Alice’s face fell. ‘You don’t?’
‘You don’t talk like you’re from around here,’ she said, shooting a knowing look Ben’s way, and he was grateful she’d found a way to present this information to Alice without giving him away. ‘Although, like me, you might have moved to Scotland. However, if I went with my gut, I’d say home is much further south … You actually sound like you’re from my neck of the woods.’
‘England?’ Alice asked.
‘I might even go as far as saying London, so I’m going to ask the Met and surrounding police forces for missing persons information as well.’
Alice nodded, looking a little lost.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Wilson said, smiling sympathetically and rising from her seat.
Once Ben had shown her out, he returned to the living room to find Alice sitting there, most forlorn. ‘What now?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I suppose there is nothing we can do except wait.’
Chapter Seventeen
Ten months before the wedding.
WHEN I’D FIRST started seeing Justin, I’d imagined him living in one of those big, white Georgian houses in Chelsea, surrounded by family heirlooms and antiques. The reality had been quite a surprise. His third-floor ultra-modern apartment overlooked Kensington Gardens. The whole building was elegant but stark, full of hard edges and diagonal lines, and Justin’s flat was probably the most immaculate dwelling I’d ever been in.
I’d quickly become aware that most choreographers did not live in the kind of luxury he did. Even those who had critical acclaim did not earn pots of money. However, Justin had ‘family money’, as he called it, although he never talked much about his family or where that money had come from. I got the impression he hadn’t had a happy childhood and that he was fairly distant from most of his relatives, including his parents, who lived in Singapore. It only made me more determined to give him the love he was so clearly lacking.
The furnishings were elegant but sparse, suiting the Art Deco influences in the twenty-first-century design. Since every piece of furniture, rug or lamp seemed in perfect harmony with the other objects around it,I’d assumed he’d hired an interior designer, but it turned out he’d chosen everything himself. I was in awe. He had such taste. Sometimes, I just wandered around the apartment, taking in the textures and colours – the pale, plush velvet of the sofas, the polished mahogany and brass accents, the blond wood herringbone floor, the thick, deep rugs with their geometric patterns.
The bedroom was my favourite room in the flat, all soft greys and lavenders. I lay on the bed, the sheets pulled up over half my naked body, allowing the Sunday morning light to slant across me and illuminate Justin, who was dozing beside me. I’d stayed over the night before after an outing to the opera. I checked my phone and realised it was already noon. I rolled over and slid a leg out of the bed, but a muscular hand reached out and grabbed my wrist.
‘Where do you think you’re going,’ he said, his voice gravelly. I stared back down at him, at the golden hair flopping back over his forehead, the glint in his blue eyes as he looked at me.
‘I’m getting up,’ I explained, a playful smile on my lips. ‘We’ve got plans today, remember?’
Justin grunted and tugged my arm. I’d been using it to prop myself in a sitting position, so I fell back on top of him and he threw his warm arms around me and kissed the top of my head. ‘Let’s just stay here all day.’
I chuckled. ‘We’ve already spent all morning in bed. Besides, you promised me lunch at that brasserie on the other side of the park.’ And before he could argue, I slid from his grasp and stood up. ‘There’s always later.’
His eyebrows puckered together in a high arch, making him look like a particularly sad basset hound.‘You’re staying at your parents’ tonight.’
‘I do still live there! Although, I think my parents might dispute that, seeing as I’m here more nights than I’m not.’
He rolled his eyes in lieu of a coherent objection.
‘We’ve got time before we go to dinner this evening.’
The rest of my family had guessed there was a man on the scene. They’d started asking questions: who was he? Did he have a good job? Was he nice to me? Once those basic questions were dealt with, Mum told me to ask him to Sunday dinner, and today was the day. She was going to do her famous roast chicken, so I knew she was pulling out all the stops. Being late or failing to turn up because we were too loved up to leave the bedroom was not an option.
Half an hour later we were strolling through Kensington. I was wearing jeans and boots, things that had always been staples in my wardrobe, but I’d also added a seriously gorgeous silk blouse and leather jacket Justin had bought me, guarding my eyes from the bright April sun with a pair of sunglasses I’d stolen from him.
It was warm enough to sit outside at the brasserie, at a tiny round table with chairs that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a chic Paris café. I dug into my smoked salmon and scrambled eggs and let the fantasy continue to play inside my head, and when I caught my reflection in the restaurant window, I realised I saw a woman who looked as if she was ready to get herself up, dust herself off, and start to take charge of her life. I had Justin to thank for that. For his support and unwavering belief in me. For seeing the ‘me’ I’d lost sight of.
I reached for his hand and tugged him to meet me over the top of the table so I could kiss him.
He smiled when I released him. ‘What was that for?’
‘For being too good to be true,’ I replied.
We were supposed to be at Mum and Dad’s at half five, but at quarter to six, we were still sitting in traffic the other side of Crystal Palace. I peered at the queue of cars ahead, straining to see if the temporary traffic light was any closer to turning green. I could imagine Mum flapping around the kitchen and making ‘it’ll be fine’ noises that would eventually segue into a monologue about what she could do to prevent the chicken drying out and the roast potatoes from turning to ash.
She looked flustered and hot when we finally arrived, and she opened the door, wiping her hands on a tea towel. Justin presented her with a large bouquet as he declared how dreadfully sorry he was that we were late and how utterly delighted he was to meet her. Mum blinked back at him as if she’d just opened the door to Prince William and accepted the flowers with a flush in her cheeks. I was surprised she didn’t curtsey.
