Nathan Trentham: Missing Wife

 Nathan Trentham: Missing Wife

The husband sat with his coat still buttoned. “She left for work Tuesday. Didn’t come home. Phone goes to voicemail. Bank card hasn’t moved.”

Trentham wrote the name, the employer, the route. He did not write “affair” until the husband said the marriage was fine.

Wednesday he walked the route she claimed. The office confirmed she had not been in since Monday. A barista on Leather Lane remembered her buying two coffees most mornings, one with oat milk she never drank. Trentham asked who took the second cup. The barista shrugged. “Man in a grey coat. Didn’t talk much.”

He found the grey coat through a parking fine on a side street the wife’s Oyster card had never touched. The man was a solicitor she had retained three months earlier, quietly, for a separation. The papers were drafted. She had not signed them.

Thursday evening Trentham waited outside the solicitor’s building. She came out carrying a small suitcase and the oat-milk coffee. She saw him and stopped.

“He told you I was missing,” she said.

“He did.”

“I’m not. I’m late.” She looked at the suitcase. “Tell him the papers are signed. Tell him not to look for me at the station. I’ll write.”

Trentham nodded. He did not follow her to the train. On the way back he bought a tea he let go cold, and wrote the husband a short letter that said she was alive, she had left on purpose, and the rest was for solicitors.