The House Guest by Mark Edwards(19)

I frowned. ‘You sound like you’re trying to make excuses for her. For Eden, I mean.’

‘I’m trying to come up with a scenario that makes sense. One in which Ruth comes walking through that door with some girl in tow who Mona and I suddenly remember.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s usually a simple explanation for everything. Did you and Ruth have a fight while you were drunk?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘But maybe you forgot. Maybe you said something that upset her. Perhaps you flirted with this Eden chick and Ruth got jealous.’

I remembered the three of us hugging. The warmth that had spread through me. But it hadn’t been sexual; not that I recalled anyway. It was like trying to remember a dream, or something that had happened twenty years ago. Everything beyond that point was blank.

‘I bet you fought, maybe one of you said something when you were drunk, something you can’t remember, and she’s gone off to stay somewhere else. That totally makes sense, doesn’t it?’

I had to admit that it did. But even when we had fought badly in the past, Ruth had never avoided talking to me. She’d certainly never gone missing. And in the three years we’d been a couple, I could count the number of major arguments on one hand.

‘What did your friend say?’ I asked. ‘The detective. Did you tell him about Ruth being missing?’

‘Missing? That’s a strong word. But yeah, I told him everything you said about Eden and of course I told him that you – we – are concerned about Ruth’s whereabouts. He’s busy today but he said he’ll call round tomorrow afternoon. He’ll want to talk to you.’

‘Of course.’

Jack yawned, showing off his perfect, filling-free teeth.

‘Try not to worry,’ he said. ‘Has Ruth got a rehearsal tomorrow morning?’

‘She has.’

‘Well, there you go. Assuming she doesn’t come home tonight, that’s where you’ll find her.’ He smiled. ‘Just don’t cause a scene, okay?’





Chapter 11

I travelled into Manhattan with the Monday-morning commuters and waited outside the rehearsal studios on Eighth Street. This was where Ruth had spent most of her days since arriving in New York. Rehearsals usually didn’t start till mid-morning but I wanted to ensure I didn’t miss Sally when she arrived – or that I didn’t miss Ruth. I was praying that Jack was right. That we’d had some kind of argument I couldn’t remember and she was either too upset to see me or was punishing me by staying away. At least that would be a problem I could understand and attempt to fix.

But was she with Eden? And did she know that Eden had been lying about her friendship with Jack and Mona?

I was trying not to think about the next, obvious, questions. Like, who the hell was Eden? And what did she want?

Had she done something to Ruth?

Ever since Jack and Mona had told me they didn’t know Eden, I had been thinking about the other day in the park; the way Eden had reacted to those two meatheads. The threats she’d made. I suddenly realised that I didn’t really know her at all.

I waited for an hour, the city heating up as I paced around on the asphalt. I kept checking my phone, just in case Ruth texted me or I got a message from the Cunninghams to say she’d turned up. Neither Jack nor Mona were due to start work again until next month, when the Columbia students came back for the new semester, and the rich people came back to the city and Mona got her business up and running again. I didn’t know where I would be then. Mona and Jack had told Ruth and me we could continue to stay at theirs if we wanted to, but we had been planning to look for somewhere else where we’d have privacy until the play ended its run.

I couldn’t think about any of that at the moment. None of it was important. All that mattered was finding Ruth.

I was so deep in thought that I almost didn’t see the familiar figure of Sally Klay get out of a taxi and stride towards the building. She was wearing all black – one of her trademarks – and wraparound shades. Her hair was piled crookedly on her head like a bird’s nest teetering on a cliff-edge. She held what looked like a USB stick between finger and thumb: an e-cigarette, which she lifted to her lips, expelling a great cloud of vapour.

She was almost at the door by the time I stepped into her path.

She recoiled, clearly not recognising me in this different environment, or not remembering me at all, though we had met a couple of times on the cruise. She had always been rude and dismissive, the kind of person who would only speak to people she considered her intellectual and economic equal. She had looked at me the way one might look at a puddle of sick on the street.

She gave me the same look now, then reached into her bag. I wondered what she had in there. Mace? A gun? I knew, from interviews, that she was a keen supporter of the Second Amendment.

‘Ms Klay,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’m Adam—’

She took off her sunglasses and narrowed her eyes at me. ‘You’re Ruth’s boyfriend.’

‘Yes, Adam, and I was—’

She waved a hand at me. ‘What are you doing here? Did she send you here to make sure her message got through?’

She was angry, her words curdling the air between us.

‘What . . . message?’ I had gone cold. ‘I came here to talk to her.’