The Perfect Couple. Jackie Kabler
state of the world, switching to lifestyle journalism when I returned to work, leaving crime and politics behind me. But now my husband had vanished, and so I turned the radio on, feeling shaky as I listened for stories about accidents, car crashes, unidentified bodies.
There weren’t any, but in the afternoon, and feeling a little foolish, I slipped Albert’s lead on and went out to walk Danny’s route to and from work, some vague idea in my head that maybe he’d been knocked off his bike by a car and had been tossed, unconscious, into a hedge or alleyway. Ridiculous, even I knew that, in a big city where he’d surely have been spotted within minutes, but I did it anyway. I’d realized before we set out that I didn’t even know his exact route to work, or even if he took the same route every day – as a cyclist, there were so many options, so many shortcuts you could take. So I studied a map, picked what looked like the two most likely routes, the most logical roads to take to travel between our house in Monville Road and Danny’s office in Royal York Crescent, and did both, one one way, the other on the return. His office was clearly closed when I got there, but I rang the doorbell anyway, and peered in through the windows at unlit rooms empty of people, before turning round and heading home again, my sense of desperation growing. I found nothing on either route, of course. No bike, no helmet, no Danny.
I spent the rest of the afternoon pacing around the house, staring out of the windows, yelling pointlessly at my absent spouse and intermittently bursting into tears. Finally, I checked the time – almost six o’clock – and made myself sit down and start making some more calls. It had been too long, and I needed help; I couldn’t handle this on my own, not any longer. I’d met a few people in the short time we’d been in Bristol, a couple of whom I already felt could potentially become good friends, but the relationships were too new, I thought, to burden with something like this. In terms of old friends, most of the couples we hung out with had originally been friends of mine, and I didn’t think that any of them would be able to help, not at that stage; if Danny had gone away to visit someone without telling me, unlikely though that seemed, it would probably have been one of his own mates. I didn’t have contact details for any of his Irish friends, but I found numbers for two of the colleagues he’d been palliest with in his old job in London, and for his former boss. They all sounded a little bemused – no, they hadn’t heard from him since he’d left, but … you know what this job’s like, he probably has no idea what time it is or how long he’s been head down at his desk, he’ll probably turn up in a couple of hours, don’t worry, Gemma. Keep us posted though, OK?
I wished I had an out-of-hours number for Danny’s new boss, just in case, but I didn’t, and I couldn’t even remember his name. So – family, then? Danny had a cousin in London, but the rest of his family lived in the west of Ireland, and after some consideration I decided against calling them, for a while at least. I’d never felt that comfortable around his cousin Quinn, and his mum, Bridget, was tricky at the best of times. His dad, Donal, had died not long before we got married, and Danny had never been close to either of his parents; there was no point in sending Bridget into a panic if, in the end, there was nothing at all to worry about. I didn’t call my parents either – they were nervy types, both of them, and I couldn’t handle their distress, not on my own, not while I was feeling so horribly anxious myself. And so I kept dialling other numbers, and when Danny’s friends couldn’t help, I decided to phone a few of my own after all, not so much to ask if they’d heard from my missing husband but for advice, for comfort, although I found little of the latter.
‘Shit, Gemma, that’s worrying. I’d be calling the police, if I were you.’
‘Oh Gem, darling, how awful! Do you want me to come down? Just say the word. But I’m sure he’ll turn up soon, it probably is just a work thing …’
‘Bloody men. But Danny’s usually so reliable, isn’t he? I don’t know what to think, Gem. Maybe give it until tomorrow and then report him missing? You don’t … well, I hate to ask, but you don’t think he’s got another woman, do you?’
It was something that hadn’t crossed my mind until then, and when I’d put the phone down after speaking to Eva, one of my closest friends, I swallowed hard, trying to consider the possibility. No, it just couldn’t be true. Since we’d moved to Bristol we hadn’t had a night apart until Thursday when I’d gone on my press trip, and we’d spent every second of every weekend together too, sorting out our new home. When would he have had time? We’d been pretty much inseparable most of the time before we moved too … we were still virtually newlyweds, after all. Well, not entirely inseparable; we’d obviously had the odd night apart, work trips and ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ nights out, and Danny was the type of guy who sometimes just wanted his own space, but … I shook my head. If he’d been having an affair, I’d have known, wouldn’t I? Whatever was going on, it wasn’t that. Could he have left me for some other reason though? I stood up, pulling my cashmere cardigan – the baby blue one Danny had bought me for Christmas – more tightly around me, and walked slowly from the lounge and down the corridor to the kitchen to peer out into the dark, empty yard again. Albert jumped up too and followed closely behind me, his nose butting my shins. He was almost as anxious as I was, I could see that, his doggy senses always keenly attuned to mine, and I crouched down beside him, stroking his soft head, looking into his dark brown, intelligent eyes, muttering soothing nonsense as my mind continued to race.
If Danny had left me, what possible reason could he have? And he hadn’t taken anything with him, had he? I realized with a shiver that I didn’t know. I hadn’t looked, hadn’t even thought to check. Suddenly light-headed with fear, I rushed upstairs to the bedroom, pulling open drawers, clawing at the clothes in his wardrobe, searching frantically through his bedside cabinet, not even sure what I was looking for. But everything seemed untouched, neat, there. His passport, still in the drawer where he always kept it. All his clothes, his underwear, his watch collection. No gaps, nothing missing, as far as I could tell anyway. Everything looked the way it always looked. So what was gone? Just his coat, his laptop, his tablet, the black backpack he carried them in, his bike and helmet. The usual things he’d go to work with. Everything else was still there, waiting for him, like I was. Like Albert was.
I slumped onto the unmade bed, breathing heavily, and Albert hesitated for a moment – he wasn’t usually allowed on the bed – and then clambered up to join me, seemingly correctly assuming that I was currently too distracted to tell him off.
Is Danny’s stuff all still being here a good thing or a bad thing? I didn’t know, couldn’t think straight, panic taking hold, and suddenly I felt very alone. If we’d still been in London at least I’d have had old friends nearby, people who could just pop round, people who could support me, but here, in this new city …
I took a few deep breaths, my heart racing again, and wondered if I should reconsider my decision not to burden the couple of new friends I’d made so far in Bristol with all of this. I’d met Clare on Clifton Down just days after we moved in. I’d actually arrived in the city a week before Danny, who’d had work to finish up in London before he joined me, and I’d abandoned the mountain of unpacked boxes for an hour to clear my head and give Albert a decent walk. Clare had a Standard Poodle, a white curly bundle of energy who had bounded up to Albert, nuzzled him enthusiastically and then run off again, looking coyly over her shoulder. Albert had hesitated for a moment and then raced gleefully after her, leaving me and Clare standing helplessly, leads dangling from our fingers, awaiting their return.
‘She’s called Winnie. Winnie the Poodle. Get it?’ She’d grinned, and I’d liked her immediately. Clare was tall, five eleven in her bare feet and slender as a hazel twig, with a mass of blonde curls.
‘And yes, I did choose a dog who looks just like me,’ she added.
We’d sat on a bench and chatted for a full half an hour on that first day and, when I told her I was new to Bristol and was planning to look for a yoga class somewhere nearby, she insisted I come to hers the following evening.
‘I go twice a week with my friend Tai. It’s Ashtanga and it’s quite full-on, but you feel great afterwards. And we sometimes go for a drink in the wine bar across the street when we’re done, if