Free Watching You by Michael Robotham Page A

character? Yes . Could he have been having an affair? No .
    Marnie heard herself answering, but couldn’t make herself sound convincing.
    “No offense,” said Rhonda, “but sometimes the spouse is the last to know.”
    “No offense,” replied Marnie, “but more often they’re the first .”
    “Did your husband ever borrow money to gamble?”
    Marnie hesitated. “I don’t think so. He was going to meetings.”
    “What sort of meetings?”
    “Gamblers Anonymous.”
    “Could he have met someone there?”
    “I’m sure he meets lots of people.”
    “Someone special?”
    The answer was still no.
    Marnie remembered the name and phone number she found in Daniel’s wallet, but she didn’t mention the incident to Rhonda. Nor did she say how secretive Daniel had become, keeping odd hours and taking phone calls into other rooms. Instead Marnie sat on the sofa, bottling up her fear, one foot jittering up and down, listening to the policewoman talk about circulating Daniel’s photograph and checking his mobile phone records.
    “You want my advice,” said Rhonda as she was leaving. “Pour yourself a glass of wine, take a long hot bath, and call a girlfriend. Your husband is a big boy—he’ll find his way home.”

8
    T he Evening Standard has two paragraphs at the bottom of page four.
    Police divers have spent a second day scouring the Thames beneath a pier at Wapping where the body of a security guard was pulled from the river on Tuesday morning. Niall Quinn, 35, a father of two from Kilburn, was found with his throat cut and hands bound with a plastic cable tie.
    An incident room has been set up and police are asking for anyone with information to call their local Crimestoppers number.
    Marnie reads the story again. She had no idea Quinn was married. He didn’t wear a wedding ring. He’d never mentioned a wife or children. Their only conversations were about pick-up times and money. Perhaps “security guard” is a euphemism for pimp or minder.
    Penny is reading over her shoulder, holding the stem of a wine glass between her thumb and two manicured fingers. “It’s cocktail hour somewhere,” she told Marnie, when she arrived with the bottle. She finishes reading and dismisses the story with a pfffft sound.
    “He had his throat cut,” says Marnie.
    “He stomped all over you, the sadistic bastard, I’m glad he’s dead.” Penny sets down her wine glass. “Let me see.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “Show me.”
    Marnie raises her blouse. Penny brushes her fingertips across the bruises. Even the slightest touch hits fresh sharp notes of pain.
    She looks at Marnie guiltily. “I should never have got you involved in this.”
    “It’s not your fault.”
    She puts her arms around Marnie, who flinches.
    “Too soon?”
    “Still tender.”
    The two of them have been friends since their second year at university. Drugs. Parties. Festivals. Holidays. Marnie had been the sensible, normal one, while Penny partied for England and tried to bed the entire team. Penny dropped out of university to become a model, but not one anyone will remember. She did a few Littlewoods catalogues and a shampoo commercial where they had her standing under a waterfall in Sweden. She nearly froze to death, she said, “my nipples were like bullets.” That was the highlight of her career—a week in Stockholm, the Four Seasons Hotel, all expenses paid, sleeping with the director. Penny was philosophical about her lack of subsequent success. She didn’t have the height for the catwalk or the breasts for glamour modelling, but she’d fallen in love with the lifestyle by then.
    She stopped working as an escort when she met Keegan—one of her better clients, she said, because he was single, sober, and showered regularly. He was fifteen years older and slightly overweight, but he fell madly in love with Penny, whom he called his “Pretty Woman.” Nobody else knew about her past except for Marnie. And Daniel, of course, who got quite turned