midweek drinkies?’ she said, with a cheeky grin. ‘Are they all free? We could just have a couple, it would be nice.’
I’d called Danny, but he told me he’d had to bring some work home with him that needed to be done for first thing in the morning.
‘Any other night … look, give them my apologies and tell them we’ll have them all over here soon instead, OK?’ he’d said. And so I’d done just that, and gone for drinks at Tai’s stunning penthouse apartment in the Cathedral Quarter on my own, admiring the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views of the city from the floor-to-ceiling windows and wishing Danny was there to enjoy them, and the wine and the company, with me.
Eva was still talking.
‘And you stayed in, every weekend. I mean, I know he was only living here for three weekends, but still. Didn’t it strike you as weird that he never wanted to go out? Not once? To explore your new city?’
I was staring at the diary myself now and starting to feel very stupid. What Eva was saying was starting to make more and more sense. How had I not realized it, any of it, at the time?
‘It just … it just didn’t occur to me. He was working long days … well, I thought he was working long days during the week, and I had loads on too. So when the weekends came we just wanted to get this place sorted, get the walls painted and put up shelves and stuff. We were planning to go out soon; we’d even made a list of all the restaurants and bars we wanted to go to. We just hadn’t got around to it yet …’
I stopped talking. Shit. Eva waved her hands in a ‘see what I mean?’ sort of gesture.
‘And he cut all communications too, didn’t he? He deliberately didn’t have a phone. He didn’t call or email a single friend or family member since he moved here, if what the police have told you is true. Maybe he thought whoever he was scared of could track him via his mobile. Or via his job, which is why he didn’t start it. Look at all the evidence, Gemma. He was hiding. It’s obvious. He was hiding. From everyone, except you,’ she said.
‘Yes, OK, OK.’
I rubbed my eyes, my brain racing. It made sense, finally. Something about this big fat mess made sense.
‘But the blood … what about the blood, Eva?’
She shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I can’t explain that. And honestly, I don’t know if he’s dead or alive right now, nobody does. But what we do know is that you didn’t kill him, and we also know that, despite what the police think, nothing terrible can have happened to him five weeks ago in London either, because he was here with you, alive and well, for the past few weeks. Somehow, we need to prove that. So if we forget the blood thing for now, assume it’s some sort of forensics cock-up or something, the rest of this theory makes sense, right? That he’d maybe got himself in some sort of trouble, and was laying low?’
I nodded slowly.
‘Maybe. I mean, I never thought of it before but now … except for the fact that he did go out, Eva, every day, for hours, Monday to Friday. Yes, he left in the dark and came home in the dark, but there were hours of daylight in-between. He must have been somewhere. And wherever that was, people must have seen him. So maybe he was hiding from someone. But he couldn’t hide from everyone, not in a busy city like this. So how do I find out where he went every day, and what he was doing? Because that must be the key to all this. How on earth do I find out?’
Eva grimaced.
‘Well that, my dear, is the million-dollar question.’
She paused, and shifted on her seat, suddenly looking uncomfortable.
‘Look, we can’t totally discount the other theory though. He did have a profile on a dating site after all. Maybe both theories work, maybe he was in some sort of trouble and he’s run off with someone else to get away from it. It’s just that, well …’
She took a deep breath, looking even more uneasy now, and I stared at her, my chest tightening.
‘What? What is it? Eva, if you know something, you have to tell me!’
‘OK, OK. Look, I didn’t want to tell you this, I really didn’t. You seemed so