“No.”
“Do you have children?”
“No.”
“What did her last message say? The one you received today?”
“I’m fine, no need for you to visit.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Three years, last December.” Clements’s longest relationship was eight months. She shakes her head, an almost imperceptible motion. She doesn’t know how people do it. Live with each other, day in day out, without getting bored or driving each other mad. Without killing each other. But then, she thinks, maybe they don’t manage it. Some do kill each other. Daan Janssen continues, desperate to impart his concerns. “I decided to make a list of the care homes in Newcastle. I collated the information online. I was very thorough. I called them all, one by one. I can give you that list too. I can’t find a place with a woman resident by the name of Pamela Gillingham. No one has ever heard of Kai Janssen. I tried all the private ones and the council ones. Nothing. And there is another thing. The Find iPhone app has been turned off.”
“Have you called any of her friends?”
“Without her phone I don’t know how to get hold of her friends.”
“You don’t have the number of any of them in your phone? Not one?”
“There aren’t many. There is someone from her pottery class that she mentions a lot, Sunara. Sunara Begum, I think, but I don’t have her number. There are a few friends from her college days—Ginny, Emma, Alex—but they don’t live in London. She sometimes takes spa weekends with them, that sort of thing. They are not my friends. You know? I don’t mean I don’t like them. I just don’t know them. Kai is very busy with her mother. She’s devoted and that takes up most of her time. She also supports me in my role. We have a full social life through my work and through the friends I’ve introduced her to.”
“Have you called them?”
“I don’t want to make a fuss.”
Clements nods, trying to appear sympathetic. She doesn’t know what to tell him. If Kai Janssen was employed, Clements might assume that there is a second phone for work and that perhaps she isn’t as honest as she should be about making private calls on her work phone to the care home but that isn’t the case. Daan is right, something is off, but Clements doesn’t believe Kai Janssen is missing, she is most likely having a cozy weekend away with her lover and it’s been eked out longer than she was expecting. Adulterers often have two phones. It’s standard practice. Clements suddenly hates her job. In this exact moment it feels like a babysitting service. Women leaving their handsome but self-involved husbands is not police work. She decides the best thing she can do is draw the evening to a close with promises to make the appropriate enquiries. Sooner rather than later, Daan will receive word from his wife. Maybe a tearful confession that she has met someone else or a hard-nosed “see ya, don’t wanna be with ya.” Either way, this isn’t Clements’s business. It isn’t police business.
“Well, I’ll write this up,” she says. “Check the phone records. Circulate a missing persons report.”
“Do you need a photo?”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
Daan immediately pulls one up on his phone, thrusts it under Clements’s nose.
“This is your wife?” she asks.
“Yes.”
Clements was expecting someone tall, blond, androgynous, but Kai Janssen isn’t anything like she imagined. She is a smiley brunette with brown eyes. She is familiar.
Clements is looking at a photograph of Leigh Fletcher.
16
Fiona
When the bell rings, both Mark and Fiona leap off the kitchen stools and speed toward the front door, racehorses out of the gate. Fiona thinks that Mark must be desperately hoping that the police officers were right, that Leigh has come home. Mark called Fiona after the police left earlier, to update her. Not that there was anything solid to report. He told her that the police seem to think Leigh will be home soon. That they are not too concerned. That women—presumably men too—sometimes do take a few days sabbatical from their families, following a row. They were reasonably reassuring; confident she’ll return safe and well. “Well, that’s what everyone is praying for,” commented Fiona, gently. Then she quietly offered, “Would you like me to come round? We could wait for news together?” She was finding it unbearable sitting alone in her kitchen. But she knew that however terrible she was feeling, however anxious, Mark would be a hundred times more so. The boys would be fretful, lost. She wanted to soothe them if she could.
Fiona loves Oliver and Sebastian; they are almost like family to her. They’ve been in her life for as long as Leigh has been in theirs. When they were younger, they called the two women Aunty Leigh and Aunty Fi. When Leigh became Mummy, Fiona hung on to Aunty Fi for a few years, but they’ve grown out of that now. Still, however much Fiona loves the boys, she has to admit they were a challenge this evening. It was clearly a good thing that she had come over. There was no doubt that her presence defused things.
The boys seemed pleased to see her, relieved. Seb, the less complicated of the two, hugged her tightly but then chatted about his day in a relatively usual way. He’s naively hopeful that she’ll tumble through the door any moment. Oli’s reaction is more nuanced. He’s sulky around his father, almost accusatory.
“I’m sure everything is okay,” Fiona said repeatedly because that’s what people say at times like this. She wants to appear positive but she’s lying to protect the boys. It’s obvious something bad has happened to Leigh. Leigh is not the irresponsible sort. She would be here if she could be. If she had a choice in the matter. She hasn’t checked in with the boys for days. Fiona suggested to Mark that they call hospitals. “I don’t want to alarm you, but we have to face the facts. It’s just not something she’d do. I still can’t take it in.”
Mark is in the hallway ahead of Fiona, she looks over his shoulders and sees the silhouettes of a hatted policeman and -woman at the door.
“Have you found her?” Mark demands as he swings open the door.
The female officer shakes her head, apologetically. “Can we come in?”
They all automatically traipse through to their small sitting room. It’s a mess but the kitchen is more so. To his credit Mark managed to make the boys a spag bol for supper; however, he clearly didn’t have the energy to wash up, so the kitchen isn’t the right place to talk. Fiona is torn—itching to restore order but also not wanting to look like she is interfering. Instead, she’s cracked open the bottle of Bordeaux that she brought with her. She thought it was more urgently needed, more supportive. She will wash up before she leaves tonight, though. She might suggest to Mark that she have a bit of a tidy around tomorrow. Everyone always feels better after a tidy around. Well, Fiona certainly does. Leigh is always teasing her about that. Fiona suddenly feels an intense pain in her gut thinking about Leigh. It’s too awful.
“You have some news?” Mark asks. His face stretched, like his nerves, with anticipation. “Should we have called the hospitals? Have you?”