Missing (2)

She has been swimming in the sea.

I have stayed in the house all day. Ridiculously. Sulking.

She took the car and drove off, turned off her phone (or ignored my repeated calls - one or the other; all I could get was her voicemail) and disappeared for the day.

Now she's back, with her skin smelling of sea and suncream; all smiles that don't engage with me and no eye contact. She is mad with me. I know what those smiles mean. 'I have had fun in spite of you.'

Her skin is pink from the sun and I know that, if I pressed my lips to it, it would radiate heat enough to warm me through. I know that, if I parted my lips and let my tongue trace the smoothness of that skin, I would taste salt and Ambre Solaire. I know, without needing to run my lips along her arm, her neck, her chest, exactly what she smells of. She smells of summer, and sand, and sea, and fresh air. She smells of all the things that made me love her in the first place, and I want to enfold her, wrap my arms around her, take her upstairs, pull her down onto the bed. I want to lazily undress her and taste the summer of her.

But she goes into the kitchen, all glistening limbs, short skirt and flip flops. Her hair, tied back, a tennis-girl's ponytail, swings with the motion of her sun-warmed body, and I watch its motion right out of the room.

I hear her pulling out pans, chopping vegetables, boiling water. I listen to the sounds of a meal being prepared, and the economy of the sounds somehow tells me that I'm fending for myself tonight.

She's really mad with me.

It turns me on.

For a decade, we've had this. Right from the start. Minor, petty arguments. The first one accidental, the second less so, until gradually it built and I knew precisely what to do, which buttons to press, how to stir her up to sufficient anger than she leaves the house. Wherever we are. She leaves the house, and she stays away, long enough for me to begin the process of wondering. Long enough for me to ring - sometimes to apologise, sometimes to plead, more often to stir her up some more. She plays along, and I know when she's really mad because she does not answer those calls. She counts up, instead, how many times I ring. Some arbitrary number, always different, always at least one short of me giving up. Then she comes back, and we don't speak. She punishes me in tiny ways. Petty ways that match the smallness of the argument that flared those few hours previously. Not cooking for me. Reading a book in silence. Withdrawing, excluding, telling me off so silently, and yet not silently at all.

It amuses me.

Her secret smiles are either self-delusions of triumph, or an indication that this amuses her too. I've never worked that out. All through the making up, the langorous making love, she stays remote, removes her eyes, her face, her touch, until that very last moment when, unable to control herself, she grips and climbs and soars and laughs; then everything is murmurs and nuzzles again. She's liquid in my arms and she strokes my body tenderly. A forgiveness of sorts, never verbally sought, never verbally given.

Tonight, though, she cooks her own meal, cooks some for me, but doesn't serve it up. She brings her own into the living room on a tray and begins to eat it in silence. I don't even ask, but going into the kitchen, I find the extra food waiting in the pans. I serve myself and eat at the table in silence. Two can prolong an argument.

I hear the tv go on in the living room. She watches some rubbish about home improvement and when it's over she brings her dishes into the kitchen, places them in the sink.

Sometimes, I think I'd like to go back to the bachelor lifestyle. Maybe because I'm ten years out of it and have forgotten. Maybe because her stubbornness occasionally wears me out. I'm still eating, taking my time. The tv is still on in the living room. She leaves the kitchen and I hear the click of a door. I assume that it's the living room door, but the sound of the tv doesn't diminish. I shrug to myself (there's no-one else here to see me do it) and finish my meal.

I rinse off the dishes, then go back through to the living room. The room is empty. The tv still plays, but she isn't there. I sit in the armchair. She's probably in the loo. I watch tv for longer than it takes to use the toilet, then get up and walk through the house.

Upstairs as well as down there is no sign of her. The car keys are on the table in the hall. Her jacket is on the coat hooks by the back door. Her bag hangs off the chair in the bedroom. I check its contents. Everything there. House keys, purse, mobile phone. I check the contents of her purse, beginning to panic now. It's pointless checking, because I don't know how much cash she keeps in there, how much she might have taken. All her cards seem to be there, but again, I'm not sure what 'all her cards' actually means.

I stand in the bedroom and look around to see whether there is anything at all missing. At the same time, I try to rationalise where she might have gone without purse, keys, car or phone. Somewhere on foot. Obviously. She might just have gone for a walk after her meal, although not so soon after having eaten.

I go back to the living room, trying to convince myself that she'll be back soon; that she's just gone for a walk. I stand at the window and look out over the sea. Briefly, I think I see a person in the distance, walking along the sea's edge, on a thin ribbon of sand, but I'm mistaken. The light is fading now; my eyes, eager for some news of her, are playing tricks on me.

I look up into the sky and see the moon, working its way towards being full again. She loves the moon, loves to see that silver disk hanging in the sky. It moves the tides; it shifts moods; it brings out wild behaviour. I look at the moon and almost ask it where it thinks she is.

By midnight, there is still no sign of her, and my eyes are rolling with tiredness. She has no keys with her, so I can't risk leaving the house to look for her. The road runs past this house, isolated on the side of the mountain. It goes up, not quite to the top of the mountain. It runs over the shoulder of the mountain, up to the two lakes; the llynnau. After that, it branches; one branch runs back down to the main road, the other further over the mountain's shoulder to the market town, four villages along from us. The road this house stands on also goes down, to another stretch of the main road. Across from where our road meets that main road is a footpath down to a beach; the one I can see from the living room window. There are too many choices, too many directions, and I don't know where to begin looking.

I know that I can't ring the police. She hasn't been gone long enough yet. She might return to the house any minute now. I can't ring the police, and I can't leave the house. And because this is a holiday home, I don't know anyone. I don't know who might be our neighbours. I don't know the neighbours back home, so why should I know who might live in the next cottage along, or even if they live there?

I'm forced into waiting.

I go back into the bedroom, and I pick up her bottle of perfume. I spray some into the air, just so that I can smell it, smell her. But it doesn't smell the same, just hanging there in the air. It needs the smell of her skin behind it; all the other fragrances that make up her scent.

I touch the book she's reading, that she's left, tossed into the middle of the bed. Its cover echoes a Magritte painting. Her favourite artist. It reminds me of the hot summer we spent in Brussels, visiting her friends, standing in the Musee des Beaux Arts in front of L'Empire Des Lumieres. How huge that canvas seemed. How she was drawn in by the street lamp in the gloom outside the house, all dark in the evening light, positioned just at eye level. And then, as she does when she's looking for the moon, she had looked up and seen the brilliance of the daylight sky, and her face had been transformed. As it is transformed when she finds the moon.

I go to the bedroom window to see where the moon is now, and I see a police car pulling up outside the house. A police officer gets out and looks up at the house, opens the gate, and walks up the path to the door, out of my sight.

I look past where the police car is parked, and down again to that stretch of beach. I've just realised something.

She still had her swimming things on, under her clothes, when she got back to the house. She didn't get changed.

I look back out at the shoreline where I thought I saw someone walking earlier. So soon after eating? She wouldn't have gone swimming again. Would she?

The police officer knocks at the front door, and I am paralysed with fear.

Before I can shake any movement into my body, before I can set off down the stairs to answer that knock, I hear voices outside. A man and a woman. The woman's voice sounds like my wife's. I listen more closely. I step nearer to the window. The police officer is going back down the path to his car.

"If you do see anything, please let us know," he is saying, over his shoulder, standing at the gate.

My wife walks into view.

"I will," she says. She stands at the gate too, holding it for him as he steps through to the road.

"Lovely night for looking at the moon," the officer says as he gets into the car. He starts the engine without waiting for a reply, and drives off.

My wife stands at the gate a moment longer, looking out to sea, then she turns towards the house and soon after she disappears from view, I hear the front door open.

She comes upstairs to the bedroom. I'm still standing at the window, looking out. I don't turn as she comes into the room. I listen to her, instead; the sound of her undressing, washing at the small sink in the corner, removing make up and jewellery, putting on her pyjamas. I hear her get into bed and snuggle down into the duvet.

"Where have you been?" I ask.

"Sitting on the bench outside the house," she says, muffled under the duvet.

"Why?" I ask.

"To see if you'd even think to step outside the house to look for me," she replies.

I leave the room. I sleep in one of the other bedrooms. There is no more talking to be done tonight.

This is the beginning of the end.

© J R Hargreaves May 2006