The house feels lonely the next morning. Dan and I are cordial with each other but there’s little for us to say. We did much of our talking when we decided to separate. I know people will ask which of us first suggested it because the important thing in any break-up is who’s the dumper and who’s the dumpee. For the record, it genuinely was mutual. We’d argued over something stupid – me leaving a pair of shoes on the bedroom floor, if I remember rightly. He shouted, I shouted back and then we sat on the bed. He said something like, ‘This isn’t fun any longer, is it?’ and I agreed. From there, it was easy. It was like the sun had finally come out after a long, long winter. We decided on a few things, set about figuring out what it would mean practically to separate and now we’ve finally told Olivia.

None of that cooperation has stopped our sniping at one another, of course. It’s automatic now: a defence mechanism for me, at least.

I’m eating a bowl of bran flakes on the sofa when the doorbell sounds. Dan’s pottering in the kitchen, sorting himself out some sort of healthy breakfast, but our eyes lock at the sound. It’s 6.45 a.m., far earlier than any sane person would ever call round.

It’s the way that Dan charges around the kitchen counter that lets me know he’d rather I didn’t see who’s at the door. He calls that he’ll get it as he’s moving but I’m much closer. By the time I’m in the hallway, there’s no space for him to push past. I take my time turning the deadbolt and then pull the door open to be met by a smiling blonde in lycra. She’s short, probably not even five foot, and bobbing on the heels of her trainers. I doubt she’s much over twenty-one or twenty-two – if that.

I don’t recognise her at first and it’s only when she sticks out her hand and says, ‘Alice’ that I clock she works at Dan’s gym. Our gym, I suppose – even if I rarely go. She did my induction when I went at the very beginning.

Dan had told me he was having a few personal trainer sessions but it’s only now that everything is slotting together.

Alice starts to jog on the spot as Dan edges around me onto the path. He’s grabbed his gym bag on the way through.

‘We should get going,’ he says, talking to Alice and then looking over her to me. ‘I’ll be going straight to school after this,’ he adds.

Alice is ludicrously smiley. It’s like someone’s painted the grin on her face, because it doesn’t slip. We shake hands and she has the smoothest skin I’ve ever touched – not that I routinely go around stroking people.

‘We’ll have to get you out one of these days,’ Alice laughs – although I sense the hilarity isn’t at my expense.

‘Not my thing,’ I reply.

‘That’s what everyone says. You’d be surprised how quickly that can change after a few sessions.’

‘I still don’t think it’s for me.’

She pats her stomach. It’s perfectly flat and there’s a weighty thud as if she’s slapping a rock. ‘My brother just got back from holiday. Brought back all sorts – including so much chocolate. I can’t stop eating the stuff. I only do this so I can eat what I want.’

Yeah, I think, it looks like you eat whatever you want – as long as whatever you want is green and tastes of damp paper.

Dan has all his weight on one leg and is edging towards the road, desperate to get Alice away from the house. His lack of subtlety is hilarious – which only makes me want to prolong things.

‘Where did your brother go?’ I ask.

‘Croatia. Have you ever been?’

‘No. I’ve seen a bit of France, Spain and Italy – the usual places. Nothing that exotic.’

‘Me, either. He said it’s very nice.’

Alice continues bobbing on the spot. ‘Sure we can’t tempt you out? If not today, then another time…?’

I put a hand across my front. ‘I can’t do too much. I broke my ribs when I was a teenager and it hurts if I overstretch myself.’

Alice shrugs. ‘Oh well – I suppose I’ll see you again.’

She waves sweetly and then turns to my husband. It’s only a fraction of a second, the merest of glances, but it’s unmistakeable. Dan’s eyes widen slightly, his lips arching up into a glimmer of a smile. It’s gone as soon as it appeared and then he swivels and Alice follows him along the path, through the gate, onto the pavement.

When the front door is closed, I give it my best middle finger. I’m not sure if it’s for him or her. Probably a bit of both. It’s hard not to wonder whether they’re shagging. There was definitely something in the way he looked at her. He has to be twice her age but he makes a decent salary, he’s in shape, he doesn’t have young children to tie him down. There’s a lot there that could be appealing to a certain type of young woman.

He didn’t out and out lie about his personal trainer but he didn’t go out of his way to make it clear he was spending time with someone who looks like Alice. I only met her today because she knocked on the door. I suspect he wanted her to wait in her car until he left the house.

It’s hard to know why I care. It’s not because I’m desperate to rekindle whatever it is we once had, which means I suppose it’s jealousy. He’s moving on and I’m not. I can’t imagine there are too many twenty-something blokes out there desperate to start something with me – not that I’m looking for that anyway.

Back on the sofa and I’m starting to feel like a stalker on more than one count. Tom Leonard is still missing and there haven’t been any updates in the past day. I find myself continuing on through the search results, reading articles about all sorts of Tom Leonards in case they happen to be him. Almost everything I find that relates to the correct Tom is to do with his running. There are spreadsheets of results from his club and I can’t explain why I find it so compelling. I check his times from month to month, year to year, seeing how he’s improved.

Then there’s Natasha. Her breakfast is half a grapefruit. I’ve no idea how that counts as a meal but it was #awesome.

It’s only when Olivia clumps down the stairs that I realise almost two hours have passed. She walks past the open door of the living room and is fully dressed, bag on her back. I call after her as she heads for the front door and get into the hallway at the same time as she’s ready to leave.

‘Are you all right?’ I ask. We’ve not seen each other since the previous evening.

She turns, closing the front door slightly, though not completely. ‘Fine.’

‘We can talk if you want...?’

‘About what?’

‘Whatever you want. Your father. Me. The house. You.’

‘What about Tyler?’

I clench my teeth. Of course about Tyler. He should have been the first name I mentioned. I’ve wasted two hours reading everything about some missing teenager I don’t know, while completely ignoring the one who is seeing my daughter.

‘Tyler, too,’ I reply.

It’s too late – and I know it. I’ve blown it once more.

Olivia twists back to the front door, says she has to go – and then does precisely that.

---

The glazier arrives at eight-thirty on the dot, exactly on time. I make him a cup of tea but, other than that, he gets on with fitting a new pane of glass into the back door. He’s the perfect kind of labourer, peacefully and swiftly getting on with his work and not feeling the need to blather on endlessly about some nonsense he read in the paper yesterday. I don’t know if I can manage much in the way of small talk today.

I leave him be and get back to reading Tom Leonard’s race results. He’s nineteen and it’s perhaps no surprise that his fastest times have come in the past year. I re-read the quotes from his parents, appealing for anyone who might have seen him. There are few details about what might have happened, because no one seems to know. He left his house as usual on Monday morning but his car was found unlocked and unoccupied a couple of miles from there. Other than that: Nothing.

The blood on my windscreen is still such a vivid thought. It was the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning. Could it belong to Tom?

I open the maps app and check where he went missing, comparing it to where I found myself in that field. In a straight line, it’s perhaps six or seven miles; following the roads it’s nine or ten. The times still don’t match up – I was at home when Tom went missing – but then it occurs to me that nobody knows when he disappeared. All anyone knows for sure is that he didn’t arrive at work on time. A few hours later and I checked into that same hotel. Later still, I woke up in a bloodied car.

The glazier interrupts my cluttered thoughts when he tells me he’s finished. He’s cleaned up after himself, which must have made noise, but somehow I missed it. He writes out an invoice and says I can either pay in cash or with a card through his website. We smile and joke about how it’s not like the old days any longer and then I tell him I’ll pay through his site there and then. He says it’s not necessary but I do it anyway and then he goes on his way, telling me we should get the locks changed.

We should, of course – except I know we won’t. The only keys we’ve had cut are all accounted for and none of us have come up with anything that’s missing. With a clear mind the morning after the night before, perhaps Dan was right. One of us accidentally left the back door unlocked and the only reason either of us noticed was because a window was broken. It might have been some kid with a ball. It feels unlikely – but unlikely isn’t impossible. It’s certainly more likely than me waking up in a field in the middle of nowhere.

With the house now empty again, I leave my phone to charge and finish getting ready for work. This time my work pass is in the kitchen drawer, precisely where it’s supposed to be.

It’s only when I’m on my way to the garage that I realise my car keys are missing.

I empty the drawer out for what feels like the twentieth time in the past day – but it’s little use. The last time I used my car was for the drive back from meeting Declan yesterday – via a detour to the countryside. I walked to Ellie’s and, other than that, I was home the rest of the time. There’s a memory of opening the drawer and putting the car keys inside, but I can’t say with absolute certainty that it was yesterday, as opposed to any of the other thousands of times I’ve done the same.

The keys aren’t in my jacket pocket, nor my bag. I check the garage but the car is locked and I can’t see them anywhere. I’ve spent hours on the sofa and pull off all the cushions, even going so far as to getting down on hands and knees to look underneath.

No luck.

There’s a spare set – but Dan keeps them somewhere that’s apparently secure and, though I assume they’re in the house, I’m not sure where. I’ve never needed the spare set before.

I’m going to be even later for work than I thought. Bloody Natasha’s going to be smugger than usual and Graham’s going to kick off.

There’s nothing else for it – so I call Dan. It rings and rings, plipping through to his voicemail message. It’s the same as it has been for as long as I can remember.

‘This is Daniel Denton. Please leave a message after the beep.’

He’s clipped and formal. Perfectly perfunctory – which I suppose sums him up. It’s annoying.

I hang up and try again, only to get the same notice. This time I leave a message, asking him to call me as soon as he gets it. I try Olivia – but she doesn’t answer – and it’s as if I’m invisible.

On the second series of checks, my pockets are as empty as they were the first time – and my bag is still full of the same largely useless stuff it always is.

The clock is unforgiving. It doesn’t feel like it but, somehow, forty minutes have passed since the glazier left. It’s almost half-past-ten.

I’m hot and sweating, largely from the fruitless hunt, but it’s more than that. It’s the frustration of questioning my own mind. It feels like I can’t trust my memories. My mother went through dementia at the end. She’d ask something basic, like what I’d been up to at the weekend. I’d tell her and then, five minutes later, she’d ask again. At first, I’d say she’d already asked – but she insisted she hadn’t. Her mind played tricks and I quickly learned to play along. If that meant telling her the same story four or five times in a short period, then so be it.

I’m forty-one, not that old, but this is how it feels now. Waking up in field in the middle of nowhere; losing my pass, then my keys.

Is it me?

I go to the fridge, looking for something to cool me down. I’m already reaching for the water jug when, like a mirage on the horizon, there they are. My car keys are sitting at the front of the salad drawer, nestled next to the tomatoes as if that’s where they’re supposed to be. I stare at them for a second, barely believing it, before sliding out the drawer and picking them up.

They’re real. Chilly, of course – but real.

It almost feels as if I’ve willed them into being because I was so desperate to find them. It can’t be true, of course. They must have been here the whole time. I did make a sandwich yesterday evening, not long after getting in – so it could have been me who left them there.

Who else could it have been? Olivia playing a weird joke? Dan? Why would they?

I suddenly remember I’m late, shutting the fridge and hurrying through to the garage.

I’ve almost finished reversing out when a car pulls up onto the road outside, blocking me in. I’m in the mood for an argument and am about to beep my horn when I notice the bright stripes along the side of the other car.

It’s the police.