Someone would later tell me that denial, the first stage of grief, isn’t big and simple, like refusing to accept that someone is dead when all the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that they are. No. The real work of denial, the true intricacy of it, takes place beneath the thoughts your consciousness articulates in the nanoseconds before it does. It happens when you are presented with a set of circumstances that any person not in denial would immediately find worrying but, because you are in the midst of it, the roots of every fear bend and break, re-forming into plausible possibilities that cause you no concern. Denial is forcing boring, pedestrian explanations out of your synapses, growing them thick and uncontrolled like vines on a time-lapse video. Constantly and quickly, so nothing logical has a chance to squeeze through.
It just didn’t occur to me that Sarah could be anywhere other than where she had said she was going to be, or that the reason she wasn’t answering her phone was because she wouldn’t or couldn’t.
But I realise now that that’s all that was occurring to Jack.
‘Where is she staying?’ he asked. ‘We’ll call her there.’
I wondered what the urgency was. What couldn’t wait?
‘Is everything okay, Jack?’ I asked. ‘Is something wrong? Has something happened?’
I wasn’t getting it yet, but this was what was wrong.
This was what had happened.
After Jack hung up, I lay down, closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep, sure that he and Maureen were overreacting. But after less than a minute I was staring at the ceiling and feeling responsible for their panic.
I couldn’t remember the name of the hotel where Sarah was staying. Truth be told, I couldn’t remember whether or not she’d ever told me it.
I imagined Jack and Maureen in their paisley-covered living room, Jack pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace and Maureen pulling the rosary beads she’d bought in Lourdes through her fingers. It didn’t matter that they didn’t need to be worried, only that they were. Sarah would be devastated to find out what she’d inadvertently caused with her radio silence, a radio silence that might be intended to help me.
This could be all my fault.
I scrolled through the contacts on my phone until I found Rose’s number. My call to her went unanswered. I sent her a text instead, asking if she’d heard from Sarah in the last couple of days and, if she hadn’t, could she remember the name of the hotel in Barcelona where she was staying, by any chance.
They’d be able to tell me the name of the hotel at the office, I knew. Jack and Maureen had probably spoken to the receptionist, who could hardly be expected to know the whereabouts of every employee. A hundred or so people worked at Sarah’s firm. I could call them myself and make sure I got put through to Sarah’s department, maybe even disguise it as a follow-up with my new best friend, Susan ‘The Sudden Scribe’ Robinson. She was Sarah’s manager. But then I pictured Sarah’s face as I explained my reasons for calling her boss, and decided to wait and see if Rose knew the name of the hotel instead.
Besides, Jack and Maureen had already been onto the office. Me and them in the same day? Sarah would be mortified when she got back.
I padded into the living room and woke up my computer.
Sarah had bought me an iMac a couple of Christmases ago. She had a laptop of her own, but only mine was connected to a printer. I’d seen the icon on my desktop already, a PDF file, named as a string of random numbers: Sarah’s boarding passes.
I opened them now.
EU/EEA Passenger: Sarah O’Connell
Booking reference: EHJ9AM
10 August 2014
EI802: ORK-BCN | Zone B | Seat 18B
Departs: 1]0:55 | Gate closes: 10:25
EU/EEA Passenger: Sarah O’Connell
Booking reference: EHJ9AM
14 August 2014
EI804: BCN-ORK | Zone C | Seat 23A
Departs: 11:40 | Gates closes: 11:10
I printed them off, set the page aside. Sarah would make contact any second, but seeing the boarding passes might make Jack and Maureen feel a bit better until she did.
I thought I might call over there later, do some reassuring in person. Sarah would probably call long before then though.
I tried her number now but, after a beat of dead air, voicemail kicked in. Hi, you’ve reached Sarah. Sort of, because I can’t answer my phone right now. But please leave me a message and I’ll call you back just as soon as I can. I hung up without saying anything.
So her phone was dead. Or switched off, at least.
I looked at my own device, turned it over in my hand, studied it. An item easily lost or damaged, kept alive by another item even more easily lost or damaged. If Sarah didn’t have one, if every other person in the Western world didn’t have one too, would Jack and Maureen be worried about the whereabouts of their grown daughter right now? Would it be at all odd that she’d been away for a couple of days and hadn’t contacted them? As my father liked to say, what did we all do before mobile phones, eh?
We waited for people to come home.
How else could you contact a person if they didn’t have their mobile phone? Sarah only ever emailed me links to articles she’d found online that she thought I’d like, but I swiped a finger across my iPhone’s screen and checked my inbox, just in case. All that had come in in the past couple of days were circulars from online stores, notifications of new comments on my blog and, three hours ago, an email from my agent.
The subject line said: Rewrite?
I ignored it for now. One problem at a time.
I checked my Twitter and Facebook apps. Sarah had accounts on both, although she rarely used them. Looking at them now, I saw the most recent activity was from weeks before.
Even if her phone was dead, she was bound to be online, if only for conference-related work stuff. I sent her private messages on both networks and then an email, asking her to call me when she got the chance, telling her that I missed her, reminding her that I loved her.
Back to the home screen.
Still nothing from Sarah. Still nothing from Rose.
I sent Moorsey a message, asking him to ask Rose to call me.
Then I realised there was a way I could find out where Sarah was staying.
Possibly . . .
The archive box was in my side of the wardrobe. I set it on the bed, using my fingertips to move through utility bills, our lease, the finance agreement on my car. At the back was a bundle of bank statements and, stuck in the middle of them: the letter from Sarah’s bank thanking her for registering for online banking and giving her the eight-digit code she’d need to access it.
Back at my computer, I navigated to her bank’s homepage. After clicking away a series of pop-up ads, I found a link to ACCESS YOUR PERSONAL ACCOUNT. I moved the cursor over it.
Hesitated.
This is for Jack and Maureen, I told myself. I wanted to stick a pin in their panic, deflate the fear that was growing in that paisley-covered living room. Sarah would appreciate it. She’d forgive me for looking at her bank account.
Wouldn’t she?
We didn’t keep any secrets from each other anyway. We lived together, lived our lives together. How could we keep secrets, possibly?
I clicked on the link and logged onto Sarah’s online banking.
The first thing that struck me was the balance on her current account. She had nearly fifteen thousand euro in there, and another five thousand in what looked like some kind of special savings scheme. I had less than a hundred in mine – actually, to my name. What was she doing with so much money? How did she have so much, when she was keeping both of us afloat?
I thought of our conversation about Barcelona. You can’t afford it, she’d said. You, not we. A few weeks ago, the flight might have been a hundred euro. At most, a hundred and fifty. Wha
t was that out of fifteen grand? You wouldn’t even miss it.
But as soon as this thought formed, I felt my cheeks warm with shame. This was her money. She’d earned it. Sarah certainly wasn’t under any obligation to spend it – any more of it – on me.
I shook this discovery off and went looking for a list of the recent transactions on Sarah’s debit card. As soon as I found them, I knew something was wrong. The narratives were all store and restaurant names I recognised. I knew them because they were all here, in Cork. They were all from before Sarah had left for Spain. I could even see a charge from Brown Thomas, the store where she’d bought the red dress on Saturday. She must have used the gift-card I gave her for part-payment; women’s dresses apparently cost a lot more than I thought.
The exception was one charge from Sunday morning, something called HMS Host. The letters ‘POS’ were displayed next to the transaction, meaning that it was a point of sale where Sarah had physically handed over her card at the cash register. I thought it might mean something until I Googled it and discovered that HMS Host was just the operator of the cafe in the Departures lounge of Cork Airport.
Sarah hadn’t used her card abroad at all. How was that possible?
Or was I just looking in the wrong place?
I scanned the screen until I found a link to PENDING TRANSACTIONS. There were just two:
10/08/14 VDA-AEROPEURTO BCN 653.00 DR
10/08/14 VDA-PLYAPRINCESSHTL 50.00 DR
I opened another browser window, typed plyaprincesshtl barcelona into Google and hit Enter.
Did you mean Playa Princess Hotel Barcelona?
I found the hotel’s contact information on their website and called their front desk. There was only one ring before a recorded message in Spanish kicked in. Not understanding a word, I hit the standard option for a human being: zero.
‘Hotel Playa Princess, buenos días,’ a female voice said.
‘Ah, buenos días,’ I said. ‘Err, habla Inglés, um, por favor?’
‘I speak English, sir. How may I help you?’
‘I’m trying to reach a guest of yours. Sarah O’Connell.’
I spelled it for her, listened to much clacking of computer keys.
‘I am sorry, sir. We do not have a guest by that name.’
‘Maybe it’s under her employer’s name.’
I spelled out Anna Buckley Recruitment but that returned no results either.
‘There’s a charge on her debit card,’ I said. ‘From your hotel. Fifty euro on Sunday.’
‘That sounds like an authorisation for incidentals,’ the agent said. ‘We take that at check-in.’ More key-clacking. ‘Ah, I think I found her, sir. Sarah O’Connell, arrived Sunday the tenth at two-twenty in the afternoon.’
‘That’s her.’ Relief, unexpectedly, flooded my bloodstream. Perhaps I’d been a little worried that this was about more than a dead phone or a lost charger. ‘Can you put me through to her room?’
‘I am sorry, sir, but Ms O’Connell has already checked out. She stayed with us for only one night.’
I frowned. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It is possible she had a continuing reservation. Let me see.’ Yet more key-clacking. ‘No, sir. She was definitely with us for only one night.’
‘Did she check out early? Can you tell?’
‘The reservation was always for only one night.’
‘Do you have a conference on this week?’
‘No, sir. We do not have the facilities. We are only a small boutique hotel of thirty-five rooms.’
I mumbled my thanks and ended the call, just as my phone beeped with a message from Moorsey.
Rose at work til 6. Everything ok?
I didn’t know if it was. I had the name of Sarah’s hotel, yes, but also confirmation that she’d left it after just one night’s stay.
Why? Where had she gone then? Where was she now? Why hadn’t she called or texted me? Why hadn’t she called or texted her parents? Was it possible that she hadn’t told them that she was going to Spain? Why would she do that?
What the hell was going on here?
I didn’t know what to think.
When I heard people say I didn’t know what to think before all this, I thought they meant I couldn’t decide on a most likely explanation from all the possibilities that were running through my head at the time. But I realise now it’s far more literal than that. You experience a blankness, an absence of thought. The voice in your head goes silent because your mind is so overloaded with fragments of information that make absolutely no sense that it fights them all at once, pushing them away until only a silent, empty space is left. The voice in your head goes away because it doesn’t know what to say. It doesn’t even know where to begin. You don’t know what to think, so you think nothing at all.
While we’re on the subject, it’s the same with weak at the knees. Love songs and rom-coms have us thinking that that’s to do with love, with butterflies and joy. But it’s actually what happens when you get such a shock that your brain momentarily forgets to keep telling your legs to stand, and you collapse, sliding or falling or dropping straight to the floor, landing in a tangle with your legs underneath you.
But that realisation was still ahead of me yet.
A few seconds of contact with Sarah would clear all this up. I glared at my phone, willing it to come alive with a call from her. I refreshed my email, willing a new message from her to appear. I picked up the printout of the boarding passes and studied it, willing the black print to reveal something to me I hadn’t seen before.
EU/EEA Passenger: Sarah O’Connell
Booking reference: EHJ9AM
10 August 2014
EI802: ORK-BCN | Zone B | Seat 18B
Departs: 10:55 | Gate closes: 10:25
EU/EEA Passenger: Sarah O’Connell
Booking reference: EHJ9AM
14 August 2014
EI804: BCN-ORK | Zone C | Seat 23A
Departs: 11:40 | Gates closes: 11:10
And then it did.
The first time I’d looked at the boarding passes, I’d seen only what I’d expected to see: that Sarah had been on the flight I’d dropped her off for on Sunday and was due to be on the one that would land at lunchtime in two days’ time.
But now I saw something else too. Something wrong.
No.
My phone began to vibrate but it wasn’t Sarah’s name on screen.
‘Rose,’ I said flatly after I’d put the device to my ear.
‘Hey, Adam.’ Her voice was airy with artificial casualness. ‘Moorsey said you were trying to reach me. I’m at work but I’m on a break. What’s up?’
‘You tell me.’
At least five full seconds of silence followed. Then, quietly:
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘She booked a middle seat, Rose.’
‘What?’
‘On her flight to Barcelona. B is a middle seat. Why would she do that? No one wants a middle seat.’
Unless of course you wanted to sit next to the person who had already booked the aisle or the window.
I didn’t have any answers yet, but I knew I had just figured out one of the questions.
‘Where’s Sarah, Rose?’ My voice wavered, so I called upon the forceful sound of an expletive to steady it for me. ‘And who the fuck is she with?’
Romain
Deavieux, Picardy, 1989
All Romain wanted was to be a good little boy.
According to Mama, Jean was the best little boy. This was clearly not true because Mama didn’t know all the little boys in the world, and anyway Jean wasn’t even really good. He was just pretending. He only did what he was told because he knew it would get him sweets or extra TV time. He wasn’t actually good, not inside. But Mama didn’t seem to see this
and whenever Romain tried to tell her she looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘If only you were half as good as your brother is . . .’
But she never finished the sentence and so he didn’t know what would happen if he was.
Maybe that was why Jean was so tired all the time. Him and Romain shared bunk beds and Jean was always asleep before Romain was, but yet every morning when Mama came to wake them up, Jean said he wanted to stay in bed longer and sleep more. Being good must be exhausting. The sweets Mama bought were the hard ones with no chocolate on them and they didn’t even have the children’s channels with the cartoons, so why did Jean even bother?
Romain couldn’t figure it out.
Papa worked in the city and was only home on weekends. Every Friday evening Mama packed them all in the car and drove to Compiègne to collect Papa from the train station. This was Romain’s favourite time of the week because Papa was his favourite, and when he came walking out of the train station it was the furthest moment from the moment when he’d have to go back again.
Sometimes though, Mama ruined it.
Papa would always drive back, and Mama would sit beside him and tell him about her week. She always talked about Romain as if he wasn’t sitting right behind her, listening. He did this, he wouldn’t do that, I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy but something is. Don’t you see it? What are we going to do with him? What can we do? What can I do, at home all week by myself?
She was always going on about Felix, the Laurier’s cat, even though she hated cats and Romain had seen her chase Felix out of their garden more than once. He’d been missing for ages when she’d found the cat’s collar in the fort Romain and Jean had built down by the lake. Mama must think Papa had a terrible memory because she told him the same story over and over again, and Papa always said the same thing. So what? That cat was always around the place. Mama said yes except that the collar hadn’t been torn or cut, but carefully unbuckled and removed. Papa said she had an overactive imagination and that that fat lump of fur probably died of heart disease. Then he’d tell her to stop going on about it because children understand more than you think.
Distress Signals Page 4