Gabby squirms, and I eye the diary she’s clutching to her chest.
‘No, I didn’t,’ she replies, rushing to explain when she sees me frown. ‘I know how Otis not mentioning the money Alexa withdrew makes him look. I wasn’t going to drop him in it about her diary too, but Otis is the most honest person I know. There must be a reason why he didn’t bring the diary up.’
‘So, you lied for him.’
Gabby bristles at my statement. ‘I didn’tlie.I just didn’t say anything. The two are very different things.’
I nod, understanding now more than ever why Gabby is such a good lawyer.
‘Otis gave the police Alexa’s phone and told them she doesn’t get out much other than to attend a bereavement support group once a week,’ Gabby continues. ‘He wasn’t hiding anything. He just didn’t mention the diary. Maybe he forgot about it. That’s possible, right?’
‘I guess, but it’s unlikely if Alexa uses the diary as much as you say she does.’
Gabby struggles. ‘Alexa hasn’t been going out for a while now. Maybe he thought she wasn’t using it anymore, so there was no point bringing it up?’ she suggests before slumping. ‘To be honest, it’s weird to me that he didn’t mention it, but he must have his reasons.’
‘But why would Otis hide something that could help find Alexa?’
‘Honestly? I think he’s scared of what the entries written inside it could mean,’ Gabby replies, then she sighs. ‘Look, I think we can agree that Otis hasn’t been the most attentive husband recently. He will have to live with that forever, but this diary suggesting Alexa could be having an affair? Well, it would kill him if it were the truth.’
Remembering Otis, bleary-eyed and shrunken by distress, I’m forced to agree with this assessment. ‘What does the diary say?’ I ask, leaning forward in my seat.
Gabby thumbs through the pages then points to something. ‘Alexa has been meeting someone every Friday for the last five months, see?’
Spinning the diary around, Gabby shows me an appointment that reads:S – 1pm, Café Marco.
I take the diary and flick back to the week before. Sure enough, another meeting with ‘S’ had been scheduled for Friday. Again, they planned to meet at one p.m. at Café Marco.
‘You said her best friend is called Sonya,’ I say, skipping over the part where I admit to meeting her. ‘Could it be a recurring catch-up with her?’
‘I thought that, but whenever Alexa and Sonya have plans, she writes Sonya’s name in full.’ Gabby flips through the diary until she finds an example at the start of the year. Sure enough, she’s right:8pm, call with Sonya.
‘Is there anyone else she knows whose name begins with “S”?’
‘Not that I can think of. Not anyone Alexa would feel the need to write “S” instead of their name, anyway. Doing that is suspicious, don’t you think?’
‘It is strange,’ I say, biting my lip. ‘Did you ask Otis about the diary?’
‘Not directly,’ Gabby admits. ‘But once I’d seen what the diary said, I asked Otis if he knew about any meet-ups or recurring plans Alexa had. He said no.’
‘Maybe he was lying? It wouldn’t be the first time in all of this.’
Again, Gabby bristles. ‘Otis isn’t a bad person, Janine. He might make stupid decisions every now and then, but he loves his wife and wants her home. Besides, if he’d have thought Alexa was having an affair, I’d have heard about it. He tells me all the time about the problems they have. Her meeting someone every Friday would have definitely come up in conversation.’
‘Fair enough,’ I say, although after all of Otis’s lies and half-truths, I’m not sure I share Gabby’s belief in this. ‘But if these meet-ups were part of an affair, Alexa writing anything about it is risky, especially if Otis knew about her diary. What was stopping him from seeing this and finding out?’
‘Why would Otis go through Alexa’s diary if he didn’t have to? He trusted her. If she said she was busy on a Friday, he wouldn’t think to question her. He’s not the jealous type.’
Once again, Sonya’s words stir in my mind, her character description the opposite of the person Gabby is describing.
‘Don’t you think this is weird?’ Gabby asks. ‘Whoever “S” is, they’ve been secretly meeting Alexa every Friday at the same time and place for months.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean an affair.’
‘Maybe not, but I wouldn’t be here unless there was more to this than the Friday meetings. Remember when we found out Alexa was taking money from her account?’
I pull a face. ‘How could I forget?’
‘Well, when the police left, I asked Otis to show me Alexa’s bank statement. I made a note of the dates she withdrew cash.It turns out, she only started doing that after she’d been meeting “S” for a few weeks. What if they were collecting money to run away together?’