Clare inviting me to come to yoga with her. At my first session Tai, who’d been Clare’s friend for years, had been warned I was coming and had saved us both a place at the back of the room. It had been an interesting first meeting; the class had only been underway for about ten minutes, all of us easing into the downward facing dog pose, when there was a loud PFFFFT somewhere in front of us.
‘Oh God, somebody’s farted!’ hissed Clare, who was on my left.
To my right Tai snorted.
‘Shhhh!’ Clare hissed again, but I glanced at her and she was grinning broadly. I turned my head to look at Tai, whose shoulders were shaking, lips pressed tightly together. I felt a bubble of laughter threatening to escape my own lips and took a deep breath. Nobody else in the room seemed to have heard the cause of our mirth, or if they had they were studiously ignoring it. Tai snorted again, and next to me Clare tried to stifle a giggle. Unable to help myself, I giggled too, and suddenly all three of us were tittering away like a group of naughty schoolgirls.
‘Will you PLEASE be quiet at the back?’
The booming voice of the yoga teacher, a tall, powerfully built woman with a shock of auburn hair, brought us to our senses, but we’d started giggling again as soon as the class finished.
‘I knew right then that I’d get on with them,’ I said to Eva, and she rolled her eyes.
‘You always have had a juvenile sense of humour,’ she said. ‘But I love you for it. And I’m glad you’ve met some nice people. Sounds like you need them at the moment. Anyway … Danny. Let’s do this. Tell me everything.’
And so I did. I told her about the last email I’d had from him on the Thursday night when I’d been away, and how I’d come home on Friday evening to find the house empty. How I’d called friends and former colleagues, asking if they’d heard from him, how I’d gone out searching for him, called the hospitals, emailed Danny repeatedly, and eventually gone to the police. And then I’d told her about the bombshells that had been dropped upon me – that Danny hadn’t been working at ACR Security at all, how he’d accepted the job and then apparently changed his mind, but had still been heading out every morning, coming home every evening, lying through his teeth to me. How he hadn’t been using his bank account, not for weeks, and yet still had money in his pocket whenever it was needed. How my neighbours had told the police that they’d thought I lived here alone. How his profile was currently on a dating app, and how I had no idea if he’d registered himself or if someone had put him on there as a joke. And, finally, my eyes prickling with tears, I told her about the two men whose profiles had been on the same dating app, the men who looked so similar to Danny, and who were now dead.
Eva, who’d been listening intently, gasped at that.
‘Shit, Gemma. I’d heard about those murders, obviously, but I didn’t connect the …’
She sank her head into her hands for a moment, rubbing her eyes. Then she straightened up and reached towards me again, patting my arm.
‘I’m so sorry, and I totally get why you’re so upset. This is crazy.’
She took a deep breath.
‘OK, there’s a lot to take in here. So I’m going to try to look at this objectively, OK? Pretend I don’t know Danny, or you. Just look at the facts, as if it’s a news story. And for now, we’re going to assume that those murders are just a coincidence, and that Danny’s still alive. Is that all right?’
I nodded, wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands, then picked up my mug and took a gulp. The tea had gone cold, and I grimaced as I swallowed.
‘Of course. The police have already done a quick search of the house to see if they could find anything that might help – they didn’t. And they’re going to Chiswick today for a look around our old place, although I can’t imagine they’ll find anything of any use there either. So if you can think of anything, Eva, anything at all … because honestly, I’m stumped here. I just can’t think of anything that would explain any of this.’