“When did you first have the feeling?”

I sipped gin and gave this some thought. “Yesterday morning when I looked up Ollie and Cheryl’s address.”

“But their address was okay?”

“Yes. The house was fine, and they were both lovely.” I took a slug of gin. “So, what did I miss?”

“Recreate it.” Sue laid her glass down, grabbed mine and set it beside hers. “Do what you did yesterday morning.”

“Okay.” I faced the sideboard. “I needed my address book.” I stepped forward, opened the middle drawer, and picked up the book. “I took it out and went upstairs….” And then the ominous feeling returned with a rush of blood to my face, and I saw what I’d missed. I dived forward.

“Whoa.” Sue watched me emptying the drawer. “What are you looking for?”

I held out a passport. “The partner to this.”

Sue took it and looked at the photo. “This is yours.” She gasped. “Jeff’s is missing? Are you sure? Wait, stop, put everything back slowly and carefully.”

The drawer was empty. I took a deep breath and laid every item back, announcing its presence as I did so. “Insurance, house stuff, old photos, car stuff, bill info, notebooks of mine, certificates of mine, my address book…and my passport.”

“Try the other drawers.”

“It’s always kept in the middle one.”

“Try the others anyway.”

We emptied and refilled the top drawer and the bottom one without success. “It’s gone.” I sat on the settee and reached for my glass.

“Didn’t you check to see if he’d taken it?” Sue picked up her own glass, drained it, and refilled hers and mine.

“I did.” I nodded slowly as realisation dawned. “It was here on Saturday along with his house keys.”

“So, he, what…sneaked back in and got it?” Sue looked around with a shiver. “He could have been in here when we were at his parents’ hotel.”

“No, wait.” I waved at her. “Stop, let me think.” I downed a mouthful of gin. “He left his keys, so he couldn’t get back in.”

“Unless he had copies made?”

“Why not just keep his own keys?”

“To fool you into thinking he wasn’t coming back. Are his keys still here?”

I went out to the hall, checked the dish, then returned. “They’re still here. Wait, though…I had the feeling yesterday morning. My subconscious saw the passport was gone, but the message never made it to my conscious brain.”

“I’m saying nothing.” Sue drank more gin.

“That means it went missing between Saturday and Thursday.” I gazed at Sue, eyes wide. “And there was only one stranger inside this room.”

“That makes a horrible kind of sense.”

“Nicola arrives, pretends to faint, and I stupidly let her in. She knew where to go; she came straight here and stood at the sideboard. Then she asked for water, and I went through to the kitchen to get it.”

“And she swiped Jeff’s passport.” Sue nodded. “He sent her here to get it for him.”

“Well, that’s that.” I slumped and drank more gin. “They’re in the South of France or Mexico or somewhere, spending his winnings.”

“Bummer.” Sue slumped beside me. “This calls for more gin.” She refilled our glasses, and we drank – and kept on drinking. It registered that I hadn’t eaten much that day, but I blithely ignored the message and carried on. We played music and danced around the room, and Elvis joined in. We drank more gin. Then Sue pointed at me. “You know what you gotta do?”

“Wha…?” I stared at her, mouth open.

“Phone your actor-slash-model. Tom. Tim. Whatever. Go on a date.”

“Nooooooo…..d’you think?” The idea filtered through my gin-addled brain and came out clear and shiny. “That’s a brilliant idea. Gimme phone.” I rummaged in my bag, found my mobile, and scrolled down to Tim’s name. “Yesh…here goes, no, wait. What’ll I say?”

“Tell him…tomorrow…eight o’clock…hotel bar.”

“Course. Brilliant.” I nodded and kept on nodding while I listened to the dialling tone. “S’ringing. Oh, oh, hello?”

“Hi?” Tim sounded polite but wary.

“Tim, Tim, hi.” I nodded again. “S’Marnie.”

“Marnie?” His voice brightened. “Hello, how are you?”

“Yeah, listen, you wanna go for a drink?”

“Oh, yes, that would be lov –”

“Tomorrow…eight o’clock…hotel bar.”

“Hotel…? Oh, you mean the Dexter Bay Hotel?”

“Yesh.”

“Well, that would be great. Yes.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Cool.” More nodding because my body seemed to be working independently from my brain.

“I’ll see you there, then?”

“Yesh. Bye-bye.” I stabbed at my phone and, after three attempts, ended the call. I looked at Sue. “Sorted.”

“Whoo…hoo!” She grabbed me, and we danced around the room again, Elvis at our heels. Then we finished the gin and started on a half-bottle of vodka. At five o’clock, Colin phoned, begging Sue to return home, and she hung up and looked at me. “Pfft. The girlfriend’s doing his head in. Better go.”

Elvis and I walked Sue to my front gate and watched her weave her not-so-steady way up Hill Street, then I floated back indoors, fed my dog, cobbled a sandwich together and ate it standing by the sink. My head felt as though it belonged to someone else.

I let Elvis out to the back garden, watched him tear around the lawn, then called him back in and trudged through to the living room. “Just having forty winks,” I told him as I lay down on the settee. Then I closed my eyes and passed out.

I woke on Saturday morning, stiff and cramped, with a thumping headache, a mouth like a camel’s armpit and the gnawing suspicion that I’d made a complete idiot of myself.

Did I phone someone? I sat up slowly, looked around, but couldn’t see my mobile, so I lay back down and thought over the last seven days. It was only a week since I found Jeff’s emails, but it seemed like months had passed, and in that time, I’d turned detective, connected with a hot chef and received two lots of flowers from an actor/model. Plus, I was now a dog owner.

Elvis appeared at my side and nudged my arm as if he'd read my mind. “Okay, okay.” I hauled myself to my feet, swayed, and left the room hanging onto the walls. I made my way to the kitchen, let Elvis out and organised the Krays morning feed. Then I brought my dog back in, fed the gangland pigeons, and made myself a pot of strong coffee. After two cups, I went upstairs, showered and changed into jeans and a sweatshirt.

Back downstairs, I returned to the living room and performed a more thorough search for my phone, finally discovering it stuffed down the back of the settee beside my other missing sock. Elvis had the grace to look sheepish.

“Okay, here goes.” I swiped through to my phone’s log and checked the last call made, and there it was.

Tim. “Oh, God.” I looked closer. I’d phoned him, and the call had been answered. I tried to focus, and my head throbbed. “Coffee. More coffee.”

In the kitchen, I fed Elvis and forced myself to eat a bowl of cereal followed by toast and coffee and two painkillers. Then the urge to escape grew too strong to ignore, so I gathered my dog and his accessories, and we left the cottage, arriving at the front gate as an ancient Daimler purred to a halt outside. The window slid down, and a hand came out and waved. “Good morning.”

“Morning, Mr White.” My neighbour’s friend was here to take them both to Lufton Bowling Club for a morning of tea, digestive biscuits and cutthroat backhands.

“Good morning, Mrs Hope.” And there he was, resplendent in smart slacks and blazer festooned with what Jeff used to call his ‘war medals’: a sprawling collection of bowling badges and club pins.

“Morning, Mr Simpkins.” My neighbour lugged his bowling bag to the car and got in the passenger side. The Daimler moved off, and Elvis and I turned uphill and made for the moors. We walked, and I tried to remember the previous evening but drew a blank after visiting Nicola’s parents. There had been gin. And lemons. Vodka. “Sheesh.” I looked at Elvis. “I am never drinking again, d’you hear?”

He gave me a dark look and returned to sniffing clumps of gorse. I chose the long way around, which passed another hour, and then we headed down Moor Road and met Sue hauling two carrier bags from the local grocery store. She looked at me and winced.

“You look like I feel.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I nodded. “Don’t remember much. When did you go home?”

“Dinner time, to meet Don’s new girlfriend. Amy.”

“Oh, yes, that’s ringing a bell. How did it go?”

“Badly.” Sue leant against St John’s church wall. “She’s an eco-warrior type, loud and opinionated. Started lecturing us on our carbon footprint and telling us how to live. Colin stuck it so long, and then he snapped and went for her.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. Amy told us she’d flown to Spain for a hen do, so he asked what about that carbon footprint? And she’d driven here and was her car electric? And if it was, how would Amy dispose of lithium batteries, and did she shop locally and live sustainably? Or was Amy just a hypocrite who liked the sound of her own voice? She stormed out and went back to London.”

“That’s a result.”

“Not really. Don went with her.” Sue heaved an enormous sigh. “I’m back to nursing duties.”

“I’ll come over tonight with Elvis. That’ll distract Colin.”

“You’ll do no such thing. You need to go back home and make yourself gorgeous for your date with Tom. Tim.”

“My date…?” I felt the blood drain from my face. “I…what…phoned him and asked him out?”

“Yes. You were very assertive.”

I slumped against the wall beside Sue. “This is tonight?”

“Eight o’clock in the hotel bar.”

“Oh, God. I can’t go. I’ll phone and cancel. No, I’ll text.”

“You will not. If you miss this chance, I’ll never speak to you again or go to mad people’s houses with you. It’s only a drink, nothing heavy.” She grinned. “Unless you get lucky. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more.”

I swallowed noisily, and Sue slapped my back. “Go and have some fun – you deserve it. Then come over tomorrow and tell me the gory details.” She pushed away from the wall and grabbed her bags. “Okay?”

“Okay.” I watched her walk away, and then I took Elvis down to the seafront, trying to imagine what I thought I’d been doing the previous evening. My stomach twitched with nerves, and the urge to phone or text and make some excuse grew stronger – but I knew I’d never do it. I’d rather go on an embarrassing date with Tim than face the Wrath of Sue and endless recriminations.

The prom was busy, so I stuck to the opposite side of the street. There are six houses here, then Dexter Bay’s meagre selection of shops – the grocers, a chemist, the newsagent with sub-post office and a gift shop. Then came the Dexter Bay Hotel – the haunt of my youth and regular meeting place with Sue until I married and moved around. Jeff had refused to drink there, not wanting to ‘mingle with the local yokels’.

God, the man was a complete pillock.

I looked at the building as we passed. There was no pub in the village. Due to an ancient by-law and more recent conservation order, building work in Dexter Bay was outlawed, and the hotel had a roaring trade with locals, guests and day-trippers. Rumours suggest that it was an old smuggler’s inn and is haunted – although other versions indicate this is a load of nonsense and the only spirits are the cheap ones the landlord buys from the cash ‘n’ carry.

And tonight, I’d be back there with a strange man, trying to relax and hold a conversation. My throat dried up, and I made three attempts before I managed to swallow.

We approached Mrs Darrow’s house, and I looked across at Sea Brew as a couple emerged, and a group of women went inside. There was somewhere else with a roaring trade, though I wondered how it would fare during the winter when tourists dwindled and the sea lashed the prom wall and sprayed the café windows. Then I reasoned that Paul would have a backup plan and be okay.

It was none of my business, anyway.

Elvis and I arrived back at Lilac Cottage, and I wandered into the living room, then had a flashback to Jeff’s missing passport and my stupidity at letting Nicola in to steal it. Why had Jeff described the room and the drinks cabinet yet not told her which house it was? He was as rubbish a spymaster as he was an accountant.

“What a complete wazzock.”

I went through to the kitchen, and Elvis stared at me, looked at his bowl, and then stared again. He whined and repeated the process.

“Oh, right, yes. Sorry.” I fetched his bag of kibble and filled the bowl while he sat and watched me, presumably congratulating himself on how well my training was going. I watched him eat and realised I couldn’t face food myself: my stomach now had butterflies the size of the Kray Pigeons, and the thought of drinking alcohol made me nauseous. Could I go on this date and stay sober?