She could be in hospital. I remember the drugs she was taking last night – all that coke, probably pills too. What if she overdosed?
I rush into her bedroom, scouring it for clues. There’s an empty wine glass on the side and on the floor beside the bed I find a pair of black lace knickers and a foil condom packet. I check the bin and find a used condom. I back away from it, feeling a little grossed out, my queasy stomach flip-flopping. It confirms she had sex last night.
OK, I think to myself, scanning the bedroom for more clues. There are two wet towels on the floor. Kate and the men must have been in the hot tub and then come in here and had sex. Did she sleep with one of them or both? One by the looks of things, there being only one condom. But then what happened afterwards? I go into the bathroom and glance in the bin beside the toilet and find another used condom. I stare at it, wondering if it’s proof that Kate slept with both men. It seems a little extra, even for her.
When I walk out into the bedroom a glint of something shiny catches my eye. The thin filament of light coming through the shutters is refracting against something shiny. I walk around the bed and bend down to examine several fine splinters of glass on the carpet, half hidden beneath one of the decorative pillows that has been flung off the bed.
I pick up the pillow and stare down at the remains of a broken wine glass beneath, lying among several splashes of what looks like dried blood.
Chapter Seven
After spending thirty minutes trying to assess the stain I give up. I’m no CSI expert. Gnawing hunger pains alert me to the fact it’s past lunchtime and I haven’t eaten since last night. My head throbs dully and the thought of eating makes my queasiness return full force, but I make myself eat some of the bread and butter the landlord left in the fridge for us, and while I make coffee I consider my options.
I try to soothe the anxiety knotting my stomach by telling myself that Kate’s fine. She’s off shopping or getting groceries or she’s gone out to lunch with those two men, or she’s avoiding me for some reason I don’t fully understand. It isn’t blood spilled on the bedroom carpet; it’s red wine. I comfort myself with thoughts of the telling-off I’ll give her when she eventually turns up. I won’t hold back. She’s ruining our trip away. If she has abandoned me for a drug-fuelled weekend of partying and sex, I will be so mad I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive her.
My anger doesn’t last though. As I walk outside onto the balcony with my coffee and take in the still boiling hot tub and Kate’s discarded dress, an ominous wet cloud settles on me and douses my rage. I set the coffee down and locate the switches for the hot tub to turn it off. In the silence that fills the air after I’ve switched it off, I pick up Kate’s dress and shake off a sudden shiver that runs the length of my body. The worm in my gut has burrowed in deep. If she’s just out shopping why is her phone off and why hasn’t she called me?
In an effort to cast off my fear I head back inside and in a flurry of activity start to clear the empty wine glasses and bottle of wine, dumping the glasses in the sink. What happened last night? All these gaping black holes have me freaking out. Maybe I should go to the hospital and do a drug test, find out definitively if I was drugged. But what a waste of time. Even if it proved I had been drugged, I still wouldn’t be able to prove who by, so there’s no point and how would I even be able to explain myself when I don’t speak the language?
As I’m doing a rudimentary tidy-up I have an epiphany. Her handbag! It strikes me then that I haven’t seen it anywhere in the apartment. It’s a Hermès Birkin bag. I’d know it a mile off as I’d enviously admired it when Kate showed it off to me at the airport. I’d assumed it was a fake, given they cost the same as a down payment on a house, but she’d reassured me that