Do you think that’s a fair description? You never describe things. I don’t think you want to inflict the way you see the world on other people, so you stick to simple nouns: lorry, house, pub. No, that’s wrong. I have never heard you use the word ‘pub’. You say ‘local’, which I suppose is a sort of description.

I don’t know why I am so disappointed to find the Star empty apart from this peculiar-looking barman. It’s not as if I expected you to be here. If I had even the tiniest hope then I must have been deluding myself. If you were able to go out drinking, you’d be able to contact me. Yvon squeezes my arm, noticing my desolate expression.

At least I know I’m in the right place. As soon as I walked across the threshold, all my doubts vanished. This is where you mean when you talk about the Star. It doesn’t surprise me that you chose an out-of-the-way place, tucked into the valley, right on the river. It is in the centre of town, but you can’t see it from Spilling Main Street. You have to take the road between the picture-framer’s and the Centre for Alternative Medicine, and follow it all the way down past Blantyre Park.

The pub is one long room, with the bar at one end. There is a damp, yeasty smell and a haze of smoke in the air, trapped since last night.

The barman is still grinning. ‘Morning, ladies. Afternoon, rather. What can I get you?’ From this I guess that he is the sort of young man who is in the habit of speaking as an old man might. In a way, I am glad not to have a choice about who to talk to. Now I can concentrate on what I ought to say.

The walls are covered with framed pages of old newspapers: the Rawndesley Telegraph, the Rawndesley Evening Post. I glance at the one nearest to me. In one column is the story of an execution that took place in Spilling in 1903. There is a picture of a noose and, beside it, another of the unfortunate criminal. The second column has the headline ‘Silsford farmer wins prize for best pig’, and a sketch of the animal and its owner, both looking proud. The pig is called Snorter.

I blink away tears. Finally, I am seeing all the things you have seen, your world. Yesterday it was your house, today this pub. I feel as if I’m taking a guided tour of your life. I hoped it might bring me closer to you, but it has the opposite effect. It’s horrible. I feel as if I’m looking at your past, not your present, and certainly not anything I could ever share. It’s as if I’m trapped behind a glass screen or a cordon of red rope and I can’t reach you. I want to scream out your name.

‘I’ll have a double gin and tonic,’ says Yvon loudly. She is trying to sound jolly for my sake, as if we’re here for a fun day out. ‘Naomi?’

‘Half a lager shandy,’ I hear myself say. I haven’t had this drink for years. When I’m with you, I only ever drink the Pinot Grigio you bring, or the tea that’s in our Traveltel room.

The barman nods. ‘Coming right up,’ he says. He has a broad Rawndesley accent.

‘Do you know Robert Haworth?’ I blurt out, too frantic to waste time thinking about the best way to approach the subject. Yvon looks worried: I told her I’d be subtle.

‘Nope. Should I?’

‘He’s a regular. He comes here all the time.’

‘Well, we think he does,’ Yvon corrects me. She is my more moderate shadow, here to dilute whatever effect I might have. With me, in private, she’s sarcastic and opinionated, but in public she is keen to obey social norms. Perhaps you’d understand this better than I do. I often think, when you look troubled and remote, that there’s a struggle going on inside you, forces pulling in opposite directions. I’ve never been like that, not even before I met you. I’ve always been an all-one-way sort of person. And ever since the first time I saw you, I’ve been pulled entirely towards you. Nothing else stands a chance.

‘He does,’ I say firmly. When Yvon looked in the Yellow Pages this morning, she found what she called ‘three contenders’: the Star Inn in Spilling, the Star and Garter in Combingham and Star Bar in Silsford. I ruled out the last two immediately. Combingham is miles away and grim, and I know Star Bar. I sometimes pop in, if I’m visiting a customer nearby, and have a pot of organic mint tea. The idea of you sitting on those low leather banquettes reading the infusions menu nearly made me laugh out loud.

‘I’ve got a photo of him on my phone,’ I tell the barman. ‘You’ll know him when you see him.’

He nods amiably. ‘Could be,’ he says, putting our drinks on the bar. ‘That’ll be seven pounds twenty-five, please. There are lots of faces I can’t put names to.’

I pull my phone out of my bag, trying to prepare myself for the worst, as I do every time. It doesn’t get easier. If anything it gets harder. I want to howl when I see that there is no small envelope icon on the screen. Still no message from you. A fresh burst of pain and fear mixed with sheer disbelief makes my chest contract. I think about DS Zailer and DC Waterhouse, and want to smash their dense, unresponsive heads together. They as good as admitted that they planned to do nothing.

‘What about Sean and Tony?’ I snap at the barman, scrolling through the photographs on my phone while Yvon pays for our drinks. ‘Do you know them?’

My question elicits a throaty laugh. ‘Sean and Tony? You’re having me on, right?’

‘No.’ I stop fiddling with my phone and look up. My heart is racing. The names mean something to him.

‘No? Well, I’m Sean. And Tony also works here, behind the bar. He’ll be in this evening.’

‘But . . .’ I am at a loss for words. ‘Robert talked about you as if . . .’ I assumed that you, Sean and Tony came here together. Thinking about it now, you never actually said that was what happened. I must have made it up, leaped to the wrong conclusion.

You come here alone. Sean and Tony are here already because they work here.

I turn back to my phone. I don’t want Yvon to see that I am confused. How can this development be anything but good? I have found Sean and Tony. They know you, they’re your friends. All I need to do is show Sean a photograph and he’ll recognise you. I choose the one of you standing in front of your lorry outside the Traveltel, and pass my phone across the bar.

I see instant recognition in Sean’s eyes and allow myself to breathe again.

‘Elvis!’ He chuckles. ‘Tony and me call him Elvis. To his face, like. He doesn’t mind.’

I nearly burst into tears. Sean is your friend. He even has a nickname for you.

‘Why do you call him that?’ asks Yvon.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

Yvon and I shake our heads.

‘He looks like a bigger version of Elvis Costello, doesn’t he? Elvis Costello after he’s eaten all the pies.’ Sean laughs at his witticism. ‘We said that to him an’ all.’

‘You didn’t know his name was Robert Haworth?’ says Yvon. Out of the corner of my eye I can see that she is looking at me, not at Sean.

‘I don’t think he ever told us his name. He’s just always been Elvis. Is he okay? Tony and me were saying last night we haven’t seen Elvis for a while.’

‘When?’ I say sharply. ‘When did you last see him?’

Sean frowns. I must have sounded too fraught. I’ve put him off. Idiot. ‘Who are you, anyway?’ he says.

‘I’m Robert’s girlfriend.’ I have never said this before. I wish I could say it over and over again. I wish I could say wife instead of girlfriend.

‘Did he ever mention a Naomi?’ asks Yvon.

‘Nope.’

‘What about Juliet?’

Sean shakes his head. He is starting to look wary.

‘Look, this is really important,’ I say. This time I make sure my voice is calm and not too loud. ‘Robert’s been missing since last Thursday . . .’

‘Hang on . . .’ Yvon touches my arm. ‘We don’t know that.’

‘I know it.’ I shake her off. ‘When did you last see him?’ I ask Sean.

He is nodding. ‘Would’ve been around then,’ he said. ‘Thursday, Wednesday, something like that. But he’s normally in most nights for a sly pint and a chat, so after a few nights of him not turning up, me and Tony started wondering. Not that it doesn’t happen, mind. We get loads of punters like that: regular as clockwork for years and then suddenly, boof! They’re gone and you never clap eyes on them again.’

‘And he didn’t say anything about going away?’ I ask, though I already know the answer. ‘He didn’t mention any plans to go on holiday or anything?’

‘Did he say anything about Kent?’ Yvon chips in.

Sean shakes his head. ‘Nothing like that. He said, “See you tomorrow,” same as always.’ He laughs. ‘Sometimes he said, “See you tomorrow, Sean, if we’re spared.” If we’re spared! Bit of a gloomy sod, isn’t he?’

I stare at the dark wooden floorboards, blood pounding in my ears. I’ve never heard you use that expression. What if you said it to Sean for a reason? What if, this time, you have not been spared?

Yvon is thanking Sean for his help, as if the conversation is over. ‘Wait,’ I say, dragging myself out of the haze of dread that temporarily silenced me. ‘What’s your surname? What’s Tony’s?’

‘Naomi . . .’ Yvon sounds alarmed.

‘Is it all right if I give your names to the police? You can tell them what you’ve just told us, that you agree that Robert’s missing.’

‘He didn’t say that,’ says Yvon.

‘I don’t mind. Like I say, me and Tony did think it was a bit funny. Mine’s Hennage, Sean Hennage. Tony’s is Willder.’

‘Wait here,’ I say to Yvon, and I’m outside with my bag and my phone before she has a chance to object.

I sit at one of the white-painted metal tables and pull my coat tight around me, tugging my sleeves down over my hands. It’ll be a while before people are drinking outside. It is spring in name only. I watch three swans glide down the river in a line as I dial the number I spent an hour tracking down this morning, the one that will get me straight through to CID at Spilling Police Station. I wanted to phone immediately to ask what exactly Detective Sergeant Zailer and Detective Constable Waterhouse were doing about trying to find you, but Yvon said it was too soon, I had to give them a chance.

I am certain that they are doing nothing. I don’t think they will lift a finger to help you. They believe you’ve left me by choice, that you’ve chosen Juliet over me and you’re too scared to tell me this directly. Only you and I know how ridiculous that idea is.

A Detective Constable Gibbs answers the phone. He tells me that Zailer and Waterhouse are both out. His manner is offhand, verging on rude. Does he so resent speaking to me that he is trying to use as few words as possible in response to my questions? That’s the impression I get. He has probably heard all about me and thinks I’m some kind of bunny-boiler, hounding you when you’d rather be left alone, sending the police to do my dirty work. When I tell him that I want to leave a message, he pretends he has a pen, pretends he is writing down Sean and Tony’s names, but he can’t be. He growls, ‘Got it,’ too quickly. I can tell when someone is really making a note of something—there are long pauses, and sometimes they repeat bits under their breath, or check spellings.

Detective Constable Gibbs does none of these things. He puts the phone down while I am still talking to him.

I walk over to the white-painted iron railings that separate the pub’s terrace from the river. I ought to ring the police station again, demand to speak to the most senior person in the building—a chief constable or chief superintendent—and complain about the way I’ve been treated. I am brilliant at complaining. It is what I was doing the first time you saw me, and it’s why you fell in love with me—you always tell me that. I had no idea you were watching, listening, otherwise I’m sure I would have toned it down a bit. Thank God I didn’t. Beautifully savage: that’s how you describe the way I was that day.

It would never occur to you to protest about anything—on your own behalf, I mean; you would always stick up for me. But that’s why you admire my fighting spirit, my conviction that misery and shoddiness do not have to be part of life. You’re impressed that I have the nerve to aim absurdly high.

I can’t go back into the pub, not yet. I am too churned up. Tears of rage fill my eyes, blurring the cold, slow-moving water in front of me. I hate myself when I cry, really loathe myself. It doesn’t do any good. What’s the point of resolving never to be weak and helpless again if all you can do when your lover vanishes into thin air is stand beside a river and weep? It’s pathetic.

Yvon will tell me again to give the police a chance, but why should I? Why aren’t Detective Sergeant Zailer and Detective Constable Waterhouse here at the Star, asking Sean when he last saw you? Will they bother to go to your house and speak to Juliet? Unaccounted-for married lovers must be bottom of their list of priorities. Especially now, when all over the country, it sometimes seems, networks of maniacs are planning to blow themselves up and take train-loads of innocent men, women and children with them. Dangerous criminals—those are the people the police care about finding.

My heart jolts as an impossible idea begins to take shape in my mind. I try to push it down but it won’t go away; it advances from the shadows slowly, gradually, like a figure emerging from a dark cave. I wipe my eyes. No, I can’t do it. Even to think about it feels like a terrible betrayal. I’m sorry, Robert. I must be going properly mad. Nobody would do that. Besides, it would be a physical impossibility. I wouldn’t be able to utter the words.

What kind of a person does that? Nobody! That’s what Yvon said when I told her about how we met, how you drew yourself to my attention. I told you she’d said it, remember? You smiled and said, ‘Tell her I’m the person who does the things nobody would do.’ I did tell her. She mimed sticking her finger down her throat.

I clutch the railings for support, feeling wrung out, as if this new fear that has suddenly saturated me might dissolve my bones and muscles. ‘I can’t do it, Robert,’ I whisper, knowing it’s pointless. I had this exact same sensation when we first met: an unwavering certainty that everything that was going to happen had been laid down long ago by an authority far more powerful than me, one that owed me nothing, entered into no contract with me, yet compelled me entirely. I couldn’t have tampered with it, however hard I’d tried.

It’s the same this time. The decision has already been made.

‘We’ve got to go,’ I say to Yvon.

Her name has not always been Yvon. I’ve never told you this. There’s a lot I haven’t told you about her. I stopped mentioning her after it occurred to me that you might be jealous. I am not married, and apart from you Yvon is the most important person in my life. I am closer to her than I am to any of my family. She has lived with me ever since her divorce, which is another thing I haven’t told you about.

She’s tiny and skinny—five feet tall, seven and a half stone—and has long, straight brown hair that reaches her waist. Usually she wears it in a ponytail that she twists round her arm when she’s working, or playing games on her computer. Every few months she chain-smokes Consulate menthol cigarettes for between a week and a fortnight, but then she gives up again. I’m never allowed to mention these lapses from healthy living once they’re over.

She was christened Eleanor—Eleanor Rosamund Newman—but when she was twelve she decided that she wanted to be called Yvon instead. She asked her parents if she could change her name, and the fools agreed. They’re both classicists at Oxford, strict about education but nothing else. They believe it’s important to let children express their personalities, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their getting straight ‘A’s all the way through school.

‘They’re a pair of numbskulls,’ Yvon often says. ‘I was twelve! I thought “Too Shy” by Kajagoogoo was the best song ever written. I wanted to marry Limahl. They should have locked me in a cupboard until I grew out of it.’

When Yvon married Ben Cotchin, she took his surname. Her friends and family, including me, were mystified when she decided to keep it after the divorce. ‘Every time I change my name, I make it a little bit worse,’ she explained. ‘I’m not risking it again. Anyway, I like having a shit, wrongly spelled first name and the surname of a spoiled, lazy alcoholic. It’s a fantastic exercise in humility. Whenever I pick up an envelope addressed to me, or fill in the electoral register form, I remember how stupid I am. It keeps the old ego in check.’

‘Are we going home?’ she asks now.

‘No. To the police station.’

I so badly want to tell her. Yvon is the person whose opinions I use to test my own. Often I don’t know what I think about something until I’ve heard what she thinks. But I can’t risk it this time. Besides, there’s no point. I know all the reasons why it’s wrong and bad and crazy, and I’m going to do it anyway.

‘The police station?’ Yvon begins to protest. ‘But—’

‘I know, I should give them a chance,’ I say bitterly. ‘But this isn’t about that. This is something different.’ I feel stunned by my own outrageous nerve, but calmer, also, now that I have decided on a course of action. No one can accuse me of being a coward if I do this.

‘Let’s talk outside,’ Yvon says. ‘I don’t like this place at all. It’s too close to the river, the water’s too loud. Even inside there’s a damp, waterlogged atmosphere. I’m starting to feel like a creature from Wind In the Willows.’ She stands up, pulls her purple shawl around her shoulders.

‘I don’t want to talk. I just need a lift. You don’t have to come in with me, you can drop me off and go home. I’ll make my own way back.’ I start to march towards the car park.

‘Naomi, wait!’ Yvon runs after me. ‘What’s going on?’

Saying nothing is not so hard after all. This isn’t the first secret I’ve kept from her. I’ve had three years to practise.

Yvon waves her car keys in the air, leaning against her red Fiat Punto. ‘Tell me or I’m not driving you anywhere.’

‘You don’t believe me, do you? You don’t believe that Juliet’s done something to Robert. You think he’s dumped me and hasn’t got the guts to tell me.’

There is an echoey squawk of birds above our heads. It’s as if they’re trying to join in our conversation. I look up at the grey sky, half expecting to see a committee of gulls staring down at me. But they are oblivious, going about their business as usual.

Yvon groans. ‘Can I refer you to my forty-seven previous answers to the same question? I don’t know where Robert is, or why he hasn’t been in touch. And neither do you. It’s very, very unlikely that Juliet’s chopped him into small pieces and buried him under the floorboards, okay?’

‘She knew my name. She’d found out about the affair.’

‘It’s still unlikely.’ Yvon relents and unlocks the car. I am disappointed. She could have persuaded me to tell her, if she’d pushed a bit harder. Most people are not as persistent as I am. ‘Naomi, I’m worried about you.’

‘It’s Robert you should worry about. Something’s happened to him. He’s in trouble.’ I wonder why I am the only person to whom this is obvious.

‘When did you last eat?’ Yvon asks, once we’re in the car. ‘When did you last get a good night’s sleep?’ Every question she asks me I think of in relation to you. Are you hungry and tired somewhere, gradually giving up hope, wondering why I’m not trying harder to find you? Yvon thinks I’m being melodramatic, but I know you. Only something that paralysed or confined you, or took away your memory, would prevent you from making contact with me. A lot of tragedies are unlikely, but they still happen. Most people do not fall off bridges, or die in house fires, but some do.

I want to say to Yvon that statistics are irrelevant and unhelpful, but I can’t spare the words. I need all my energy to steel myself for my next step. It’s obvious, anyway. Even if the odds are one in a million, that one could be you. It has to be somebody, doesn’t it?

Yvon is on Juliet’s side; she too believes I’m better off without you. She thinks you’re repressed and sexist, and that the way you talk is grandiose and pretentious, that you say lots of things that sound deep and meaningful but are actually meaningless and trite. You present clichés as if they are profound, newly discovered truths, she says. Once, she accused me of trying to mould my personality to suit what I imagine you want, although she took that back the following morning. I could tell from the look on her face that she had meant it, but thought she’d gone too far.

I wasn’t offended. Meeting you did change me. That was the best thing about it. Knowing I had a future with you helped me to bury everything I hated about the past. How I wish I could leave it buried.

We drive up the steep tree-lined road, the sound of the river fading behind us. There are no leaves yet on these trees, which throw their bare arms up towards the sky.

Yvon doesn’t ask again why I want to go to the police station. She tries a new tactic. ‘Are you sure I wouldn’t be better off driving you to Robert’s house? If you’re so sure you saw something through the window . . .’

‘No.’ The dread I feel at the mention of it is like a hand closing round my throat.

‘It’s one mystery we could easily get to the bottom of,’ Yvon points out. I understand why she thinks it’s a reasonable suggestion. ‘All you need to do is go and look again. I’ll come with you.’

‘No.’ The police will go, as soon as they’ve heard what I’m about to tell them. If there’s something to be found, they’ll find it.

‘What could you possibly have seen, for God’s sake? It can’t have been Robert, handcuffed to a radiator and covered in bruises. I mean, you’d remember that, wouldn’t you?’

‘Don’t joke about it.’

‘What do you remember seeing in the room? You still haven’t told me.’

I haven’t because I can’t. Describing your lounge to DS Zailer and DC Waterhouse was bad enough; some reflex in my brain kept springing back, away from the image.

Yvon sighs when I fail to answer. She turns on her car radio and jabs one button after another, finding nothing she wants to listen to. In the end she chooses the station that’s playing one of Madonna’s old songs, and turns the volume down so that it’s barely audible.

‘You thought Sean and Tony were Robert’s best mates, didn’t you? That’s how he talked about them. He misled you. They’re just two guys who work behind the bar at his local pub.’

‘Which is how they met Robert. Obviously they became friends.’

‘They don’t even know his real name. And how come he’s in the Star every night? How come he’s in Spilling every night? I thought he was a lorry driver.’

‘He doesn’t do overnights any more.’

‘So what does he do? Who does he work for?’

She is picking up speed, and I raise both my hands to stop the flow. ‘Give me a chance,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing mysterious about it. He’s self-employed, but mainly he works for supermarkets—Asda, Sainsbury’s. Tesco.’

‘I understand the concept of supermarkets,’ Yvon mutters. ‘You don’t have to list them all.’

‘He stopped doing overnights because Juliet didn’t like being left on her own. So most days he loads up out of Spilling, drives to Tilbury, where he loads up again. Or sometimes he loads up out of Dartford . . .’

‘Listen to yourself,’ says Yvon, shooting a puzzled look at me. ‘You’re talking like him. “He loads up out of Dartford”! Do you even know what that means?’

This is becoming irritating. I say sharply, ‘I assume it means that, in Dartford, he puts some things in his lorry which he then transports back to Spilling.’

Yvon shakes her head. ‘You don’t get it. I knew you wouldn’t. It’s like he’s taken you over, and what have you got in exchange? He gives you nothing but empty promises. Why can’t he ever stay the night with you? Why can’t Juliet be left on her own?’

I stare at the road ahead.

‘You don’t know, do you? Have you ever said to him, “What exactly is wrong with your wife?”’

‘If he wants to tell me, that’s up to him. I don’t want to interrogate him. He’d feel disloyal discussing her problems with me.’

‘Very noble of him. Funny, he doesn’t feel disloyal fucking you.’ Yvon sighs. ‘Sorry.’ I hear a trace of something in her voice: scorn, perhaps, or a weary kindness. ‘Look, you saw Juliet yesterday. She appeared to be a self-sufficient, able-bodied grown-up. Not at all the poor, frail thing Robert’s described . . .’

‘He hasn’t described her. He’s never said anything specific.’ I am starting to feel a little bit angry. I need all my energy to look for you, to stay positive, to stop myself going crazy with worry and fear. It is too much to have to defend you at the same time. Too preposterous, as well, when the attack comes from someone who’s never met you.

‘Why can’t you pin him down? If he can’t leave Juliet now, when will he be able to? What will change between now and then?’

I want to protect you against the sting of Yvon’s hostility, so I say nothing. You could have lied about why you won’t leave Juliet immediately; many men would have. You could have made up a story that would have kept me at bay: a sick mother, an illness. The truth is harder to accept, but I’m glad you told me. ‘It’s nothing to do with Juliet,’ you said. ‘She won’t change. She’ll never change.’ I heard what sounded like determination in your voice, but perhaps it was a sort of furious resignation, anger filling the gap where hope once was. Your eyes narrowed as you spoke, as if in response to a sudden sharp pain. ‘If I left her now, it’d be the same as if I leave her in a year, or five years, from her point of view.’

‘Then why not leave her now?’ I asked. Yvon isn’t the only one who has wondered.

‘It’s me,’ you admitted. ‘This won’t make sense, but . . . I’ve thought about leaving her for so long. Planning it, looking forward to it. I’ve probably thought about it too much, in a way. It’s turned into this . . . legendary thing in my mind. I’m paralysed. It’s become too big for me. I get too preoccupied about the details—how and when to do it. In my mind, I’m already caught up in the process of leaving her. The grand finale—what I’ve been working towards for so long.’ You smiled sadly. ‘Trouble is, the process hasn’t yet manifested itself in the world outside my head.’

You took a long time to say all this, taking care to choose exactly the right words, the ones that most accurately described your feelings. I’ve noticed you don’t like to talk about yourself unless it’s to say how much you love me, or that you only feel truly alive when you’re with me. You’re the opposite of a self-absorbed, oblivious man. Yvon thinks I’m obsessed with you, and she’s right, but she’s never seen you in action. Nobody but me knows how you stare at me hungrily, as if you might never see me again. Nobody has ever felt the way you kiss me. My obsession is dwarfed by yours.

How can I explain all this to Yvon? I don’t entirely understand it myself.

‘What if leaving Juliet always seems too big?’ I asked you. ‘What if you always feel paralysed?’ I’m not a total fool. I’ve seen the same films Yvon has about women who waste their whole lives waiting for their married lovers to get divorced and commit to them properly. Though I will never regard you as a waste of time, no matter what happens. Even if you never leave Juliet, even if all I can ever have of you is three hours a week, I don’t care.

‘I will always feel paralysed,’ you said. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and I turned my face away so that you wouldn’t see my disappointment. ‘I’ll always feel the way I do now: hovering on the verge, not ready to throw myself over the edge. But I will do it. I’ll make myself do it. Once, I really wanted to marry Juliet. And I did marry her. Now you’re the one I’m desperate to marry. I look forward to it every minute of every day.’

When I replay things you’ve said and hear your voice so clearly in my mind, I feel like a dying animal. It can’t be over. I have to be able to see you again. There are two days to go until Thursday. I will be at the Traveltel at four o’clock. As usual.

Yvon nudges me with her elbow. ‘Probably I should keep my big gob shut,’ she says. ‘What do I know about anything? I married a lazy alcoholic because I fell in love with the summerhouse in his back garden and thought it’d be ideal for my business. Got what I deserved, didn’t I?’

Yvon lies about her romantic history all the time, making herself sound worse than she is. She married Ben Cotchin because she loved him. Still does, I suspect, despite his aimlessness and his drinking. Yvon and her business, Summerhouse Web Design, now live in the converted basement of my house, and Ben’s summerhouse, if Yvon’s spies are to be believed, is used primarily as an extra-large drinks cabinet.

We are nearly there. I can see the police station, a blur of red bricks in the distance, getting closer. There is a large obstruction in my throat. I can’t swallow.

‘Why don’t we go away for a couple of days?’ says Yvon. ‘You need to relax, detach a bit from all this stress. We could drive up to Silver Brae Chalets. Did I show you their card? I could get us a chalet for next to nothing, being well connected, you know how it is. After you’ve done whatever you need to do at the police station, we could—’

‘No,’ I snap. Why is everybody talking about bloody Silver Brae Chalets? Detective Sergeant Zailer quizzed me about it, after I stupidly gave her the card by mistake. She asked if you and I had ever been there.

I don’t want to be reminded of the only time you’ve ever been really angry with me, not now that you’re missing. It’s funny, it never bothered me before. I forgot it almost as soon as it had happened. I’m sure you did too. But this one bad memory seems to have taken on a sudden significance, and my mind swerves away from it.

It can’t possibly have anything to do with you being missing. Why would it make you decide to leave me now, four months after it happened? And everything has been fine since then. Better than fine: perfect.

Yvon had a pile of those wretched cards lying around her office and I picked one up. I thought you needed a proper break, far away from Juliet and her leech-like demands, so I booked us a chalet as a surprise. Not even for a whole week, just for a weekend. I had to negotiate a special rate on the phone, with a rather ungracious woman who sounded as if she actively didn’t want me to boost her profits by staying in one of her cottages.

I know you don’t like being away overnight as a rule, but I thought that if it was just a one-off, it’d be okay. You looked at me as if I’d betrayed you. For two hours you didn’t speak—not one single word. Even after that, you wouldn’t get into bed with me. ‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ you kept saying. ‘You should never have done it.’ You withdrew into yourself, drawing your knees up to your chest, not even reacting when I shook you by the shoulders, hysterical with guilt and regret. It’s the only time you’ve been close to crying. What were you thinking? What was going on in your head that you couldn’t or didn’t want to tell me?

I was distraught all week, thinking it might be over between us, loathing and cursing myself for my presumptuousness. But the following Thursday, to my amazement, you were your usual self. You didn’t refer to it at all. When I tried to apologise, you shrugged and said, ‘You know I can’t go away. I’m really sorry, sweetheart. I’d love to, but I can’t.’ I didn’t understand why you hadn’t just said that straight away.

I never told Yvon, and can’t tell her now. How can I expect her to understand? ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to snap at you.’

‘You’ve got to get a grip,’ she says sternly. ‘I honestly believe Robert’s absolutely fine, wherever he is. It’s you who’s cracking up. And, yes, I know I’m in no position to lecture you. I’m the proud owner of the shortest marriage on record, and I’m extremely precocious when it comes to ballsing up my life. I got divorced while most of my friends were taking their A levels . . .’

I smile at the exaggeration. Yvon is obsessed with the fact that she is divorced at thirty-three. She thinks there’s a stigma attached to having a failed marriage behind you at such a young age. I once asked her what was an okay age to get divorced and she said, ‘Forty-six, ’ without a moment’s hesitation.

‘Naomi, are you listening? I’m not talking about since Robert did a runner. If you ask me, you were cracking up long before then.’

‘What do you mean?’ All my defensive impulses kick in at once. ‘That’s bullshit. Before Thursday I was fine. I was happy.’

Yvon shakes her head. ‘You were staying every Thursday night at the Traveltel on your own while Robert went home to his wife! There’s something sick about that. How can he let you do it? And since he’s gone on the dot of seven, why don’t you just come home? Shit, I’m ranting. So much for being diplomatic.’

She turns left into the police-station car park. No running away, I tell myself. No last-minute changes of mind.

‘Robert doesn’t know I always stay the night.’ It might be crazy, my Thursday-night routine, but you are not implicated.

‘He doesn’t?’

‘I’ve never told him. He’d be upset, thinking of me there on my own. As for why I do it . . . it’ll sound mad, but the Traveltel is our place. Even if he can’t stay, I want to. I feel closer to him there than I do at home.’

Yvon is nodding. ‘I know you do, but . . . God, Naomi, can’t you see that’s part of the problem?’ I don’t know what she’s talking about. She carries on, her voice agitated. ‘You feeling close to him in some grotty, anonymous room while he’s at home with his feet up watching telly with his wife. The things you don’t tell him, the things he doesn’t tell you, this strange world the two of you have created that exists only in one room, only for three hours a week. Can’t you see?’ We are driving up and down rows of parked cars. Yvon cranes her neck, looking for a space.

I might one day tell you that I stay at the Traveltel alone every Thursday. I’ve only kept it from you out of mild embarrassment— what if you would think it’s too extreme? There may be other things that I happen not to have told you about myself, but there is only one thing I really want to hide from you, from everyone. And I’m about to make that impossible. I cannot believe that I have ended up in this situation, that what I am about to do has become necessary, unavoidable.

Yvon swears under her breath. The Punto jerks to a standstill. ‘You’ll have to get out here,’ she says. ‘There are no spaces.’

I nod, open the passenger door. The sharp wind on my skin feels like total exposure. This can’t be happening. After three years of meticulous secrecy, I am about to tear down the barrier I’ve built between me and the world. I am going to blow my own cover.