I make a coffee and sit on the sofa with the iPad to search online for news of Kit’s disappearance – information might have circulated in spite of the police’s preference to keep investigations below the radar – but there is nothing. I check the name ‘Sarah Miller’ and find three hundred million listings. There are thousands on LinkedIn, almost two hundred of those in the UK. Am I really going to track down every one and demand to know if she took the river bus to St Mary’s on Monday night? And if I do by some miracle identify the right individual, will she co-operate? Like me, she’ll have been asked not to talk about the investigation and she might report my approach to Parry and Merchison, make me look more suspicious, not less.

I check on Kit again. Still nothing.

I know I ought to be careful of my online activity from now on. If the police do suspect me of foul play and are monitoring it, it might look like unusual levels of interest.

On the other hand, wouldn’t any friend be searching constantly for updates? Wouldn’t any friend be on the streets scouring in person, out of their mind with worry? Making notes of remembered details that might prove useful, scraps of conversation that contain clues.

If the police even believe I was a friend in the first place. I text Kit’s phone for the first time since Monday night:

Where the hell are you? Everyone’s worried sick!

But the message fails to send.

29

27 December 2019

Clare comes home at five thirty – early for her, she must have cancelled her evening viewings – and hurries straight over to hug me. There is licorice on her breath from the little Italian sweets she eats when she craves a cigarette, the only sign that she is anywhere near as agitated as I am.

‘I know we just talked about cooling things with Kit, but I didn’t mean for him to literally vanish!’

‘I know.’ I remember my suggestion about adjusting my hours in the New Year and changing to a different boat from him, but right now, the idea that my working life will proceed along controlled lines feels like a fantasy. ‘Have you seen Melia?’

‘No, she wasn’t in. She rang Richard this morning. Played it down from what I can gather, said it’s not the first time he’s gone AWOL, but obviously I knew from you it’s more serious than she’s letting on. I mean, to report him missing! She must know this isn’t just his usual drinking session – I mean, who with? Everyone will’ve been with their families over Christmas, won’t they? Like us.’

Like us. The words cause a lurch of remorse.

Clare shrugs off her coat, drapes it over the back of the sofa. ‘Poor thing, I hope she hasn’t been dealing with this on her own. Richard’s told her to take a few days’ compassionate leave. She won’t be able to think straight until she finds Kit. Where the hell is he, d’you think?’

I exhale noisily through my mouth. ‘I have no idea. Did the police call you?’

‘Yes, just now.’

Well, they can’t have told her of the affair or she wouldn’t be talking to me like this. The thought is less relaxing than I’d hoped. There’s something dangerous simmering within me. ‘They’ll be ringing everyone he knows, Melia must’ve given them a list. What did they ask you?’

‘Just when I saw him last, which was weeks ago, so no use to them. Also, what time you got home on Monday night.’

Which presumably was of use to them.

‘What did you say?’

‘Eleven forty. I looked at my phone when you woke me up, so it was easy to remember. They said you were the last to see him. Is that true?’

I shrug. ‘As far as they seem to know, yes, but I don’t see how I can have been. If he didn’t go home, he must have gone to meet someone, or to a bar.’

Clare pulls a face. ‘Maybe he carried on drinking somewhere and went to sleep under a bush or something, in which case he could have caught hypothermia. I assume they’ve tried all the hospitals?’

‘I guess so, they didn’t say.’ It strikes me that in my extended chat with the two detectives I gathered very little information for myself.

‘Well, he didn’t reach home, that’s established,’ Clare says. ‘Melia went to bed early, apparently, and when she got up and realized he hadn’t come home, she assumed he must have stayed out with you. Then she discovered his phone was dead and started getting worried. She couldn’t get hold of you, or me – it must have been a complete nightmare for her.’

She sets about turning on the lamps I have left unlit, restoring us to normality. The Christmas tree lights, in the window at the front, are on a timer and so have been twinkling for some time and I feel an ache of regret for all the future Christmases that I won’t be enjoying here. Because everything’s changed now. She leaves the room and a minute later, I hear the fridge door open and close, the musical clink of glassware on worktop.

Then she’s back, with two oversized glasses of white wine that must contain half a bottle each. I told myself on the way home that I wouldn’t drink this evening – with the police interested enough to intercept me on my way to work, I need to keep my wits about me, remember every word I say and to whom. But the pull is too powerful and I take the glass, swallow gratefully.

‘God knows what Melia’s feeling right now.’ Clare arranges herself next to me on the sofa, her face close enough for me to feel the heat of her breath. I have a sudden and terrifying premonition of discovery, of conflict, seeing with hallucinatory clarity her wine flying the short distance from glass to my face. I can feel the cold sting of it in my eyes.

She sinks back, takes a sip. ‘Should we go round there, do you think?’

I look just past her candid, caring gaze. ‘I don’t know. She might be with the police, one of those family liaison types.’

‘I doubt it. I mean, would they have the manpower for that? Half our industry was off work today, so it must be the same for the police, all the public services – they can’t possibly be laying on the full works. Let’s go round after we’ve finished these. We can’t just leave her to suffer, can we? It’s been, what, four days? She must be assuming the worst by now. I know I would be with a boyfriend like that.’

I take a deep draught of wine and then speak very carefully: ‘I think you should go on your own, Clare.’

She frowns. ‘Why?’

‘Because the police asked me not to go near her.’ There’s a cold prickle at the back of my neck as I realize I haven’t phrased this skilfully enough. The sense of premonition deepens and I recognize it for what it is: the slippery, bucking, lunatic impulse to confess.

‘Why?’ she asks a second time.

‘I suppose because I argued with Kit on Monday, so they think I might be involved in his disappearance in some way. And I ignored her calls – maybe that looks bad.’

‘I didn’t know you ignored her calls. Why didn’t you pick up?’

‘Because it was Christmas and I didn’t think they were anything important.’ I can hardly use the excuse I gave the detectives: the awkwardness of taking calls from your lover while a guest in your partner’s parents’ home. ‘What could we have done from Edinburgh, anyway? Melia’s got other friends, hasn’t she? They would have helped her.’