“I emptied the drawers out.”
Toni lifted one of the printed leaflets off the bed, one of those that had been under the black notebooks.
“BUGS,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“BUGS. That what it says on this flyer.” She held up one of the leaflets. “The Bristol University Gambling Society.”
“What about it?” I asked.
“This flyer. It’s advertising material: ‘Join the Bristol University Gambling Society and get a guaranteed return on your stake money.’ ”
“Guaranteed return?” I said. “They must be joking. Have you ever met a poor bookmaker?”
“I’ve never met any bookmakers,” she replied.
“I just hope that James isn’t wasting his money.” I held up the passport. “Come on. Let’s go and scan this in my office.”
“How about this mess?” Toni said, pointing at the stuff still lying on the bed.
“I’ll deal with it later.”
We went downstairs, through the kitchen and utility room, to my office.
“This house just keeps on giving,” Toni said in her broad Southern accent. “I have two beds and a bath upstairs, and a kitchen and living room downstairs. That’s it. No frills. No extras.”
I put the picture page of the passport face down on the scanner and made the copy, which I then emailed to the letting agency, using the address James had texted to me, with a cc to him. I left the passport lying on my desk.
“Remind me to post that to him in the morning.”
Toni put the BUGS leaflet down on my desk next to it.
“Now what?” she said.
She had been right. Scanning the passport had taken my mind off the most pressing issue of the moment, if only for a while. Now it all came flooding back with a vengeance.
“Hadn’t you better call your wife?” Toni said.
“I’ll call the boyfriend first.”
I pressed Amanda’s number on my phone.
“Hello,” Darren said, answering at the first ring.
“Is she back?” I asked.
“No.”
I looked up at the clock on my office wall. It was ten minutes to ten. She’d now been missing for almost three hours.
“Did you and Amanda have another argument?” I asked him.
“No,” he replied, but there was something in the tone of his voice that slightly worried me. But it might just have been because he didn’t like me.
“I think I should call the police,” I said.
“The police?” He didn’t sound at all happy about that.
“Yes,” I said. “The police. No doubt, they will want to interview you. Are you sure there is nothing more you want to tell me? Like, are you responsible for Amanda’s disappearance?”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Have you done something to her?” I asked him outright.
“No. Of course not.”
Did I believe him?
Maybe I did. Or maybe I didn’t.