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Stella uncurled her legs from under her and sat forward, putting her empty glass on the table. ‘Might be nothing, but there’s just something that doesn’t feel right.’
‘I don’t think you should read too much into it,’ said Bridget, hoping she sounded more convincing than she felt.
‘Well, he had on a new tie yesterday and it was so noticeable because the style wasn’t like something he’d normally buy himself. For one thing, it was expensive, way more than he’d normally spend on himself.’ Stella thought of how Simon managed their business finances, questioning every request to spend money. His fastidiousness sometimes drove her mad, but she knew she should be grateful that she didn’t have to worry about that side of the business.
‘Did you ask him about it?’ Sarah ventured.
‘Yes, but he just brushed the whole thing off, made out it was no big deal. But afterwards I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I went to have a look when he was in the shower. It’s a Hermès tie, for god’s sake.’
‘That’s so not like him!’ said Lucy, laughing a little, then immediately feeling bad for doing so. ‘Sorry, Stella, I’m not saying he doesn’t… just that he’s nothing if not conventional with his wardrobe.’
‘I know, that’s the thing. It’s really not him. That’s why I noticed, I guess. And what’s weird is the way he clearly tried to gloss over the matter. If someone gave him the tie quite innocently, why not tell me?’
‘But asking him about a bloody tie is hardly grounds for bolting for the door, is it?’ Bridget’s eyes narrowed.
There was a moment’s silence. Stella knew what they were all thinking so she decided to say it out loud. ‘You all think he’s having an affair.’
‘Oh, come on, we don’t know that, Stella, there might be a really simple explanation for all this,’ said Bridget, stroking Stella’s hair softly.
Stella looked straight ahead. ‘An affair is the only explanation that makes sense though.’ Her voice was firm.
In a swift movement, she got up from the sofa and left the room. She raced up the stairs two at a time, went into their bedroom and opened the wardrobe where she assumed she’d find the tie, but it wasn’t there. He’d clearly taken it with him.
Stella walked over to the big chest of drawers under the window overlooking the common. People were out making the most of the unexpected sunshine. She picked up a photo frame from the top of the chest and looked at it, their wedding photo. She’d always loved that photo, taken on the beach, the sun so bright it had put their faces in shadow, but the smiles on both of their faces were unmistakably happy.
‘Where are you?’ Stella spoke the words into the universe in the hope that, wherever he was, Simon might hear them and remember how much he loved her. Or at least had loved her once. Tears fell from her eyes, slowly at first, but soon her cheeks were wet from crying.
She opened the top drawer and started searching through his socks, then opened the next drawer down, pulling his clothes out onto the floor, waiting for a clue to land at her feet. She went to the cupboard and lifted his clothes out onto the bed, reaching into the pockets of his suit jackets and trousers. Next, she riffled through the drawers in the small table on his side of the bed, dropping everything onto the carpet. All these years, they’d never had secrets, but as she went through his things, it was like going through the belongings of a stranger.
Picking up the photo frame again, Stella lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes. One word filled her mind, crowding out everything else. She whispered it over and over again: why, why, why, why, why? The photo frame fell to the floor with a dull thud.
By the time Bridget, Sarah and Lucy came up the stairs to check on her, they found Stella curled in a ball on the bed surrounded by clothes, her body shaking with silent sobs. Lucy sat beside her and gently rubbed Stella’s back while the other two quietly put the room back together.
8
At first, the days passed slowly, each minute crawling by. But before Stella knew it, Simon had been gone for a week, then two, then four. Despite not wanting to get out of bed most mornings, Stella forced herself to keep going, not least for the sake of the children. She was functioning rather than living, but it was the best she could do. She spent hours going through their paperwork, trying to find something, anything, that might tell her where or why he’d gone. She found some old mobile phone records, trawling through them with a highlighter, ringing any numbers she didn’t recognise. With each fruitless search, Stella’s hope slowly diminished.
After a week of telling them their father had simply gone away for work, Stella knew she’d have to tell the children the truth. At least, what she knew to be the truth. She had sat them down at the kitchen table after school one day and delivered the news that their father had gone. She told them she didn’t know where or why and she didn’t know when he was coming back, but, hopefully, he’d be back soon and then he could explain it himself. It took all her self-control to not unleash a torrent of words at the very thought of what Simon had done, tell them that he’d ripped her whole world apart without so much as saying goodbye, but she held it in.
Max had nodded, his eyes fixed on the table. Stella could see he was trying hard not to cry, his fingers digging into his palm. Millie had looked confused, Isla sad. Then, after a few moments, they’d asked what was for tea.
Bridget, Sarah and Lucy had taken it in turns to drop in on Stella every day for the first few weeks, making endless cups of tea and tidying up the kitchen. They brought food, not that Stella could eat much of it. Caroline had been typically practical, driving up each week to spend a day at the house with Stella, changing sheets and sorting out the washing.
‘There must be someone else you can call who might know where he is?’ asked Caroline one afternoon as she folded laundry at the kitchen table.
‘I’ve tried everyone I can think of. I’ve tried his friends that I know, our old colleagues. No one’s heard from him.’ Stella sat at the table, her laptop in front of her. The screensaver, a picture of the children and Simon on a Greek beach from a particularly lovely holiday taken just a few years before, seemed like it was from another lifetime. She looked at her husband’s face, smiling out at her, so familiar and yet suddenly completely unknown.
‘What about his family? There must be a relative somewhere?’
‘He didn’t have any. Not that I know of, anyway. Just us.’
‘Facebook?’
‘He loathed the idea of Facebook. Doesn’t even have an account.’
‘What about your bank account, has he taken any money?’
‘No, he’s not touched our joint account. I know he had his own account; we always kept our own accounts as well as a joint one for our mortgage, bills and everything else like that.’
