His lightly mocking tone sent a dart of adrenaline through her body. Disturbed, she started plucking daisies and dropping them on to Pansy’s back, until Pansy flicked her thigh irritably. Taisie turned to Nick. He was looking down, but she could tell he was scowling. Then he lifted his head, raked his fringe out of the way with his fingers and held her gaze with eyes that were hot with anger. She was the one who blinked first.

GRACE

Monday, 16 April 2018

WHEN I WORKED FOR A HOMELESS CHARITY YEARS ago, there were all sorts of reasons why people left their families but what they mostly boiled down to were money, sex, addiction or emotional problems. As far as I know, money and addiction aren’t issues for either of us; so that leaves sex and emotional problems. Could I be wrong about Nick? Could he be having an affair? I feel as though I’m tumbling.

He wouldn’t; he loves me. I bite down on my lip and think back to the last dinner party, the last drinks, the last casual meeting while walking the dog, trying to picture Nick with the women we know. Most of the people we see are happily married. What about work? I realize I haven’t the slightest idea, but Nick was back early from his staff Christmas drinks, so I doubt there’s anything going on there. And anyway, I’d know. There would be signs. No way would Nick smile at me the way he does, that big beaming smile that embraces me. No way would he tease me and Lottie, joking that he’s at the mercy of our whims. No way would he have proposed. I press my fingers hard against my eyes. This is all wrong. Nick hasn’t run away from me; he’s out there, hurt and unable to get home.

I take a sheet of paper and a pen and start to put down figures and tot up Nick’s day. We had compared our steps after Wimbledon. He had somehow managed to do five hundred more than me, and we couldn’t work out how that had happened. Nick had done almost four thousand, me more like three thousand five hundred. After lunch we’d taken Lottie to buy Hannah’s birthday present, adding another two and a half thousand or thereabouts. On Saturday night Nick stopped moving at eight thousand five hundred and forty-three steps, so that means he managed between one thousand nine hundred and two thousand two hundred steps. I open my laptop, type our postcode into the search engine and click enter. I pull up the map and mark a radius around our house.

So now I have a fairly good idea of how far he walked before he stopped. I visualize the routes that I know he takes, to shops, to the station, to friends’ houses. Toffee whines at my feet, as anxious as me.