Mr. Nobody

by Catherine Steadman

  I stare at my empty Facebook page and I think of the gold band on Chris’s finger today, of how I could have just asked about it but I hadn’t. I type “Chris Poole” into the search box and hit return.

  His page fills the screen, his handsome, grown-up face; he’s looking at someone slightly off-camera mid-laugh, and he looks so happy I feel a stab of loneliness.

  He’s thirty, same as me—well, three months older to be exact. He’s married. He’s been in the police force since he graduated from East Anglia Uni with a 2:1 in geography nine years ago. There’s something about the course of Chris’s life that I find so reassuring in its clarity. If I was to make a real page of my own, it would not be quite so straightforward as his.

  Impulsively, I open a tab and google his station. There are two other men and one woman listed on the local police website. The men are both sergeants and the woman a PC—police constable—just like Chris. She has a warm, kind face, shiny brown hair pulled back securely in a low ponytail; she looks nice. I bet she and Chris like each other. I don’t recognize her from school at all. I type her name into Facebook—Beth Graceford. Divorced, born in Falmouth, studied English at Falmouth University and worked for a publishing company in Falmouth. Interesting. I guess she needed a change. A big one. Good for her; I know from experience how hard that can be, upending your whole life and starting again somewhere new. And it explains why I don’t recognize her, she only transferred to Norfolk last year. I type in the two sergeants’ names: likewise both are not originally from the area. So far, so good.

  I take another sip of my wine and think.

  There’s something I’ve wanted to check, very badly, since I first logged on, but I’ve been trying with every ounce of my willpower to ignore the impulse.

  I type in Chris’s name again. His page springs up again and this time I click on photos. I know she’ll be there.

  I find her instantly, tall and pale and feline, her long red hair loose over one shoulder, striking against the white of her wedding gown, her green eyes ablaze with happiness, and next to her, so close, his arm entwined with hers, stands Chris. He doesn’t look at the camera; his eyes are on her. I realize I’ve been holding my breath for a while. I let it out and tap on her photo tag. Zara Poole, Chris’s wife. I click on the link.

  I recognize her from the hospital lobby that morning—she was talking to someone in the coffee shop queue—but I don’t recognize her from school, so it comes as a shock to see she did actually go to Waltham House too. I try to remember redheads from back then, any girls who were that stunning. Surely that would have stuck in my head. Her bio tells me her maiden name was Zara Thompson. But then I see her school dates. She’s younger than us, by three years. She would have been thirteen when I left. That’s why I don’t remember her and it’s highly unlikely she’ll remember me. I click on her profile picture. Zara looks back at the photographer teasingly, invitingly, her lips parted ever so slightly, and I wonder if Chris took the photo. I catch myself wondering if they’re happy.

  Shit. This is not why I am on here.

  I feel a tight gnaw of shame in my stomach. I definitely shouldn’t go for that drink with Chris.

  I click out of Zara’s profile back to Chris’s, and then a strange thought strikes me. Is there a chance I could know my patient? Perhaps he did recognize me, and in the same way I couldn’t place Zara perhaps I can’t recall him because he’s older than me. He wouldn’t have been a student at the school then, but he could have been a teacher. Perfectly plausible. Although odd that no one else would recognize him from this area. I realize what I really need to do is get my hands on a list of everyone who was working at Waltham House in the years I was there. That would be a start. I could ask Chris. But then I might have to explain why I needed it. Or maybe, knowing Chris, I wouldn’t have to tell him, maybe he’d just trust me enough not to have to explain, if I said it was for the case. Which of course it would be. I grab my phone and tap out an impulsive message to him.

  For the next two hours I keep searching, recalling, and tapping in the names of everyone I can remember from those years, all those almost-forgotten children of my childhood.

  Chris’s dad was chief inspector at the Burnham and Hunstanton station. Local police. I should have known Chris would still be here; his family have been and always will be local.

  Our family, on the other hand, had no choice but to leave.

  Then the thought occurs to me again: If my patient does know me, he knows about what happened. Could he be faking his symptoms to get me to come back here? The lure of intrigue. After all, a patient like this is the only reason I’d ever come back here. It’s a paranoid thought and I shut it down. A shiver runs through me and I pull the cashmere throw tighter around me as my thoughts continue to slip and slide over the idea. It would be hard for anyone to pull off what he’s doing alone if they were faking, but perhaps he’s not doing this alone. I think I hear something in the darkness beyond the patio doors, but when I stand up to peer out I see only my own reflection in its black mirror.

  I need to know if my patient is lying. I need to make sure I do my fMRI test as soon as possible. I need to know if this case is really fugue, if he really can’t remember who he is. Or if he’s doing something else entirely.

  24

  ZARA AND CHRIS

  DAY 8—SECRETS AND LIES

  Zara is on her laptop, fingers clacking over keys, her legs curled gracefully underneath her on the sofa, when Chris finally returns from the hospital. The winter sun is setting outside their Georgian windows, and she’s bathed in a soft peach-and-lilac glow.

  They bought the house for its period features, the fireplaces, coving, big sash windows—if they couldn’t move to London, Zara had argued, then they’d get the best money could buy in Norfolk.

  She looks up briefly from her screen as he wanders in. He watches her working, her eyes momentarily masked by a stray curtain of glossy red hair.

  “You’re back early,” she says wryly. He’s not. Sarcasm plays across her screen-lit face. “So? How did it go?

  “Yeah. Long day,” he says, shrugging off his jacket and perching on the edge of an armchair, lost in thought.

  Today was supposed to be Chris’s day off. He’d been called in to pay a site visit to the hospital and have a conversation with the new doctor about the case. He hadn’t been too surprised to be called in, not since the hotline went up. Everyone had been working extra shifts since that had started. When he’d gotten to the station to change into his uniform, he’d been roped into following up on a whole tsunami of hotline leads, none of which had amounted to anything.

  Overnight, the well-intentioned hotline had turned into a complete free-for-all. People from all over the country calling in, with all kinds of bizarre sightings and tip-offs, and they, the Burnham and Hunstanton station, had to follow up on nearly everything. Assess the information, grade it in order of relevance or urgency, and flag it up if the lead looked promising. That’s a lot of paperwork.

  When he’d finally headed over to the hospital it’d taken him a good half an hour to track down the new doctor. And she’d turned out to be Marni Beaufort.

  He’d found her. Found her in the hospital canteen. After fourteen years.

  Seeing her had been very confusing. And now he felt…weird. But kind of good weird. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. How she used to look playing lacrosse at school, her cheeks flushed in the cold, her mischievous grin, her freckles. The Beauforts had been rich back then, crazy rich. Before it all happened, obviously. And all that wealth had somehow lent them this air, this healthy seductive glow. That calm, the ease, like nothing was ever a struggle, even winning, which the Beauforts seemed to do a lot.

  Zara looks up from her article and frowns. She’s pretty sure Chris didn’t hear what she just said.

  She asks again. “How was it with the new doctor, honey?”

/>   Chris’s attention snaps back to her, he gives a quick smile. “Yeah. Yeah, it was good,” he says, getting up and heading into the kitchen.

  “And…?” Zara probes further, following him into the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe and watching as he stares unseeingly into the fridge.

  “And…er, and yeah, she was nice.” Chris realizes this line of questioning will not go away unaddressed. “Her name is Emma Lewis. Dr. Lewis. She seemed nice. She’s from London. Seemed good at her job. The hospital says they’re lucky to get her. I told her I’d send her everything we have that could help. And that was it.” He closes the fridge door empty-handed. He’s not exactly sure what he was looking for in there—but he didn’t find it.

  “Did she say what she thought it was?” she presses. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “No. I didn’t ask. First day, isn’t it?”

  “And what’s the general mood at the station? Any leads? Is that why you’ve been so long?”

  “Just got dragged into all that hotline stuff as soon as I got there.”

  “But there must be some interesting stuff in all that, right?”

  “Yeah, interesting is definitely the word for it.”

  Zara frowns. “If it’s that pointless, can’t they get someone else working on it other than you guys?”

  “Not really, Zee. There’s never enough of us, even when nothing’s happening. We can outsource to other stations but that still means transferring information and making a bunch of outgoing calls for every incoming call we receive.”

  “Uh-huh.” She nods and slides onto the kitchen table bench. Chris can tell she’s desperate for information. She must have had a slow day. She leans forward on her hands in a parody of an attentive schoolgirl.

  “You know I can’t actually tell you any details, Zee. You know that.”

  “I’ll make it worth your while.” She pouts provocatively.

  “Stop it.”

  “Can’t help it,” she says, and changes tack. “Look, honeybun, I am trying really hard, you know how hard I work, I’m trying to pip a lot of people to the post here. And this story is an absolute gift to me. Nothing happens here and then suddenly this happens right on our doorstep. I hate to bring it up again but we stayed here, Chris, we didn’t move to London, we stayed here and that’s all great, honey, but if this story can raise my profile then I can get a better job. A national paper. I wouldn’t have to move, we wouldn’t have to, I could write from here and just go in to the city once or twice a week. Writing for real, not just this local piecemeal shit I’m doing right now. So, please, Chrissy, throw me a fucking bone, okay? I’ll be good, I promise.”

  Chris shakes his head slowly. “Unbelievable.”

  “I know, okay. Before you say it, I’ve heard it before, Chris, you’ll lose your job, blah, blah, blah, loss of trust. You won’t, Chris. You won’t lose your job. Police talk to press all the time. That’s life. It’s not like I’m asking you for the nuclear codes or anything, I just want a vague update on what’s going on with this case. Something that I can package up nicely and sell to editors. I’m doing as much research and tracking on this as you are, honey, I’m on message boards all day, Twitter feeds, you name it. If we share information then surely everybody wins, right? What do you think?”

  Chris sits down slowly opposite her, palms on the table, weighing up all she’s said. He does worry he’s held her back. That someday she’ll hate him for it. “Okay.” He pauses, then lets out a low groan. “Something. Oh God, okay. This is what I can tell you. But don’t go crazy with this, okay? You promise?”

  He knows with absolute certainty that he can’t ever mention Marni. But he can give his wife something.

  “I promise.” Zara purses her lips, trying to mask her moment of pure triumph.

  “Okay.” Chris pauses, thinking it through one last time. It should be okay to tell her this. “The doctor they sent up today, Dr. Lewis, she’s a specialist from London. She was hired by…well, let’s put it this way, our orders at the station are now coming in from slightly higher up the food chain than before.” Zara’s brows knit together. “It looks like the government has stepped in on this in some way,” Chris clarifies. “They’re trying to keep everything locked down up here around this guy for some reason. And before you ask, I don’t know what the reason for that is. I have no idea.”

  Zara nods thoughtfully.

  Chris continues. “And this fucking hotline has completely swamped us, Zee, there’s too many calls to process. Too many leads. Ever since the story broke. We’ve got people calling saying he’s an illegal immigrant, people saying he’s their missing husband or missing son, people saying he looks like an actor they recognize from TV, people saying they saw him in Scotland the day before—you name it, people are saying it.” He stops, noticing Zara reach for her mobile phone. “So don’t write anything about the station, Zee. You can write about other stuff but not the station. We’re handling it.”

  “Sure, no problem. I’ll leave you guys out of it.” She rises, leans over the table, and kisses his forehead in one quick motion. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you,” she singsongs as she dances back to her laptop.

  Chris sighs. He lets his forehead rest flat on the table in front of him for a second. As she wanders back in he raises his head to look up at her.

  “And, Chris hon, you can’t say any more about this government thing, can you?” she asks. Chris lets out another groan.

  “No, okay, don’t worry,” she adds hastily. “But this doctor. Who is she? I mean, has she done anything like this before? Has she worked for the government on anything else?”

  Oh shit. Not Marni. He raises his head now. He thought if he gave Zara something to go on, she’d be happy. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I don’t know if she has. But I doubt it.”

  Zara looks up sharply at this. “Why do you doubt it?”

  “I don’t know,” Chris flounders. “I guess, she’s young, ish. Well, about my age.” Shit, he thinks. “And, I don’t know, she just seems…well, as in the dark about this as everyone else. From what I sensed…meeting her today.”

  Chris is a bad liar, he knows this. Better to just avoid questions in the future, he thinks. Thankfully, Zara seems satisfied by his awful answer and wanders out of the kitchen. He lets the tension in his shoulders release and gently rests his head back down on the tabletop.

  He wonders if Emma has worked for the government before. Because it’s incredibly strange that they chose her for this job, considering her history up here. Whoever assigned her must have known what happened, and surely they’d realize how much the press finding out would harm the investigation, wouldn’t they?

  But the press won’t find out, he tells himself. He’ll make sure of that. But if someone else recognizes her, he wouldn’t be able to control that. Hell, he recognized her right away. But then, he would, wouldn’t he, he’d spent the formative years of his life staring at her and her brother across classrooms and playing fields. Other people might not have looked so hard, they might not see Marni’s features hidden in Emma’s adult face. There’s no way Zara will see it. Emma Lewis doesn’t look anything like Marni Beaufort, that’s for sure, not anymore.

  * * *

  —

  Later that night, while Chris is brushing his teeth in the bathroom, his mobile phone receives a text message. Zara leans across the bed and checks it. There’s no name for this contact on his phone, just a number she doesn’t recognize.

  Sorry to text so late. Would it be possible to get a list of past employees at Waltham House? I can’t say why just yet but I think it might be helpful. Also, might have to rain check that drink. Snowed under.

  Emma x

  Zara stares at the words intently, as all the possible permutations of what they could mean blow like a forest fire through her mind. Leaving sadness in
their wake.

  The sounds of Chris pottering in the bathroom drift in to her, she opens her mouth to call to him, so he can explain, tell her it’s all a misunderstanding, she’s got the wrong end of the stick, but she stops herself. Better to wait and see, she reasons. After all, if she asks him now, he might lie and she’s not sure she could handle that. And after a moment that seems to stretch back through their entire lives together, Zara places Chris’s phone back down where she found it. She wriggles quietly down into the soft comforting cotton of their bed and reaches up to turn out her bedside light.

  25

  DR. EMMA LEWIS

  DAY 9—THE NIGHT IT HAPPENED

  Chris didn’t text me back, but that doesn’t mean anything, does it? He was probably already asleep. Lucky sod. I look down at my mobile on the bench next to me. The clock reads 02:00 A.M.

  I can’t sleep. Guilt, too many thoughts, too many feelings, flowing through me. And I’ve only been back one day.

  I sip my tea and look up at the stars. I’ve come out for fresh air. I thought about jumping in the car and driving all the way to a petrol garage to buy a pack of cigarettes, but I made a steamy mug of tea instead and came out here to clear my head. It’s not as scary out here as it was before. The darkness is somehow comforting.

  Looking up past the trees, I can see the glittering arch of the Milky Way carving across the night sky.

  It’s beautiful, but everything here reminds me of the past, of what happened, especially this sky. I’m so tired of trying not to think about it.

  * * *

  —

  It was Bonfire Night. Fourteen years ago. Most years we’d spend it at home; we’d help Dad light our own bonfire in the top field, piling dried leaves and fallen branches, cardboard and old papers. Dad would set up elaborate firework displays while we fetched him coffee to keep warm. Sometimes a school friend would come over, one of Joe’s or mine. Sometimes some of Mum and Dad’s friends came over. They’d drink Glühwein and chat with our parents as they perched, blankets on knees. The garden would be rigged with Catherine wheels, thin Roman candles, and tightly packed rockets dotted around the lawn, ready to be lit. Joe and I would have hot chocolate with tiny little marshmallows melting into gloop on its surface and chase each other around with sparklers, carving our names in light into the air. But we didn’t do that this year, we went somewhere new, which should have raised some red flags at the time but didn’t. That night we went to the county fireworks display at Holkham Park.