Woman Last Seen(51)

“I don’t know. To what end?”

“I just want to know about her life. Her other life. I need to understand it.”

“But would these people even respond? The few men who have liked her posts are likely to be couple friends—you know, Daan’s friends, really. They are unlikely to want to talk to you. And women are generally reluctant to interact with men they don’t know who approach them through Instagram.”

Mark sighs again, deeply, as though there is a storm inside him that needs to escape.

“I could do it for you,” Fiona offers.

“Will you?” He brightens.

“Yeah, leave it with me. The women at least are more likely to respond to me.”

Fiona starts to tap on her phone while Mark continues to search for information about Daan. It doesn’t take long to find details of where the other husband’s office is and where he lives. People are unaware what information telephone directories and electoral rolls hold.

“I’m going to visit him,” he announces firmly.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I have to. I need to see her home, to know this is real.”

Fiona wants to put her arms around Mark and give him a friendly hug the way she had on countless other occasions, but she stops herself. Obviously, the gesture would just be intended to reassure but it seems a weird thing to do if Leigh isn’t in the vicinity. Loaded. Open to misinterpretation. “It is real, Mark. I’m sorry but it is,” she says, carefully. “And honestly, I think we both know you are too angry to meet up with him. It might, you know, end badly.”

Mark turns red—it isn’t clear to Fiona if it is embarrassment or a deepening fury. She knows a lot about the Fletchers’ lives. She knows about the time Mark held a guy up against a wall by the scruff of his jacket, legs dangling, even though the guy was taller than Mark. The incident had happened at one of those children’s adventure parks, a place with trampolines, rope ladders and ball pits. A family place. The guy had lifted Seb off a rocking horse so that his own son could have a go. Seb had just got on the horse after queuing for it for twenty minutes, and when Oli—protective of his younger brother—pointed out that was unfair, the guy had yelled at him. He made both boys cry. They were very young. Leigh had been there and from her account, the guy did sound like a prick.

“Mark was terrifying,” Leigh had laughed, not really afraid. “I thought this bloke was going to pee himself.”

“What did Mark say?” Fiona had wanted to know.

“I don’t think it was what he said, it was how he said it. He was all quiet and threatening, proper psycho.”

And there was that time when a neighbor complained about the boys playing football in their own back garden, he said they were annoying and too noisy. He called them brats. Mark tore a strip off the neighbor. Even though he was elderly. He just snapped. “Where the hell do you think they should be, if not in their own garden? Hanging around the corner shop? Drinking in the rec?” He’s never spoken to the neighbor since.

Fiona has witnessed his fierce overprotectiveness firsthand. Once, when they were all on a day trip to Bath, Leigh bumped a car as she was parking, a tiny bump, no damage done. She was full of apologies but the other driver called her “a silly careless cow.” Mark was out of the passenger seat in seconds; he threw the guy against the car bonnet like he was in an episode of The Wire.

“I’ll go and see him,” offers Fiona.

“You? Why?”

“Well, first because, like you, I am curious but unlike you, I’m not furious.”

“Hey, that rhymes. You are a poet and you don’t know it.” Mark treats Fiona to a tired grin. It strikes her that hard-won smiles have their charm.

“I can report back. We can’t risk you going over there and losing it, but maybe we do need to know more about him. I said before, one or the other of you is a suspect.”

“Well, I haven’t hurt her.”

“I know that, silly.”

It was an uncompromisingly childish word, designed to beguile and pacify. Mark used it on the children when they were much younger. Still, he appreciates it. Some part of him wants to be infantilized. It is too much. Too tragic.

“How will you make contact?”

“I’ll call on him, tell him the truth, I’m a friend of Leigh’s and I want...”

“Want what?”

“I want to get to know Kai.”



22


Oli


Oli sits at the top of the stairs in the dark and listens to his dad and Fiona talk in the kitchen. He often does this, listen in on adults. It’s not because he’s sneaky. It’s because they are. Normally, there is not much to hear. Normally, his parents talk about what to watch on TV or whether there is enough milk for breakfast. Tonight, obviously there is a lot more being said. There was on Sunday too. His parents really went at it. He was surprised at the time and also he wasn’t. Not really. His dad really downplayed the scale of the row to the police. You can’t blame him for that, though. He’d be mad to admit to what was really said. Considering everything.

He is glad she has gone. Bye bye, skank. Who needs a fucking mother, anyway? He’s nearly sixteen, he’s three inches taller than her already.