Our bedroom was large and spacious. It extended across the full width of the front of the house. I crossed it quickly to take up a position by the cast-iron fireplace in the end wall and when I spun back Donovan was lingering by the doorway, giving me an intrigued look.
‘It used to be two separate bedrooms in here,’ I explained. ‘We knocked the wall down. Created one large space.’
He whistled. ‘Big risk.’
‘But worth it, we think.’
He entered the walk-in wardrobe to his left, placing his hands on his hips and contemplating the brightly lit shelving, fitted drawer units and hanging rails.
‘You don’t have many clothes in here.’
‘We won’t need them when we’re travelling.’
Another white lie. A harmless one, I hoped. The fact was a lot of my clothes had been ruined by paint flecks and rips and tears from all the decorating and DIY I’d been doing, and Sam pretty much lived out of the same handful of chinos and plaid shirts that he rotated beneath a battered sports jacket for teaching. It wasn’t as if we had any spare money to buy new outfits.
As Donovan sized up the wardrobe, I took the opportunity to move towards the nearest of the three windows in the room, tilt the shutter blades down and peer outside. There was a small white sofa underneath the window and my leg pressed against it as I leaned forwards.
I couldn’t see Bethany.
The pavement was empty. The road was still.
For a second, I pretended to myself that the room was as it had been for much of the last year. Exposed walls and bare floorboards. Dust sheets and ladders and decorating gear stashed everywhere. Sam and I had slept amid the mess. Some nights we’d eaten takeaway pizza together on the bed with our travel guides and maps spread out before us, planning where we’d go when the work on the house was finally complete and the place was sold. Back then, it had been our own private world. I hadn’t given much thought to who might inhabit it after us.
I was about to pull away from the window when I caught sight of a blur of movement from the corner of my eye. It was the headlamps of a car reversing into a tight space further along the street. I stared harder, but when the headlamps switched off and the interior light came on, I recognized the driver as a woman who lived nearby.
‘Are you looking for Bethany?’ Donovan called to me.
‘I thought I saw her car, but I didn’t.’
‘I’m starting to think she’s not going to make it.’ He took out his phone and contemplated the screen. ‘She hasn’t messaged me.’
‘She’ll be here soon, I’m sure.’
I wasn’t sure, but for reasons I couldn’t fully articulate, I didn’t want Donovan to know that.
He weighed my answer along with the phone in his palm, then he crossed the room and stepped closer to me – so close that I heard my breath catch in my throat – and gazed over my shoulder to peer outside.