‘I could look at any woman on earth and tell you her BMI.’ Zoe smiled.
I didn’t dare look at Jo, but I was pretty certain that ‘I could look at any woman on earth and tell you her BMI’ would make an appearance in conversations to come.
‘One of the key benefits of a broken heart,’ Zoe went on. ‘Slimming down, toning up. You look fantastic!’ She crossed her perfectly slim, perfectly toned legs and fished a prawn out of her bowl.
I was exhausted by the time I cleared the table. Too exhausted to unwrap the artisan chocolates I’d bought with the intention of pretending I’d made them myself. Too exhausted, even, to care about openly checking Eddie’s Facebook wall while I made coffee.
So I ended up staring emptily at his profile for a good while before I realized that someone had finally replied to my appeal for information. Two people, in fact. I read their posts once, twice, three times, then moved across the kitchen and slid my phone into Tommy’s vision.
Tommy read the posts a few times before handing my phone to Zoe, who read them once, said nothing and handed the phone to Jo.
Thoughts spiralled like a tornado.
‘Well,’ Tommy said, ‘I think we might owe you an apology, Harrington.’ He glanced at Zoe, who had probably never apologized to anyone.
Hot. I was too hot. I took off my cardigan and it fell tothe floor. My head thrummed as I bent down to pick it up.I was too bloody hot.
‘Blimey,’ Jo said, looking up from the phone. ‘Maybe you were right.’
‘Oh, come on!’ Zoe laughed. ‘This post doesn’t mean anything!’
But for the first time in as long as I could remember, Tommy took her on. ‘I don’t agree,’ he said. ‘I think this changes everything.’
This afternoon someone whose name I didn’t know, an Alan somebody, had replied to my post:I just looked up his profile for the same reason and saw your post, Sarah. He went AWOL after cancelling our holiday the other week. Has anyone messaged you about this? Let me know if you hear anything.
Then someone else, a Martin someone, had written:Was wondering the same. He hasn’t turned up at football for a few weeks. Admittedly, he is not known for his reliability, but this is beyond the pale. I’m sorry to say that tonight we were thrashed 8–1. A shameful episode in our long and magnificent history. We need him back.
A few seconds later the same guy, Martin, had posted a photo of Eddie and had written:Find this man. #WheresWally
And, finally:It doesn’t sit well with me that you can’t punctuate hashtags.
I stared at the photo of Eddie, holding a pint.
‘Where are you?’ I whispered, horrified. ‘What’s happened?’
Into the ensuing silence, my phone rang.
Everyone watched me.
I picked it up. It was a withheld number. ‘Hello?’
There was a silence – a human silence – and then the line went dead.
‘They hung up,’ I told the room.
‘I think you were right,’ said Jo, after a long pause. ‘Something very odd is going on here.’
Chapter Twelve
DAY TWO:The Morning After
I should have been jet-lagged. Deeply exhausted and probably hungover; certainly uninterested in waking before midday. Instead, I woke at seven o’clock feeling like I could take on the world.
He was there. Asleep next to me: Eddie David. A hand snaked out in my direction, resting on the soft shelf of my stomach. He was dreaming. The hand on my navel twitched occasionally, like a leaf in a half-hearted wind.
His curtains frilled at the bottom as the morning moved silently through the open window. I drew in a great lungful of air, drawn straight from the valley like water from a spring, and looked around the room. Mouse was sitting with Eddie’s keys on an old wooden campaign chest.
I hardly knew this man, of course. I’d met him less than twenty-four hours ago. I didn’t know how he liked his eggs, what he sang in the shower, whether he could play guitar or speak Italian or draw cartoons. I didn’t know what bands he’d loved as a teenager or how he was likely to vote in the referendum.
