forming between his eyes. He runs a hand through his thick dark hair and I think of how Marlow takes after him with her furrowed expression when she doesn’t get her way.
‘I don’t want you to be mad at me,’ I say, watching him carefully. ‘Because I didn’t know.’
‘Didn’t know what?’ he asks, sitting back in his chair as though readying himself to receive bad news from a doctor.
I take another deep breath. ‘What I didn’t tell you is that the night Kate went missing we brought two men back to the apartment.’
Rob takes a few seconds to absorb that. ‘What?’ he asks plainly.
‘I know, it sounds bad. But it wasn’t my decision. Kate invited them.’
‘But there were two of them,’ Rob hits back, colour flooding his face.
‘Yes, but I didn’t want them to come back with us,’ I explain. ‘I told Kate not to invite them but she ignored me.’
‘Where did you meet them?’
‘At a bar,’ I admit. ‘But, here’s the crazy thing: it turns out that Kate hired them.’
‘What do you mean she hired them?’
‘They were escorts. Kate paid for their services.’
Rob’s mouth hinges open. ‘Prostitutes?’
I nod. I let him absorb that for a few seconds. ‘Before you ask, I don’t know why. She didn’t tell me. I found out about it after she went missing.’
Rob shuts his eyes, still trying to wrap his head around it. I understand what he’s going through, having not so long ago gone through it myself.
‘I think I was drugged,’ I continue when I think he’s had enough time to process. ‘I don’t know for sure. I was so drunk I passed out. But I think it was more than alcohol. I felt weird. There was this bitter taste in my mouth when I woke up and I couldn’t remember anything about the night before, or not much. I blacked out. There’s huge pieces of my memory that are missing.’
‘Did you go to the hospital?’ he asks, real concern crossing his face.
I shake my head.
‘Did …?’ He swallows hard, his jaw tensing. I know what he wants to know. He wants to know if anything happened to me, if I was assaulted.
‘No,’ I interject fast, setting his mind at rest. ‘Nothing happened.’
He reaches across the table and takes my hand and I start to relax. He’s taken it very well, considering.
‘But Kate slept with one of them,’ I continue. ‘I found a condom in the bin. Two actually.’
I think about the wrapper I found in my bed. I still have no idea why Kate put it there, except perhaps she wanted to play a practical joke on me when I woke up, so I decide not to mention it to Rob as he’ll only suspect the worst.
Rob takes that in quietly, then he looks up at me, frowning. ‘But she hired them to sleep with both of you?’ he asks.
I nod. ‘Yes. I have no idea why though. And there’s no way I would ever have …’
‘I know,’ Rob says, squeezing my hand.
‘You do?’ I say, letting out the breath I’ve unwittingly been holding. ‘I was so worried you wouldn’t believe me, that you’d think I was in on it.’
Rob shakes his head, staring off into the middle distance. ‘This is so fucked up,’ he mutters. ‘Why would Kate do that?’
I nod, joining my other hand to his. ‘I know. I don’t know what she was thinking.’
Rob doesn’t speak for a while. He’s lost in thought. Finally he turns back to me. ‘But you think these two guys might have something to do with her going missing?’
I chew my lip, thinking back to the confrontation with Joaquim – how completely genuine he seemed when he professed his innocence. That look, you couldn’t fake the surprise when he heard Kate was missing. ‘They said they didn’t,’ I tell Rob. ‘And I think I believe them.’
Rob stares at me, shaking his head in shock, his blue eyes shining with tears. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this. I thought you were over-reacting when you called me. I thought maybe you’d had a fight or Kate had done a Kate and buggered off on a bender somewhere. It was only when you told me you were going to the police that I realised it was serious.’
Tears spring to my own eyes as well. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know what to tell you at first, and then it felt too late to say anything. I wanted to wait until we were