the place, hadn’t he? I remembered the shiny surfaces, the clean bed linen, the used bedding damp in the washing machine, the bathroom towels in there too, the faint smell of bleach in the air. What if …? But why would he?
I slammed the bleach bottle down onto the cistern and ran from the room. In the kitchen I found my iPad, opened Google and tapped in ‘can you clean away DNA?’. And there it was.
… oxygen-producing detergents destroy all DNA evidence …
… oxygen bleach tested on bloodstained clothing for two hours completely destroyed the DNA …
Oxygen-producing detergents? I did another quick search. There were dozens of them on the market. I ran my eye down the brand names, recognizing most from the cleaning aisle at the supermarket, then ran back to the bathroom. Our bleach was on the list. Our innocent-looking household bleach could destroy DNA. And Danny had, it seemed, cleaned the house from top to bottom before he left. Did he know that, about the DNA? Yes, he wanted to disappear, that much was abundantly clear now. But did he want to disappear to that extent? To literally try to wipe away all evidence of his very presence in his own home? Or was he just carrying out a final act of kindness and leaving the place clean for me? Was I totally overthinking this? I groaned and slumped down onto the closed toilet lid. For a few moments I simply felt sad, worn down, exhausted. And then, unexpectedly, a shiver of anger. Yes, Danny was probably dead now, because surely, surely, he wouldn’t have let me go through this agony alone, without some sort of contact, some sort of apology, some sort of explanation. But if – IF he was still alive …
‘You BASTARD!’
I screamed the words. Did he know that I was getting the blame for his disappearance, was the police’s prime suspect, was likely to be dragged into custody any day now? That I’d been questioned, not just about him but about four other murders? That I’d been humiliated, stalked by the press, photographed? If he was alive, he knew it, he knew all of it. How could he not, when it had been front page news for days? And still, to do nothing?
‘Bastard. FUCKING BASTARD.’
I was on my feet now, and I kicked the waste bin next to the basin so hard that it flew into the air, landing with a clatter on the tiled floor, disgorging its contents. I stared at the plastic wrapping, toilet roll tubes and cotton wool balls stained with mascara scattered across the floor for a moment, then turned and walked out of the room. I thought Danny had loved me. I would have sworn it on my life, on my mother’s life. We had spent days, weeks, months, planning our future, totally wrapped up in each other. Could he have been that good an actor? Was I really that stupid, to have let him fool me for so long? And then, just as quickly, the anger subsided. Because however he felt about me, however much he’d lied to me, the simple truth was that I loved Danny. And, regardless of what he’d done to me, I was scared for him, so terribly, horribly scared.
I don’t care if you’re in trouble, or what you’ve done. I don’t even care about what you’ve done to me. I just want to know where you are, Danny. I just want you to be alive and well and safe and here.
And so I sat down at the kitchen table, taking deep breaths to clear my head, and I began to think. Danny had been here, with me, for three weeks, but for hours every day he’d been going somewhere. Somewhere, presumably, that he felt safe. Where? Where would he go? Where can you spend hours, every day, without anyone questioning you? Somewhere you can just do your own thing, and be left alone? A park? But it had been February and freezing. No, somewhere indoors. A library? Maybe. People sat all day and worked in libraries, didn’t they, without anyone thinking it was weird? But Danny, in a library? I couldn’t see it. He wasn’t a reader, and I’d never known him to even contemplate walking into a library. So what else? What about a gym? You could spend all day in a gym, couldn’t you? The big ones nowadays had pools, saunas, coffee shops – was that a possibility, even if