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