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F OR THE LAST four years I’ve had pictures on the hallway walls that Matt brought with him when he moved in. They’re huge photos of jazz musicians in heavy black frames. Ella Fitzgerald usually faced the front door, her eyes half-closed in a shy, ecstatic smile. Now there was nothing but the smooth cream paint we’d used when we painted the hallway last summer.
I dropped my coat and bags on the polished oak floor and on automatic pilot stooped to steady the bottles as they tilted to the ground. I stepped forward and stared again. There was nothing on the wall. I turned and looked at the wall alongside the staircase. Charlie Parker was usually there, bathed in a golden light and facing Miles Davis. It had always looked as though they were playing together. Both were gone.
I looked around in disbelief. Had we been burgled? But why had they taken the pictures? The walnut cabinet I’d bought from Heal’s was worth a lot and that was still there. On it, alongside the landline and a lamp, sat the silver and enamel Tiffany bowl that my parents had bought me when I graduated. Surely a burglar would have taken that?
I put my hand on the door to the living room, then hesitated.
What if someone’s still here? What if they’ve only just got here?
Quietly I took my handbag and backed out of the front door. On the path, safely away from the house, I took out my phone, uncertain whether to call the police or to wait for Matt. I stared at the house. Apart from the hallway, it was in darkness. The house attached to mine was dark, too; Sheila and Ray, our neighbors, had told me they’d be away until Sunday. The house on the other side had sold a month or two ago and its owners had long gone. A new couple would be moving in soon, but it didn’t look as though anyone was there yet; the rooms were empty and there were no curtains at the windows. Opposite us was the wide entrance to another road; the houses there were bigger, set well back with high hedges to stop them from having to view the rest of the estate.
There didn’t seem to be any movement in our house. Slowly I walked across the lawn to the living room window and looked through into the darkened room.
At first I thought the television had gone. That would definitely be burglars. Then I froze. The television had gone; that was true. Matt had bought a massive flat-screen when he moved in. It had surround sound and a huge fancy black glass table, and to be honest, it took up half the room. All of it had gone.
Now in its place was the old coffee table I’d had for years, which I’d brought with me from my parents’ house when I left home. On it was my old television, a great big useless thing that used to shine blue and flicker if there was a storm. It had been in the spare room all this time, waiting until we had the energy to chuck it out. I’d hardly noticed it in all the time it had been up there.
My face was so close to the living room window that I could see the mist of my breath on it.
A car braked sharply in the distance and I jumped and turned, thinking it was Matt. I don’t know why I thought that.
My skin suddenly felt very cold, though the evening was warm and still. I took a deep breath and pulled my jacket tightly around me. I went back into the house, shutting the door quietly. In the living room, I put the overhead light on, then quickly went to the window to draw the curtains, even though it was still light outside. I didn’t want an audience. I stood with my back to the window and looked at the room. Above the mantelpiece was a huge silver mirror and I could see my face, pale and shocked, reflected in it. I moved away so that I didn’t have to look at myself.
On either side of the fireplace, white-painted shelves filled the alcoves. Our DVDs and books and CDs had been on them. On the big lower shelves Matt had kept his vinyl, hundreds of albums, all in alphabetical order by band, the more obscure the better. I remembered the day he moved in, how I’d taken dozens of my books from the shelves and put them in boxes in the spare room so he’d have space for his records.
Those books were now back there, looking as though they’d never been away. Most of the DVDs and CDs had gone. All of the vinyl was gone.
I turned to the other corner. His record player was no longer there; neither was his iPod dock. My old stereo was back; his had gone. Gone, too, were the headphones he’d bought when I’d complained I couldn’t watch television because of his music.
I felt as though my legs were about to give way. I sat down on the sofa and looked at the room. My stomach was clenched so tightly I almost doubled over.
What’s happened?
I didn’t dare go into the rest of the house.
• • •
I TOOK MY mobile from my bag. I knew I shouldn’t call Matt—what was the point? He’d sent me the clearest message he could. At that moment, though, I had no pride. I wanted to talk to him, to ask him what was happening. I knew, though. I knew exactly what had happened. What he’d done.
There were no missed calls, no new messages, no new emails. Suddenly furious—he might at least have had the decency to let me know—I clicked on Recent Calls and scrolled down to find his name so that I could call him. I frowned. I knew I’d called him a few nights ago. I’d been in the car, just about to leave work; my friend Katie had sent a message saying that she and her boyfriend, James, might come round and I’d phoned Matt to check we had some drinks in. There was no record of that call on my phone. I scrolled down further. Months of calls flashed by. None of them was to him or from him.
I closed my eyes for a second and tried to take a deep breath, but I couldn’t. I felt as though I was going to faint and had to put my head down on my knees. After a few minutes, I looked back at the screen, clicked on Contacts and typed M for Matt, but nothing came up. Panicking, I typed S for his surname, Stone. His name wasn’t there.
My fingers were suddenly hot and damp, slipping on the screen as I scrolled down the list of text conversations. Again, there were none to him and none from him, though we had sent a few each week. We tended to do that rather than call lately. There were still messages to friends and to my parents and to Sam at work, but nothing to Matt. I’d bought that phone at Christmas with my bonus. I sent him a message then, though he was only in the kitchen, asking him to bring a bottle of prosecco into the living room. I could hear him laugh when he read the message and he brought it in with some more chocolate mousse. I was lying comatose; the agreement had been that I’d cook Christmas lunch for his mother and us, but wouldn’t have to do anything else for the rest of the day.
I double-checked now and looked at my texts to Katie. It took a while to scroll through them, as we sent several a week—several a day at times—but eventually I found the first one, wishing her a happy Christmas and telling her that Matt had bought me a Mulberry bag. She’d acted amazed, but I knew he’d asked her advice on it. I don’t know how she’d kept it a secret.
My mind whirled. What had happened to Matt’s texts and calls?
I switched the phone off and on again, hoping that might do something. There were text messages from Katie, sent yesterday afternoon, asking me about my trip to Oxford today. She’d phoned me just before the training started this morning, too, to wish me luck, knowing how much the day meant to me. I’d spent a few minutes talking to her in the car park before I had to go in. There were texts to and from Sam, my friend at work, and Lucy, my assistant, as well as some from my mum and a few from my dad, including those exchanged in Oxford just hours ago. There were also messages from Fran and Jenny, old friends who I run with sometimes, and some from university friends that I still saw occasionally. There wasn’t anything from Matt at all.
Of course I knew what was going to happen when I opened my emails. No new messages, but that wasn’t a surprise. I tried to think of the last time Matt had emailed me; usually he’d text. Back when we first met we’d email several times a day; we both used to have our private emails open on our computers while we were working, so we could chat to each other throughout the day. You’d think that would have made us less productive but the opposite happened and we found we were firing on all cylinders, working fast and furious and making great decisions. We were so fired up we both got promotions and it was only when Matt’s company started logging network accounts after some idiot was found to be looking at porn all day that we had to stop. My heart sank now as I looked at the folders; the one with all his emails in it was missing. I opened a new message and entered “Matt” into the address bar. Nothing came up, not even his email address.
I could hear myself breathing, short, shallow breaths. There was the beginning of a red mist around my eyes and I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate.
I had no way of contacting him.