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Directed by: Otto Bathurst
Synopsis
"Day Twenty-Eight"
Matt wakes up next to his children on the morning of his birthday. Twenty-eight days
have passed since Leanne's disappearance, which has now officially become a murder
investigation despite the lack of a body. Ethan hops out of Matt's bed and returns a few
minutes later with a tray full of breakfast. Tanya has left to stay in Paris with her father,
Daf, and Sarah emerges from the girl's room wearing a robe. Following Ethan into Matt's
room, she tells the kids they can have pizza at their grandparents' house. Rosie asks
whether Leanne will join them and then tells Sarah to "go away."
Later, in Tanya's room, Sarah makes the bed and apologizes to Matt for sleeping over -
she'd just had too much to drink. Matt apologizes, too, for "going on a bit" the night
before; he's still struggling with the hazy answer about whether Rosie was molested.
"There are worse things than not knowing," Sarah tells him. He replies, "Not to me."
Barbara comes over to visit, bringing a cake for Matt, but when they get a chance to talk,
he says he feels like he's in denial - that Leanne must be dead. But Barbara is angry that
the police have decided her daughter is dead - without any evidence - and she needs
Matt's support. "We can't get used to this," she tells him.
At Barclay's office, his 28-day mandatory review has arrived, and two inspectors
interview him about the case. They too would like to know why he decided to pursue a
murder investigation without a body, and when they ask for his hypothesis, his answer
doesn't impress them. "I haven't the faintest idea. That's why I'm investigating. And I'm
not going to make something up just to fit in with anybody else's textbook idea of how it
should be done." He's positive that the Macedonian flower seller they arrested must be
involved and suspects a smuggling link, but without any evidence, they had to release
him weeks ago. While the reviewers speak with other detectives in the office, Barclay
and Foster scramble to stay one step ahead of them while hoping for a new lead in the
case.
Matt walks in on Ethan and Rosie arguing over whether Leanne is dead or "just
sleeping," and the weeks of pressure suddenly catch up with him. He screams at his
children: "Shut the f**k up!" Simone comes over to the house and, while looking through
Matt's mail, finds a receipt for an airline ticket to France that Leanne had purchased.
When she shows Matt, he follows her thinking, "You think you know someone. I've been
mourning her for a month, and maybe she was planning to leave me."
Foster considers Matt's jealousy as a motive for murder, but Barclay, not ready to go
down that road, sticks with the Eastern European smuggling link. To get more
information, Jim approaches Gary at work, asking Matt's friend to spy on him and find
out whether there were problems between Matt and Leanne. Gary says Matt's too close-
lipped a guy to talk about that sort of thing with anyone - even his closest friend. But,
when Jim dangles the offer of a job in front of Gary, who's about to leave the military,
Gary ends up calling Matt to meet up for a beer.
John gets his hair cut at a local shop, and the stylist tries to chat him up in the chair,
asking if he's taken any trips lately. She says her father travels all the time, that he's
spending up all of her inheritance, "I tell him, 'You'd see your only daughter starve,
innit?'" John tries as politely as possible to ask her to stop talking, and a co-worker calls
her away to explain why making the joke in front of John was so insensitive. The stylist
comes back in tears, apologizing profusely, but John can't take any more. He stands up to
leave midway through his haircut, and when the cashier offers her condolences, he loses
his temper, "Oh, we're all sorry," he says. "Everyone is so bloody sorry."
John visits Vic at the nursing home, and the two talk about how strangely everyone is
treating them. "They act like grief is catching," John tells his father-in-law, "like death is
catching." Vic explains that he went through the same thing with his neighbors when his
wife died, and when John asks whether he's OK living in the nursing home, Vic admits
he misses his friendship with Kyle's mother, Hazel. "I told her I wouldn't blame her for
what her son did, but she won't give me the time of day now," he tells John.
Gary stops by Matt's house, intending to get some information, and his friend is thrilled
to see him. Realizing the phone is off the hook, Matt goes upstairs to find Ethan and turns
off the cordless phone the boy's holding, explaining to Gary that he carries it around
everywhere in case Leanne calls. Gary loses his willingness to spy on his friend when
Matt tells him, "I keep thinking, 'It's my birthday; she's got to come home today.'"
Making excuses about Matt's family coming to visit, Gary hurries out the door. But, the
investigation uncovers some new information nonetheless when a forensic team down the
road finds a piece of Matt's smashed cell phone in a storm drain.
That night, Danielle knocks on Matt's door under the pretense of bringing his work
schedule. She wants to come inside, but Matt says nothing can happen between them. She
asks him, "If you were a girl, you know what the boys would call you?" Danielle answers
her own question. "Prick tease." Later, Matt explains to Sarah that Danielle would have
latched onto any "fit black guy" at the gym - it just so happened he was the only one. The
attention didn't sit well with Leanne, though, he says; she was definitely the jealous type.
He tells Sarah that they can only be friends, and she shoots back, "I think friends is
difficult enough." As they talk, she breaks down in tears and tells him she thought being
with him and his family would actually help her - she has a tragedy in her past that she's
kept a secret. When she was five years old, she witnessed her father murder her mother.
Afterward, she suffered a lot of the pain Matt is going through now, though she can't
remember the events very clearly.
Barbara and John receive a phone call late that night. When Barbara hears John answer,
she thinks it's Leanne, but it's actually Tanya calling from France. She can't stand her
father's girlfriend, and she's flying back to England tonight. They agree to meet her at the
airport. Shortly, they get another call, this time from the police. The owner of the dog
shelter has found a body in the forest. It hasn't been identified, but it could be Leanne's.
Shaken, Barbara and John drive to the airport to wait for Tanya, wondering what to tell
her when she lands.
Matt gets the same call from the police, and Simone comes over to sit with him and
Sarah. Feeling guilty, Matt tells the story of his last phone conversation with Leanne,
though Simone asks him to stop, afraid he'll incriminate himself. Not realizing the
implications of his words, Sarah tries to help him by drawing the details out of him. Matt
says Leanne was so jealous that she would check his text messages, and when she found
notes from Danielle, she gave him a hard time. "Stupid little sexy jokes and messages,"
he says. "I didn't even reply to most of them." He argued with her about it the day she
disappeared, he says, and the last thing he told her was, "Remember - I'm the guy who
can kill you with one hand." With that, Simone reads Matt his rights and takes him into
custody.
Barclay shows up to examine the body, and immediately, the medical examiner knows
it's not Leanne, "It's a little bit too ... male," she tells him. The body is also missing two
fingers - just like the Macedonian flower seller Barclay had arrested. The police call the
family to tell them the news, and relief is quickly replaced with the constant dread
they've been suffering for weeks. Sarah tells Matt there's still hope, and he replies, "It's
hope I can't bear."
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