They shake their heads. “We passed a couple of joggers—”
“No, he’s not a jogger, he wouldn’t have been jogging,” I say, already running off. “Thanks anyway.”
I ask the same question to a man jogging along the water’s edge, then to a young woman sitting on the sand with a toddler, then to an older woman walking a Dalmatian. None of them have seen a man matching Ned’s description. I’ve been running along the beach for about ten minutes now, I see a pier ahead of me, it must be Bournemouth Pier. I keep on running, stopping another few people on the way, who all tell me that they haven’t seen Ned. When I’m almost at the pier, I turn and run back the way I came, past the steps I came down, until I can’t run anymore. I stop for a while to catch my breath, then go back to the steps and return to the house.
It’s now nearly nine o’clock. Using my phone, I search for the number of the local police station.
“Hello, can you help me?” I ask. “I’m worried about my husband, he went for a walk this morning at six o’clock, and he still hasn’t come back. I wouldn’t normally be worried, but he left his phone on the kitchen table.”
“Has your husband gone off on long walks before?” the responder asks.
“No, at least, not without his phone. But he’s been under a lot of strain recently, he’s been accused of something, allegations have been made against him, he’s been hounded in the press—”
“What’s his name?”
“Ned, Ned Hawthorpe, shall I spell that for you—”
“No, it’s fine.” The woman’s tone has suddenly perked up. “And you are?”
“Amelie Hawthorpe—I’m his wife.”
“And your address?”
“I don’t know it exactly, we’re not at home, Ned rented a house for a couple of weeks, it’s in Haven Cliffs. The house name is Albatross, but I don’t know which road it’s on.”
“Okay, madam, stay where you are. I’m sending someone to you, they’ll be with you within the next twenty minutes.”
“Oh good, thank you.” I let relief suffuse my voice, then hang up.
I wait, my stomach a mass of knots. Fifteen minutes later, there’s a ring on the bell. I use the control pad by the door to open the main gate. A police car drives through and pulls up at the front of the house. Two police officers get out, a man and a woman. I hurry to the door.
“Mrs. Hawthorpe?” the woman says. “I’m Officer Wendy Garrat and this is Officer Phil Allson. Can we come in?”
“Yes, of course,” I say, hoping I sound worried rather than nervous. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
I lead them to the kitchen, offer them a seat, and repeat what I already said on the phone.
“You say your husband—Ned—has been under some strain recently?” Officer Garrat asks.
“Yes, he was accused of sexual assault.” I glance at them. “You probably know about it, the accuser was one of his staff at Exclusives magazine, he fired her and she took revenge.” I twist my hands in my lap. “But even though she dropped the charges, the press won’t leave him alone and it’s been getting him down, it’s why he decided to rent this house, he wanted to get away for a while. I thought he was fine, a little depressed maybe, but he seemed to be coping. But last night I woke up and he wasn’t in bed. I went to look for him and found him here, in the kitchen, sitting at the table with his head in his hands. He said that he had a headache and that I was to go back to bed.” I pause, slow my speech. “I managed to persuade him to come with me but he couldn’t sleep, and at around five-thirty, he took a shower and said he was going for a walk on the beach, that he’d have breakfast with me when he got back. He gave me a kiss and I went back to sleep.”
“You weren’t worried about him at that point?”
“No. I was only worried about his headache, but I hoped a walk would clear it.”
“When did you become worried about him?”
“When I came downstairs after my shower, at about eight o’clock. And not straightaway, because of his phone being on the table.” I reach for it, pick it up, put it down again. “I presumed he was in the pool, he’s never far from his phone, so I made a pot of coffee and went to call him. But he wasn’t in the pool so I thought he must be in the study or the sitting room. But I couldn’t find him anywhere in the house and that’s when I began to get worried, because it was almost eight-twenty and he’d left around six.” I swallow. “Without his phone. So I went to the beach to look for him but he wasn’t there either and I thought that maybe he’d come back to the house while I was out, that we’d somehow missed each other. But he wasn’t here.”