by J. S. Monroe
‘Some of it. It’s taking a while to access the files. They can’t charge Martin if he’s done nothing wrong.’
There is a silence before Amy speaks, Jar’s ‘if’ lingering in the ether.
‘I’ll call you,’ she says.
As Jar walks up on to the Tube platform, the thought crosses his mind that Martin just might have indecent images on his computer. No children of his own, those two strange rescue dogs he used to keep – ‘smoking beagles’, Rosa called them. But it doesn’t wash. Martin’s not like that. The authorities’ focus is Rosa, not her uncle – and Jar’s own efforts to prove that she is alive. And they are watching him now, desperate to get their hands on her diary, knowing that there is something Rosa’s been waiting to tell him.
12
Cambridge, Spring Term, 2012
I haven’t come to Cambridge to study drinking games. And I have no interest in rugby (even though Dad loved it). So why did I spend last night with a group of college players and public-school groupies whose idea of a good night out is getting lashed at The Pickerel and then setting fire to their pubes with sambuca?
I don’t want to upset anyone, that’s my problem. And when everyone in my block is heading out for the evening, it seems rude to say no, be the killjoy, say I’ve got work to do. No one likes to be left on their own, not in their first year. And I thought it would be good for me. Getting out of my room. I’ve spent too much time in here recently, light off, curtains drawn, writing this diary, hoping it might help to lift the darkness that wraps itself ever more tightly around my life.
At least I managed to leave early last night. I slipped out when everyone was using their empty beer glasses as binoculars, and meandered down King’s Parade, trying to imagine how Mum and Dad had met here. I wish I’d asked Dad more about their time as students.
That day when he took me punting, we also went for tea at the Kettle Pot, opposite King’s, his arm around my shoulders as he ushered me to a table in the big bay window overlooking the famous chapel. He was very insistent we sit there, said it was where he had first dated Mum.
‘Your dean’s a good man,’ he said, smearing too much jam on his hot buttered crumpet.
‘You know him?’ Dr Lance: bearded, serious, a world authority on Goethe.
‘We were undergraduates together,’ Dad said. ‘When everyone left, he stayed on, took to the academic life.’
‘He seemed OK at the interview.’
In truth he’d left little impression on me and I was struggling to recall his face. I had expected him to do something weird when he interviewed me – set fire to the newspaper he was reading, somersault out of the window mid-conversation – but it was a very straightforward exchange, quite different from the myth of the Oxbridge interview.
‘Some of the best people in the FO have been recruited on his recommendation.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, when I need a job.’
‘I’ve asked him to keep an eye on you.’
‘Dad,’ I sighed, but he had a point. I had been asked to leave a few places in my time, including my last school, but it was after A levels and the place was a dump.
‘In a good way. Most students only get to see their dean when they’ve done something wrong. He’ll be looking out for you. There if you ever need any help.’
‘Can I ask you a question, about us?’ I said, sated after our crumpet fest.
‘Sure.’
I paused, feeling guilty about bringing up Mum’s death. She took her own life a year after I was born. The family doctor said it was nobody’s fault – postpartum psychosis – but Dad never forgave himself. ‘If Mum hadn’t died, would you have been more successful, in your career?’
He laughed, throwing back his head like in the photo I have of his wedding, when his best man was making a speech. His laughter was always infectious, unselfconscious. ‘Do you know something that I don’t?’
‘What I mean is, a lot of people in your situation would have got in more help.’
‘Your mother and I had vowed to bring you up ourselves. If you’re asking me if my job might have gone in a different direction…’ He paused. ‘I can’t answer that.’
‘Well I’m sorry if I have held you back.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You can only play the cards in front of you. If Mum hadn’t died, we might have had more children, less money. Who knows? I might have taken a different job altogether, outside the FO.’
‘It must have been very hard. In the early months.’
‘This is a merry conversation.’
‘I just need to know.’
‘Of course. New chapter, no longer my little—’
I cut him short with a don’t-you-dare face of disapproval. Another pause. We were always easy in each other’s company, no need to talk if we didn’t want to.
‘Did you ever think about ending it all as well?’ I said at last.
He looked at me before answering, his face suddenly serious, sad. I’d never asked him that before and I don’t know why I decided to ask him then. It was a cruel question, selfish. I knew he’d suffered over the years, had had days when he’d come home and hadn’t spoken a word, had stayed up late in his study, risen red-eyed the next morning, an empty bottle of whisky in the recycling bin.
‘Sometimes it seemed the easiest thing to do. But she would have been furious!’ He laughed again, less effusively this time. ‘And I couldn’t bear the thought of you losing both of us.’
I rested my hand on his. His eyes were moistening.
‘Thank you.’
‘All I ask in return is that you care for me when I’m old and dribbly.’
Dr Lance wants to see me tomorrow. We meet up a few times a term – he clearly feels even more responsible for me since Dad died – but this time I sense it will be different. He has written me a sweet note, said it’s been brought to his attention that I’m not happy (underlined). Understatement of the year.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Dad’s words in recent days, what stopped him from following Mum and taking his own life. Sometimes it seemed the easiest thing to do. Would Dad be ‘furious’ with me? And was he ever furious with Mum? I didn’t know it was possible to be this down, to miss someone so much, for life to feel such a disappointment. Perhaps it’s because I’m conscious of how much I’m meant to be enjoying myself here.
The new college counsellor will be there tomorrow, too, along with Dr Lance. I wasn’t even aware we had one until I heard that all the boys are pretending to be suicidal just so they can spend time with her. She’s mint, apparently. A hottie, as Dad would have said.
13
Jar has always questioned Carl’s taste in women, but he’s right about Kirsten Thomas. It’s Monday morning and he’s sitting in a high-ceilinged room in a Georgian townhouse on Harley Street, allowing his eyes to linger on hers longer than he should as she outlines her terms.
‘My first session is always off the clock,’ she says breezily. New England, Jar guesses. Maybe Boston. ‘But in your case, I’d like to make you an offer.’
Me too, he thinks, returning her smile, then checks himself: Jaysus, you’re behaving like Carl. He takes in his surroundings, wondering if all Harley Street consulting rooms are like this. She is sitting on one side of a large oak desk, he is perched on a chair in the centre of the light and airy room. A chandelier hangs from the high ceiling, the floor is reclaimed pine boards.
There’s no couch – he makes a note to tell Carl – but a sofa and one armchair are arranged beneath the tall window. A wooden Venetian blind shields them from London life beyond. In the corner there’s a washbasin, and he spots a box of tissues on the floor, beside the armchair. He thinks of all the people who must have sat in these rooms, unpacking their problems for an hour only to put them all away again and step back out on to the street.
‘I’m writing a paper that I’m hoping you might be able to help me with. It’s called “Bereavement among the imaginative: grief reactions, post-bereavement hallucination
s and quality of life”.’
‘Catchy title.’
‘I’ve written about the condition before, but I’m now kind of interested in how it affects artists. Novelists.’
‘You think we imagine it? Make it all up?’ Jar doesn’t mean to sound aggressive, but he resents the suggestion of creativity.
‘Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Maybe the condition manifests itself better in the artistic.’
‘So what are you offering?’
‘Six free one-hour sessions, starting tomorrow. Before I see my first client of the day. Are you a morning person?’
Jar doesn’t answer. Instead, he looks again at her cropped blonde hair and blue eyes, trying to guess her age: mid-forties? Her face is magazine-model attractive rather than unusual: high, sculpted cheekbones, wide mouth, snub nose. There’s nothing mysterious or exotic about her, but on the plus side she’s not interested in playing up her unquestionable assets. Light make-up – maybe a clear sheen on her full lips – and her clothes are anything but revealing: buttoned-up cream blouse beneath a brown jacket, skirt to her knees. No heel.
‘I’m not sure why I’m here, if I’m honest,’ Jar begins.
‘That’s OK.’
‘My friend—’
‘Carl, he told you to come. I’m glad. He said he would.’
‘I was expecting to hear music,’ Jar says, nodding towards the door. ‘“Therapy” by All Time Low, that kind of thing.’
‘British humour, huh?’ she says, managing a smile.
‘Irish, actually. We tend to find comedy in most things, even death.’
The mention of death stills their conversation like oil on water, which is Jar’s intention. He looks towards the window, a cue to move on, get to the business end of their meeting. It’s then that he becomes aware of a quirk in her breathing: an occasional sharp intake of breath, as if she’s been frightened by something.
‘If you are OK with my offer,’ she says, ‘I’d just like you to turn up here and talk.’
‘Talking’s a way of life where I come from.’
What’s he saying? Playing up his Irish roots to impress the blonde American?
‘I’m guessing Dublin,’ she says.
‘Galway City.’ He knows he should stop there, but he can’t help himself. ‘Ireland’s “cultural heart”,’ he adds. ‘Birthplace of the late, great Peter O’Toole.’
She holds his gaze, looks away, and takes another breath just before she speaks, making that curious sound again.
‘I’m a psychoanalyst by training, Jar. I rely on a method called free association, developed by Sigmund Freud. You say whatever comes into your head and I look for unconscious factors that might explain your behaviour.’
Carl wasn’t so wrong after all, he thinks.
‘I’ll need you to tell me everything about your bereavement and the subsequent sightings,’ she continues. ‘It will help me and I’m confident it will help you.’
‘How much did Carl explain?’
‘Can we assume nothing?’
‘If it’s easier. But I’m guessing he said that my girlfriend – Rosa Sandhoe – died five years ago, that we had a brief relationship at university, and I subsequently drank myself into oblivion in a misguided attempt to get over her. The truth is less simple. We loved each other with a passion for the few months that we were together, an intensity that I have never experienced before or since. I drink slightly less now, but I still miss her every day. What’s more, I think that she’s very much alive. Rosa was a happy person when I knew her, despite the loss of her father – her suicide was out of character, a belief reinforced by sightings of her that have become more real in recent months.’
Has he said too much, been too candid? Jar decided before he arrived here that there would be limits. He won’t mention Rosa’s diary, not specifically, even though its discovery – and the effect it might have on him – is what’s brought him here. He feels guilty enough that he’s reading it – Anton has passed on six decrypted entries now: how they met at the restaurant, skinny-dipping in the Cam, their first night together – and he doesn’t intend to breach Rosa’s confidence further by sharing the contents with anyone else. He’s also troubled by her version of events.
‘Do we have a deal?’ Kirsten asks, smiling at him.
*
An hour later, Jar is sitting at his computer in the lock-up garage, about to read for the third time the latest diary entry that’s arrived, when his phone rings. It’s Amy, sounding more coherent than the last time they spoke. They talk about Martin – the police have released him without charge – and then the hard drive. It’s four days since she handed it over in Cromer.
‘He had to tell them we’d given it to you,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. It’s Rosa’s diary they’re after, Jar.’
‘How much did he tell them?’
‘Your name and address. He had no choice. Have you managed to read any of it yet?’
Jar can feel time running out as they speak. He tells her about Anton, how he’s decrypting the entries one by one and placing them in a drafts folder.
‘Ask this Anton to copy all the files,’ Amy suggests, as Jar logs into the drafts email address. ‘That’s what they are coming for. And Jar?’ There is a pause. ‘Her diary’s bound to stir things up. I know you weren’t keen before, but you should really think about getting some help. Talk to a therapist. I can recommend a few.’
‘I already am. Had my first session today.’
‘That’s great. Who with?’
‘An American in Harley Street.’ Even Jar’s impressed by how that sounds.
‘Was it helpful?’
‘Early days. I’ll let you know.’
After a few minutes of chat, Amy says she’s coming to London later in the week and it would be good to meet up. Jar agrees and they hang up.
The diary entries never arrive in the drafts folder in any particular order. The one on the screen now is from Rosa’s second term at Cambridge. Jar hates himself for it, but he can’t help always scanning the text first to see if she has mentioned his name, left him a message, a crumb of comfort.
When he had first read this entry, it was with a twinge of disappointment that he realised she’d written it in the spring term, before they met. And before an important meeting with the college dean, Dr Lance, a man Jar has written to many times over the past five years. An Oxbridge recruiting sergeant for the intelligence services, if the rumours are to be believed: the old tap-on-the-shoulder-over-a-sherry routine. All Jar knows is that Dr Lance has never replied to his letters, emails or phone calls, refuses to see him whenever he turns up in person.
He flicks back to the beginning of the document and starts to read, shocked again by how much sadness Rosa managed to conceal from him, how little he really knew her.
Was she pretending that hot summer’s day when they cycled out to Grantchester Meadows with a bottle of cheap cava? He’d disappointed her by asking if they needed to bring glasses – his da has a thing about glasses in the pub, used to get Jar to polish them every morning before school (‘You never know when the Pope might pay us a visit.’).
‘You’re so old-fashioned,’ she’d teased, swigging from the bottle as she lay back in the sunshine by the river. He had never felt happier than he did that day, lying with her in the long grass and planning their future together. Had it meant the same to her? Did she write about it? He’s sure she was happy too, which makes the disconnect between his memory and hers all the more unsettling.
14
Cambridge, Summer Term, 2012
Strange things, May Balls. They’re held in June not May and they cost more than most students can afford. I’d never seen a champagne fountain before, not even at any of the diplomatic parties Dad took me to, but I saw one last night, watched people having their heads held under it until they gagged (posh waterboarding).
Everyone else in my year seemed to be going to our college ball, and, well, what the hell, I thought: Da
d would have been appalled if I’d not gone. Besides, I had three bids on the table, all offering me a free ticket.
I went with handsome Tim in the end, having told him up front that I had a boyfriend back home. He seemed fine with that in a way that made me feel bad. But I told myself I was lying in order to be more truthful: to dampen any sexual expectations (mine as well as his).
If I‘m honest, I also decided to go because I thought it would be good for me. I hadn’t seen Jar since our skinny-dipping encounter, but I couldn’t get him out of my head. I had to keep reminding myself that this was not the time to fall in love. That if Jar was thinking about me for even a fraction of the time he was filling my thoughts, it would be unforgivably cruel to him. (I also had to keep reminding myself that he might not care a fig, of course.)
Tim insisted on having cocktails in his room with a few close friends before we went across the road to join the ball. I’d been to his room a few times before. It’s a nice enough place, but nothing to compare with Jar’s. A party was already overflowing down the corridor when I arrived in a cream taffeta ball gown that I found in a charity shop on Bene’t Street. For a moment I wondered if I wasn’t the only one he’d bought a ticket for. Tim’s one of the most social students in college, thanks in part to Tim’s Bar, a late-night shebeen he runs in his room every Friday, when he serves cocktails to all and sundry. His dad’s a wine merchant in the City, so sourcing industrial quantities of alcohol isn’t a problem. Money isn’t either. He’s also very sporty, more into cricket than rugby, and good-looking in a Greek god sort of way, but I wouldn’t have given him a second thought when I first met him if it weren’t for the fact that he’s also profoundly deaf.
‘I thought a quiet tête à tête might scare you off,’ he said, kissing me on both cheeks when I found him in the corner, shaking cocktails. Like all the men present, he was wearing a black tailcoat with white bow tie.
His own speech is generally good – a few telltale words are a bit nasal – but he relies on lip-reading and minimal hearing in his left ear to understand what other people are saying. When I first met him, I was flattered by the attention, the close face-to-face engagement, until I realised he does that with everyone. He needs to have a clear view of your lips.