Daniel walked to Ruth’s, above a hardware shop on a road he had driven along hundreds of times.
Ada opened the door before he knocked. She wore a blue sweatshirt he didn't know and the trousers she'd left in on Sunday. Her hair was badly tied up. For one instant all he wanted was to put his face in it.
She stood aside.
“Come in.”
“No.”
“All right.”
Then he saw Ruth beyond her, holding a sheet of paper by its edges. There was a small press on a table in the front room. Someone had been doing work. Ada had been alive in a room where work happened while he listened to her voicemail.
He came in after all.
Ruth moved a pile of paper off a chair. “I'm going to keep doing this. You can have the kitchen.”
Ada led him there. A saucepan soaked in the sink. Two bowls sat on the table, both empty except for a little orange sauce. He couldn't stop looking at them.
“Have you eaten?” Ada asked.
“Don't.”
She sat down. He stayed beside the fridge, which hummed loudly enough to become another person.
“Did you know what he was doing?”
“Yes.”
She didn't soften it. He'd been ready for a softer word and now had nowhere to put his resistance.
“When you came for the window.”
“Yes.”
“When you moved in.”
“Yes.”
“When we stood in the room and said—”
“I knew how it had started.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
She pressed her hands flat on the table. Her right sleeve slipped back. Finger-shaped marks ran around her wrist.
Daniel saw them, then looked deliberately at her face.
“I thought we'd tell you,” she said. “At the beginning. That was what we said. I would meet you, see if there was anything there. Then you'd meet him.”
“Did you see if there was anything there, or did you make it?”
“I wanted you.”
“He said that too.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“Do you?”
Her mouth trembled. She bit the inside of her cheek, a habit he knew. He had once kissed her to stop her doing it. Now he watched it without moving.
“I liked having something he didn't get to do with me,” she said. “He picked you, and I thought that was funny. He couldn't just walk up and ask. He could arrange a room, but he couldn't ask a man if he wanted to kiss him.”
“And you could.”
“Yes. I liked that.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I liked him wanting to hear about it afterwards.”
The fridge stopped. In the sudden quiet Daniel heard a roller moving in the next room.
“Hear what?”
“Things you said. Things we did.”
“What did you send him?”
Ada's fingers curled away from the table.
“Pictures. Some recordings.”
“Of me.”
“Of us.”
“Don't make that better.”
“It doesn't.”
“Did you ask me?”
“No.”
He remembered her phone propped against a mug. Her laughing because his elbow knocked it sideways. A little film she said she wanted because he never let her photograph him properly. He had been shy, then flattered, then willing. There was no one to undo that for him.
He sat down because standing had become difficult.
Ada reached towards him and stopped halfway across the table.
“I stopped,” she said. “Not all at once. I kept thinking I'd tell you tomorrow. I stopped sending him the things I didn't want to give him. Then I stopped going when he asked. Two months ago I told him I wanted out.”
“Of him or of the game?”
“Both.”
“He's still your husband.”
“I hadn't done anything about it.”
“You told me you had.”
“Yes.”
He stared at the bowls again. “Why didn't you call yesterday?”
“Because I knew you'd ask this.”
The answer made him angrier than a story about no phone could have.
“I thought if I got the rest from him before I told you—”
“The rest of what?”
She drew her sleeve over the bruises.
“There's a camera in the mirror. In the frame. One of the little black holes in the leaves.”
Daniel looked at her.
“I found it on Sunday. I was wiping the dust out with a cotton bud. I thought it was a screw, then I saw the glass. I pulled the mirror forward and took the back off. I put it back so you wouldn’t see.”
“The mirror.”
“Yes.”
He pictured her in the bedroom kneeling beside the heavy frame. He'd been downstairs working. She hadn't called him.
“I took the memory card out. It was in my bag. I went to him.”
“Why him?”
“Because it was his mirror. He bought it.”
Daniel remembered her joking about terrible taste.
“He said he'd put the camera in while you were away. When I was out too. He had the spare key I gave him before.”
“You gave him a key.”
“A long time ago.”
“To our house.”
“To your house,” she said, and flinched at her own correction.
Daniel stood up again. The table was too close to his knees.
Ada told him about the flat. The hand on her wrist, the door Julian blocked, the bag he took. She'd hit him with it trying to pull it back. Her phone had fallen. She'd run without it, without the bag, without the card.
“He's got them,” she said. “He's been carrying them around your house.”
Daniel thought of the canvas bag beside the sofa.
“He's got older things as well. He told me he'd already changed the card once. I don't know everything he kept.”
“And you didn't know.”
“Not about that camera.”
“You want me to believe there's a line.”
“I didn't say you have to believe me.”
A convincing denial would have given him something to hold. Instead she was giving him pieces he couldn’t put back together without cutting his hands.
Ruth appeared in the doorway with her phone.
“Ada. You said today.”
“I know.”
“Now.”
Ada took the phone. Ruth remained in the doorway until she began the call, then returned to her work.
Daniel heard Ada give her name, say she was the person reported missing, confirm she was safe and staying with a friend. She asked how to speak to someone about what had happened at Julian's flat. Her voice was clumsy, too quiet on some words. She had to repeat her surname.
He watched her while she described the camera and the wrist and the phone. She didn't look at him for permission. When the person on the call asked something, she said, “There are things I did as well. I need to explain those.”
The call took several minutes. Afterwards she wrote a number on the back of an envelope and put it beside the bowls.
“Someone's going to speak with me,” she said. “They know I'm here. They said the search can stop.”
Daniel nodded. Her disappearance was over. He didn't feel found.
“Please don't go back to him,” she said.
“He's in my house.”
“Then don't let him stay.”
“Is that advice you followed?”
She took the words without answering. He regretted them before she could do anything with them.
She said, “There are things I didn't send. Things he doesn't know.”
He looked at the bruise appearing below her sleeve. Her hand was close enough to touch. He looked past it at Ruth’s phone. If he could lay open Julian’s phone and Ada’s phone and all their lovely ordinary voices, perhaps nothing would remain hidden.
“I'm going,” he said.
“Dan.”
He turned at the door.
“There's ink on your neck,” he said.
“Ruth's. She's trying a stupid new roller.”
He almost smiled. The old reflex hurt more than anything she had told him.
Outside, he stopped beneath the hardware shop’s awning and took out his house keys.