“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“That’s not our room.”
“I’m just sorting some things out at the back.”
And then my mother came into the frame behind her and said, “Ives, stop bothering your wife. She’s been very sensitive lately. Let her rest.”
Amara looked down at her hands and said nothing at all, and the call ended two minutes later.
Then a message came up on my phone from her.
I need to tell you something before your mother—
And it went. Deleted by sender, while I was reading it.
I rang back. Nothing.
And thirty seconds after that my mother rang me, and said, warmly, “Everything all right, love?”
I had not told my mother I was trying to reach my wife.
I said my trip had been extended by three days, and I booked the first flight into Wrenhall, and I told nobody.
At twenty to seven the next morning I was parked two streets away and I watched Amara come out of our front gate on foot.
She did not take the car. She walked twenty-two minutes in the cold to the market on Pell Row.
I followed her the whole way about forty feet back.
