Page 3 of The Girl in Room 12

Poppy jumps up and rushes over to me, throwing her arms around me.

I hold her close and kiss the top of her head. ‘Everything’s okay. Come on, let’s peel this apple.’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t want it now.’

I put the apple back in the fruit bowl.

‘I can put Poppy to bed,’ Max says, rising from the table. ‘You’ve been working all day too. And you made this.’ He gestures to the barely touched risotto on his plate. ‘It was lovely.’

My face crinkles – I don’t know how to deal with this abrupt turnaround. And as I watch them disappear upstairs, Max clutching Poppy’s hand, a flurry of questions crashes around my head.What the hell is going on with him?

Once Max has read Poppy a story and tucked her into bed, I go up to say goodnight. By the time I come back downstairs, Max is sitting on the sofa in the kitchen, staring through the bifold doors. He’s holding his phone but not looking at it.

‘Poppy’s drifting off,’ I say.

Max flicks his head. He’s a million miles away and I don’t know how to reach him. Silently, I pour us both a glass of red wine and take them over to the sofa, sitting beside him. Instinctively, I go to reach for him, but something stops me.

He takes a glass and places it on the coffee table. ‘Thanks.’

‘Want to talk about it?’ I offer. I’ve had enough of being kept in the dark. Something’s going on with him and I need to know what it is.For better or worse.Isn’t that what we promised each other six years ago?

He shrugs, and continues to stare out at the dark. There are smudges on the lower half of the doors – Poppy’s handprints – and I doubt he even notices them. ‘I’ve got a crushingheadache, that’s all,’ Max says. ‘Work has been…relentless. I’m still carrying Peter’s workload. It’s doing my head in that they still haven’t replaced him. It’s been months. This is all just…’ He sighs. ‘Untenable.’

‘I know.’ I reach for his hand. ‘Can I do anything?’

He laughs. ‘Only if you’ve suddenly become an expert in finance overnight.’ He strokes my cheek. ‘I’m just joking.’

‘I run a successful business, Max. Don’t be patronising.’ I might have little idea about all the forecasting and analysis he has to do each day, but equally he doesn’t know everything it takes to run a business, especially in this uncertain climate.

‘I didn’t mean?—’

‘I can listen,’ I suggest. ‘If you want to talk about anything. Sometimes it’s not about having your problem solved, but just being able to let it out.’

‘Now who’s being patronising?’ He turns away.

My closest friend, Sarah, is always quick to point out how men don’t like to talk, and how trying to make them is like expecting to squeeze apple juice from a grapefruit. Max isn’t like that, though. That’s why I fell for him. Even at the beginning, he never put on any pretences – what you saw was what you got.

When I worked in the HR department of the company he still works for, we’d meet at lunchtimes and sit on the roof terrace, taking in the sprawling views of Southbank. To some people, London is bleak, grey and dirty, but I only ever see the beauty in it. The life. The history. The diversity of its inhabitants.

Max would share so much in those early days as we immersed ourselves in the London landscape, marvelling at how we are all just tiny specks going about our business. Sometimes it was like talking to a female friend.

I didn’t see him as anything else until one lunchtime I felt the strong urge to kiss him. We’d been laughing about something and our heads were buried closely together. To this day, neitherof us is sure who made the first move. He claims it was me. I beg to differ. Perhaps it was both of us simultaneously. What does it matter, anyway? From that moment we never looked back.

And even when he opened up to me about the incident in his past, I never saw glimpses of that unfamiliar person.Is that what I’m seeing now?

We’ve had our challenges, like when Poppy arrived and I wasn’t prepared for life with a newborn. Max took it all in his stride, seamlessly navigating this new world of parenting, while also managing to stay focused on his work. He patiently stood by me while I was too shattered to give him a second of my time. I know it must have been hard for him, but he threw every ounce of energy he had into being a dad to Poppy. In the end we found our feet. Since then, for the most part we’ve sailed along smoothly. Until now.

Max shakes his head. ‘I’m fine. I don’t need to talk. I just need my workload to ease.’

‘They’ll replace Peter, won’t they?’ I venture. ‘Then things will settle.’

He nods. ‘Eventually. It takes time to recruit, though. It’s not like you deciding to give someone a job in your shop. Like Katy.’

Without another word, I stand up and leave the room, taking my glass of wine with me. Over the last few months, I’ve learnt to keep my distance when Max decides he wants to pick a fight.

Upstairs, I check on Poppy then head to my bedroom and sit on the bed. While I sip my wine, I flick through Facebook.

I click on the local Putney community page, aimlessly scrolling until something catches my attention. A discussion about a woman’s body being found in the River Walk Hotel. I immediately click on the link that takes me to the local news story.

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