Page 71 of The Happiness Project

‘Just tell me what you found,’ I say wearily.

‘It’s interesting.’ Patty reappears from the kitchen and reassures me.

Mum gets out her little notepad and clears her throat.

‘At one fifteen, suspect and his work colleague park their van and have lunch in the park,’ she says. ‘We did start following him before this but he was in some office block all morning and we couldn’t see what he was doing.’

‘You needed a pass to get in, otherwise we would have tried,’ adds Poppy, getting a nod from Mum. How such an unlikely alliance formed will probably baffle anyone who doesn’t know my family.

‘Suspect had cheese sandwiches without any salad,’ declares Mum as if this is a groundbreaking finding.

‘How close did you get?’ I ask.

‘Poppy has binoculars,’ explains Mum. ‘You can see in the windows right across the street with them. I know what I’m asking for my next birthday.’

‘The key point here,’ Poppy says, picking up the thread, ‘is that we think if there was a woman around, she’d probably have bought salad and made him put it in his sandwiches.’

‘He might not like salad,’ I suggest. ‘Or, here’s a theory — maybe he makes his own lunch even though he has a girlfriend.’

‘No need to be uppity,’ says Mum. ‘You may not like the thinking but I know people and that was not a female-made sandwich.’

‘Is there anything else?’ I sigh.

‘Oh yes,’ declares Mum. ‘I’ll skip past the following him all afternoon and into the supermarket where he bought microwaveable meals for one as you’ll probably have some snarky remark about that. We’ll get onto the key discovery.’

‘Please do.’

‘I stayed in the car park while your mum followed him around the shop,’ says Poppy. ‘Just in case she lost him and he came out early.’

‘We had the phones on so we could alert each other,’ adds Mum, absolutely loving all of this.

‘When he came out, he sat in the seat of his van and made a phone call before he left,’ continues Poppy. ‘Well, we were standing quite close by, and we heard that call in its entirety,’ she said with a flourish. ‘He called you.’

I sit stunned and eventually say, ‘Me?’

‘That’s right,’ adds Mum, reading from her notebook. ‘We wrote this down afterwards but we both heard it:

‘Angie — Michael again. Really sorry to keep calling you like this but I’m worried and do wonder if everything is okay. I know you said not to bother you but if you could call back and let me know whether your friend Patty is recovering, I’d love to hear from you — and just in case you’ve lost it, my number is . . .’

‘Are you sure?’ I ask the wall of faces now staring at me. ‘I haven’t had any calls from him at all. Maybe it’s someone else he’s calling.’

‘Someone else called Angie with a friend called Patty?’ asks Patty.

‘I promise you that’s exactly what he said,’ says Poppy. ‘Somehow, he’s using the wrong number.’

‘How? I gave him my number and called him from it,’ I say.

‘Don’t know, but it’s the only explanation,’ says Mum. ‘He obviously thinks that you’re ignoring him.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asks Patty. ‘Call him?’

‘No,’ I say, channelling the strong woman who has just bought a beautiful apartment. ‘No more mixed messages, I’m going to go round to his house and talk face to face. If he’s out, I’ll wait. If he has a female visitor, I’ll take two minutes of his time then leave them to it. I want this cleared up once and for all.’

‘Can we come?’ asks Mum, getting a very firm ‘No!’ from everyone in the room.

I want to stop the speculation about what the possible reason behind this mystery could be so I wrestle myself from the sofa and head to the kitchen, emerging with the champagne and four flutes. It stops the conversation.

‘I have news too,’ I tell them as I place everything on the table and begin to undo the metal tie and take off the muselet. I twist the bottle rather than the cork but it still flies off, hitting the ceiling, rebounding and ricocheting off Mum’s head. I honestly couldn’t have aimed better and we all burst out laughing at the astonished look on her face. I pour glasses and hand them out, raising mine and telling them, ‘I bought an apartment today.’

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