Chapter 23
TOM
I’m sitting cross-legged on Pete and James’s absurdly neat guest bed, phone in hand, still in last night’s T-shirt. Pete’s just gone downstairs, all breezy smiles and “come down when you’re ready,” which I think is code for “take five minutes to have a mild breakdown before breakfast.”
And I do.
My mind is whirling with too many thoughts.
Pete’s bruised wrist.
The talk of James’s temper.
The vicious sex I witnessed between him and Sam.
And Chris. The ex who vanished.
I rub my temples, last night’s wine catching up with me.
Chris Christianson.
The name rattles around in my head like loose change. Sam had dropped it in so casually last night, like it was a punchline, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Who just vanishes? People don’t just vanish, not unless they’re in Netflix documentaries narrated by David Tennant.
I open Facebook, because of course I do. There are about ten Chris Christiansons, which feels excessive for a country this size. I scroll through them one by one—men holding fish, men holding babies, men holding beers. None of them look like they used to date Pete.
And then I find him.
He’s smiling in every photo, all white teeth and blonde hair, and—oh god—there’s Pete, arm slung around him in one of them.
They look happy, genuinely happy, the kind of happy that makes my stomach twist. I don’t know why it hurts—Pete’s allowed a past—but seeing it is like pressing on a bruise I didn’t know I had.
Then I see the tag. Emma Christianson. Sister. I click.
Her timeline is a mixture of dog memes and increasingly desperate posts:
My brother has been missing for two years. He was last seen around the Bristol area. Please share. If anyone knows anything—anything—please contact me.
The air leaves my lungs like I’ve been punched. Missing. Not just “moved to Spain and forgot to tell anyone,” but missing-missing.
My phone buzzes, making me jump so hard I almost drop it. Craig.
“Morning,” I whisper, glancing at the door like James might materialise there any second.
“You sound like you’re hiding under a bed,” Craig says.
“I might as well be,” I hiss. “Craig, I think James is abusive. And controlling. And Chris—Chris Christianson—is missing.”
There’s a pause. “What? Who?”
“Pete’s ex. Blonde. Cheekbones. Sam mentioned him again last night, got his full name. And I found his sister on Facebook. She’s been posting for two years about him disappearing.”
Craig sighs, the long-suffering kind. “Tom, you have a gift for choosing the most dramatic men possible.”
“I’m serious,” I whisper-shout. “I saw James and Sam last night — together, like having sex together—”
“So, it was an orgy?”
“No! No, I wasn’t involved, I was just spying on them.”
“You’re not coming across great in this conversation.”
“No, it wasn’t like that,” I say, exasperated. Although I realise it was exactly like that. “The point is, it wasn’t… gentle. It was like, rough.”
“Rough? Okay, who doesn’t like a bit of rough play,” Craig admits.
“No, like rough-rough. Like ‘I’m going to choke you until you pass out’ rough.”
Craig sighs. “I miss nights like that.”
“Craig, listen to me: there’s this whole tension with Pete that feels like—like—”
“Like what?”
“Like if I leave him here long enough, Pete’s going to turn into one of those missing person posters too.”
Another pause. Then Craig says, more soberly, “Okay. That doesn’t sound great.”
“Doesn’t sound great? Craig, I’m basically living in the set of a true-crime podcast!”
“All right, calm down. You need to take a step back. If James really is controlling, this could end badly. I think you should keep your distance.”
“I can’t just—”
“You can,” Craig interrupts, voice hardening like the detective he is. “You need to think clearly.
“Can you look into him?” I ask.
“Look into him?”
“Like police-look-into-him? His background. Does he have a violent history?”
“I can’t just look into anyone for no reason.”
“Please,” I plead.
Craig sighs. “I’ll see what I can do. But you need to keep your head down. And don’t get any more involved. Have a few days away from Pete. It doesn’t sound like anything good will come of this.”
“And here’s me thinking polyamorous relationships were the new healthy norm.”
“Well, compared to this, mine positively is.”
When I hang up, my hands are shaking.
I head downstairs, trying to look normal, which probably just makes me look like a guilty man in a BBC crime drama. James is in the hallway, speaking to Pete.
“I’ve left the spare key where the cleaner can find it, under the plant pot by the back door” he says, like Pete’s too dense to have figured that out himself.
“Right,” Pete murmurs.
James grabs his jacket and leaves, door clicking shut behind him.
The house feels instantly lighter, like someone’s opened a window. Sam is nowhere to be seen.
Pete pokes his head around the kitchen door, smiling. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” I say, too brightly. So that’s what I do: sit down, drink coffee, and play normal while I figure out whether my boyfriend is married to a monster.