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had both missed, Jeremy asked if I had seen any of the neighbours and wondered what they must be thinking. I replied that I was not particularly botheredabout the neighbours – we hardly came into contact with them anyway. They would only be able to speculate among themselves about what they had witnessed that day, and I thought they would suspect that it could be drugs. Thinking of how we must be perceived, a double-income couple, no kids, early forties, however, even that theory seemed absurd.
    I told him about the search team going over everything and taking loads of stuff from the house and shop, and that we should get a list within seven days. There was no response from Jeremy but we sat down to eat while watching the TV. We were both very tired and traumatised.
    All he managed to say before going to bed was that he was suspected of the most terrible crime, worse than murder, and wished he had been accused of that. As he turned away, head bowed, shoulders slumped, I was overwhelmed with sadness for him.
    My thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. It was my hairdresser and friend, Joan, who had been due to do my hair that morning and had seen the police at my house. She asked if everything was OK and I felt the tears start to well up. Through a shaky voice I said that I was not up to talking and without any prompting from me she said, ‘I bet this is something to do with Lloyd.’ I added that I could not say but that I would call her to re-arrange my hair appointment.
    Saying nothing more about the day we went to bed early. That morning I had thought of our home as our sanctuary, but now I was beginning to understand the violation felt by burglary victims. Strangers had pored over all our possessions, rifling through clothes, cupboards and drawers, looking at private papers and then taking it all away. Preferring to remain in the comfort of the darkness, with just the glow of the television, we lay entwined in each other’s arms and hoped for sleep to come.

Chapter 2
THE WAY WE WERE
    J eremy and I met in November 1998 and by the Christmas of that year he was more or less living with me. He was a regional loss-prevention manager for a large retailer and I was a PA to a pensions and benefits director of a French chemical company. We were both very happy in our chosen fields of work.
    We had both been married before and, in hindsight, much too young. Jeremy had been divorced for some years and although I had married at nineteen, I had given it a good shot for fifteen years before getting divorced in 1995.
    Jeremy was one of three children, the middle child between two sisters, and I had a younger brother. His mother lived with her partner, Cliff, having been widowed three years earlier, and my parents had been married for twenty-five years. Our families were very important to us.
    It was during the Christmas holidays of 1998 that we decided to plan a holiday together to the USA. I had never been there and Jeremy was keen to visit California to show me where he used to live. Jeremy’s father was American and had worked for the US Air Force based over here when he met and married Jeremy’s mother. The family had lived in Huntingdon Beach, California, in the late ’70s and Jeremy had very fond memories of this part of his life. We wanted to see all the main attractions andmade a list of everything we thought we could comfortably cram into three weeks. We decided that April 1999 would be a good time to take our holiday as the weather would be good and we also wanted to avoid the school holidays.
    One day Jeremy came home from work unexpectedly early and said he wanted to talk to me. It sounded serious and I was worried. Puzzled as to what this might be about, I waited for him to speak. ‘I would like to ask you if we should make the holiday our honeymoon. Will you marry me?’ I looked at him trying to digest what he had said and found myself excitedly saying ‘yes’. From that moment I had to