We left the pub around eleven. I walked Amber back to her door. Her insistence that she was fine on her own didn’t deter me. She never walked alone in the dark. I knew her so well.

‘A nightcap?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s fine. I can see you’re tired. Thanks for coming out.’

I was surprised by my self-control. She leant across and pecked me on the cheek. I didn’t reciprocate. Instead I smiled, lips upturned, closed. My eyes bored through to the back of her head.

‘Goodnight, Amber. Happy New Year!’

When Ted called me a few days later to ask if I’d seen his daughter, that she seemed to have disappeared, I told him truthfully that we’d shared a glass of wine on New Year’s Eve but I hadn’t seen her since. Not even through my own bedroom window.

Loss of control is man’s biggest fear. I’m not certain what we all want to control when I think about it logically, but perhaps it’s pure animal instinct, a sexual necessity that seeks domination over our partners. We don’t want to control our wild animal urges, rather we want to give vent to their baseness with gay abandon. We only want to control the appearance that this isn’t true. I for one was fed up with the pretence.

At that moment I wanted to punish Amber, make her pay for what she’d done to me. If I had been able to find her over the next few years, she wouldn’t have been safe. Death would, most likely, have been the only option. Her death that is.

As it happened, over time, I worked out that a replacement love, a better and more beautiful Amber, would help heal the pain and bury my impotent fury. It took ten years for the replacement to arrive.

24

Rebecca

James Pennington just sort of happened. Oliver was off work the day James turned up out of the blue at the gallery. Still nervy, anxious, after the night of the funeral, I jumped when the bell rang.

‘Hi. Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. James Pennington. We met at the funeral.’

It had only been three days ago but seemed far longer.

‘Hi. Yes, I remember. Can I get you a coffee?’

At that moment the phone rang. James picked it up and handed it to me.

‘Hello, Pennington’s Art Gallery.’ The kettle whistled in the background and I saw James make himself at home in the kitchen. ‘Hello?’

Silence then the call was disconnected.

James returned with a steaming hot mug of coffee and sat down at my desk. ‘A wrong number?’

‘Yes. It’s been happening a lot lately.’

My mood lifted, not so much from James’s appearance as from the silent phone calls. Something told me it might be Mitch. It was hard not to be buoyed by the crumbs; a flimsy lifeline.