John doesn’t answer. She can hear someone whispering.

‘If you know something, John, please, you have to tell me, I’m going out of my mind here.’ Maddy presses her palm to her neck.

‘You know he left yesterday, don’t you?’ he says quietly.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I mean he resigned. Told me after lunch. Right out of the blue.’

‘How could he do that when you’re business partners?’

‘We’re most certainly not. Is that what he told you?’

‘Yes, two years ago. I gave him the money for it.’

‘We were talking about it two years ago, until he backed out, said he couldn’t get enough cash together.’

‘But he showed me the papers; they were all drawn up.’

‘Well, I never signed anything. Good job too, because to be honest with you, he’s been a bloody nightmare.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Never knew if he was going to turn up for a job or not, from one week to the next.’

‘This is not making any sense.’

‘I’m sorry, love.’

‘Would you know anything about a key for Plot 146? It was found in his rucksack.’

‘No idea. Sorry, I can’t help.’

The line goes dead. Maddy slams the phone down, her cheeks burning as if John has slapped her hard across the face. She hurls the address book at the wall. Her mind flits through the times Max stayed away longer than planned, to finish a job or work extra shifts. And what about that time he was late for Chloe’s school concert? He blamed it on work. If John is right and Max didn’t always turn up for work, where was he going?

Chapter Six

Max: March 2011

At 9 p.m. Max knocked on the solid oak front door and waited in the open porch. It was an imposing house with ornate brickwork around mock Tudor beams. After a couple of minutes, the door inched open. He could see Maddy in the gap, a chain separating them.

‘Oh, hello,’ she said.

‘Sorry, I know it’s a bit late. Did I get you up?’

She unchained the door and stood aside.

The light in the hall was dim. A dirty cream pattern like hundreds of faces lined the walls, hanging down in strips in places. There was a smudged outline where a picture had once hung, framing a cleaner patch of wallpaper.

‘I’m making a milky coffee, do you want one?’ She stifled a yawn.

Without all the slap he could see the beginnings of crease lines around her eyes and mouth; must be pushing thirty at least. The woody bong of an old-fashioned clock chimed far off in another room. He followed her past an iron coat stand, into the kitchen. It looked like nothing had been modernised for years – free-standing cupboards, a Welsh dresser, and a twin-tub in the corner covered in pot plants.