hadn’t been resolved and that I needed a few more weeks without a commission. I had somehow managed, in snatched moments here and there over the past few days, to finish the spa feature for Fitness & Style – definitely not my finest work, but it was done – but writing anything new seemed impossible. All of the editors had been understanding, and I was deeply grateful, but I assured them I wouldn’t be unavailable for long. I had to. The world of freelance journalism was a fickle one, and I knew I’d be replaced as a regular if I was away for too many weeks, maybe even lose my Camille column, although thankfully that was always written several issues ahead of time. But surely, this would all be over soon? How much longer could it go on, for goodness’ sake? And how long would it be before my neighbours came round to complain about the press invasion of their street?
Earlier, I’d swept the courtyard, whipping the broom backwards and forwards, sweat beading on my forehead from the physical effort. I’d stopped for a moment to wipe my sleeve across my face, and had seen Clive again, standing motionless at an upstairs window next door, looking down at me. Unsure what to do – would a wave look too cheerful, too casual, in the circumstances? – I nodded at him, then looked away and started sweeping again. Thirty seconds later when I glanced back at the window, he was gone. I hadn’t spoken to him or his wife – or indeed to Jo, my other neighbour – since the night I’d popped round to ask them if they’d seen Danny. It was just too awkward, too impossible, with the press camped on my doorstep: what on earth must they think of me? They’ll be ruing the day I moved in, and who could blame them? I thought, as I picked up the wire basket I used to cart cleaning products around the house and headed up to the bathroom, my thoughts drifting back to the previous day and my latest encounter with the police. They’d humoured me, but I had the feeling they hadn’t believed my theory about Danny’s disappearance at all, and in many ways I didn’t blame them. Faced with a bizarre collection of facts and odd behaviour, I’d pieced them together as best I could to come up with something that sort of, vaguely, made sense. And yet, when it was said out loud, in the cold light of a police interview room, it did sound like something a half-crazed person would say to cover up a crime. It wasn’t really logical, and there were big holes in it. It was all I had though, for now, I thought, as I sprayed cleaning foam around the hand basin and vigorously wiped it off again. I loved this bathroom, with its huge double walk-in shower and the clawfoot, cast iron bath in front of the window, trailing plants cascading down one wall from a high shelf and scented candles dotted around. Since Danny had gone, the pleasures of our bathroom had passed me by, a cursory swipe of a toothbrush and quick, joyless shower all I’d been able to manage in the past few days. Yes, the half-baked theory I’d shared with the police was all I had, but it was something to cling onto now, something to work on, on my own if I had to. At least they hadn’t kept me in custody.
‘Thank goodness for forensics,’ I said out loud to my reflection in the mirror, as I wiped a spot of toothpaste off the smooth glass. ‘At least they know you were here at some point, Danny. At least they know I’m not making everything up.’
Their findings bothered me though – the fact that they’d found so little of Danny in the house. Yes, he’d been gone for a while, and yes I’d cleaned the place since he’d vanished, as I’d told them. But was it that easy, to destroy DNA? I didn’t know much about it, but I’d always somehow thought that it was harder than that – that DNA was tough stuff that could hang around for years. And then, as I twisted the cap off the bleach bottle and poured some of it into the toilet bowl, I stopped dead, staring at the bottle suspended in mid-air. Bleach. That Friday night, when I’d arrived home to an empty house. Danny had cleaned