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Danielle’s mobile was switched off. I left a curt message for her to call me. This
needed to be sorted out with maximum pain.
The directory was still on the table from when I’d called the QPR fan. I flicked
the pages from “Police” to “St Clare’s and St Mark’s.” The Secretary told me that
Danielle was teaching and would be until lunchtime. What a dedicated woman she was.
I left another message, thumped down the phone and went out to the garden. I walked
a circuit of the lawn then returned to the living room and scrolled through the images
again. They hadn’t changed. She looked-out at me. I lay down on the sofa. Every now
and then I would look to the screen. She kept on looking at me while the sound of
Gene Pitney and Marc Almond drifted in. Could life get any worse? Yes, it could,
thanks to the DJ’s decision to play Black Box.
I thought back to November and to the preceding months and how Danielle and I had
stopped having sex in October. This was because her period had been three weeks late
in September. It had scared her. She became distant and put-in more hours at school.
She did this when she was stressed - working herself to a standstill. It was a strange
approach, but it worked for her. She would suddenly pop-out of it and everything
would be fine again. However, this hadn’t happened, and all through the winter she’d
been distracted and irritable. It was during this time that she’d started wearing
clothes in bed. This was a serious development.
In our time together she’d always slept naked. The change began with knickers and
a T-shirt, and progressed to thick socks. On a couple of cold nights, she’d worn
track-suit bottoms. They don’t look good even for sport.
Slipping-off a pair of knickers is erotic. Heaving off some fleecy joggers is not.
By December, all of this had got to me. I hardly saw her during the week, and when
we did have time to cuddle, I was hugging an Inuit in full winter-wear. I asked whether
anything was wrong and she always said “no.” I suggested her “lateness” had been
a miscarriage. She became angry and insisted that she’d skipped a period. I didn’t
believe her. In our years together she’d always been very regular - like a walking
lunar calendar. She’d never been late.
