Find Me

by J. S. Monroe

  Jar falls silent, trying to process what she’s saying.

  ‘When I was in America. My titles have become a lot more boring since then. More academic.’ Kirsten comes around from her desk and joins him at the window, looking out on to the street. ‘Do you want to talk some more about her diary? It seems to have stirred a few things up.’

  Jar’s old fears kick in again – why does she want to talk about the diary? – but this time he ignores them. He can already hear his father’s voice: yous been a feckin’ eejit. Misread coincidences as connections. It doesn’t change anything, he tells himself. Rosa did have a therapist at college called Karen. It’s just not the same person standing beside him now.

  ‘I’m still off the clock,’ she adds.

  His phone is ringing in his jacket pocket, vibrating, on silent. He slips it out to see who it is.

  ‘And if you don’t mind me saying,’ she continues, walking back to her desk, ‘I’ve seen you looking better.’

  But Jar isn’t listening. To her, to the noise of people walking past on Harley Street, an accelerating car. All he can hear is the sound of his own deafening heart, growing louder with each beat. He looks at the name showing on his phone again, in case he’s imagining it. But he’s not.

  It’s Rosa.

  34

  Cromer, Summer Term, 2012 (continued)

  I couldn’t sleep after I heard Amy and Martin arguing, haunted by the sound of the smashed plate. I still don’t know all the details of why Martin retired early, but Dad had his theories: excessive cruelty to laboratory animals (‘Beaglegate’, he called it), sexual harassment, medical grounds. Take your pick. The last one was his favourite (Dad had a dark sense of humour): he reckoned Martin left because he was suffering from chronic depression, which would have been deeply ironic, given he was researching antidepressants just before he was ‘let go’.

  At about 2 a.m., I decided enough was enough. Sleep was not going to happen. So I slipped on jeans and a jacket, opened my bedroom door and crept down the stairs, careful not to wake Jar.

  My life would be so much more straightforward if I hadn’t met him. Jar’s complicated things in the brief time we’ve known each other, muddied the waters. The way forward was once so clear to me, but he’s introduced an element of doubt, made me question at times whether I’ve taken the right decision. When I’m with him, I feel happier than I ever thought possible, but I scare myself with my ability to disconnect the moment we’re apart. It seems I can erase him from my thoughts like deleting a file. I know there’s no turning back.

  I unlocked the back door and walked across the flagstones at the rear of the house. It was a clear night and there was enough moonshine to make out the garden – a manicured lawn (Martin’s big on stripes), then a long, narrow orchard, bordered on either side by high, drystone walls. Beyond the apple trees, more than five hundred yards from the house, I could see Martin’s ‘shed’. It’s a proper garden office, about the size of a double garage, with windows looking out across the garden. My plan had been to go down Hall Road to the beach – about a twenty-minute walk – and watch the rising sun from the pier, but curiosity got the better of me. Instead of going through the side gate, I stepped out on to the lawn, keeping to the shadows of the wall, and looked back at the main house. All the lights were off.

  I carried on walking, through the orchard, ducking under branches weighed down with ripening fruit, until I was standing to one side of Martin’s shed. There was a padlock and chain on the door. His computers were stolen a few years ago and he’s obviously taking no risks now. I glanced back at the house again and then moved up to the windows and peered in. There was an open area, with a few garden chairs stacked up inside, and beyond it a partition wall. A pale red light was seeping out from under a door to what must be a second room. I was about to walk away when I heard something: a whimper, perhaps, more animal than human. I strained my ears, listening for the sound again as the hairs pricked on the back of my neck, but there was nothing. I’m imagining things, I thought.

  I walked back up the garden, taking less care to stay in the shadows as I lengthened my stride, slipped open the side gate and set off down the road towards the town, shaking off the fear that had descended on me like a fog. The two beagles stay in the house, sleeping in Amy and Martin’s bedroom at night. ‘Martin doesn’t walk his dogs, he takes them for a drag,’ Dad used to joke. Not funny, when you think of puppies being forced to inhale cigarettes. God, I miss Dad more than ever.

  Down in the town, I headed straight for the beach and picked my way along the sand, close to the water’s edge, stepping over the groynes that punctuate the shoreline at regular intervals as I looked for shells. It was almost 3 a.m. and the moon was so strong, it cast shadows.

  There was no one around – I couldn’t even see any boats on the horizon – so I decided to go up to the Hotel de Paris and walk down the pier, past the Pavilion Theatre and on to the end, by the lifeboat station, where I’d seen dads and their kids fishing earlier in the evening.

  I’ll apparently know when the time’s right. This was not that moment, but I still felt a surge of adrenaline as I leant against the railings and looked out to sea, relishing the salty wind on my face. I gripped the rusting iron, but then I stepped up on to the first rail and stood there, with nothing to stop me falling into the sea far below. It was a calm night, but a strong current was swirling around the pillars of the pier far below. I started to feel dizzy. For a second, I wondered if perhaps the time had come, but there is still much to be done. I want to put everything in order, leave no loose ends, write to Jar, explain what I can, which is very little. Say my goodbyes.

  I stepped down off the railing and headed back up Hall Road towards the house. My legs were shaking.

  35

  ‘Who is this?’ Jar says, looking up and down Harley Street. He is standing on the pavement, outside Kirsten’s consulting rooms, talking into his phone. ‘Why are you ringing from this number?’

  There is only silence on the other end of the line. His first thought is that someone has managed to get hold of Rosa’s phone – it has never been found – but as he listens, his anger gives way to hope. The silence feels female.

  ‘Rosa?’ he asks, almost whispering, waiting for the call to disconnect at any moment. ‘Is that you?’ He listens, for the sound of breathing, anything, but there is no noise. He hangs up and leans back against the door, eyes closed.

  When he opens his eyes, he sees Kirsten at the front window, looking across at him. He walks away, down towards Oxford Circus.

  ‘Wait, Jar,’ he hears her call after him, but he doesn’t turn. He’s still not sure Kirsten is being straight with him. A moment later, she is at his side.

  ‘Who was on the phone?’ she says, struggling to keep up with Jar.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I’m worried, Jar. It’s my job.’

  ‘Last time I visited your office, I was picked up by the police. I hope you’ll understand why you being here now is making me a wee bit jumpy.’ To confirm his point, he looks up and down Harley Street as he walks on.

  ‘That had nothing to do with me. Was it Rosa on the phone?’ she asks.

  Jar stops on the pavement and turns to her.

  ‘Was it her?’ she repeats. ‘Rosa?’

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because of the way you reacted. I’ve seen it before. I can help you, Jar.’

  ‘You think I imagined the call? Is that it?’

  ‘Grief manifests itself in many ways, Jar. I don’t doubt that someone called you.’

  ‘But you don’t think it was Rosa. What’s that, then?’

  He holds his phone out, Rosa’s name clearly displayed on his list of received calls. Kirsten looks at it and then back at Jar.

  ‘Her phone must have been found by someone and they rang me by mistake. A pocket call. It was her phone – her number is still in my contacts – but as everyone keeps telling me, she died five year
s ago.’

  He is offering an explanation for his own benefit as much as for hers. His mind hasn’t stopped racing from the moment he saw her name displayed. Of course it wasn’t her, he tells himself, walking on.

  Kirsten hasn’t given up and is still jogging at his side. ‘Come back tomorrow morning,’ she says. ‘I’ll be in early. Please. I can help you.’

  Jar walks away, sensing that she is watching him until he disappears into the crowds.

  His phone rings again as he approaches Oxford Street. It’s Carl.

  ‘Are you coming into work?’ Carl says. ‘I can’t keep making excuses for you.’

  ‘Can you locate a phone for me?’

  ‘I told you to turn on your “Find My iPhone”—’

  ‘It’s not mine, Carl. It’s Rosa’s.’

  Carl pauses before he speaks. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I need you to ask your friend at the phone company.’

  ‘We’ve been through this before, Jar. Her phone’s dead.’

  It’s true. In the early days, Jar asked Carl the same favour, after he was woken by a call on his phone in the middle of the night. The caller ID had been blocked, but Jar, half asleep (and possibly still drunk), had lain in his flat in the darkness, listening to Rosa talk to him about all the good times they had spent together. When he awoke in the morning, he thought it had been a dream, but he checked his phone and he had accepted a call from an unknown number at 2.05 a.m. that had lasted twenty-five minutes. He rang Carl, who had an old college friend who worked in the IT department of Jar’s mobile-phone provider, but there was no trace of Rosa’s handset on the networks.

  ‘Someone’s just rung me on it,’ Jar says now. ‘The caller ID said Rosa, just like it used to when we were at Cambridge together.’

  There’s a pause on the other end of the line.

  ‘Did they say anything?’ Carl asks. His voice is quiet, more supportive now.

  ‘Nothing. I’m guessing it’s been found by someone.’

  ‘Five years is a long time.’

  ‘Maybe they put the SIM card into a new phone. I don’t know, Carl. You tell me.’

  ‘Let’s talk when we meet. You are coming in, aren’t you? The boss is giving me hell, like I’m personally responsible for your continuing absence.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him. Now will you call your friend? Please?’

  ‘Only if you promise to come into the office.’

  ‘Sure. And Carl? You were right about Kirsten and Karen, Rosa’s counsellor at college. It was just a coincidence.’

  ‘There’s a surprise.’

  ‘But we were both set up, by Rosa’s aunt. Kirsten didn’t come into our lives by chance. Amy arranged it – thought I needed help.’

  There’s another long silence before Carl speaks. ‘You mean she’s not playing Congo Natty to her patients?’

  ‘Not this morning.’

  ‘And it was such a good story. You still seeing her, then? Professionally, I mean?’

  ‘I’ve just been lying on her couch.’

  ‘I’ll call you. About the phone.’ Jar detects a certain weariness in his friend’s voice. ‘But you are coming in?’

  ‘Promise. And thanks. For everything.’ Carl’s gone the distance in recent days, trawled the dark web, put up with more conspiracy theories than usual, covered for him at work. Jar’s about to hang up when he spots someone across the street. It’s the man who sat in the café opposite the office, there’s no doubting it’s him this time. ‘I’m coming in now.’

  36

  Please forgive me, Jar. I tried to call you earlier today, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk. Not after all this time. It was good to hear your voice. So good. And I don’t blame you if you’ve moved on with your life. But it’s important we talk. It’s best, I think, if we meet face to face and then I can attempt to explain everything from the beginning.

  Meet me where I said I’d go if the world ever slipped off its axis. Do you remember the place? I can’t risk writing its name here. I’ll be waiting for you. At least give me the chance to explain. You’re not safe and nor am I. Take care, babe. Always.

  37

  Jar stares at the screen and then checks behind him. The message in his email inbox – his own private gmail account, the one he’s had for years – is so unreal, he wonders if an audience is watching him and he’s not in the office but on stage in some tasteless reality TV show.

  Meet me where I said I’d go if the world ever slipped off its axis. Do you remember the place? I can’t risk writing its name here.

  Jar glances across at Carl, who is typing, punching at his keyboard with podgy index fingers. When he looks back at his screen again, he expects the message to have gone, but it’s still there. He reads it slowly, from the beginning, mouthing each word, and when he gets to the end he reads it again. And again. It’s her language – she wrote something similar in her diary, after her father’s funeral – and it’s her old gmail account, but is it from her?

  Think, think. He stands up at his desk, running a hand through his hair, looking around the office. Carl glances up at him and then returns to his own screen. Somewhere in the deep recesses of his troubled mind, Jar has a memory of a conversation with Rosa about a place of retreat in times of crisis. If the world ever slipped off its axis.

  Still standing, he leans forward, scrolling through the diary, reading random, flickering snapshots from their conversations at Cambridge. Then he looks again at the email. It means only one thing: Rosa is alive. The phone call was from her too. She’s trying to make contact, remind him of a crazy rendezvous plan she once told him about. If only he could recall where it was.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Carl asks.

  ‘I’m good,’ Jar says, but the blood is draining from his face. He sinks down into his chair, feeling nauseous.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Just tell him the truth, that you’ve been unwell.’

  He’s not been off sick, but Jar lets it go. He is due to see his editor in ten minutes, explain why he has only written one story – best celebrity ‘nudies’, as opposed to ‘selfies’ – in the past week. He’ll try to bluff his way through the meeting, but he fears the worst. At least if he’s out of a job he’ll have more time to find Rosa. His life has changed irrevocably, nothing else matters now.

  And then he remembers. The night he met Rosa for a drink at The Eagle. She’d been with her actor friends, but they’d gone off in a group, leaving her behind. Rosa had rung him, feeling abandoned. She was worse for wear when he found her, talking about a report in the news about a meteorite that was going to pass close to earth.

  ‘I know it’s due to miss us by a few hundred thousand miles,’ she said, nursing her pint of bitter, ‘but if, say, something like that ever did happen, and the world got a fright, jumped a little and slipped off its axis, you and I need to have a plan.’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Somewhere we could go, away from all the chaos, far from the cities. A place where we could shelter together, in a post-apocalyptic world.’

  She took several runs at apocalyptic – ‘acopalyptic’, ‘alopacyptic’ – before giving up and burying her head in Jar’s neck, giggling, her eyes closed.

  ‘Galway’s got a lot going for it,’ Jar said, putting an arm around her. Her actor friends had behaved poorly, he thought, should never have left her behind.

  ‘Galway’s too far,’ she said, perkier now, sitting up, one hand resting high on Jar’s leg. ‘And planes won’t be flying – there’ll be dust clouds in the atmosphere.’

  ‘You’ve really thought this one through, haven’t you?’

  ‘There’s a place in Cornwall where Dad visited after Mum died. And I went there after his funeral. Somewhere to hide – and heal. We should meet there.’

  She turned to Jar, looked at him with her big eyes. She had never mentioned her mother’s death before. He was about to ask her about it when she leant forward and kissed him, a long, slow, drunken
kiss.

  ‘It’s named after a pig-ugly fish – the gurnard – but it’s one of the most magical places in the world,’ she said, sitting knee to knee with Jar now, holding both his hands in hers. She leant in to kiss him again. ‘It’s really important you remember this,’ she chided and then hiccupped. Jar smiled, still not listening properly, thinking instead how beautiful she looked tonight, a touch of the capricious Carmen about her. ‘Are you concentrating? You never know when we might need an emergency rendezvous in life.’

  ‘I’ll remember.’

  She took a sip of her pint and continued. ‘You get down to this place by a steep track – after you’ve had a drink at a pub at the top. Bright yellow-ochre walls, can’t miss it. There’s a sandy beach at low tide – some delicious hidden coves – but it’s best to walk on around the bay, past the remains of an ancient chapel, and up to Gurnard’s Head. You’ll see some big rocks on the headland, and a place you can hunker down, out of the wind. Shall we meet there? We could watch the seals below, maybe even porpoises if we’re lucky. The air is so pure.’

  ‘Gurnard’s Head,’ Jar says.

  ‘What’s that?’ Carl has stopped typing and is looking at him.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Jar, you’re seeing the boss in five minutes.’

  ‘He’s only going to sack me. I’ve got a train to catch,’ he says, breaking into a run.

  But before he’s reached the exit, one of the regulars from the post room stops him. ‘Sign for this before you go, Jar?’

  Jar takes the package – a book for review, he assumes – and runs out of the office.

  38

  Silent Retreat, Herefordshire, Spring Term, 2012

  It’s the last day of our briefing in Herefordshire. Tonight we return to our colleges, start to put our affairs in order – and wait.

  Todd told us everything this morning. We were all called into the classroom again, where we first met him, and he treated us to a run-through of the whole programme. He was more relaxed than before, I think because our numbers have been thinned. Almost half of us have been ‘allowed back’ to our colleges early, leaving only the chosen few.