I got out of the bath and walked, dripping and naked, into the bedroom. The heating was cranked up and the flat was tropical, the windows steamed up. I was sick of winter, was reaching the point I got to every year where I started to crave sunshine, my body starved of vitamin D. It had been a long winter and now even the brightness Charlie had brought into my life was diminished, black clouds over the sun. I wanted to get that brightness back.

The phone rang. It was Tilly.

She went straight into the conversation without niceties, in the same way I had with Sasha the day before.

‘Did Rachel stay at yours on Friday night?’

‘Yes . . .’

‘And what did she say she was going to do afterwards?’

‘Why? What’s happened? You sound like you’re about to have a panic attack.’

‘No, I’m fine. I’ll explain in a second. Just tell me, please.’

‘She said she was going to ride up to Cardiff to stay with her sister. She left here Saturday morning. What’s going on?’

I sat on my bed wrapped in just a towel, the last droplets of water on my body evaporating. I could hear the couple downstairs arguing. I wondered vaguely what colour my aura was at the moment. Red, probably. Cabernet sauvignon.

Tilly’s voice tightened, like she was on the verge of tears. ‘She never got there. Her sister waited for her all afternoon. Rachel’s not answering her phone, either. I’ve tried to ring it a hundred times but it goes straight to voicemail, like it’s turned off.’

‘Oh Jesus.’

‘I’m so worried, Andrew. We’ve been on to the police but there haven’t been any reports of motorbike accidents.’

‘Maybe – I mean, I don’t like to say it, but what if she went off the road somewhere remote and the bike’s . . . concealed somewhere.’

‘In a ditch, you mean.’

Neither of us spoke.

‘How did she seem Friday night?’

I realised straight away what Tilly was asking. ‘You mean did she seem suicidal? No, she didn’t at all. She was scared, shaken by what had happened with Henry. But she struck me as someone who very much wanted to survive.’

‘That’s what I told the police. Listen, they’ve got your name and address. They might come round to talk to you.’

‘OK.’ The couple downstairs had stopped arguing and were now having sex. ‘What about Henry?’

‘I don’t know. The police asked me a lot of questions about him. I told them what he’d done.’

‘You think he caught up with her, intercepted her?’

‘Oh God, I hope not. But that’s the most probable explanation, isn’t it?’ Her voice caught. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without her. I couldn’t cope.’