I didn’t tell you of my suspicions after you left a message on my answerphone when you knew I wouldn’t be at home. I didn’t mention the instinctive distrust that had been brewing the weeks before your disappearance, nor my neurotic spying outside your flat. There was no point. I needed the full story and reminded myself I’d done nothing wrong.

‘That was Amber. She was a primary school teacher at the pre-prep department where I worked. Oliver introduced us. He thought she was a lot like you. She was nothing like you.’ You moved your hand back over mine, willing me to listen, not to interrupt and to understand. You needed me to believe you.

‘I had a fling with her, once, a few months previously. It was a drunken one-night stand which Oliver instigated. I went along on a double date to keep him company. I always felt guilty at having snatched you from under his nose and I kept trying to make it up to him. Back then I thought he was a good friend.’

I looked at my watch. It was eleven and the bistro was empty apart from us. A window had been opened and a distinct chill wafted through the room. The background music had been turned off. We had to leave. I needed to leave, feel the full force of the frozen night air on my face. I didn’t want to hear any more.

We strolled through Highgate, and left our cars at the pub. We walked in silence, side by side, as we sobered up. Perhaps it was fate that led us through the cobbled back streets, along quiet leafy cul-de-sacs past the expensively priced residences of young high-flyers. You took my hand, threaded your fingers through mine, until we reached our cottage. There was a For Sale sign up again in the front garden but with a Sold sticker plastered across the board. The cloudless sky was bright and stars twinkled in the galaxies. For that one moment in time, none of it mattered. We stopped outside the cottage and faced each other.

‘Shhh. No more,’ I said. ‘Not now. Let this be a special moment in time. It can wait.’

You pulled me close, wrapped me inside your coat, kissing first my cheek and then my lips. It had been a long wait.

Nothing yet everything had changed.

53

Arthur

Perhaps I’d fooled myself into believing Amber was dead. I played make-believe that she had died, some sudden and violent demise. Perhaps she had fallen under a train or drowned in the ocean. She liked to swim, to battle the waves and tease the force to drag her under.