Page 21 of The Woman Who Said Yes

‘What’s that all about?’ Andie asks.

‘Christ knows.’ Sam sips his rapidly cooling coffee. ‘A letting company or a building firm maybe?’ He scans the home page for a phone number, an email or a postal address, and clicks the ‘About us’ link. The page starts to load, then stops. The page you are looking for is not available. The link may be broken or not exist. ‘What else can we try?’ he wonders.

Andie sits back, looking thoughtful. ‘How about Companies House?’

‘Good idea,’ Sam says, although he’s not quite sure what that is, or what they do. Now Andie is typing, and up it comes: a listing for DM Strategic Property Solutions. Dissolved in 2022, it reads.

Andie looks at Sam. ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, does it? Nothing dodgy, I mean?’

He shrugs. ‘No, I guess not. Companies dissolve all the time.’ Hasn’t his own framing business endured some tricky periods? Half a decade ago, Covid had nearly put the kibosh on it and he’d had to scour around for freelance graphic design jobs to keep things afloat.

‘But people don’t change their names all the time,’ Andie remarks. ‘And what about that phone conversation? Someone was mad at him, giving him a hard time⁠—’

‘Could it just have been a friend?’

‘It didn’t sound like that,’ she says firmly.

‘A colleague then?’

Andie pulls a face. ‘Does he even have colleagues?’

‘He did say something about his team,’ Sam says, trying to recall the details. There’d been a lot of champagne that night.

‘You’d think they’d have a current website,’ she murmurs. ‘But maybe he’s not named on it? He did say that these days he just sticks his oar in and gets in the way.’

Sam nods, trying to replay the scene at Niko’s that night. The self-deprecating bluster that didn’t feel quite right. Not that Sam has ever been especially adept at picking up signs. Like the fact that Bibi had booked her one-way ticket to Bangkok without Sam even realising that anything was going on. Surely something should have alerted him? The sudden obsession with juice cleanses and wellness books and the purchase of several bikinis when – to his knowledge – no trip had been planned? Then one evening Bibi had beckoned him into their bedroom for ‘a chat’.

That’s how she’d put it. ‘Sam, d’you have a minute? Could we have a chat?’ He’d sat down next to her on the bed. She was worried about Theo, that’s what he’d assumed. Something about the fact that, at ten years old, he wasn’t loving school or learning to play the piano and unfortunately, Bibi had struck a deal with the teacher where they’d paid for a block of lessons. No biggie, Sam thought.

But it wasn’t about Theo. Apparently it wasn’t about Sam either, as she kept stressing, ‘It’s not you. I mean it’s nothing you’ve done. You’ve always been so kind and supportive and such a great dad.’ Yet despite all of his supposedly sparkling qualities, Bibi was flying to Thailand in a week’s time.

‘You want a holiday by yourself?’ He’d stared at her delicate face and tried to make eye contact, but she wouldn’t look at him. ‘Well… I guess that’s fine, isn’t it? I mean, not that you need permission. If you feel like it’s something you really need to do, then I don’t see why you shouldn’t⁠—’

‘I don’t mean for a holiday, Sam,’ she choked out.

He took a breath. In his bedroom Theo was playing a noisy video game. Sam heard bangs and explosions, but maybe they were coming from the inside of his head? ‘So what do you mean?’ he asked.

‘I mean…’ As Bibi rubbed at her eyes, he realised she was crying.

‘Honey, what’s wrong?’ he asked in alarm. He tried to hug her but she pulled away.

‘I’m going out there for…’

For what? Sam’s heart seemed to crumple in on itself like a flimsy aluminium can as he sat there, waiting. Maybe it was just the term he’d used? Bibi disliked the word ‘holiday’ with its connotations of tourism and package deals. ‘Oh, I picked it up on our travels,’ she’d explain whenever a friend admired her tan leather bag or turquoise beaded necklace that she’d bought in Portugal or Greece.

‘I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, Bee.’ Sam glanced down at his hands and realised they were shaking as it sank in. She was leaving, she explained. She’d ‘done her time’ here.

Done her time? ‘You’re making it sound like prison!’

‘Well, it is,’ she cried, then seemed to catch herself. ‘It’s not you, Sam. And it’s definitely not Theo. It’s just, I’ve given it my all and I need some time away to figure out what it is that I’m going to do.’

Sam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. As Bibi’s work as a dancer had dwindled, she’d moved into teaching. But her heart wasn’t in it. And nor did it seem that her heart was into being with her husband or son. She wanted freedom, adventure and to ‘rediscover herself’, and apparently that meant moving 6,000 miles away.

‘I’ll still be your mum,’ Bibi assured their shell-shocked son as they broke the news to him. How long would she be gone for? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to ‘put limits’ on anything. ‘We can talk, we can video call all the time!’ she assured him. As if this would be fun for Theo – a real treat. He stared at her as if she had announced that she was joining a circus, and then she was gone.

Thank God for Andie and Eva who rallied around without taking over or telling Sam what to do. For being there for Theo: taking him to the cinema and theatre and what they called ‘aunties’ lunches’. Without smothering him – because no ten-year-old wants that – they made sure he felt loved and cared for. Without them, Sam doesn’t quite know how he’d have stumbled through that terrible period.

He looks at Andie. As she sets down her mug and turns to him, the milky sunlight catches the colourful flecks in her hazel eyes. ‘It doesn’t feel great, does it?’ she says. ‘Snooping on Dom, I mean?’