The Perfect Couple (ARC)

by Jackie Kabler

  stuff or something, and I’m just so scared, Eva. What the hell is Danny playing at? Where is

  he? And all that blood? What’s that all about? I just can’t …’

  Hot tears were burning their way down my cold cheeks, and Eva grabbed my hands,

  rubbing them hard.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it any more than you do. And the blood thing is

  weird, bloody weird, no pun intended. But you know he was OK when he moved to Bristol, so

  don’t think about that for now. Go and get your diary. We need to go through every day, every

  single day, from the day Danny moved down here to the day he disappeared. Because he didn’t

  have an invisibility cloak, Gem. This isn’t some sort of Harry Potter fantasy story, it’s the real

  world. And he was out of this house all day every day, pretending to go to work, and you must

  have had things delivered to the house, and done lots of stuff together over the past few weeks,

  right? Somebody will remember seeing him, there’ll be somebody who can prove to the police

  that Danny was here with you and alive and well until last week, OK? Come on. Game face

  on.’

  I managed a small smile. ‘Game face on’ – it was what we used to say to each other in

  our early newspaper days, when we were half dead from lack of sleep and the stress of

  deadlines, and had just had yet another assignment thrown at us.

  ‘Game face on. We can do this.’

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  And so, I put my game face on. I even got dressed, brushed my hair, moisturized my skin,

  ate a bowl of cereal, fed Albert, promising him as I did so that I’d take him out for a nice long

  walk later. And then I brought my diary to the kitchen table, and we began, as the morning sun

  streamed in, dust motes dancing in the air around us.

  An hour later, I pushed the diary aside, feeling something close to despair.

  ‘There’s nothing. Nothing.’

  Eva steepled her fingers together, eyes fixed on the diary.

  ‘OK, well as far as I see it at the moment – and leaving the mystery of the blood in the

  bedroom aside for now, as that makes no sense whatsoever – there are really only two possible

  scenarios here. One – and I know this is one you don’t want to think about, love, but I’m sorry,

  we have to consider it as a possibility – one, he’s vanished because he’s gone off with someone

  else, someone he met on that app. He might have stayed with her that week after you moved

  down here. It doesn’t explain all his odd behaviour, I know, but still. The other one … well, I

  now think it’s even more likely that we were on the right track with that vague theory we came

  up with before. Because what this increasingly sounds like to me now is that he was being very,

  very careful to make sure that nobody would see him here in Bristol. But he was clever about

  it, really clever, so you wouldn’t notice. I don’t know why yet, but now I’m really starting to

  think he was hiding, Gemma. He was hiding right here, and you didn’t even realize it,’ she said

  slowly.

  She tapped her notebook with her pen.

  ‘Let’s look at it all again with that in mind. For a start, when you lived in London he

  always took his turn doing the weekend supermarket run. Or else you did it together, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘But since you moved here, he decided he’d stay in and clean the house on a Saturday

  morning, and that you’d go out and do the shopping.’

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  ‘Well, yes, but that was because I always moaned about having to do all the cleaning, and

  he was just being nice …’

  My voice tailed off.

  ‘OK, maybe. But seriously …’

  ‘You did every dog walk since you moved here. Every single one, on your own.’

  ‘Well, yes, but that’s just because of his working hours … well, I thought he was working.

  I generally did most of it in London too, not all, but most; he used to come out with us at

  weekends. I’m sure he would have started doing that again here soon.’

  ‘Every time you got food delivered, you went to the door to get it, not him,’ Eva

  interrupted.

  ‘He said he’d get the plates out, pour the wine …’

  ‘Exactly. Making sure the delivery guy didn’t see him. Did he ever go to the door, to take

  in a delivery? Of anything?’

  I thought. I couldn’t remember, but he must have, surely?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said quietly.

  ‘When you went out with your new friends, he never asked if he could come. Fair enough,

  maybe, as you’d only known them a few weeks. But even when you went round to … Tai, is

  that her name? … to Tai’s house for a drink after yoga, and Clare’s husband joined you too,

  and you called Danny and asked him if he wanted to pop over for a quick one as well, and meet

  them all, he said no. So they never met him, either.’

  I’d told Eva about that night earlier. On the spur of the moment as we’d left the third yoga

  class I’d been to, Tai had suggested that it might be nice if her husband, Peter, and Clare’s

  husband, Alex, met Danny.

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  ‘I’ve got some very nice sauv blanc chilling in the fridge; shall we have an impromptu

  midweek drinkies?’ she said, with a cheeky grin. ‘Are they all free? We could just have a

  couple, it would be nice.’

  I’d called Danny, but he told me he’d had to bring some work home with him that needed

  to be done for first thing in the morning.

  ‘Any other night … look, give them my apologies and tell them we’ll have them all over

  here soon instead, OK?’ he’d said. And so I’d done just that, and gone for drinks at Tai’s

  stunning penthouse apartment in the Cathedral Quarter on my own, admiring the

  three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views of the city from the floor-to-ceiling windows and

  wishing Danny was there to enjoy them, and the wine and the company, with me.

  Eva was still talking.

  ‘And you stayed in, every weekend. I mean, I know he was only living here for three

  weekends, but still. Didn’t it strike you as weird that he never wanted to go out? Not once? To

  explore your new city?’

  I was staring at the diary myself now and starting to feel very stupid. What Eva was saying

  was starting to make more and more sense. How had I not realized it, any of it, at the time?

  ‘It just … it just didn’t occur to me. He was working long days … well, I thought he was

  working long days during the week, and I had loads on too. So when the weekends came we

  just wanted to get this place sorted, get the walls painted and put up shelves and stuff. We were

  planning to go out soon; we’d even made a list of all the restaurants and bars we wanted to go

  to. We just hadn’t got around to it yet …’

  I stopped talking. Shit. Eva waved her hands in a ‘see what I mean?’ sort of gesture.

  ‘And he cut all communications too, didn’t he? He deliberately didn’t have a phone. He

  didn’t call or email a single friend or family member since he moved here, if what the police

  have told you is true. Maybe he thought whoever he was scared of could track him via his

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  mobile. Or via his job, which is why he didn’t start it. Look at all the evidence, Gemma. He

  was hiding. It’s obvious. He was hiding. From everyone, except you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, OK, OK.’<
br />
  I rubbed my eyes, my brain racing. It made sense, finally. Something about this big fat

  mess made sense.

  ‘But the blood … what about the blood, Eva?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t explain that. And honestly, I don’t know if he’s dead or alive right

  now, nobody does. But what we do know is that you didn’t kill him, and we also know that,

  despite what the police think, nothing terrible can have happened to him five weeks ago in

  London either, because he was here with you, alive and well, for the past few weeks. Somehow,

  we need to prove that. So if we forget the blood thing for now, assume it’s some sort of

  forensics cock-up or something, the rest of this theory makes sense, right? That he’d maybe

  got himself in some sort of trouble, and was laying low?’

  I nodded slowly.

  ‘Maybe. I mean, I never thought of it before but now … except for the fact that he did go

  out, Eva, every day, for hours, Monday to Friday. Yes, he left in the dark and came home in

  the dark, but there were hours of daylight in-between. He must have been somewhere. And

  wherever that was, people must have seen him. So maybe he was hiding from someone. But he

  couldn’t hide from everyone, not in a busy city like this. So how do I find out where he went

  every day, and what he was doing? Because that must be the key to all this. How on earth do I

  find out?’

  Eva grimaced.

  ‘Well that, my dear, is the million-dollar question.’

  She paused, and shifted on her seat, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

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  ‘Look, we can’t totally discount the other theory though. He did have a profile on a dating

  site after all. Maybe both theories work, maybe he was in some sort of trouble and he’s run off

  with someone else to get away from it. It’s just that, well …’

  She took a deep breath, looking even more uneasy now, and I stared at her, my chest

  tightening.

  ‘What? What is it? Eva, if you know something, you have to tell me!’

  ‘OK, OK. Look, I didn’t want to tell you this, I really didn’t. You seemed so happy, and

  I just didn’t see the point, it was nothing really …’

  ‘Shit, Eva, TELL ME!’

  ‘OK. I’m telling you. It’s … well …’ She paused and blew out some air, then covered her

  face with her hands. ‘Danny made a pass at me once,’ she mumbled through her fingers.

  ‘Danny … he what?’

  I suddenly felt light-headed. What? Seriously. WHAT? Had she really just said that

  Danny, my husband Danny, had made a pass at her, my best friend? Eva dropped her hands

  from her face again, looking anguished.

  ‘I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. I should have told you about it ages ago, but I just didn’t see

  the point. I mean nothing happened, nothing whatsoever, OK? I would never have done that to

  you, even if I did fancy Danny, which I didn’t. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with him, he’s

  very attractive, but he just isn’t my type …’

  Her voice tailed off, her face flushed. I stared at her.

  ‘Well, go on. When, how? What happened?’

  She ran a hand across her eyes, then leaned forwards in her seat.

  ‘OK. It was at that crazy space restaurant opening in Soho, do you remember? Back in

  September. The one where robots served the pre-dinner nibbles?’

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  I did remember. I’d actually been given four tickets for the opening night of Space Soho

  at pretty short notice, and only Eva and Danny had been free to come with me; it had been on

  a Tuesday night, as far as I could recall. The restaurant, with glow in the dark menus, a slowly

  rotating dining area and small white robots moving jerkily between tables holding aloft trays

  of finger food, was owned by the brother of one of my Camille magazine colleagues, and

  although it was all as tacky and cheesy as hell, it had been a really fun night. But, I thought,

  casting my mind back, the three of us had been together all evening, hadn’t we? When would

  Danny have …?

  ‘It was towards the end of the evening, when you were invited into the kitchen to talk to

  the head chef, remember?’ Eva said, anticipating my question.

  I nodded. Yes, I remembered that too. But I’d only been gone for ten minutes, fifteen

  tops… ‘So what happened?’ I said.

  She sighed.

  ‘We were all really drunk, weren’t we? All those cocktails at the beginning, and then the

  champagne, and the espresso martinis, and … anyway, you went off, and we just chit-chatted

  for a few minutes, and then I think I said something about it getting late and needing to get

  home, because I had work early the next morning, and he just … he just said something like,

  “I wish I could take you home”.’

  She stopped talking for a moment, looking at me with a wary expression, but I nodded at

  her. I was beginning to feel sick.

  ‘Carry on. It’s OK.’

  ‘Right. Well, I just laughed it off at first, you know? I said, well, that’s kind of you, but

  I’ll be fine, I can get a cab right outside. And then he … well, he slipped his hand under the

  table and started stroking my knee, Gemma. And he told me that wasn’t what he meant. He

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  told me I was gorgeous, and that what he actually wanted to do was take me home and … take

  me to bed.’

  She stopped again, her face flushing an even darker shade of red. I swallowed hard.

  ‘And … what did you say? What happened next?’

  ‘Well, obviously, I told him to bugger off. I didn’t want to make a scene, especially as I

  knew you’d be back any minute, but I asked him to get his hand off my leg and told him I was

  going to ignore what he’d said, just this once, because you were my best friend and I knew he

  loved you and he was only saying what he said because he was drunk. When you came back a

  few minutes later it was all over, and he was acting normally again, laughing and joking like

  nothing had happened. I felt dreadful the next day, and not just because of the hangover, which

  was a stinker. I just didn’t know what to do, didn’t know whether to tell you or not. But then

  the next time I saw him, a few weeks later, when we all went to the pub, he took me aside as

  soon as he got a chance and he apologized, told me he didn’t even really remember what had

  happened but he knew he’d been inappropriate, and he seemed really genuine, Gemma, really,

  really sorry and really embarrassed about it. So I thought about it a bit more, and I decided to

  just let it go. I mean, we all do and say stupid things when we’ve had too much to drink, don’t

  we? And nothing happened, after all. It would just have upset you, and caused a big row, and

  for what? It never happened again, either. So … well, that’s it really. I just thought that now,

  with all this going on …’

  I nodded. This was horrible, horrible, but it wasn’t her fault. Would I have told her, if the

  situation had been reversed? Probably not, if I thought it was a one-off. Why potentially wreck

  somebody’s relationship over a drunken, unwanted advance? No, I’d probably have done

  exactly the same in her shoes. It didn’t stop it hurting, though. It was shit, SHIT.

  How could you have done that, Danny? Eva’s my friend.

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  ‘It’s OK, honestly,’ I said. �
�I’m glad you told me. I just don’t know what to make of it,

  though, Eva. I don’t know what to make of any of it, and I can’t even think straight anymore,

  I feel sick all the time and I think my brain is turning to mush—’

  BRRRRR.

  The doorbell rang, making us both jump. The police, to do whatever forensic stuff they

  needed to do in the house. They filed in past me, four of them, led by DC Frankie Stevens, the

  other three clutching cases of equipment, as Eva watched silently from the kitchen doorway.

  ‘You’re welcome to stay around while we work, but it will take a couple of hours. You

  might prefer to go out, maybe have a coffee or something. It’s a nice day out there,’ DC Stevens

  said, and the unexpected kindness in his voice almost made me burst into tears. The previous

  day had been so horrible, the way DCI Dickens and DS Clarke had looked at me … maybe

  they didn’t all think I was some sort of lying, husband-attacking witch then? We took his

  advice, and went out, Eva and I, Albert trotting along beside us, walking towards Clifton

  Village under a sky so bright we wished we’d thought to bring sunglasses. On a cobbled side

  street, we found a little coffee shop that sold almond croissants and pains au chocolat, and we

  ate at a tiny outside table, Albert stretched out at our feet, the sun warm on our faces, any

  awkwardness that hung between us after Eva’s revelation quietly dissipating.

  ‘Let’s talk about other things. About anything. Just not about Danny, just for a little

  while,’ I begged, and so we did, Eva regaling me with tales of newspaper life, stories that made

  me smile, even laugh out loud once, before I remembered again, and the hollow feeling that

  had been building in my chest for days now threatened to engulf me, smother me.

  Where are you Danny? What are you doing to me? Come home, Danny. Please, please

  come home.

  After coffee, we wandered around for a while, peering into quirky little homeware shops

  and flicking through the rails in trendy, independent boutiques. But our hearts weren’t in it,

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  and by mid-afternoon we were heading back to the house. As we turned into Monville Road, I

  stopped abruptly.

  ‘What’s going on? Shit, Eva, are they for me?’

  Halfway up the street we could see a little cluster of people, a large white van parked a