Page 47 of The Woman Who Said Yes

‘Are you mad?’ Sam exclaims. ‘Leave it alone!’

‘This won’t take a minute…’ Phil had Gina’s name stored as ‘G’ on his phone. You’d think, being a police officer, he’d have had the suss to use a decoy name. His favourite auntie, for instance. So I’d think it was sweet, scone-baking Auntie Margaret who was calling and not his hot colleague who, I discovered later, he’d taken to the Radisson in Bournemouth on his so-called conflict management training day.

Maybe Phil got off on the danger aspect? Perhaps that had heightened the thrill for him – the fact that G might call, which in fact she did a couple of times, when his phone was within my sight-line? ‘Just one of the guys,’ Phil had said, meaning his mates in the force. Dumb, mashed-potato-brained me hadn’t thought any more about it.

Of course I don’t think for one second that, in some bizarre coincidence, Gina was calling Dom. But the terrible memories it’s sparking are causing me to clutch his phone in a tight grip – even though Sam has tried to grab it off me – and note with surprise that it’s unlocked. ‘Put it down, for God’s sake!’ he commands in a strangled voice.

‘This won’t take a minute.’ I swipe upwards and access Dom’s contacts and scroll through to find ‘G’ under, well… G, obviously. Placing the phone face up on the table, I reach for my own.

‘This is going to look so fucking weird,’ Sam mutters, as if disassociating himself from my actions as I photograph G’s number. Then, as I nudge Dom’s phone back into some approximation of its original position, he hisses, ‘They’re coming back!’

Quickly, I assume the expression of a woman sitting patiently under the hairdresser’s heat lamp, my heart battering against my ribs. ‘Aren’t we naughty,’ Eva announces.

‘Terrible, darling,’ Dom agrees. As they take their seats, his gaze drops to his phone on the table. No one else seems to spot the flash of panic on his face.

‘Someone called you, Dom,’ I say unnecessarily.

‘Oh, right.’ His taut smile looks as if it might shatter, like a meringue. He picks up his phone, gives it a cursory glance and shrugs, as if it was just some pesky marketing call. Then he gazes around the restaurant and runs a hand over his immaculately cropped hair; a gesture of studied nonchalance. I’m well-practised at spotting such behavioural traits from when the kids were teenagers. In particular, when Phil and I came home late from a night out, and Jake had arranged himself on the sofa in a scene which might have been entitled: ‘Young man in casual repose’. Later, we learned that he’d had his mates round and a full bottle of Bombay Sapphire was gone.

Having recovered his composure, Dom shows me and Sam pictures of the boutique hotel they’ve booked for a short holiday – a ‘mini-moon’, as he terms it, which does something funny to my back teeth.

‘Lovely,’ I enthuse.

‘We’ll do a big holiday some other time,’ he adds. ‘No point in booking something in a hurry.’ Because God forbid anyone should rush into anything around here! It’s only when we’ve all left Niko’s, and Sam and I find ourselves alone, that we can properly process what happened tonight.

‘I can’t believe you did that with his phone,’ he announces.

‘I had to,’ I tell him. ‘I still have this feeling, you know? This terrible feeling in my gut?’

Sam nods grimly and I stop, focusing on my phone for a moment.

‘What’s up?’ he asks.

‘I’m sending you that picture.’

‘What picture?’

‘The one of that contact on Dom’s phone. That ‘G’ person⁠—’

‘I don’t want that,’ he insists, in mock-horror. ‘I’m having nothing to do with your subterfuge⁠—’

‘Sam, we’re in this together so you should have it too. There, I’ve sent it to you.’ For a few moments we stride onwards in silence.

‘I still don’t know what it is that we’re in,’ he mutters, which I choose to ignore. Instead, as we’re about to part company, I ask him – with studied nonchalance – whether he’s seen Lucy again, since her exhibition.

‘Erm, I have actually,’ Sam says in a neutral tone.

‘Really!’ I look up at him, waiting for him to tell me more, and when no further information is forthcoming, I say, ‘That’s great. That’s really great!’

‘Yeah,’ is all he says to that, with an oddly tight expression. He looks down the street as my bus approaches. We hug briefly, and once I’ve stepped aboard I look out to give him a wave through the window, as I always do. But this time Sam has already gone.

27

WEDDING COUNTDOWN: 14 DAYS

Sam

Sam isn’t averse to an art house film. It’s not that he demands exploding cars or multiple killings; in fact, he has enjoyed plenty of films without much in the way of a plot. But what he’s just watched is a movie in which literally nothing happened, apart from a middle-aged man in a stained dressing gown shuffling around a grim apartment, smoking copious roll-ups and frying the occasional egg.