5 Wednesday night, 23 October ‘Don’t do this to me, please,’ Red said, as the mobile phone again went to voicemail after six rings. ‘Hi, this is Karl. I can’t answer just now, so leave a message and I’ll call you right back.’ She’d left three messages, and still he had not called right back. The first one had been at 7.30 p.m. – half an hour after the time he’d said he would pick her up. They’d planned to have dinner at the China Garden. She’d left a second message at 8 p.m., and a third, trying not to sound angry – which had been hard – shortly before 9 p.m. It was now 10.30 p.m. She’d even checked her Twitter messages and Facebook page, although Karl had never before used them to communicate with her. Terrific, she thought. Stood up. How great is that? Splitting up with Bryce had been a nightmare that still stayed with her. In those first few weeks after she had thrown him out, with the help of the police, she would often come home to find his Aston Martin parked right outside her old flat. He would be nowhere around, but the sight of the car was enough to give her the creeps. He’d stopped doing it after the time she had got really pissed off at him and let all four of the tyres down. But even after that, sometimes during her solitary training runs for the Brighton Marathon, in aid of the Samaritans, she would spot him watching her, always from a distance, either on foot or in a moving car. For a while it had put her off, particularly the evening runs she used to love across the Downs in the falling darkness. On the advice of the people she had talked to at the Sanctuary Scheme, she had moved out of her flat into this temporary accommodation, rented under an assumed name they had given to her. The second-floor flat, chosen for its position, had no windows that were visible from the main road, and a reinforced front door. It was in a gloomy, tired converted Victorian mansion block that had once been a grand private residence, close to Hove seafront. Her view from all the main windows was out onto the fire escape of an ugly 1950s apartment block, across a courtyard and an alleyway that led to the car park and lock-up garages behind her building. Although she was meant to feel safe here, the place depressed her. It had a narrow hallway, dingily lit, that led through into a small open-plan living/dining area, with an old-fashioned kitchen that was little more than a galley separated by a breakfast bar. There was a small bedroom off the hallway that she had made into her den, and a larger bedroom, with a window that looked down onto the lock-up garages and wheelie-bin store at the rear. She’d given the whole place a lick of white paint which had brightened it a little, and hung some pictures and family photographs, but it did not feel like home – and never would. Hopefully, she would be out of here soon and moving into her dream flat, thanks to the sale of her old place going through, and some financial help from her parents with the deposit. It was airy and spacious, on the top floor of the Royal Regent, a Regency house conversion on Marine Parade in Kemp Town, with a huge suntrap of a balcony facing the English Channel, and fabulous views of the marina to the east and Brighton Pier to the west. She had been advised by the police not to drive her beloved 1973 convertible Volkswagen Beetle, as it was too conspicuous. So it now sat, forlornly, in a lock-up garage she had rented nearby, and she took it out only very occasionally to keep the battery charged and everything turning over. She poured the last of the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc she had opened earlier, when it was obvious she wasn’t going anywhere tonight with Karl. Men, she thought angrily. Sodding, bloody men. But this was so out of character. After the nightmare of these past years that she had been through, Karl Murphy had seemed a total breath of fresh air. She’d been introduced to him by her best friend, Raquel Evans, a dentist. He was a doctor in the same medical centre as Raquel, and a recent widower. His wife had died from cancer two years back, leaving him with two small boys. According to Raquel, he was now ready to move on and start a new relationship. Raquel had had a feeling the two of them might hit it off, and she’d been right. Early days, but they’d had dinner a few times, and then last Saturday, with his sons staying overnight with his late wife’s parents, they’d slept together for the first time, and spent much of Sunday together. Karl had told her, with a big grin, that he must be quite sweet on her to have sacrificed his regular Sunday-morning golf game. It was a little bit early in their relationship to be a golf widow, Red had replied, with an equally big – but pointed – grin. They’d spent Sunday morning in bed, then they’d gone to the Brighton Shellfish & Oyster Bar, under the Kings Road Arches, for a seafood brunch of oysters and smoked salmon, followed by a blissful long walk along the esplanade. In the late afternoon, Karl had left to go and collect his boys, and they’d arranged their next date for tonight, Wednesday. He had planned to take the day off to play in a golf tournament and would be over straight after, he had said, to pick her up at 7 p.m. So where was he? Had he had an accident? Was he in hospital? He hadn’t told her which golf course he was playing at, so she had no idea where to begin phoning. She suddenly realized how little she actually knew about him, despite having checked him out. And probably how little about her he had told anyone. She toyed with phoning the police, asking if there had been any accidents, but dismissed that. They’d heard enough from her over the past few years, with her frequent 999 calls after yet another of Bryce’s violent attacks. The hospitals? Excuse me, I’m calling to see if by chance Dr Karl Murphy has been admitted. She realized, though, from her past experience with men, that she was probably being too charitable. He was more than likely pissed, propping up the bar at the nineteenth hole of some clubhouse, and had forgotten all about her. Sodding men. She drained her glass. Her fifth, counted the man watching her.