Page 9 of Not in a Million Years

But if he hadn’t heard from Andy and didn’t know anything more than I did, why on earth was he calling me?

‘Kate? Are you still there?’

‘I’m still here. I was just wondering…’

‘Why the hell I’m calling you?’

‘Well… Yes, if I’m honest.’

‘I spoke to Matt earlier, after I got Abs’s text. Andy hasn’t been in touch with him, either. He’s worried, and I’m worried.’

‘I’m worried too. But I’m not sure what we’re meant to actually do. I mean, Andy’s a big boy. He’s allowed to do stuff without telling us, if that’s what he wants. We’re not his parents. If he’s gone on holiday or something with this Ash, he’s probably too busy having fun to answer his phone.’

‘Come on, Kate. Have you actually ever met Andy?’

This silenced me. Daniel knew Andy as well as I did – or almost as well – and we both knew that if he was having a fabulous time with a new love interest, he’d have been providing his friends with a constant running commentary about how great it was, how happy he was, how much off-the-scale sex he was having.

‘Yeah,’ I admitted, ‘that’s kind of why I’ve been concerned. I was thinking, if things had gone wrong between them and Andy was… well, you know. Upset about it. Then he might have gone silent on us while he got over it.’

‘But you’ve never seen Ash, have you?’ Daniel asked, his tone almost accusatory.

‘Nope.’

‘None of us have. That’s weird, too, isn’t it?’

It was weird, I had to acknowledge. Again, with a (presumably) desirable new man in his life, it would have been typical of Andy to want to show him off, to arrange nights out, to ask us endlessly what we thought of him.

‘It makes me think…’ I began, then hesitated.

‘That maybe Ash isn’t totally on board with the sober lifestyle?’

‘Exactly.’

Now that Daniel had expressed the thought that had been on my mind, as annoying and persistent as a fly buzzing against a half-open window, unable to find a way out, it seemed more likely and more worrying. If Andy had fallen in love with someone who was a drug user, what were the chances of him being able to stay sober himself? And if Andy relapsed… Well, we both knew how complex and dangerous the consequences of that would be.

I’d reached my apartment block now, and I tapped my key fob against the door panel, which emitted its usual high-pitched beep.

‘You home?’ Daniel asked.

‘Just got here,’ I confirmed, stepping into the cool, marble-floored lobby. ‘I’m about to get in the lift. The signal will probably cut out in a minute.’

‘Look, there’s no point talking about this any more now,’ Daniel said. ‘You free to meet for a coffee tomorrow?’

‘I…’ Normally, I’d have had the cast-iron excuse of work. As a freelance contractor, I couldn’t just swan off to meet friends – or not friends – in the middle of the day. But I didn’t have work tomorrow, nor for the next few weeks. And besides, this wasn’t about me, or Daniel, or our instinctive antipathy towards each other. It was about Andy, and Andy might be in trouble.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Text me where and when.’

Then I ended the call and stepped into the lift, immediately regretting my moment of weakness. Coffee with Daniel had about as much appeal as another hot-air balloon trip, only without the incentive of Claude’s company.

But if it would help us find Andy, I was just going to have to suck it up.

Four

As soon as I got into the flat, I undressed, took off my make-up, brushed my teeth and got into bed. Our girls’ night out, while not as aggressively cocktail-fuelled as they sometimes were, had left me feeling pleasantly light-headed, and although my conversation with Daniel had been somewhat sobering, I was still confident that I’d be able to sleep well and wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, if slightly hungover.

But my body (or more likely my brain) had other ideas. As soon as my head hit my lavender-misted pillow and my eyes closed, my mind shot into overdrive.

I pictured Andy lying in some dark alleyway, a needle in his arm. I imagined him having been robbed by a dealer, beaten up, his phone stolen, left for dead. I imagined him getting into his car intoxicated and wrapping it round a lamppost.

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