Mr. Nobody

by Catherine Steadman

  Marni Beaufort. The Beaufort family. Christ.

  Zara catches her breath. Holy shit.

  A giggle of pure joy bubbles out of her beautiful screen-lit face, because, finally, Zara cannot believe her luck.

  33

  DR. EMMA LEWIS

  DAY 11—PEOPLE ARE COMING

  The call comes at 10:07 that night.

  Up until then it had been a comparatively uneventful day of memory exercises and talking through Matthew’s positive response to his antianxiety medication. The lack of drama making me feel my decision not to resign yesterday had been the right one. Joe had been less understanding when I tried to explain on the phone. But it would be crazy to leave without knowing how Matthew has come to know so much about me and my father. But of course, I couldn’t tell Joe my reasoning in that respect. If he’d wanted me to leave before, he’d have dragged me off himself if he knew my reasons for staying.

  I spent the rest of the day at the hospital finishing Matthew’s preliminary medical report and fMRI analysis. I emailed it across to Richard Groves at MIT for his opinion. And I sent it on to Peter too. The report included my initial observations as well as all Matthew’s scans and test results. Richard’s opinion, though obviously not essential, would be extremely useful to me at this stage.

  Back at the lodge, I crack open another bottle of wine and heat some pasta. I’m eating when the lodge phone rings, which is a surprise because I wasn’t even aware the lodge had a landline. I find it by the window next to the armchair.

  “Emma, has anyone contacted you?” It’s Peter Chorley. His tone is urgent, brusque.

  “About what, Peter?” I ask, momentarily confused by the question. “Is Matthew okay?”

  “Yes. This isn’t about Matthew, Emma. Has anyone from the press contacted you? In the last few hours?” There’s concern for me in his voice; something has happened.

  “No. Should they have? Sorry, Peter, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.” I suddenly feel like I’ve wandered out onto a ledge in my sleep. My vertigo kicking in without a stimulus.

  He’s silent on the line, I hear him exhale and cover his receiver. A muffled conversation. When he comes back on the line his tone is grim.

  “Listen, Emma, I need you to turn your mobile phone off, please. We’re sending a police officer around to you now. They’ll stay outside your accommodation for the night to—”

  “What the hell is going on, Peter!” I erupt, cutting him off mid-flow.

  There’s another thick silence before he answers.

  “They’ve found out who you are, Emma. The press. We don’t know if they know where you’re staying, but best to be safe. I have a contact at the press association, he called me five minutes ago. It’s going to break online at midnight and it’ll be all over tomorrow’s national papers.” He pauses to let me take this in before continuing. “I’m truly sorry this has happened, Emma. This isn’t what anyone wanted.”

  I stare unseeing out into the darkness through the window.

  This can’t be happening.

  “Emma, are you still there?”

  It’s going to happen all over again. Just like before.

  I sit down hard into the deep armchair. “Yes,” I manage. I need to keep him talking. I don’t want him to hang up, I don’t want to be left alone with this. “How did they find out?” It seems the next reasonable question. “How could they have found out without breaking the law? Without hacking data?”

  “We don’t know but we’re looking into it. It was a local reporter apparently. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”

  Zara. It must be Zara. Her face last night outside the hospital. Chris must have told her who I was. That’s why she looked at me that way.

  “Right. Okay,” I hear myself say. “Thanks for letting me know.” Then I remember something. “Sorry, Peter—what were you saying about the police? Why are police coming? Am I in any danger here?” The last thing I want is Chris showing up but I’m suddenly perilously aware of how isolated I am out here.

  “Um, yes, the police are on their way. They’re making arrangements, you should have someone with you within thirty minutes. It’s only a precaution, but there are some concerns that the press might have information about your whereabouts. Obviously, the Beaufort case is going to attract a substantial amount of public attention as well. We’re just concerned about your safety, and in light of your need to enter the protected-persons program fourteen years ago it would be wise, I think, to be…prepared. Better to be over-prepared than under.”

  Oh God. This is actually happening

  I throw my mind back to that autumn fourteen years ago. The threats, the letters, the hateful words sprayed on the walls of places they put us, people grabbing at us, shoving us, their faces distorted with anger, baying for a kind of justice that we couldn’t give them, Joe and Mum and me. I wonder if I hadn’t said what I’d said back then if they would have chased us so hard. If I’d have kept my mouth shut, they’d have hated us less. They thought we were lying, that he was still alive somewhere out there, they thought we knew where he was. They wanted the truth even if we weren’t entirely sure of it ourselves.

  “Emma, did you hear me?”

  “Sorry, Peter, what?”

  “The police officers, they should be there soon. But in the meantime, it would be best not to answer the door. Not to anybody, until the police arrive. And turn off your mobile. Steer clear of this landline from now on too unless you see it’s my number calling, okay? Hopefully, we’re still slightly ahead of the game here.” He sounds confident but I know what’s coming. If I need police protection, this is going to get very ugly. I suddenly feel so incredibly alone. Alone in the woods. Alone in my life. “I’ll call you first thing tomorrow morning, if not before,” he continues. “Trust me, Emma, it’s all going to be fine in the long run.”

  The line goes dead and I sit in silence, my heart beating loud in my ears. They’re coming for me.

  I pull out my mobile and slide off the power just as Peter told me. Outside the windows, I can make out the flutter of snowflakes falling and beyond that the darkness of the dense forest all around me. I’m a sitting duck in this isolated house.

  I head to the front door, deadbolting it. If any doorsteppers get this far, they’ll get no farther. I try not to think who else might want to pay me a visit now that the news of who I am is breaking.

  I head to the patio doors, tugging hard at the handle until I’m certain it’s locked and secure. I pull the heavy tapestry curtains closed across the great expanse of black outside and shiver.

  I dash to the kitchen sink and lean over, pulling on the bobbled rope of the blind until the outside world disappears behind it.

  I pull the curtains tight in the living room and the hallway, then run up the stairs to check the windows and close the curtains in the two bedrooms. I know that even a tiny gap in the fabric is enough for a long-lens camera and a photographer with enough patience.

  When it’s all done, and I know everything is secure, I slump down on the top step and catch my breath.

  Is everything locked? What am I forgetting?

  And that’s when I hear it. The crunch of a footstep outside on the gravel. Already? I hold my breath, listening hard. Shit, the police won’t be here for half an hour. It could be a reporter, a photographer, or it could be someone else. We didn’t leave fourteen years ago because of the media alone. We left for our own safety. I think of the house phone lying downstairs on the armchair, my iPhone next to it, turned off.

  I listen for another footstep. Nothing, just the pop of the fire downstairs.

  I stand and start to take the stairs down, wincing at every creak. Outside, a fox shrieks in the distance, and I pause as the plaintive call echoes out through the woods. But no sound of footsteps. Perhaps they have headed around the back. If I can make it int
o the living room, I can grab my iPhone, and then I can run back upstairs and lock myself in the bedroom. I can call the police from there.

  I continue down the stairs, holding my breath. And then I hear the footsteps on the gravel again, two steps this time, someone turning, right by the front door. I freeze. And then the knocking starts. Three heavy pounds on the door.

  Oh, please God, no.

  I stand frozen mid-step and watch as the door handle moves, rattling against the lock. And then I run—I bolt down the stairs, run to the sofa, and dive for my mobile. The screen flashes white. I hear the footsteps outside. Whoever it is, they’re on the move. They could easily burst through the thin Victorian windows. I pocket my iPhone, which is still powering on, and grab the house phone as I dart into the kitchen and head for the patio doors. I could make a run for it into the woods behind the house. I could double back on myself through the trees, make a break for the car and head to the hospital, at least there’s security there. But I remember my car keys are still on the ledge in the front hall.

  Shit.

  I can’t hear the footsteps anymore.

  Then, right next to me behind the curtains, a loud bang on the patio doors. I shoot away from them, my heart thundering. Someone’s right there. And then a man’s voice comes, furious and gruff, “I know you’re in there, Marni. Open the door!” I retreat farther back into the kitchen until my back comes up hard against the basement door.

  I’ll be safe down there.

  Gently I raise the latch and ease the door open, peering down into the darkness below. A chill wells up from the basement. I leave the door ajar enough to shed some light down the stairwell but I leave the lights off. I don’t want to attract his attention. Feeling my way down each cold stone step, I creep into the darkness.

  At the bottom of the stairs I make a break toward the closet on the far side of the room. But, as I run a brutally sharp stab of pain shoots up through my foot, then another, then another. I fly forward, landing hard, sprawled across the basement floor. Pain thunders through my hands now too as they connect with the sharp objects littering the floor. I try to muffle my reaction but I can’t help but cry out at the sheer intensity of it. Raw with wounds, I curl tight into a fetal position—the pain is everywhere. I hold a hand up to the half-light and see the dark wet marks blossom across my palms. Blood. My eyes slowly adjust to the darkness and I see the floor around me is glittering with bright slivers of broken glass caught in the moonlight. I try to crawl to my feet but let out a moan of agony and drop back down. Above me, through the smashed basement window, two booted feet appear, and I’m suddenly blinded.

  A flashlight, I think. I squint up into its glare. The man’s voice comes again. “What the hell are you doing down there, Marn? Why aren’t you answering your sodding phone?” I try to shield my eyes from the glare of the probing flashlight to see the face above me, but as I do he must catch sight of my bleeding hands.

  “Jesus Christ, Marn, you’re bleeding! Are you okay? Wait—just stay right there, don’t move. I’ll…I’ll jump down.”

  “Chris?” I ask, bewildered.

  “Yeah, of course. Who did you think it was? There’re basically only two police officers around here.” A big tall figure drops down through the broken window into the basement next to me with a grunt. “Oh God. Listen, just don’t move, shit, there’s glass everywhere.”

  “What’s going on, Chris? Why the hell did you break my window?”

  34

  DR. EMMA LEWIS

  DAY 11—WALKING ON BROKEN GLASS

  “It was Zara, wasn’t it?”

  He looks up from my foot, tweezers in hand. “I don’t know,” he answers thoughtfully. “You mean who broke the window? Or your cover?”

  My bleeding feet rest on a towel-covered cushion on his lap as he delicately removes each splinter of glass. Chris had carried me up from the basement and put me on the sofa before he headed off to find a first-aid kit for my wounds.

  “Did you tell her? Who I was?” I ask.

  He looks up at me, his feelings clearly hurt. “What? No, of course not. Why would you think that?” He holds my foot firmly in his hand now and pulls.

  “Ah! Jesus, Chris. This hurts so much.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.” He smiles, amused. “I can’t believe you thought I was coming to get you. That’s hilarious. Oh God, not hilarious that you thought someone was coming to get you obviously, but I mean that it might be me—” He fumbles to a stop.

  I know what he meant, and to be honest I’m so pleased he’s here he could literally say anything right now. I smile. “Well, then maybe you shouldn’t be creeping around outside people’s houses like a murderer, Chris.”

  “Yeah, I definitely need to stop doing that.” He smiles mutedly before his expression drops slightly. “But someone did ring you to let you know I was coming, right?”

  “Yeah, I literally just got off the phone with Pe—with someone.” I catch myself. I’m not sure if I should be mentioning Peter at this stage. I know he’s in close contact with the police but I don’t know if it’s above Chris’s pay grade. I move on swiftly. “They said someone would be coming. I just didn’t know you’d get here so quickly.”

  But Chris catches my misstep. “Who called you, Marn?” he asks, suddenly serious.

  I rub my eyes. I’m so tired. “Please stop calling me Marn, Chris. I haven’t been Marn for years. And it’s none of your business who called me, okay? That’s confidential.”

  I regret my tone instantly when I see his expression.

  “I’m sorry, Emma. I’m sorry about all this, the press finding out. I didn’t know Zara would do this. She threw me out this morning, by the way, so…I don’t know. She thinks we’re having some kind of affair.” He shakes his head dismissively, as if the thought were beyond absurd. “Anyway, I’m just saying that I’m not sure whoever you’re working for really has your best interests at heart. I mean, they could have moved you somewhere safer than this for a start, couldn’t they?”

  “What do you mean she threw you out?”

  “Don’t change the subject, Emma.”

  “What was the subject? What? Why I’m staying here, in the middle of nowhere? Well, for a start they wanted to keep me away from Holt,” I reply indignantly.

  The mention of Holt silences him and when I look back he’s intent on my foot again. I sigh and fall back into the cushions. “I’m sorry, Chris. I’ve just got a lot going on in my head right now.”

  He tugs and another spike of glass pulls painfully free. “Are you scared? About what will happen tomorrow?”

  I close my eyes and blow out a soft breath as he pinches another shard out.

  “Yes. I am. I’m very scared: for my mother, what she’ll wake up to in the morning, for Joe and how he’ll have to pull Chloe from her daycare. I’m scared for all of them waking up to reporters on their doorsteps, and it being my fault that their friends won’t look at them the same way again, and I’m terrified of the questions, and of the judgment.”

  “It won’t be as bad as before, I don’t think. It can’t be.”

  “Chris, have you seen those TV crews outside the hospital? The world is a totally different place than it was fourteen years ago, everything is bigger, faster, meaner. This time it will be everywhere.”

  “You know, if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t read about it, at the time. It seemed wrong to read about your personal life like that. They shouldn’t have released some of the things they did. I’m sorry it happened.” He wipes both feet with an alcohol wipe and presses on a final dressing. “All done here, Dr. Lewis.” He throws me one of his ridiculously handsome smiles, gives my ankles a warm squeeze. His skin on mine.

  All the blood in my body rushes up my inner thighs. Oh God. Every natural impulse tells me to pull away from his hands, but his touch feels so good.

&nb
sp; My body bypasses my brain. “Would you like a glass of wine, Chris? I know you’re on duty but one won’t hurt, right?”

  He holds my gaze, eyes crinkled around the edges. “No, it wouldn’t. And yes, I would.”

  I pull on the socks he passes me and hobble off on tender Band-Aid-covered feet to the kitchen.

  The evening passes in a blur of sensations. The hot flush of wine, his smiling eyes taking in my face, a burst of laughter, his hand resting on my thigh and its electric throb of possibility, and suddenly his warm mouth on mine. The feel of his hands all over me as we kiss, the desperate animal need of it.

  Later, I offer him the second bedroom but he says he’ll sleep on the sofa, he’s supposed to be on duty anyway, and I head upstairs to bed.

  I lie there awake, thinking about what happened that night fourteen years ago.

  I didn’t see my father do it, maybe that’s half the problem—or maybe it’s the silver lining?

  I heard it, though. The crack of it in the night, like thunder, the rip of the double-barreled shotgun as it echoed up the thick carpet of our staircase, along a landing lined with our family pictures, and into my childhood bedroom.

  But before the echo of the gunshot there was the helicopter. The sound of it circling in tight loops over the house was what woke me. I’d sat up in bed groggy, blinking into the shadows, as it rumbled over the house, my head throbbing. A headache and nausea from too much sugar and excitement at the fireworks that evening. After a moment Joe trundled into my room too, his silhouette in my doorway. “Helicopter,” he’d said croakily as the mechanical roar receded off into the night.

  “Yeah,” I offered up into the growing quiet. The noise gone as quick as it came.

  Joe disappears back to his room and I lie back down with a wave of dizziness and pull my duvet up to my chin. Safe. The sharp scent of spent fireworks in the air.

  I think of the bonfire earlier that night, of nice things, of being cold and now being warm. Snapshots of memories. Dad’s concentrated face as he lit the sparklers. Mum’s smile. The crunch of teeth on burnt caramel. The rush of sugar through my body. Watching the giant pyre as flecks of gold and orange crackled and floated away into the darkness.