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