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The room felt suddenly several degrees colder, and I snuggled deeper into the folds of Finn’s thick, fleecy sweatshirt. I’d been wearing it almost constantly since finding it on the floor of my wardrobe. ‘You missed one,’ I’d said sadly as I reached for the forgotten garment and slipped it over my head. My senses had filled with the smell of him that lingered on the fabric. Would I still be wearing the sweatshirt days, weeks, even months from now, when the smell of my own body had erased his? What a tragic thought.
Dad was saying something about the police, which I’d clearly missed.
‘Sorry, Dad, what was that?’
‘I was just asking what that policeman chap said when you told him what you’d found.’
Or what I’d not found, if we were being strictly accurate.
‘He said it seemed clear Finn had left of his own volition and that as he wasn’t classed as vulnerable or at risk in any way, there was very little they could do.’ I sighed heavily, much as I’d done during my conversation with Inspector Graham. ‘Basically, their attitude is that Finn is a grown man who appears to have changed his mind and taken the easy way out by choosing not to face the backlash following his non-appearance at his own wedding.’
I’d almost laughed at that, wondering what about this situation Inspector Graham had thought was remotely easy.
‘I’m so sorry this has happened to you, my love,’ Dad said sadly. ‘You didn’t deserve this.’
‘This isn’t what you all think it is,’ I said, perfectly aware that by now I was sounding like a broken record.
‘Why don’t you come for lunch tomorrow,’ urged Dad, clearly happier with a change of subject. ‘I’ll make us one of my famous roasts. It’ll be like old times.’
Except Mum wouldn’t be there. And now neither would Finn.
‘Okay. I’ll see you then.’
TUESDAY: DAY THREE
15
If someone had asked me where the bundle of postcards was, I truly wouldn’t have been able to tell them. Which made it even more eerie when they tumbled out of the top of my wardrobe as I stowed away my carry-on bag. I retrieved the stack from the bedroom carpet, where it had landed face up. The colours of the topmost image had faded over the years. The colour of the Australian sky was less cerulean, the water of Sydney harbour looked more grey than aquamarine. But the Opera House still looked good. The rubber band holding the collection was four years old and had perished, snapping painfully against my fingers like a warning as soon as I touched it.
I crossed to the bed and laid out the postcards on top of the duvet. I didn’t need to read the postmarks to know in which order they’d been sent – I could plot the course of the locations as though they were pins on a map. A map showing a route I’d never travelled, but one that Finn had. The first postcard had been sent from Sydney and had landed on my doormat about three weeks after I’d bidden Finn goodbye at the airport. I’d scarcely paused to study the picture in my eagerness to reach his message. Journalists are taught to be succinct, but Finn had written nothing other than his name on the postcard, taking brevity to a whole new level.
The cards had continued to arrive; a new one every two or three weeks. They ranged from the Great Barrier Reef to the Twelve Apostles in Victoria and detailed Finn’s comprehensive Australian road trip. But whether the cards featured the majestic stark beauty of Uluru, lovable kangaroos and koalas, or the breathtaking scenery of the Great Ocean Road, he had never written a single message on any of them.
I had no address to reply to. His UK mobile phone number no longer worked, and he hadn’t given me his new Australian one. If it wasn’t for the constant trickle of postcards, Finn Douglas could be said to have completely disappeared from my life. Although never from my thoughts.
I must have replayed our last evening together a thousand times, and as so often happens with a happy memory, it just kept on getting better in my imagination, until I began to wonder why the hell Ihadn’tgot on the plane with him when he’d asked me to. It was a dangerous line of thinking.
*
‘I’m thinking of taking a holiday,’ I said in a whisper to Hannah.
‘That’s nice,’ Hannah whispered back, glancing into the bassinet beside her to make sure our lowered voices hadn’t woken her newborn infant, who was perfect in every way apart from her belief that sleep was something other babies did, but not her. ‘Where are you thinking of going?’
I paused, not for fear of waking Milly, but because I already knew how my answer was going to be received.
‘Australia.’
‘What?’ Hannah cried, loud enough to make her baby murmur restlessly. ‘I thought you were going to say somewhere in Europe.’
‘Well, I’ve got over three and a half weeks’ holiday that I need to use, so it just makes sense to go somewhere further afield.’
Hannah gave a derisive snort. ‘Oh right. And this has nothing at all to do with a certain journalist, turned barista, turned who-knows-what, who just happens to live there?’
I blushed. There was little point in lying to Hannah; she’d see straight through it in a heartbeat.
‘I thought it might be nice to pay Finn a visit.’
‘But I thought you didn’t have his contact details – or even know where he lives, except that it’s somewhere in Sydney.’
