Vanished

He came back to my place after work one Friday evening.’

‘And after that?’

‘After that …’ Her eyes flicked to me and away: more embarrassment, but not about the affair, or the idea of it, but about having to reveal details of their sex life to a stranger. ‘Are you asking me how often we had sex?’ she said finally, trying to paint me as some kind of voyeur.

‘I want to understand why Sam left.’

She sighed. ‘We would do it every day at work. We found an empty office on the forty-sixth floor in Sam’s building and we’d go there.’

‘What about evenings?’

‘Sometimes, if he convinced her he was working late.’

‘Weekends?’

‘No. Never weekends.’

That tallied with what the phone records showed: there were no conversations between Sam and Ursula on Saturdays and Sundays. ‘Why not weekends?’

‘He wanted to be with her.’

‘It sounds like he was conflicted.’

‘He was. I think he always loved her, even when we were doing what we were doing. He told me a couple of times he wondered what life would be like with me, if we were a couple, but that was about as far as it went. I wanted him more than he wanted me. I …’ A pause. ‘I felt something for him. I thought he felt something for me. But now I can see the relationship for what it was. I can see what he wanted from it.’

‘Which was what?’

‘Sex,’ she said, as if the answer was obvious. ‘I was like a bloody schoolgirl; so wrapped up in it, I couldn’t see the difference.’

‘Did he ever talk about his sex life with Julia?’

‘A little.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he didn’t fancy her.’

For a man, Sam didn’t have much of a sex drive, Julia had said to me.

‘Did he say why he didn’t fancy her?’

‘No.’ She brushed more hair away from her eyes. ‘He obviously loved her. I could see that after a while; can certainly see it now. But he used to say – when it came to sex – she didn’t do it for him.’

‘In what way?’

‘In any way.’

I wrote that down. It seemed weird that he would feel like that about Julia – and yet still commit to getting married.

‘Do you think he cheated on her before he met you?’

‘No.’

‘How come?’

She looked out through the windows of the bar. ‘He was ballsy and confident in his work, single-minded, which was why I was attracted to him in the first place. But he wasn’t like that at all in bed. Not to start with, anyway. He seemed almost … inexperienced.’

‘How?’

A frown cut across her face, but it was more a look of discomfort than anything else. ‘Maybe “inexperienced” is the wrong word,’ she said, ‘because that suggests he didn’t know what he was doing. He definitely knew what he was doing. But there was always …’ She faded out, and then looked up. She wasn’t going to finish. I didn’t know if it was because she couldn’t articulate what she meant – or she was hiding something. There seemed to be a hint of a half-truth in her eyes, a flicker, a shadow, but not enough for me to build an accusation on.

‘There was always what?’ I pressed.

‘I think he was twisted up over what we were doing.’

‘He felt guilty about cheating on Julia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that why you think he cooled things off towards the end?’

She seemed surprised I knew about the change in their relationship, but the phone records showed the calls and texts between the two of them had started to die out from 2 September. The relationship had been burning itself out. ‘In the last two or three months, he’d tell me he was busy over lunch, or pretend he had a meeting, or had to work late,’ she said, not exactly answering the question, and I decided not to jump in but come back to it later. ‘He just changed.’

‘Changed how?’

‘Became different. Preoccupied.’

‘Did you ever talk about it?’

‘I never got the chance. He became very quiet, really highly strung and stressed out. It was never like that before. He was easy-going and fun.’

This was returning to the same place all conversations about Sam seemed to retreat to: he was a nice guy, he was easy-going, he didn’t have any reason to leave, but he changed in those last few months. The minor details were different, but everyone was saying the same thing. His finances, his affair, how he felt about Julia, everyone had a theory, but no one had an answer.

‘Nothing else sticks with you?’ I asked.

She glanced at me, down to her wine, then back up. A frown formed on her face. ‘There was this one time …’ She paused again, trying to recall the details; rubbed a hand across her forehead. ‘It was about two or three months after we started seeing each other. He came back to my place for a couple of hours and we …’ She looked at me. Had sex. I nodded for her to continue. ‘Anyway, he started to ask about my previous relationships.’

‘What did he ask?’

‘It was weird. He wanted to know the details. Like, all the details. He wanted to know how long I’d gone out with each of them, how many times I’d slept with them, what our sex life was like, that kind of thing.’ She paused, forefinger and thumb pinching the neck of her glass. ‘I only really thought about it after he disappeared, because it never struck me as odd at the time. We weren’t married, we were just having sex. Him wanting to know what I’d done, what I liked, it was all a part of it; part of the affair. The excitement. When it’s taboo, when it’s risky, when people see it as wrong, you’ll do anything. Try anything. Because it doesn’t matter any more. All the stuff you’ve always wanted to do, you just …’ She looked at me, shrugged. ‘You just do it.’

‘So why did it feel weird when he asked?’

‘It was just strange coming from him.’

‘You pegged him for a straight arrow?’

She nodded. ‘Definitely.’

I looped the conversation around to a point we’d left unfinished earlier. ‘How did you react when he started cooling things off?’

‘React?’

‘Did you just accept it?’

She shrugged. ‘I could see myself becoming a bunny boiler, the psycho bit on the side, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t bear the silence; going from all-in to all-out.’ She stopped; looked downcast. ‘So, no, I didn’t just accept it.’

‘What did you do?’

She glanced at me, a reluctance in her face. ‘I started following him.’

‘When was this?’

‘Things started to change in early September, and by the middle of October I wasn’t getting anything from him: no calls, no texts. I found that very hard.’

‘So you started following him at the end of October?’

‘End of October, beginning of November.’