doorway, no sign of anyone in the room. Nor were his clothes over the chair where he usually put them after undressing for bed.
Where is he? she thought crossly. Surely he wasn’t still working?
Feeling groggy, she propped herself up on the pillow, her mind running through the possibilities. He could quite easily be on a call. But there were other possibilities, darker thoughts that were also easy to believe. Diana swung her legs out of the bed and reached for her robe. She had gone to sleep thinking how much she loved her husband, but she still had to be realistic. She was the wife of a billionaire, a man who had barely touched his wife sexually in the past six months. Julian was a catch to end all catches; why wouldn’t she suspect he was up to his old tricks? She walked out on to the landing and cocked her head, listening. Nothing.
Stop it, Diana, she said to herself. Where did she expect him to be? On a Skype call to a secret mistress? In the garden on a booty call with a hooker? They had put all that behind them; they’d had to. How was a marriage to survive if there was no trust? She almost laughed. Eighteen months of marriage counselling after Julian’s ‘indiscretion’ and where had it got her? Standing by her bedroom door, imagining him having some late-night tryst under her nose?
She padded down the stairs, all her senses alert.
Compared to Somerfold, their west London home was almost small, but at night it seemed cavernous. She was too practical a woman to believe in ghosts, but there was still something unsettling about walking through an empty house lit only by the dim light from the early grey dawn leaking through the windows. She stopped on the bottom step and held her breath, hoping that she would detect some sound or movement to indicate where her husband might be.
‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ she whispered, her disquiet turning to irritation. She turned on a downstairs light and walked through the dining room and across to Julian’s study, half expecting to find him jabbering into his phone, scrolling through columns of financial hieroglyphics on his computer screen. It wouldn’t be the first time: it was late morning in the Far East, early afternoon in Australia, and Julian seemed to have business interests in every corner of the globe. But not tonight. The room was dark, with only a half-empty whisky glass sitting on his desk to show he had been there.
Something about that glass made prickles pop out on Diana’s arms.
‘Julian?’ she called, moving through the house, switching on lights, opening doors. She was actively worried now. Had he gone out? But why would he, at this time of night? And anyway – how? He had certainly drunk far too much at the party to drive.
The car, of course. She had to check on the car. She went to the back door and slipped on the first footwear she came to – Julian’s scuffed-up old walking boots, which felt cold and over-large on her bare feet. She fumbled the keys into the lock and stepped out into the garden, the fairy wonderland of the party now cloaked in dark shadows and strange shapes. It was cold, and a light frosting of dew had settled on the lawn. Keep going, she told herself, clumping along the path that led towards the large brick garage at the back of the grounds. If his car’s gone, then you’ll know. But know what, exactly?
The door to the garage was closed but unlocked. ‘Julian?’ she called as she poked her head inside. She could make out the outline of the two cars that they stored here – her own silver Range Rover runabout and Julian’s dark blue Mercedes, which at least meant he hadn’t driven anywhere.
Now she was puzzled. Shaking her head, she resolved to call him on his mobile and then go back to bed. She closed the garage door and turned back to face the house. It was then that she noticed a crack of light from one of the lower-ground-floor rooms.
It was a part of the house she rarely went to. There was a utility room down there, an overspill dressing room, and a small, sparse library – they had moved most of their book collection to Somerfold – where Julian kept his drum kit and collection of vinyl. She hurried inside and took the stairs to the basement. Like the rest of the house it was still and silent, but down here, it made her feel especially anxious.
She pushed open the library door and stepped inside. The room was in semi-darkness, bathed in low silvery dawn light from a gap in the curtains. As she turned to look for the lamp switch, she gasped in disbelief at the sight in front of her. Julian was kneeling slumped on the floor, a noose attached to a bookshelf tied around his neck.
She didn’t even hear herself scream.
2
‘So how did that feel?’
Rachel Miller squeezed the water from her dark hair and looked sideways at the handsome Canadian standing beside her on the boat.
‘Incredible,’ he grinned, unstrapping his air tank and putting it down on the deck with a clank.
‘You know this is the second best dive site in the world after Cairns,’ said Rachel.
The man raised his eyebrows. ‘Yeah, I think you told me that when I made my booking.’
‘I just like to remind people,’ she teased, giving him her most flirtatious smile.
‘I think I’ll go downstairs to change.’
‘I hope you haven’t peed in your wetsuit,’ she shouted after him.
He looked back at her quizzically, and as the split-second chemistry between them evaporated instantly, she cursed her lack of grace.
Just as well, she smiled to herself, before taking a slug of water from the bottle beside her. It was unprofessional, verboten even, for instructors to fraternise with the clients, although playful banter with good-looking men in wetsuits was definitely one of the perks of the job. She wiped her damp, salty brow with the back of her hand and sat down with a contented sigh. Today’s diving group had been her favourite kind: young and up for fun, plus they were all PADI-certified divers, so she had been able to take them out to the more interesting dive sites that surrounded the Thai island of Ko Tao. Out by Shark Island they had seen batfish, barracuda, spotted rays plus shoals of angel fish and all sorts of coloured coral and sponge. There were certainly worse ways to earn a living.
‘Hey, Liam.’
Rachel looked up at the sing-song voice and the accompanying giggles: three of her clients, pretty gap-year students who had switched from damp wetsuits to skimpy bikinis and were loitering on deck watching her business partner Liam hard at work sorting out the swim fins into the right buckets. She could hardly blame them; Liam was tall, blond and muscular from leading daily dives on the reef. Still, it didn’t do to encourage that sort of thing.
‘Everything all right, girls?’ said Rachel, walking over as Liam disappeared below deck.
‘I can’t believe you get to work with him every day,’ whispered the most attractive of the trio.