by Watson, S J
We step out into the cold. She lights a cigarette with jaundiced fingers before offering the pack to me. I’m tempted, but resist. There’s no way I’m going back to that, not after all this time. She blows the blueish smoke out through her nose.
‘What’ve you heard?’
‘Just that some people aren’t so sure she killed herself.’
‘That so?’ She takes a deep breath and lowers her voice. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘all I can tell you is she were a lost soul. From what I heard, she were having boyfriend problems. The usual, you know.’
A lost soul? Boyfriend problems? My ex floats into view. I see him telling me he’d had enough. It was my work. I was cold. It was over. I was upset, yes. Much more than I let show. He was the first man I’d trusted. I cried. I swore I’d never fall in love again. I stopped short of watching a shitty movie with my flatmate, just. But I didn’t reach for the bottle. I didn’t jump off a cliff.
‘Monica. People don’t do that just because someone dumped them!’
‘Some do.’ She hesitates. ‘Look, I don’t know. Maybe it was more than that.’
‘Like?’
‘Who knows?’ She stubs out her half-smoked cigarette on the wall. ‘Look, it were tough, back then. With no body and that. Folks don’t want it raked up. It’s history. They want to forget. That’s all. An’ I reckon you’d be better off forgetting it, too. I mean, it’s not like knowing why she jumped is going to bring her back, is it?’
‘Of course not. But—’
‘So what’s the point?’
The truth, I want to say. That’s the point. The truth. And it’s what I do, my stock-in-trade. But then I think of Black Winter. Did the truth help any of those girls?
‘Look,’ says Monica, her voice softening. ‘Whatever you make of us, we’re just ordinary folk, y’know? Minding our business like anyone else. I mean, you may not realise it, but my livelihood relies on visitors here, now. Most folks’ does. We can’t have this film putting anyone off coming. Understand?’
For a moment it sounds like a threat, but she’s smiling.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘But I’m not making an advert for the village, you know. Come to Blackwood Bay and have all your dreams come true.’
She grinds the stubbed cigarette into the ground with her boot. ‘I’ve been watching the films.’
I hesitate. I don’t need her approval. Yet I can’t stop myself.
‘Yes?’
‘We all have. We just … we want the village to be known for something other than that.’
‘I get that.’
She smiles sadly. ‘Daisy was lonely. That’s what I think.’
‘I was told she had a friend? What happened to her?’
‘She ran away. Don’t recall where.’
The wind blasts up the hill and, even though I feel it only in the most abstract, distanced way, I shiver.
‘Who was she?’
My words sound wrong, mangled, like someone else is controlling my tongue, but she doesn’t notice.
‘Girl from out near Malby way. They went to school together but, like I say, she ran away. There were rumours she turned up in London, but I don’t know anything about it.’
No, I want to say. No. It wasn’t that. They barely knew each other. Maybe Monica is confused. Maybe she has the wrong person. Maybe another girl went missing back then.
But no. I’d know about that. Surely?
‘So three girls went missing?’ I say, aware of how stupid I must sound. ‘Daisy, Zoe, and this friend?’
‘Daisy didn’t go missing. She killed herself. And her friend turned up, they say. But yes.’
‘This friend,’ I say, and it’s like my throat is stoppered. I have to force the words out through thick sludge. ‘When did she run away?’
‘I don’t remember exactly. Around the same time Daisy died. Why?’
I feel like I’m clinging to a cliff face, about to fall.
‘What was her name?’
‘Sadie,’ she says, and though I suppose I should’ve been prepared for it, should’ve braced myself, the name thunders through me. It echoes like a scream in a darkened room and threatens to tip me off balance. ‘She were called Sadie.’
Then
8
So many of those days in the London hospital blur into one, but I do remember the day I found out who I was, the day I was born again. The day I became Alex.
I woke early to a pale light streaming in through thin blue curtains and tried to work out where I was. The room smelled of cheap air freshener and had few clues, just a chest of drawers with a television on it next to a vase of flowers, a mirror on the wall opposite, a bedside table with a lamp and an empty glass. For a second I thought I was in a hotel, that any minute I’d hear the toilet flush and some guy would reappear and tell me to get lost, but then I remembered. I was in the hospital, where I’d been since I was brought here from Kent.
I saw Dr Olsen after breakfast. She met me in the day room; it was more comfortable in there, she said, as if we were just going to have a chat, a catch-up like old friends. I knew the real reason was I hated her office: it was too small, it felt cramped and stuffy and whenever I was in there I began to sweat. We sat on the stained chairs, and she shuffled hers nearer to mine. That day she was wearing a dress and smart leather boots, even though the weather was warming up.
‘How’re you doing?’ she said, her accent barely perceptible.
I shrugged, then remembered to speak, too. I liked Dr Olsen; she’s done nothing to hurt me. ‘Fine.’
She smiled.
‘Fine?’
‘Yes.’
‘Want to elaborate on that?’
‘Not really.’
She waited. The silence grew until, eventually, I felt compelled to fill it.
‘There’s nothing much to say.’
‘Still no luck?’
I shook my head. Dr Olsen thinks muscle memory might one day kick in and, without thinking, I’ll start to remember, maybe remember the code to get into my phone, but so far she’s been wrong.
‘And nothing has come back to you?’
A little, I thought. I remember a coach. Next to me, a huge man ate cheese-and-onion crisps and swigged a bottle of Coke before burping his rotten breath all over me. A cute kid with a mass of corkscrewed curls was told off by her mum.
But those memories are mine, I thought, they’re all I have. And was that the journey I must’ve taken to Deal, or some other journey, from before?
‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
I nodded emphatically.
‘Yes.’
She looked disappointed, but tried to hide it. I felt sorry for letting her down, but there was nothing else I could do. After ten more minutes she told me she’d have to go.
‘Oh, by the way,’ she said, standing up. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’ She took out her phone. It was a new iPhone, the latest model. ‘You know more about these than I do, I expect. I want to film my grandson, only I can’t figure it out. There’s a video, apparently, but …’
She shrugged helplessly. I held out my hand and she gave me the phone; without thinking, I tried to unlock it.
‘What’s the code?’ I said, but she was looking at me strangely, watching my hands.
‘You just tried thirteen seventeen,’ she said. ‘I want you to try that on your own phone. Okay?’
I stared at the phone in my hand, then gave it back to her. She’d tricked me, and I felt a hot, stabbing resentment. But, on the other hand, maybe it’d worked.
‘I will,’ I said.
I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, my open phone heavy in my hand. I’d found only one number in the memory. It seemed simple. If I wanted to find out who I was, all I had to do was dial it. So why couldn’t I do it?
It was ridiculous. I sat up and tapped the number. I waited for it to connect, and when it did the silence seemed to stretch for ever.
‘Hello?’ I said, finally. Th
ere was a pause, then a slick voice, velvety and with a hint of an accent that I couldn’t quite place.
‘Hello? he said, sounding concerned. ‘Sadie?’
The name was like a pin puncturing a balloon and I recognised it instantly as my own. There was no doubt; it felt like a lifeline thrown across the abyss, a secret code that might lead me out of the damp, fusty cellar in which I was trapped. Memories flooded back in an almost overwhelming rush. I remembered Blackwood Bay, I remembered hitching as far as Sheffield, spending a few nights there before continuing to London. I remembered, too, that I was in danger, that I mustn’t tell anyone anything, not even my name. I just couldn’t remember why.
‘Sadie?’ the voice said again.
Maybe this person knew why. His was the only number in my phone, after all.
‘Who’s this?’ I said.
‘What?’
I repeated the question quickly. ‘Who am I speaking to? I don’t—’
The line went dead. ‘Shit,’ I muttered, before calling back straight away, hopeful that it was just a dropped call. This time it didn’t ring out, and neither did it the second time I tried, nor the third. In the end, I gave up. There was nothing else I could do.
Dr Olsen tapped on my door a little while later.
‘Any luck?’
‘It was the right number,’ I told her. She smiled, but she could see from my face that it wasn’t good news.
‘And?’
I remembered the conviction I’d felt that I mustn’t tell anyone.
‘There was only one number.’ I sighed. ‘Whoever it was hung up.’
She sat on the bed next to me. I could tell she wanted to put her arm round me, but she didn’t. Perhaps she wasn’t allowed to.
‘Did they say anything?’ she asked instead, and as I looked up at her expectant, hopeful face I realised this was it, the breakthrough she’d been waiting for during our work together. All that time spent asking me whether I ever did anything and then couldn’t remember it (‘Doesn’t everyone?’ I said), or if I’d ever found anything at home that I couldn’t recall buying (‘What home?’), or if I ever felt my body didn’t belong to me or was being operated by someone else. When it was all done she told me she thought I’d experienced something called dissociative fugue, and that it could be caused by lots of things, and it was obvious my life hadn’t been easy recently, and that it usually just got better by itself.
And this was the breakthrough she’d been hoping for? Again, I felt I had to give her something, or else she’d never stop asking.
‘Just my name,’ I said.
‘Well, that’s good!’
‘My first name.’
‘Right,’ she said, a little more hesitant, a little more disappointed. ‘And?’
I had to think quickly. I couldn’t give her my real name; she’d already talked about a TV appeal, or more contact with the national press. A name floated up from nowhere.
‘Alex,’ I said. ‘My name is Alex.’
‘Alex?’
I nodded.
‘Well, it’s something,’ she said. ‘A big thing! Your name … We can ring them back. You want me to? I can explain—’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it. Later.’
She hesitated.
‘Promise me you will,’ she said doubtfully. I told her I would, and I did. Every day for a week, and every day she asked me and I told her truth. The number was never answered again, and on the eighth day stopped even ringing out. She gave the number to the police at that point but they said it was unlisted, probably a pay-as-you-go mobile. Dr Olsen told me not to worry, that more would come now I had my name.
‘There’s something else, though,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to worry, but we do need to think about discharging you to Outpatients soon. You can’t stay here for ever. You have somewhere to go?’
She knew I didn’t. She’d already referred me to someone who’d said she’d help with that, not that I had any faith they could.
I shook my head. She put her arm on my shoulder and, for once, I didn’t flinch.
‘Don’t worry, Alex, dear. I won’t abandon you. It’ll all be all right. I promise.’
Now
9
Monica and I finish our tea, then I return to Hope Cottage. I know I look nothing like I did back then, but still I’m shaken. I’ve lost the excess weight I was carrying, which was considerable. I dye my hair black – along with my too-bushy eyebrows, which I now pluck assiduously – and wear it short. Laser surgery has removed the need for the glasses without which I never left the house. The gap between my teeth closed up naturally, but I’ve had them straightened and whitened, plus I used some of the money I made from Black Winter to have my ears pinned back, my too-large nose trimmed down and my slightly protruding jaw recontoured with fillers.
But there are other differences, too, more significant. Everything changed when I became Alex, when I got myself off the streets and into employment, when I started taking my film-making seriously. Everything. The clothes I wear, the way I hold myself, the way I walk and talk, my confidence. Even my own mother would struggle to recognise me, though that’s not something I’d relish putting to the test. But people who knew me back then? A passing resemblance, they might say, as if Sadie and I could be sisters, perhaps. But no more than that, I’m certain of it, or else I’d never have come this near Malby. I’d never have let Dan bully me into coming back to Blackwood Bay. I’d never have talked to Monica.
I reach for my glass of water. My laptop sits in front of me, a browser already open. Google is fired up and ready to go. I think back to what Monica said. That maybe me running away was the last straw for Daisy. But she’s wrong. She’s misremembered, or made a mistake. Daisy and I weren’t friends; I barely knew her. I’m not even sure I’d recognise her if she were standing in front of me now. Not that she can, of course. So it can’t be my fault she decided to jump. Can it?
And what did she mean about the rumour I’d turned up? Can it be true? I type my name and press Search. The machine hangs for a moment, but then the list of results fills the screen. I don’t appear on the first page, nor the second. I try again, this time adding Blackwood Bay.
And there I am, right at the top. Local Teenager Missing. My hand hovers over the trackpad. I could click the link, go in deeper, find out what they said about me, whether they linked my disappearance to Daisy’s death, or I could close the window and focus on what I want the documentary to be. I hesitate for a moment longer. Who knows what I might find out, where it might take me? And I’ve gone this long without looking. I should concentrate on my film, not on myself.
But what if the two things are linked? I click.
The article is from the local news. It tells me nothing I didn’t know. I just disappeared, it says. I left home one day – from our house near Malby; I was on my way to visit a friend, according to my mother – and never returned.
I click another couple of links, hoping for more articles, but though there are a handful, the story seems to have died quickly. When I skim what there is it becomes apparent that they all report the same thing, with few new details. I was seen trying to hitch a lift, carrying a bag. Details are sketchy, and of course, how can they know I ended up first in Sheffield, then London, and then, after who knows what happened to me down there, how I wound up unconscious on a beach in Deal? But still, I was expecting more than this.
I select the next link. In this article there’s a brief interview with my mother; it’s completely out of character, she says, her little girl would never run away. She appeals for me to get in touch. Whatever’s wrong, we’ll sort it out together. Yes, I think. Like you sorted everything else out: by siding with your new boyfriend and telling me to like it or lump it, to shape up or ship out.
There’s only one picture of me, though it’s used in most of the articles. It’s in black and white, taken at school and cropped at the neck. I’m glad. I glance at it only briefly – it almost doesn’t look lik
e me. The girl I used to be had one of those generic, unremarkable faces that can map on to almost anyone. Only the gap between my front teeth is remarkable. My hair is a light brown, the colour of milky coffee, tucked neatly behind my ears, and though my eyes are bright, my skin is blotchy and pocked with acne, my face puffy, my chin indistinct. Plump, they called me, when they were being kind. Which wasn’t often.
I close the window, suddenly ashamed. What did I do? Why do some people think I’m linked to Daisy’s death? The truth is, I can’t remember; I know something terrible must’ve happened, something that made me run all the way to London and vow never to go back, never to use my real name, but, however hard I try, I can’t remember what it was.
I open Google once more, and this time search Daisy Willis. There are more news reports, though by now the story is old, details even more scarce, the whole affair shrouded in uncertainty. A suicide note is mentioned, which I hadn’t picked up on before, but nothing else. Nothing about me, so nothing to suggest she and I had been close, or that me running had had anything to do with her death.
And yet there’s something here, I’m sure of it. A memory bobs like jetsam, beneath the surface but unreachable, catching the light before sinking once more. I dig deeper, try an image search, but then it comes to me. Daisy and I standing on the slipway with a group of kids. Someone taking a photo.
I find the picture halfway up the stairs. I’d noticed it the first night I got here but hadn’t recognised its significance. Monica with the kids, two girls standing off to one side, pretty much ignoring the camera. They look conspiratorial; they’re up to something. I reach out and touch the cool glass, leaving a greasy mark. I lean in close, though I hardly need to. Now I look again it’s obvious who they are, and I whisper their names under my breath.
Daisy. Sadie. Daisy. Me.
It’s true, then. We were closer than I thought. I turn away from the photo and go back downstairs. I remember Gavin telling me that some people think Zoe’s disappearance is linked to Daisy’s. She’s part of the puzzle, too, even if she did disappear years later. I’m sure of it.