Ada had left a thumbprint in the butter.
Daniel had been looking at it while the police officer asked when he'd last seen her. He'd brought the dish downstairs because the toast had seemed like something he ought to do. Now the toast was cold beside a cracked fanlight and there was a woman in uniform in his workshop, waiting for him to stop looking at butter.
“Yesterday. Sunday. About two.”
“And she said she was going where?”
“Out.”
He heard how useless that was.
“She'd been cleaning upstairs. I was here. She came down with her bag. I asked if she wanted anything from the shops and she said she'd get it.”
“Was anything unusual?”
He wanted to offer a useful thing. Ada's hair had been damp. She'd put it up with a pencil and one strand had stuck to her cheek. He had lifted it off, and she'd caught his wrist and held it for a moment. He hadn't remembered that until now.
“She didn't kiss me.”
Sergeant Cole's pen paused.
“I don't mean that's evidence. She doesn't have to kiss me every time she goes out.”
“Of course.”
“Usually she steals something. A mint. A pencil. It's a joke.”
The officer waited. Daniel rubbed the black pencil mark from his palm with his other thumb. It wouldn't come off.
Ada had used the workshop as a route through the house even when the side entrance was easier. She'd come in smelling of printer's ink or wet wool, draw a fingertip along whichever pane he'd been polishing and ask whether he could make her something ugly. For sixteen months there had been a second life moving through his work. Eleven months of her socks appearing in improbable places. Ten since they'd stood upstairs in front of a window he had repaired and promised things.
“Your wife,” Cole said. “When did you marry?”
“We did our own ceremony. Here.”
“Was that a registered marriage?”
“No. We knew it wasn't. We'd both done the official version before. We wanted—” He stopped trying to explain it. “We wanted to say it.”
“And her previous marriage?”
“Finished. She said they were divorced.”
“Have you spoken with her former partner?”
“I don't know him.”
It had once seemed a virtue to him that Ada didn't bring her old marriage into their house. His ex-wife, Calla, had left whole months lodged between the floorboards. Ada had said Julian was the sort of man who would straighten your collar while you were telling him you couldn't breathe. Daniel had laughed. He hadn't asked what had happened next.
Cole asked about work, friends, the hospital call he had already made. He gave her Ruth Bell's name, the only friend whose number he had, and said he'd left a message. He'd called Ada so often overnight that her voicemail greeting had ceased to sound like words.
A car stopped outside.
He looked up at once, foolishly, because Ada did not drive.
The man who came to the door was wearing a dark coat over an open-necked shirt. He was taller than Daniel and stood with one shoulder slightly forward, as if he had expected to have to squeeze past someone. A purple bruise ran from his left cheekbone towards his ear.
“Daniel Mercer?”
“Yes.”
The man looked at Cole. Then at the half-eaten toast, the boots underneath the bench, the narrow stairs rising beyond it.
“I'm Julian.”
Daniel knew the name before he knew what to do with it.
“Ada's Julian?”
“I don't know what she's told you.”
“I'm taking details about her whereabouts,” Cole said. “Do you have information?”
Julian drew his phone from his coat pocket. His hand was steady until the screen came on.
“I've been trying to call her.”
“So have I,” Daniel said.
“Since yesterday?”
“Yes.”
Julian nodded once, a small movement that made the bruise shift. “Then I think we need to talk.”
“You're her ex-husband.”
“No.”
The word didn't seem to reach anything. Daniel heard the faint click of the officer's pen.
“I'm her husband too.”
Julian turned the phone.
Ada stood on stone steps with flowers in her hand. Younger, perhaps, her hair longer, her eyes narrowed against the sun. Beside her Julian smiled in a pale suit. She wore the thin gold ring she said had belonged to her mother. Daniel knew the ring. He had taken it off her finger to wash plaster out of the setting.
“This was six years ago,” Julian said. “We're still married.”
Daniel reached for the phone, then withdrew his hand. He hadn't asked permission to touch it. An absurd thing to worry about.
Cole asked Julian for his surname, address, number. Rook. An address on the north side of Merrow. Julian had a photograph of a certificate as well, which he began to open.
“I'll need to verify the relevant information,” she told him. “Let's speak one at a time.”
Daniel said, “How did you know about me?”
“I found the address.”
“Where?”
“Among her things.”
“That could mean anything.”
“Yes,” Julian said. “It could.”
He looked humiliated. Daniel hadn't expected that. The photograph had made him angry, but this man's face made anger more difficult to place.
“Did she do that?” Daniel asked, nodding towards the bruise.
Julian touched it, almost gently. “We argued.”
“About me?”
“She wouldn't tell me where she was going.”
Ada had held Daniel's wrist. Damp hair, bag against her hip. He tried to move that woman into a room where she could hit someone hard enough to leave that mark.
Cole directed Julian's account back to when he had last seen Ada and what he knew of the argument. Daniel listened to answers which sounded ordinary until they were put together. Ada had been at Julian's flat yesterday. They'd spoken. She'd struck him with her bag and gone. He didn't know where.
“She's been living here,” Daniel said.
Julian's mouth tightened.
“For eleven months.”
“I can see that.”
“You can't just look around and—”
“Her shoes are there.”
Beside the stairs, the red clogs she'd bought second-hand and sworn would become comfortable. One lay on its side. Daniel had stepped over them all morning.
Julian said, “Does she still put newspaper in them when it rains?”
Daniel felt a strange relief. Then hated it.
“She says the leather's like a sponge.”
“She says they'll learn.”
“Yes.”
For a moment the two men were smiling at the same absent woman.
Cole finished with what they should do if Ada contacted either of them, how to pass on further information. She wasn't declaring one marriage real and the other ridiculous. She wasn't saying Ada was in trouble or safe. Daniel wanted her to stay until the things in his workshop returned to their proper uses.
Instead she stepped outside to speak to Julian briefly, then left.
Daniel stood in the doorway. Beyond the seafront roofs a strip of grey water looked almost solid.
Julian came back towards him.
“I can go,” he said. “If that's what you want.”
Daniel pictured shutting the door and sitting beside the butter dish until it was evening again.
“Do you know her workshop?”
Julian hesitated. “Not this one.”
“Then come.”
He took Ada's spare workshop key from the hook. He left her clogs where they were.