by J. S. Monroe
The wall behind the computer table is a patchwork of photographs. On the left-hand side are images of Rosa from university. On the right are unconfirmed sightings since her death, some of them crossed out. He didn’t take a photo at Paddington of the woman he thought was Rosa. Instead, he sticks a photo of the station on the wall, draws a question mark next to it with a red marker pen and adds the date.
He keeps everything to do with her here, in an effort to preserve some sort of normality in the rest of his life. The endless Freedom of Information requests to St Matthew’s (her college), the police, the hospital, as well as his correspondence with the coroner (exempt from FoI). There’s the more personal, too: a Margaret Howell nightshirt (bought by her aunt when she got into Cambridge), her favourite perfume (scent she’d found in the spice market in Istanbul), one of the funny cards she’d slipped under his college door.
When people visit the flat, they think he’s moved on with his life. He likes that, wants people to believe he’s over her. No one need know that it’s here in this draughty lock-up that he feels most alive, surrounded by images of the woman he loved more than he thought it was possible to love another human being. If someone walked in on him now, they would mistake him for a stalker. In some ways that’s what he is, except the woman he is hunting is meant to have died five years ago, jumping to her death on a wild night in Cromer, 130 miles away on the north Norfolk coast.
He checks through his personal emails. His father has sent him a few lines about hurling over the weekend and a link to a match report in the Connacht Tribune. Jar’s cousin was playing. ‘Conor didn’t come within an ass’s roar of scoring. Visit us soon, Da.’ Jar smiles as he moves to flip accounts to his work email, but his eye is caught by another message in among the junk.
It’s from Amy, Rosa’s aunt, a picture restorer who lives in Cromer. Amy and Rosa had always been close, but the bond between them grew even stronger after Rosa’s father died. Rosa often went up to the seaside town for weekends, welcoming the chance to get away from the cauldron of Cambridge life.
Jar was invited along too but it wasn’t always easy. Amy bears a painful physical resemblance to her niece. She has also spent much of her life on medication, rollercoastering in and out of depression. Amy’s spirits seemed to lift, though, whenever Amy was with her. They would sit quietly in the filtered sunlight of the sitting room, where Amy would paint intricate patterns in henna on Rosa’s arms and hands as they chatted about her dad.
Jar doesn’t blame her for what subsequently happened and he has stayed in touch since, their relationship, like Amy and Rosa’s, blossoming in mutual bereavement. Amy is an ally, equally paranoid, the only person Jar knows who doesn’t believe Rosa is dead. She has no explanation or theory, just a ‘sixth sense’, as she puts it, which makes the upbeat tone of her email tonight all the more intriguing:
Jar, I’ve been trying to ring but couldn’t get through. We’ve found something on the computer that you might be interested in. It’s to do with Rosa. I’m around all week if you want to come and visit. Call me.
Jar glances at his watch and considers ringing Amy now – it’s late but he knows she never sleeps well. Then he remembers his phone is on the charger back at the flat. He’ll ring her first thing in the morning – from the train to Norfolk. After tonight’s burglary, he might be running out of time.
6
Cambridge, Summer Term, 2012
It’s been a week since I saw Him in the restaurant. If you had asked me then how I imagined we’d meet up again, I’m not sure I would have said as naked as the day I was born on the banks of the River Cam. But that’s what happened last night and I’m still not quite sure how.
At least I now know his name. He’s called Jarlath Costello, ‘Jar’ to his friends, and he’s from Galway. His father runs a bar in the city, his mother’s a psychiatric nurse in Ballinasloe. Jar’s doing an MPhil in Modern and Contemporary English, having read Irish Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. As I thought, he’s a couple of years older than me. And ten times more sensible.
After we finished our rehearsal, the whole cast went out for a drink at The Eagle, where Watson and Crick did their DNA thing. Later, when the evening started to wind down, three of us – Beth, Sam the director, and me – took a walk along the Backs. It was a warm June night and the moon was almost full, bright enough to cast shadows.
‘Anyone fancy a dip?’ Sam asked, looking at me. He’d been flirting a lot over the past few days and I can’t say I minded the attention, although I worry about my motives. An aura has already built up around him as a director, that unsaid consensus that in a few years he will be something big in the real world.
Beth hesitated, watching my response. I knew she fancied Sam too, but I’d been trying to put that to one side, determined that it wouldn’t get in the way of what I hoped was our growing relationship. I’m still attempting to prove to myself that I can do what students are supposed to do: get drunk, skinny-dip, forge lifelong friendships, have lots of energetic sex, maybe even learn something.
I must have paused too long, for the next moment Beth was stripping off and running across the grass, her body shockingly white – and far too nubile – in the glassy moonlight.
‘Come on then,’ she whooped, as much to herself as to us. She’d seized the initiative, laid down a challenge, and I was going to match her all the way.
Without pausing, I took off my clothes too, running towards the riverbank in the hope that it might seem like a less flagrant act when combined with doing something else. I didn’t look back to see whether Sam was following us. I just wanted to join Beth in the water as quickly as possible.
I felt no embarrassment until my knickers caught on my toe and I hopped the final few yards before jumping in. I couldn’t help noticing that I made more of a splash than Beth, which annoyed me. And then I was annoyed that I’d even noticed.
The river was much colder than I expected, but I swam over to Beth, who was treading water beneath Clare Bridge, looking back at Sam.
‘Is he coming in?’ I asked, as indifferently as I could manage. I wanted to turn around, but that would have suggested that I was as interested in seeing Sam naked as she was.
‘How is it?’ Sam called out. He was still very much in his clothes.
‘Aren’t you joining us?’ Beth asked.
‘These will get wet on the grass,’ he said, gathering up both our piles of clothes. Oddly, I felt more self-conscious about Sam handling my knickers than seeing me naked, but he bundled them up briskly, like a mother picking up washing from a teenager’s floor, and walked over to a bench that was set back from the bank.
Beth turned to me. I could tell she was thinking what I was thinking: Sam never had any intention of swimming.
‘You’re a chicken, Sam,’ Beth called out. ‘A big fat lazy cock hen.’
‘He could have left them where they were,’ I said.
‘He’s auditioning us,’ Beth said, swimming back to the shore.
I trod water, watching as Beth lifted her dripping white arse out of the river and sashayed across the grass towards Sam, who was now sitting on the bench, our clothes piled up next to him. She made no effort to walk quickly or cover herself.
Suddenly it wasn’t funny any more. I didn’t want to be auditioned, to submit myself to Sam’s scrutiny.
‘Are you staying in there all night?’ he asked.
If I have to, I thought. A better friend than Beth would have brought my clothes to the bank. The game had been won and she could at least have been magnanimous in victory, but she’d already pulled on her clothes and was sitting next to Sam, his arm slung around her shoulders, keeping her warm.
And then I watched as they got up and walked away, arm in arm.
‘See you back at college,’ Beth said, calling over her shoulder. ‘Catch us up.’
Yeah right. Trying to ignore the creeping cold, I looked around me, at the fabled Backs bathed in moonlight, King’s College Chapel rising
up in stately silhouette. I should be enjoying Cambridge, I thought, my time here, but I’m not. That reminder made me feel at peace with the decision I’ve made. I miss Dad so much it hurts.
There was a May Ball further down the Cam, at Queen’s College. The distant hum of music and student exuberance carried up the river. I’d like to go to our own college ball, at least I think I would, to prove that I can enjoy things like that, but the ticket is too expensive. Three people have asked me, offering to pay, but it feels like a contract for sex.
I thought back to the day Dad punted me down there, the last time I saw him alive. He would have approved of the skinny-dipping but not Sam’s behaviour, even less Beth’s. I only had myself to blame.
I suddenly felt vulnerable, my clothes too far away from the bank for comfort. In the distance, a group of students was heading my way. And that’s when I spotted Him, walking over Clare Bridge above me.
There was no question it was Jar, the heft of his big frame silhouetted in the moonlight. And there was something about his long-strided walk: purposeful, going somewhere with his life, not treading water like me (waiting for an end that can’t come quickly enough). At least he was on his own, hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets.
Should I sink lower into the water, I wondered, hope he doesn’t see me, or front up and call out, ask him to bring my clothes over?
‘Hi there,’ I said, realising for the first time how cold I was. I needed to get out.
For a moment he didn’t respond, but then he stopped, as if he was processing the voice, recalling it from some deep vault in his writer’s brain.
‘Down here. The girl who couldn’t pay for her dinner.’ It was a lousy calling card, but I couldn’t think of anything better to say.
Jar was peering over the edge of the wall now, his arms cradling one of the big stone balls that line each side of the bridge.
‘Let me guess now,’ he said, seemingly unsurprised to see me skinny-dipping in the river at midnight. ‘Method acting? Some weird audition?’
‘Kind of. Only I don’t think I want the part.’
‘You look frozen.’
‘Can you get my clothes?’ His comment had made me feel much colder, dangerously so. ‘Over there, on the bench.’
‘You’re lucky no one ran off with them.’
I started to swim for the bank, watching as Jar walked across the bridge and over to the bench, where he picked up my clothes. We reached the bank at the same time.
‘I’ll leave them here,’ he said, making a conscious effort not to look in my direction as he held them out and turned his back.
For a moment I wondered if I was too cold to pull myself out of the water. My arms were aching and I sank back in after the first attempt.
‘Are you OK there?’ Jar asked, turning his head sideways, as if addressing someone he couldn’t quite see in the dark.
I wanted to ask him to help, but it would have been too awkward. Instead, I summoned the strength and hauled myself out.
‘I’m fine.’
We’d both clocked the approaching group of drunken students, now walking towards us on the path that runs parallel with the river. Chivalrously, Jar had positioned himself in between them and me. I pulled my clothes on as swiftly as I could, not bothering with my bra and trying to ignore the catcalls.
‘The nick of time. Are you OK?’
‘Fucking freezing.’
‘Here, take this,’ he said, giving me his jacket. ‘Go on now,’ he added as I hesitated.
I wrapped myself in his large suede jacket, aware of sandalwood again, just like in the restaurant, and we walked down towards King’s College, away from the students, who’d lost interest.
We hadn’t discussed where we were going. I just wanted to walk to keep warm and he seemed fine with that. Soon we’d turned up through King’s College and into town, chatting about his home in Galway, his time at Trinity College and the move to Britain. As we talked, I subconsciously weighed up being cold against having to make a decision about what we were doing, where we were going, his place, mine or our separate ways, and I wasn’t ready to decide yet. It turned out he’s just begun working on a novel, on top of his MPhil, and was out walking in an attempt to think through the ending.
‘Someone once told me that writing a novel is like telling a joke,’ he said as we headed up Hobson Street. ‘You know the punchline, but there are lots of ways of getting there.’
‘But you don’t know the punchline…’
‘My father used to love The Two Ronnies, always had it on in the pub – when he wasn’t watching Dave Allen. His favourite part was when the little fella sat in the big chair and told those long shaggy dog stories. The actual joke was not important, it was the way he told it. I thought the ending wouldn’t matter.’
‘Have you come up with one tonight?’
‘Early days,’ he said. ‘My two main characters have only just met.’
7
Jar replied to Amy’s email, telling her that he wanted to come in person instead of talking over the phone, and he is now on the Coasthopper bus from King’s Lynn to Cromer. He took an early train out of King’s Cross, using all the cash he had left in his emergency fund (kept in a battered old Persian teapot at the flat – another item that the ‘burglars’ had left untouched).
He feels a surge of adrenaline when Cromer pier comes into view. He always does. Five years ago, Rosa was seen on the town’s CCTV, approaching the Victorian structure at 1 a.m., a rough sea pummelling its iron pillars. A man who has never been traced rang the police shortly afterwards to say that he had just seen a figure jumping off the pier’s end. The emergency services were called and the town’s inshore lifeboat launched. A vicious riptide flows beneath the pier and that night the current was running east to west, which would have carried anyone in the water out into the North Sea and around to the Wash. CCTV cameras on and around the pier, some of which were found to be faulty, had no record of a person leaving.
Jar has visited Cromer a number of times in the intervening years, to see Amy and to stand here, high above the roiling water, trying to imagine what might have happened – whether the woman he loved, and who he thought loved him, had chosen to end her life there. The memorial service was postponed until after the coroner’s inquest. Everyone expected her body to wash up on one of the beaches along the north Norfolk coast, but she was never found.
At the delayed inquest, the suicide note addressed to Amy, with whom she had been staying the night she died, the call to the emergency services, the police report and the character assessment from her college dean, which dwelt on her grief for her father, were enough for the coroner to declare her presumed dead. It was little consolation that her death was recorded as misadventure rather than suicide.
She had written a letter to Jar, too, which was also presented to the coroner. It was an email in her drafts folder (Amy’s one had been left there too) and wasn’t long. He knows the words by heart:
Jar, I’m so sorry. Thank you for the late happiness you brought into my life and the love we shared. I hope you go on to find the peace that eluded me in this world. In the end, the loss of Dad has proved more than I can bear, but already I feel closer to him, knowing what lies ahead of me. I just wish I didn’t have to leave you behind, babe, the first true love of my life and my last.
Jar has often wondered if she deliberately chose a stormy night to head down to the pier. In her last weeks at college, he had helped her to write an essay on pathetic fallacy. Her mind was more disturbed than he realised at the time – he accepts that now – but it still doesn’t make sense.
After stepping off the bus, he heads straight for the hotel where Amy has arranged for them to meet: the Hotel de Paris, an Edwardian timewarp popular with coach parties. He is early and had planned to walk down the pier first, but the choice of venue – why not meet at her house? – has made him nervous. Or perhaps it’s being in a seaside town unfairly out of fashion that troubles him: the dawn-l
ike stillness of empty streets and closed-up shops, the sense that last night’s party has moved on.
Inside the hotel, which overlooks the pier, wood-panelled signs indicate the ‘Ladies Powder Room’ and ‘Games Room’. There’s a minstrel’s gallery of sorts above the main reception, a dizzying patterned carpet, chandeliers, and heavy gilt-edged portraits on the walls. Jar heads down to the cocktail bar, past a poster advertising house doubles and Bacardi and colas, and a glass cabinet displaying bottles of Prosecco and Pinot Grigio.
Amy is early too, sitting in the far corner of the deserted main bar, nursing a cup of coffee. Jar swallows hard, the deafening echoes of Rosa threatening to fell him before they’ve even spoken: the same high brow and long, dark hair, an unseasonal purple velvet coat and bohemian knee-length boots. But there is none of Rosa’s playfulness. Instead, a heaviness hangs over her, something that Jar once saw in his mamó shortly before she died: eyes wearied by years of pain. She’s having one of her down days, he thinks.
‘Am I late?’ he asks, closing his eyes as he kisses her on the cheek.
‘I’m in no rush,’ she says. Jar remembers how time seems to slow down around Amy when she’s like this. ‘Coffee?’
A bored waitress wearing a pinny emerges through a swing door that slams with disapproval behind her. Jar jumps, but Amy doesn’t seem to hear it. He orders a double espresso, taking in the empty, high-ceilinged room: the dark varnish of the bar, ornate cornicing, a sketch of the lifeboat. He feels a sudden pang of homesickness, for the family bar in Galway, his father.
‘Our revels now are ended,’ his da likes to bark at closing time, standing on a chair among the throng of locals and tourists. ‘Or, in the immortal words of William Shakespeare, haven’t any of you feckin’ eejits got homes to go to?’ (He can curse the bladder out of a goat, can Da.) Sometimes it feels like Jar’s whole childhood was misspent sitting on a bar stool, dipping his finger into the beer-spill tray as he listened to Da chatting to customers, telling American tourists about the fourteen tribes of Galway, weaving his spell of Gaelic bonhomie. If his mother hadn’t made a point of sending him to bed every night, he would have stayed up till dawn. ‘Well how’s the wee fella ever going to learn about the world?’ his father would complain, ruffling his hair.