The Perfect Couple. Jackie Kabler
her throat.
‘I think, Mike, that you’re bang on. I have no idea what’s going on here, or why on earth an apparently happily married man has a profile on a trendy dating site, but that’s definitely Danny O’Connor.’
I was slumped on the sofa, shivering violently despite the warmth of the room. What was going on? My head throbbed, and I felt disorientated, dizzy, as if I’d had too much to drink, although not a drop or morsel had passed my lips since the police had left that morning. The thought of food made me feel ill. How could I prepare a meal, sit down and eat it like a normal person, when everything I thought of as normal seemed to be crumbling around me? Danny hadn’t been going to work, hadn’t even started his new job. How was that even possible? For three weeks, he’d been leaving the house in the morning, dressed for the office, heading off on his bike and returning long after dark in the evening. He’d seemed to be enjoying his new role enormously, seemed so happy, so … so Danny. Nothing different about him whatsoever. And now I’d been informed that all of it, all of it, had been a lie. Why? Why would he make something like that up, pretend to be going to work when he wasn’t? And if he wasn’t working at ACR Security, where I thought he was, where he said he was, then where the hell had he been spending his days? The police had asked me that too, and I’d simply gaped at them, shaking my head, unable to think of anything, anywhere he could possibly have been going. Of course, now that I was alone again, I’d managed to come up with all sorts of wild scenarios in the past few horrible hours – he’d taken another job, some sort of top secret one he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about. He was sick, suffering from some terrible illness, and had been having clandestine daily treatment, not wanting to worry me. He had another family, a second wife, children maybe, who lived in Bristol, and that’s why he’d been so excited about moving here, finally able to spend time with them. But as each theory slammed into my brain, and was then instantly dismissed as ludicrous, my fear grew. I had no idea, no clue at all.
Danny, what have you done? Why would you do this to me? I love you, Danny, and you love me. Don’t you?
But suddenly, the doubts were creeping in.
If he’s lied to me about this, what else might he have lied about?
There were little white lies in every relationship, of course there were. But you didn’t lie to somebody you loved about the big things, did you? Not the huge, massively important things like your work, your life. The job, the daily routine, the annoyance he’d shown at the delay of his new work phone’s arrival when, in reality, it appeared now, there was no work, no imminent phone. Lies, lies, lies. And then to just vanish, leaving me so confused, so frightened … who would treat someone they loved like that?
A little sob escaped me and, at my feet on the carpet, Albert, who was curled up, asleep, opened his eyes briefly, looked up at me, glanced around the room as if to check if Danny was back yet, then shut his eyes again with a heavy sigh. There was a faux fur throw on the back of the sofa and I dragged it off, wrapping it around my legs and pulling it up to my chin, trying to stop the shivering. We’d snuggled under this velvety softness so many times, Danny and me, watching films, talking, kissing. The flash of memory made my eyes sting with sudden tears. This made no sense. None of it made any sense. And yet, I thought, had increasingly been thinking in the past few hours, how well did I really know my husband, when you looked at the facts? We’d met on Tinder only eighteen months ago, as I’d told the police officers when I’d gone to the station. We’d liked the look of each other, exchanged a few flirty messages, then it was phone calls, long and late into the night. His soft Irish burr had enthralled me, and I’d found myself opening up to him before we’d even met in person, telling him about my work, the anxiety that had led to me packing in my newspaper career, the emotional trauma it had left me with. He’d been so kind, so supportive, so understanding, right from the start. And then, when we’d finally had our first date, when I’d looked into those chocolatey brown eyes, there’d been a connection so immediate, so deep that it had almost frightened me. I’d had boyfriends before, even a few serious ones over the years, but not for a while and not like that. Not like Danny. That was September; on Christmas Eve, he dropped to one knee in our favourite little Italian restaurant and proposed, amid the whoops and cheers of the waiters and other diners. We got married just three months later, on the seventeenth of March, St Patrick’s Day.
‘Always a day for celebrating. And I can’t think of a better reason for celebrating than marrying you,’ he’d said, as we left Marylebone register office, holding hands, grinning crazily. We’d kept it small, simple, just us and a few friends, plus my parents and, representing the O’Connors, Danny’s cousin Quinn, his only relative who lived in London. His mum hadn’t flown over from County Sligo for the wedding – Donal, Danny’s father, had died just six weeks or so earlier, at the beginning of February, after being ill on and off for years, and his mum was full-time carer for their other, disabled, son, Liam, Danny’s younger brother.
‘Mum hates travel, and Liam isn’t good with changes to his routine, it freaks him out. Even before Dad died, they’d rarely left the county for years, never mind the country,’ Danny had told me. ‘It’s a shame, but I’ll send her pictures and videos. She’s not that bothered anyway, you know what she’s like. And I’ve told her it’s just a modest do, and she’s not missing much.’
I’d only met Bridget once, but I knew what he meant. Danny had told me he’d never really got on well with either of his parents, and I had seen why when I’d met them. Bridget was definitely an odd one, and I hadn’t warmed to his father at all. And he was right, it wasn’t much, our wedding reception, but it was perfect for us and I loved it: a knees-up at the local pub, champagne and fish and chips, photos snapped on friends’ phones, to be collated and put into an album later. It was really how Danny had wanted it – he hated fuss, as he called it – but I’d been happy to go along with it, as long as a few key people were there: Mum, Dad, my closest friends. I still wore white though, a beautiful Chanel sheath, and insisted he wear a suit and cut his wild locks into something resembling a hair style. He’d moaned, but he’d complied, and I’d never seen him look more gorgeous than he did that day. I’d never felt more in love, or happier. Never dreamt that just a year later …
There was a lump in my throat, and I swallowed hard, feeling the nausea rising again. We’d been happy, we had. We fitted. And I hadn’t lied when I’d told the police we’d been virtually inseparable most of the time. OK, so Danny, very occasionally, would become a little withdrawn, wanted to be alone, would head off on his bike for a couple of hours, but that was natural; he loved cycling, and he had a stressful job, cooped up in a stuffy office, staring at a screen. It was a bit like that for me too, with my writing, and I’d always understood his need for a bit of solitude. He’d always come back a few hours later, smiling, relaxed, rejuvenated. So this, this complete disappearance – this wasn’t Danny. Or not the Danny I thought I knew, certainly.
He lied to me, I thought again. He lied. And not just a little white lie, a massive one.
And if Danny had lied to me about something as huge as his job, hadn’t told me what was really going on in his life, it suddenly seemed to me that it was much more likely that he had just left me, just walked out, despite my previous insistence that he wouldn’t do that. Could he have been having an affair? Were those solitary cycle rides not what I thought they were – had he been meeting up with somebody after all? Had he now gone off to be with her, whoever she was? And yet, I thought, rubbing my throbbing temples, even that didn’t make much sense, for why had he taken nothing with him? His passport, toiletries, clothes – everything was still here. If you were leaving your partner, and wanted to do it quickly while they were away for a night, surely you’d still take the basics? One bag, with a few clothes, bits and pieces to keep you going until you could come back and collect the rest? I would. Why leave with nothing …?
BRRRRR.
I