can do your job from anywhere too, can’t you, Gem? You’d love it, I know you would, the quality of life would be so much better. Bristol’s a lovely city, and you’ve got Devon and Cornwall just a few hours down the road, and the Cotswolds not far in the other direction, and it’s a uni city so there are plenty of good bars and restaurants, and the architecture’s gorgeous …’
‘OK, OK, you’ve sold it to me, let’s do it!’
In truth, he hadn’t really had to work very hard to convince me. He was right that as a freelance journalist, I could pretty much work from wherever I wanted to, and London didn’t have any great hold on me anymore. It was too busy, too stressful, and in recent years I’d often craved a gentler life, more greenery, less noise. And so he took the job he’d been offered, and we’d packed up our modern apartment just off Chiswick High Road and moved into this lovely, high-ceilinged Victorian semi with the wonderful courtyard in the leafy Bristol suburb of Clifton. We’d only been married a year, and had still been renting in London, not wanting to commit to a huge mortgage until we’d decided where we wanted to settle. Even though Bristol felt right to both of us, we didn’t want to jump into buying there too soon either, wanting to give ourselves time to make sure we were both still happy with our jobs and the Bristol lifestyle and to find the perfect forever home.
‘We’ll rent, just for a year or so. Somewhere nice though. Best part of town,’ Danny had said as we’d scrolled excitedly through the property listings online, amazed at how low the rents seemed compared with what we’d been paying in Chiswick. And so it all came together perfectly, and after just a few days, I knew I was home. Danny appeared to feel the same, even if his working hours were just as long as they’d been in London, something I hated but had grown to accept.
Even so, I’d been so looking forward to seeing him on Friday night that I’d felt miserable, sleeping badly, waking every hour to see if the empty space in the bed next to me had been filled by his warm, weary body.
When he still hadn’t called by nine o’clock on Saturday morning I’d started to really worry. This wasn’t right. Pushing aside my reluctance to appear the nagging wife, I’d looked up the switchboard number for his company and dialled it. It had gone straight to voicemail, informing me that ACR Security was now closed and would reopen at 9 a.m. on Monday, and advising that clients with an urgent issue should call the emergency number on their contract.
‘What about wives with an urgent issue?’ I’d shouted down the phone, then ended the call, my heart beginning to pound. If his office was closed, where the hell was Danny? Had he had an accident on his way home? That flipping bike. I’d always thought it odd that he didn’t drive, but he’d shrugged cheerily when I’d asked him about it.
‘Never needed to. Plenty of good public transport in Dublin when I was a student. And then London … I mean, who drives in London? Congestion charge, parking is ridiculous … ah, bike’s the way to go, Gem. And we’ve got your car, haven’t we, when we need it? No point wasting money on two.’
He had a point. But I still worried about him commuting on that thing. And so when I couldn’t track him down at his office, and after I’d tried to Skype him half a dozen times only to find he was offline every time, I started to ring the hospitals. There seemed to be only a few in Bristol with accident and emergency departments, and after I’d ruled out the children’s and eye hospitals there were only two left, Southmead and Bristol Royal Infirmary. My hands shaking, I called both, but neither had any record of a male with Danny’s date of birth or fitting his description being admitted in the past twenty-four hours. For a minute, a wave of relief washed over me, before fear gripped me again. If he wasn’t at work, or hurt, where else could he be? If he’d decided on a last-minute trip to see a friend, he’d have called me, wouldn’t he? But that was just so unlikely, when he’d promised to be there when I got home, cooking