WHEN I WORKED FOR A HOMELESS CHARITY YEARS ago, there were all sorts of reasons why people left their families but what they mostly boiled down to were money, sex, addiction or emotional problems. As far as I know, money and addiction aren’t issues for either of us; so that leaves sex and emotional problems. Could I be wrong about Nick? Could he be having an affair? I feel as though I’m tumbling.
He wouldn’t; he loves me. I bite down on my lip and think back to the last dinner party, the last drinks, the last casual meeting while walking the dog, trying to picture Nick with the women we know. Most of the people we see are happily married. What about work? I realize I haven’t the slightest idea, but Nick was back early from his staff Christmas drinks, so I doubt there’s anything going on there. And anyway, I’d know. There would be signs. No way would Nick smile at me the way he does, that big beaming smile that embraces me. No way would he tease me and Lottie, joking that he’s at the mercy of our whims. No way would he have proposed. I press my fingers hard against my eyes. This is all wrong. Nick hasn’t run away from me; he’s out there, hurt and unable to get home.
I take a sheet of paper and a pen and start to put down figures and tot up Nick’s day. We had compared our steps after Wimbledon. He had somehow managed to do five hundred more than me, and we couldn’t work out how that had happened. Nick had done almost four thousand, me more like three thousand five hundred. After lunch we’d taken Lottie to buy Hannah’s birthday present, adding another two and a half thousand or thereabouts. On Saturday night Nick stopped moving at eight thousand five hundred and forty-three steps, so that means he managed between one thousand nine hundred and two thousand two hundred steps. I open my laptop, type our postcode into the search engine and click enter. I pull up the map and mark a radius around our house.
So now I have a fairly good idea of how far he walked before he stopped. I visualize the routes that I know he takes, to shops, to the station, to friends’ houses. Toffee whines at my feet, as anxious as me.
I clip on his lead and leave the house, striding north, phone in hand, tapping the screen to check the app every few seconds, dog-legging through wide, tree-lined streets. We are conservation here, red-brick, detached double-fronted Victorian villas, far enough from central London to have been built with a generous gap between them. Nine hundred steps brings me to the edge of the Common where I let Toffee off his lead. He scampers around, racing up to other dogs, but he doesn’t stray out of earshot. One thousand three hundred more steps take me to the far side, where I linger by the bus stop, looking across at the minimart, the gift shop, the estate agent’s and the Costa. It’s full of women chatting over their lattes, prams beside them. I imagine Nick crossing the road at a stroll, with no particular aim. Or was he hurrying; needing to be somewhere, to talk to someone? Was it a woman, or a man? Did he owe something? Loyalty or money? Love or sex?
I cross at the lights and walk to the Queen’s Arms, bracing myself. Even though I’m now incredibly scared it still feels a little embarrassing to be in a pub asking if they’ve seen my man.
I show the barkeeper a picture of Nick on my phone, and to my surprise and relief she nods.
‘He came in on Saturday night, but he didn’t stay long. He had one drink and left.’
‘Did he talk to anybody?’
‘Not so’s I’d notice.’ She starts to wipe down the bar.
‘How did he seem?’
‘All right, I suppose, maybe a bit dejected. He sat over there.’ She indicates a table in the corner. ‘No one joined him.’
All I can think of is that word. Dejected. ‘Do you remember what he drank?’
‘Whisky. A double with ice.’
‘Really?’ Nick has never been interested in spirits – a tot of brandy in a hot chocolate on a winter evening, but that’s all.
From there I check the shops that would still have been open. The manager at the minimart wasn’t in on Saturday night, but says that if Nick did come in it’ll be on their CCTV. He takes my number and says he’ll check when he has a chance. He gives me a pitying look as I leave, like he thinks I’m deluding myself. I can imagine what he’s thinking: the boyfriend’s done a bunk. It’s tough, but people do that shit.
In the off-licence, the owner says good afternoon, hands on the counter, leaning forward. He knows me.
‘Didn’t see him,’ he replies to my enquiry. ‘Are you sure he came in? Didn’t go to the competition?’ He tips his chin in the general direction of his rival, the minimart.
I blush. ‘Maybe.’
He smiles and shrugs. ‘Use us or lose us.’
I leave quickly and hesitate at the kerb, not knowing whether to keep walking. He could have gone off in any direction. He could have got into someone’s car and been driven away – someone he thought was a friend but who meant to harm him. Christ, I think, it must be money. What if he’s hiding a huge debt, or found himself in a situation he could see no way out of. Except one.
One thousand five hundred steps take me to the station. He either caught a train, or he walked further.
I walk east, past the school to the streets of smaller workers’ cottages beyond it. These are painted in pastel shades, though some of the newer arrivals have gone for a Farrow and Ball palette. In estate-agent speak the area is called the Garden Triangle because all the streets are named after flowers and shrubs: Primrose, Forsythia, Larkspur, Clover, Camomile. Anna Foreman’s house is in Camomile Avenue. Maybe she did see him on Thursday evening. She might have recognized Toffee tied up outside the minimart and gone up to pet him. Everyone likes my dog – he’s a great one for offering a paw – then Nick came out and she introduced herself. Maybe she saw something.
Anna’s house is pale pink with cracked tessellated tiles leading to an olive-green front door. Down this street the residents are amicably competitive about their tiny front gardens. There’s a rose showing signs of bursting into leaf, clambering up the wall. In June it will dance with white blooms tinged with yellow.
She doesn’t answer my knock. I try a couple more times and wait. I phone her landline and hear it echoing through the house. Her mobile rings out as well. I’m typing out a text, asking her if she wants to come round for a coffee, when she opens the door. She’s wearing painter’s overalls and her hair is tied back and partly covered by a scarf.
‘Grace,’ she says. ‘Hi.’
‘Are you busy? I thought I might pop in for a cuppa. I’m at a loose end.’
Anna’s surprise shows in the way her eyes narrow, and I realize how odd this looks. We’re not on dropping-in-unannounced terms, not like I am with Cassie and the others. I first met her at a coffee morning organized by Susanna to introduce her to the neighbourhood. I didn’t warm to her then, and, to my shame, I’ve avoided getting to know her in case I can’t shake her off. There’s something not quite right, a slyness about her. Her throat and cheeks are flushed pink, but if I’ve caught her at a bad time, I can’t help that.
What if it wasn’t the first time they’d met? Jealousy flickers into life. I haven’t felt this way since Douglas, as though a seam of it is running through my body, lighting up, a lurid green. What if she and he … I grit my teeth. I will kill her if it’s true.
She grimaces. ‘Sorry. Any other time, but I’m getting behind on orders.’
‘Oh, well. That’s fine, I just wanted to ask you something.’
I’m the one going red now. Her eyes are on my face, her eyebrows raised.
‘What?’
‘Did you happen to bump into Nick on Thursday evening?’
‘Nick? Is that your bloke?’ She frowns. ‘I’ve never met him.’ She tucks a loose strand of hair up under the edge of the scarf. ‘Why?’
I study her face, trying to gauge if she’s telling the truth. She looks back steadily.
‘Sorry. I don’t know why I thought—’
Her face softens. ‘Tell me.’
‘He’s …’ A tear squeezes out of my eye. I wipe it away. ‘Sorry, I haven’t had much sleep. He’s gone.’
Her fingers move to her ear, twisting one of the pretty diamond studs. ‘Look, my house is a shit-tip, so don’t come in, but let’s go for a walk.’
‘What about your work?’ I say, sniffing.
‘It can wait.’ She picks up her keys from the shelf above the radiator, pulls the scarf from her head, letting her hair fall, then closes the door behind her.