JEANETTE WAS SITTING at the breakfast table turning the pages of the newspaper, distractedly and mostly for appearance’s sake, since her husband was also at the table. If she wasn’t reading, she would be expected to talk to him, and she had increasingly little to discuss with her husband. The news didn’t interest her either—the thoughts turning over in her head now overshadowed everything else.

More than two weeks had passed since the nonmeeting, and Jeanette’s problems had only got worse. Now she no longer dared to hope for a reunion with Peter. After scrutinising every element of the drama that had taken place, it seemed more and more obvious that he no longer wanted her with him on his voyage into a brighter future. But there were a few details that bothered her and kept her hopes alive, and no matter how much she puzzled over it, she was unable to make sense of his reasoning.

How could he be so certain that she wouldn’t have a breakdown, give herself up and therefore by extension him too? That risk had been looming large since the very beginning, and he ought not to feel confident in her loyalty as a result. What was more, if he had lied to her, holding out the prospect of a meeting, and then he had crept away from all of it without so much as a peep, then the situation as far as he was concerned was even more serious. Surely he grasped that this was no longer just about loyalty to him, but quite simply a matter of her own well-being? Jeanette was free to do as she wished, and if she was in the process of succumbing to remorse then the next step of contacting the police wasn’t far off.

And why had he let her believe until the very end that he loved her and was missing her? The words in that final text message were beautiful, and it had clearly been a very effective method of keep her warm, as it were. But instead of proposing a meeting, he could have postponed. A week at a time, or a month. For their safety. He could have laid it out like that and she would have walked straight into the trap. Right until the day it became apparent to her that the relationship was never going to happen. By then so much time would have passed that nothing could be done, everything would drain away into the sand, and life would return to normal. If it hadn’t already done so.

Her gaze fell upon an article covering a large spread describing the mysterious disappearance of a forty-one-year-old man. She read it several times and examined the picture with a rising sense of dread. Then she rushed into the bathroom to be on her own with her uncontrollable shaking and her overheating brain.