The Weekend Away

by Sarah Alderson

  ‘How long do you need to stay?’ he asks.

  ‘The police said I shouldn’t leave the country.’

  His cocks his head. ‘What else did they say?’ he asks. ‘About your friend?’

  ‘Not much. They’re looking into it.’

  He frowns, taking that in. ‘She hasn’t gone home without telling you?’

  ‘She left all her things,’ I point out. ‘And she didn’t have her handbag or passport with her when she went missing.’

  ‘Strange,’ he murmurs. ‘Is it the two men do you think, who came back with you?’

  ‘I …’ I break off, staring at him. How did he know it was two men? Did I tell him? I don’t think I did. He knew there were people besides us in the apartment on Friday night but I don’t remember telling him it was two men. Maybe I did though. Or maybe he guessed from having heard their voices. ‘The police don’t know,’ I say, not wanting to give him too much information. ‘They’re going to interview them.’

  ‘Are they worried something bad has happened to her?’ He seems to finally be grasping the seriousness of the situation, judging from the concern on his face, which has been all but absent until now.

  My throat tightens and my heart starts to race. ‘I don’t know.’

  Sebastian sees my anxiety and gives me a smile. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? You English people like your tea.’

  ‘I’m Irish,’ I say, automatically. I’m about to turn him down on the tea but I am so beyond tired I think I need some caffeine to perk me up. ‘Yes, thanks. I’ll have tea.’

  I follow him out to the kitchen. I look around noticing the pristineness of the space. ‘What do you do?’ I ask, trying to make conversation as he boils the kettle.

  ‘I read textbooks.’

  I’m not sure I’ve understood him correctly so I ask him to repeat it.

  ‘Audiobooks. I record textbooks as digital files. Physics, psychology, science, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Sounds like the perfect thing to put me to sleep,’ I say with a laugh, before realising how insulting that sounds. ‘I mean, I’m terrible at science. In one ear and out the other.’ I’m waffling, trying to make up for my rudeness. What’s gotten into me?

  He sniffs and looks wounded. ‘It is mainly for students who have dyslexia,’ he says, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘I work for a couple of publishers but also I have two clients who pay me to record textbooks for their children who are dyslexic.’

  ‘That’s … great,’ I say.

  ‘And I manage all my Airbnb apartments.’

  ‘You have more than one?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, I have five – all over the city. One in Sintra.’

  I nod absently. Making small talk is exhausting when your mind keeps drifting to other, more pressing concerns. ‘That’s nice.’

  He makes me a cup of tea and hands it to me before picking up a cloth to wipe down the countertops. He’s a clean freak, that’s for sure.

  I pull out my phone and wave it in the universal symbol of excuse me, must make a call. ‘My husband,’ I explain. ‘I should call him and tell him where I am. Don’t want him to worry.’

  Sebastian nods and I take my cup of tea and head back to my room, pausing slightly in front of a door to what seems like a third bedroom. This is how the apartment differs to ours. Judging by the wall dividing the living room, the room has been custom built.

  ‘That’s my recording room,’ Sebastian says. He’s come up behind me on silent feet.

  I notice that the door doesn’t have a handle, only a lock, and my stomach folds over on itself, anxiety buzzing through me like a swarm of wasps. I hurry to my bedroom and shut the door behind me. This door doesn’t have a lock at all, though at least it has a handle, and I wonder if I’m safe. My paranoia is so extreme that I’m starting to imagine all sorts of wild and crazy things. What if Sebastian’s lying about that room being a recording room? What if it’s a padded torture cell? What if Kate’s locked inside there? OK, calm the hell down, Orla.

  I have to suppress a giggle, which threatens to turn into a sob as I think about how much Kate would love it if she could hear my thoughts right now. She’d die laughing. I’m perfectly safe, I tell myself firmly. Sebastian isn’t a danger. I’m just being silly and overly paranoid. Better paranoid than dead, the voice in my head pipes up.

  I take a sip of tea and set it down on the side. It tastes funny, which is probably because it’s made from Lipton, which for some reason seems to be the only tea you can get when you’re abroad. Does anyone else, beside the Irish and the English, not know how to make a decent cuppa?

  I perch on the corner of the bed and see that Rob’s called and left a message. We keep missing each other. Before I call him back, though, I check my social media. The Twitterverse has retweeted my tweet about Kate thirteen times, which isn’t what I’d hoped when I prayed it would go viral. No one has tweeted back to say they remember seeing her either.

  I think about adding a Facebook status update about the situation but there isn’t much of one. Kate is still missing and what will anyone in England be able to do, other than send thoughts and prayers, which frankly aren’t going to be much help? I also don’t want to be fielding emails and calls from friends, which could tie up the phone line, in case Kate or the police call.

  I’m not even aware of my eyelids drooping or of falling asleep but when I burst awake sometime later it’s with the gasp of a drowning woman. I’m sitting bolt upright, heart hammering. The room is dark and for a moment I’m confused as to where I am and think I’m in our Airbnb apartment, but then I remember I’m at Sebastian’s in the apartment downstairs. How did I fall asleep? I guess exhaustion finally caught up with me. Groggy, I check my phone only to find that it’s died. I root in my bag for the charger and plug it in, anxiously waiting for it to turn on and then, when it finally does, discovering it’s gone seven in the evening. I’ve been asleep for hours and there are several voicemails.

  The first is from Kate’s mum. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t manage to book a flight. Can you get Kate to call me? Thanks.’

  I have to replay the message to make sure I’ve heard it correctly. How the hell can I get Kate to call her? She’s missing! Kate really wasn’t joking when she said her mother redefined the term batshit crazy.

  There’s a voicemail from Detective Reza too. She’s calling to tell me they haven’t been able to find Joaquim or Emanuel. I gave the police the address from Joaquim’s driver’s licence. Konstandin had the good sense to make him hand it over so we could take a picture as surety. I wonder if they’ve done a bunk or gone into hiding. They must have guessed that despite my promises I’d go to the police and are no doubt lying low, but I have to admit it’s a disappointment.

  Rob has also left a message and I feel bad as I never called him back before falling asleep. I try calling him but it’s my turn to miss him. He might be putting Marlow down to sleep. I hope everything’s OK with her. Being away from her has pulled into focus just how much I love her. I stare at my screensaver, a picture of Marlow waving a carrot in the air like a flag, until I feel the tears start to build up and I have to put the phone down before I start bawling.

  On stiff legs I move to the en-suite bathroom. My clothes feel damp and are sticking to me. I must have sweated in my sleep, probably from nightmares fuelled by my overactive imagination. Like the bedroom, the bathroom doesn’t have a lock, and I’m uneasy about it, but I need a shower – I feel rank – so I push my suitcase in front of the bedroom door and lay a rolled-up towel along the floor in front of the bathroom door as a bit of a buffer before stripping naked.

  As I wait for the hot water to come through, I try to pummel my thoughts into some kind of order. Kate, what the hell were you up to? Because clear as day, she was up to something and whether or not it’s related to her disappearance I don’t know, but I also don’t think it can be a coincidence. As Konstandin said, figuring out why she might have wanted to drug me and set me up to sleep with, or t
hink I’d slept with, an escort may be the key to all this.

  If only I could get into her phone I could find out who it was that called on Friday night. I wonder if I should have given the phone to the police but they didn’t ask for it, another thing that makes me wonder about how good they are.

  The police probably have ways to crack open phones. But then I recall reading in the paper last year about a spree shooter in the US. The FBI weren’t able to access his iPhone and Apple refused to help, citing privacy laws, so perhaps it’s a dead end, though surely they could get hold of her phone records and those would contain some information, at least about who she was on the phone to on Friday night.

  The shower doesn’t do much to wake me up. I’m too exhausted for that, despite the nap I just took. Wrapped in a towel I walk out into the bedroom and find my phone ringing on the bed. Lunging for it I see that it’s Konstandin. I answer it. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘I was just calling to see if there was any news.’

  ‘No,’ I say, feeling cold droplets of water snaking down my spine from my wet hair. ‘Nothing. The police tried to find Joaquim and Emanuel but didn’t have any luck.’

  ‘They probably left town for a few days to avoid them.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ I muse, chewing on my thumb. ‘I didn’t tell the police about you, in case you were wondering.’

  There’s a silence on the end of the phone before he says, ‘Thank you. But that’s not why I’m calling. Have you eaten?’ he asks.

  I hesitate. ‘No,’ I admit.

  ‘Do you want to get some food?’ he asks.

  I am hungry and I don’t much fancy staying in the apartment all evening, hiding from Sebastian to avoid conversation about audio textbooks and growing slowly more paranoid about what he’s up to in that room besides recording audio books. And it would be good to talk through everything with Konstandin. ‘Yes, OK,’ I finally say.

  ‘I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes, how does that sound?’

  ‘Good,’ I say, standing up and looking about for my clothes. ‘See you then.’

  As soon as I hang up I wonder if it’s weird to go out to dinner with him. Rob wouldn’t like it much. And if I’m honest, I’m not sure of Konstandin’s intentions. He’s just being a friend I suppose, and I am grateful for everything he’s done so far. It would be good to talk everything through with him. I feel so alone over here.

  I worry, though, that I’m being too stupid and too trusting. He isn’t exactly a law-abiding citizen. The thought occurs to me again that he could be involved in Kate’s disappearance. It would explain his interest. But if that were the case, he wouldn’t be helping me hunt down clues. In my heightened state of anxiety and exhaustion I can’t calibrate properly. I can’t figure out who to trust. I can’t even trust myself.

  Fifteen minutes later I push my improvised barricade suitcase away from the bedroom door and exit the room. Walking quietly through the apartment I cock my ear for any sound of Sebastian but it seems like he’s gone out. I don’t know what to do about a key – how will I get back in later? – so I call his name. There’s no response.

  My gaze hovers on the closed door, the one with the lock. Is he in there? From the outside the room looks to be about as big as our third bedroom back home, a tiny box space about six feet by eight, roughly the same size as a prison cell. My previous suspicions about the room come back to me. I tiptoe towards the door and press my ear to it. It might be my imagination but I think I hear a woman’s voice on the other side of the door, but then comes silence.

  I knock loudly. ‘Hello?’

  The door opens a crack and Sebastian peeks his head out, looking irritated. He holds the door half-closed and blocks my view with his body. ‘Yes?’ he asks, tersely.

  I crane to look past him, catching sight of a desk against one wall with a computer, and a microphone and a pile of heavy-looking books. The walls are lined with some dark-coloured foam panels. It looks, from what I can see, very much like the kind of office you’d use for recording audio textbooks.

  ‘I was just about to head out to get some food,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘If Kate turns up will you make sure she calls me?’

  He nods.

  ‘And I wondered if you had a spare key so I don’t disturb you later.’

  ‘What time will you be home?’ he asks.

  I’m taken aback – surely, I can come home whenever I like? I’m a paying guest after all. ‘Not late, probably before ten.’

  ‘You don’t need a key. I will be home.’

  ‘It might be useful to have a key though,’ I say, confused. What does he normally do when he has people to stay?

  ‘I don’t have a spare,’ he says hurriedly. ‘Now I must get back.’ He turns back into the room and my eyes track to the monitor, catching sight as I do of movement on it. A black and white movie by the looks of things.

  He shuts the door on me and I stand there for a few seconds, staring. Why is he watching a movie in there when he has a whole flat screen in the living room?

  Maybe it’s porn. But I’ve never seen black and white porn, though I haven’t seen much at all. And I’m assuming he’d want to watch that in the comfort of his bedroom. Though maybe he figured he could watch it at full volume in there, thanks to the soundproofing. I shudder thinking about it. Whatever is going on, he’s downright weird. But I can at least put to rest my suspicion that he’s holding Kate inside a soundproofed room in his house, torturing her. That’s something I suppose. I wish she were here, if only to share my increasing paranoid and crazy ideas about her disappearance with her. She’d find it hilarious.

  As I step outside onto the street into the warm night air, I see Konstandin is already outside, waiting for me, leaning against his car smoking a cigarette.

  ‘How long have you been waiting? You should have texted me to say you were here,’ I say, walking towards him.

  ‘I got here early,’ he says, drawing on his cigarette before tossing it away. He’s wearing a beaten-up old leather jacket and he smells of smoke. I am happier to see him than I realised, which is surprising.

  ‘How are you?’ he asks as we move towards the car.

  I shrug, my cheeks still overheated. ‘Not so good,’ I admit. ‘I’ve had to move out of—’

  ‘Orla?’

  I jerk around at the sound of my name. Oh my God. A man is striding towards me across the street. It’s Rob.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I say, staring in astonishment at my husband.

  Rob’s gaze moves from me to Konstandin. He frowns, his eyes narrowing, before turning his gaze back to me. Ignoring his look, I throw my arms around his neck and my body reacts like all the air has been sucked out of it at once. I almost go limp, the relief is so great at seeing him. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ I stutter before pulling back in alarm. ‘Where’s Marlow?’ I ask, looking around and spotting only a small backpack at Rob’s feet but no pushchair or baby.

  ‘She’s with Denise.’

  ‘The babysitter?’ I say, bewildered. ‘Overnight?’ We’ve never left her overnight, not even with her grandparents.

  ‘My parents are away, remember?’ Rob says. ‘And I couldn’t ask your mum to come over from Ireland. It would have taken too long for her to get there and Denise said she could take her for a night or even two if we need.’

  ‘You came,’ I interrupt, my eyes watering. I clutch his hand. ‘Thank you.’ It suddenly feels as if everything might be OK. Rob’s here. We’ll find Kate together.

  I see Rob’s smile tighten and his gaze drift back to Konstandin who has stepped away to give us space and is waiting, hands folded in front of him, watching us through lowered eyes.

  ‘This is Konstandin,’ I say to Rob, feeling heat rush to my face. ‘He’s been helping me. He’s … an Uber driver,’ I blurt. Oh, this is awkward.

  Konstandin holds out his hand to Rob. ‘Konstandin,’ he says, introducing himse
lf.

  ‘Rob. Orla’s husband,’ Rob counters, rather coldly. I wince. Oh dear, he’s not happy.

  ‘I figured that,’ Konstandin replies with something of a smirk.

  Rob shakes his hand and I notice both men’s knuckles turn white and they look like they’re trying to out-grip each other. ‘Konstandin has been the most useful person,’ I explain hurriedly to Rob, wondering why I sound so guilty. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without him. He’s been translating and … things.’ I peter off, knowing that by rambling on I sound guilty of something, even though I’ve not done anything wrong.

  ‘I see,’ says Rob, gesturing towards Konstandin’s car. ‘And you were just going somewhere?’

  I nod. ‘Yes.’ Shit, should I admit we were going to get dinner together? It seems like something Rob could very easily read into, but I blurt it out anyway like an idiot. ‘We were going to get some food actually.’

  Rob frowns. ‘You couldn’t order takeaway?’

  I open my mouth to say something but Konstandin gets in first. ‘Perhaps I’ll go.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Rob murmurs.

  Konstandin turns to me. ‘Let me know if you hear any news.’

  I nod, giving him an apologetic look. I grit my teeth as he gets in his car, my face flushing furiously with anger and embarrassment. Once he drives off I turn to Rob and rush into his arms before he can say anything or grill me further.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ I say, burrowing into his familiar chest. He hugs me back, dropping a kiss on top of my head. I close my eyes, squeezing them shut. ‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’

  ‘I was racing to the airport and I tried you but you didn’t pick up.’ He pulls back. ‘Good job I did show up though. Were you really going to go to dinner with him?’

  My face flames. ‘It’s not like that.’

  He frowns. ‘How is it then? It’s a little bit weird to go out to dinner with an Uber driver, don’t you think? And he looks a bit dodgy if you ask me.’

  ‘He’s not dodgy,’ I protest, weakly.