by C. J. Cooke
I turn my key in the door and step inside to quietness and darkness.
‘El?’
I head into the playroom and see the figure of old Mrs Shahjalal sitting on the edge of the sofa, rocking the Moses basket where Cressida is lying, arms raised at right angles by her tiny head.
‘Hi,’ I whisper. ‘Where is she?’
Mrs Shahjalal shakes her head.
‘But … she’s here,’ I say. ‘Her car is outside. Where is she?’
‘She isn’t here.’
‘But—’
Mrs Shahjalal raises a finger to her lips and looks down at Cressida in a manner that suggests it has taken a long time to settle her to sleep. Cressida gives a little shuddered breath, the kind she gives after a long paroxysm of wailing.
‘Max is upstairs, in his bed,’ Mrs Shahjalal says in a low voice.
‘But what about El’s car? The white one in the driveway?’
‘It’s been here all the time. She didn’t take it.’
I race upstairs and check the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the attic, then switch on all the lights downstairs and sift the rooms for my wife. When that proves fruitless I head out into the garden and stare into the darkness. In that moment a daunting impossibility yawns wide. I barely know Mrs Shahjalal, save a few neighbourly waves across the street, and now she’s in my living room, gently rocking my daughter and telling me that my wife has vanished into thin air.
I take out my phone and begin to dial.
17 March 2015
Komméno Island, Greece
Somehow I find myself in a rocking chair with a thick orange blanket around me, next to a crackling fire. My right sleeve is rolled up and someone’s tied a belt tight around my bicep. The tall skinny bloke with glasses, Joe, is standing next to me with a cold instrument pressed to my wrist. The room smells funny – like seaweed. Or maybe that’s me.
‘Only a couple more seconds,’ he says.
‘What are you doing?’ I say, though it comes out as a strangled whine. The inside of my mouth feels like sandpaper.
‘Checking your blood pressure.’
There’s a heated discussion going on amongst the others in the room and I sense it’s about me. I still feel queasy and limp.
Eventually he removes the belt from my arm. ‘Hmmm. Your blood pressure is a bit low for my liking. How about the tightness in your chest?’
I tell him that it seems OK but that I’m weak as dishwater. He reaches forward and gently presses his thumbs on my cheeks to inspect my eyes.
‘You’re in shock. Little wonder, given that you rowed across the Aegean in a full-blown storm. Let’s get your feet raised up. And some more water.’
The woman – Sariah – lifts my feet and supports them on a stack of cushions.
‘How’s your head?’ she asks.
‘Sore,’ I say weakly.
‘You don’t feel like you’re going to pass out again?’ Joe asks, and I give a small shake of my head. It’s enough to make the pain ratchet up to an agony that leaves me breathless.
‘It’s after midnight, so getting you to a hospital has proved a little tricky,’ Sariah says, folding her arms. I notice she has a different accent than the others. American, or maybe Canadian. ‘There’s no hospital or doctors anywhere here,’ she says. ‘George has contacted the police in Heraklion and Chania.’
‘Did anyone report me as missing?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
She must see how this unnerves me because she lowers on her haunches and rubs my hand, as though I’m a child. ‘Hey, don’t worry,’ she says. ‘We’ll call again first thing in the morning.’
Nothing about this place feels familiar. It feels like I’m seeing everything here for the first time.
‘Do I live here? Do I know any of you?’ I ask her.
‘We saved you,’ George says flatly. I can’t see him, but sense his presence behind me.
‘There was a storm,’ Joe adds, though something in his voice sounds uncertain, hesitant. ‘Big sandstorm coming across from Africa, no doubt. George and I went out to check that our boat hadn’t come loose from its moorings. And then we saw you.’
‘Where was I?’
‘On Bone Beach,’ Joe says.
‘Bone Beach?’
‘The small horseshoe beach with white rocks that look like bones. Down below the barn.’ He grins. ‘Crazy that you managed to survive all that. Someone up there must like you.’
‘You were in a boat,’ Sariah explains. ‘You don’t remember if you were with anybody?’
I have a terrible feeling that I should know all of this, that I should know all about the boat and the beach and where I’m from. And I have no idea, absolutely no clue, why I don’t know these things.
‘Why did you come to Komméno, anyway?’ George asks, moving to the light as he reaches for a pack of cigarettes. ‘I mean, it’s not like there’s anything here.’
‘What’s “Komméno”?’ I say.
‘It’s the name of this place,’ Sariah says, a note of sadness in her voice, as if she’s addressing someone very stupid, or ill. ‘Komméno Island.’
I hesitate, hopeful that an answer to George’s question will surface in me automatically and provide an explanation for all this.
But it doesn’t.
18 March 2015
Potter’s Lane, Twickenham, London
Lochlan: It’s after midnight. My wife is officially missing. I’m trying to get my head around this.
The facts are as follows: (1) I Facetimed Eloïse on Monday night shortly after seven while she was making pancakes in the kitchen and our two kids were playing happily in the family room, and (2) sometime between ten and one today, while our children were asleep in their beds upstairs, she disappeared from our home. Also, (3) there is no indication that anyone has been here, Max didn’t see anyone come in and (4) Eloïse’s clothes, passport, credit cards, car, driving licence and mobile phone are still at home. She has therefore no way of making contact and no way of paying to get anywhere: not the tube, not a taxi, not a flight, and no way of paying for food or drink. Lastly, (5) no one seems to have any clue where she might have gone.
We have run out of expressed breast milk. I’m so out of sorts that Cressida shrieked for an eternity until it dawned on me that she was probably due another feed. An hour ago I phoned a taxi company and paid them fifty quid to go and buy some formula milk at a supermarket and bring it here. Cressida was a little confused at first, both by having to suck a plastic teat again and by the weird taste of formula, but finally she relented and drained it in one sitting.
Mrs Shahjalal has gone home. She lives alone at number thirty-nine, across the road. She has offered to come again in the morning and help in any way she can. Right now, I’m mired in bewilderment and can’t think straight.
On the train from Waverley I set about contacting Eloïse’s friends to see if anyone had heard from her. Of course, they’d seen neither hide nor hair of her since yesterday or the day before. My Facebook post was met with weeping emojis and well-wishing; in other words, nothing of any use. With great reluctance, I texted Gerda, Eloïse’s grandmother, to ask if El had gone to their place in Ledbury. It was a long shot, of course, given that the kids were still here, but I had quickly run out of possibilities.
I’ve searched the whole house four or five times in total. Wardrobes, the bathroom closet, that weird space under the stairs, even under the beds and in the loft, then running around in the back garden with a torch, checking all the bushes and the shed. I guess I thought she might have got stuck somewhere. I felt like I was going insane. All of this whilst Max was running around after me asking if we were playing a game and could he hide, too, and whilst Cressida realised she was being held by someone other than her mother and wanted half of London to know all about it.
Gerda rang back to say no, she hadn’t seen El since last week, though she spoke to her on Sunday night. She started to ask questions and I stammered something about El no
t being home when I got back this afternoon. There was a long pause.
‘What do you mean, El’s not home? Where are you, Lochlan?’
‘I’m back in London.’
‘And where are the babies?’
‘They’re here.’
‘Lochlan, are you saying Eloïse has left?’
‘I’m saying she’s not at home. Her car is still there, her keys and her mobile phone. Everything.’
‘Call the police.’
‘I’ve already done it.’
I checked El’s mobile phone, examining all her messages in case there was some unforeseen emergency she’d been called away for, but all I found was an eBay enquiry about a high chair, emails from Etsy, Boden, Sainsbury’s and Laura Ashley, as well as Outlook reminders about Max’s parent-teacher meeting at nursery next Friday and Cressida’s jabs at the health clinic.
At eleven o’clock Max came downstairs, bleary-eyed and wrapped in his Gruffalo robe, his blond hair longer than I remembered it being, dandelion-like with static.
‘Hi, Daddy,’ he said, yawning.
‘Hey, Maxie boy. How are you doing?’
He padded across the room and climbed up on my lap. I kissed his head, flooded with a sudden tenderness for him.
‘Is Mummy back?’
How much it pained me to tell him that she wasn’t.
He curled into me. ‘Did Mummy have to go to the shops? Did she forget that me and Cressida were in the house?’
‘I don’t think so, Max.’
‘Did she get lost coming home?’
I shook my head, and he started to grow upset.
‘Want Mummy, Daddy. Where’s Mummy?’
When I began to feel overwhelmed at my inability to console him – and by the thought that he might well wake Cressida – I told a fib.
‘I think maybe she’s gone to take her friend some flowers.’
‘Which friend?’
‘Uh … the lady with the long black hair from playgroup.’
He straightened. ‘Sarah?’
‘Yes, Sarah.’
‘No, it can’t be Sarah, ’cos Sarah got her hair yellowed.’
‘Niamh, then.’
‘Why is Mummy taking Niamh flowers? Is Niamh sad?’
‘I think so.’
‘What kind of flowers?’
‘I don’t know, Maxie.’
‘Can you call Niamh on your mobile and tell her that we need Mummy to come back to us now, please?’
‘Soon, darling, soon. Let’s go back to bed.’
In a fleeting moment of clear-mindedness I remembered the high-spec baby monitors that El had installed when Max was born – seriously, they’re like surveillance cameras – and checked El’s phone to see if any footage had been recorded. But no, the recording facility had been switched off ages ago. Of course it had.
I bribed Max to go to sleep without Mummy bathing him and reading him his favourite story by promising to take him to Thomas Land. Even so, he insisted on staying downstairs with me and cried himself to sleep.
It’s almost two in the morning when a police car pulls up outside and two uniformed police officers appear at the door, a man and a woman. I show the officers into the living room and attempt to console Cressida so that I can actually hear what they say. Her face is beetroot-red, tears rolling down her cheeks, and she punches the air with her fists. Max has fallen asleep on the sofa, holding the quilt Eloïse made for him up to his chin and murmuring occasionally.
‘When did you last speak with your wife, Mr Shelley?’ the male officer asks as I rock Cressida back and forth.
‘I already gave all this information on the phone,’ I say. I want answers, resolutions, for the police to wave their magic wands and materialise my wife.
‘Sorry, but there’s some information we’ve got to confirm. We’ll ask a few additional questions before we begin enquiries.’
‘I’ve been in Edinburgh since Monday but I spoke to her around seven on Monday night via Facetime,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Sometimes I call during the day as well, but it’s been really busy at work. I didn’t get a chance.’
‘Where do you work?’
I shift Cressida into a different position, away from my ear. She’s still tiny at three months so she fits along the length of my arm. I bounce her there and she lets out a huge belch. I say ‘Good girl!’ but she starts to cry again.
‘I work at a company called Smyth and Wyatt. Four days a week I’m based in Edinburgh, the rest of the time I’m at the London branch on Victoria Embankment.’
The male officer jots this down as ‘Smith & White South – a bank’.
‘It’s not a bank, it’s a corporate finance firm.’
He scores out his note. ‘OK. Did you and your wife have any disagreements? Anything that might have made her leave?’
‘Look, I’ve already explained this. My wife has not left. Cressida’s only twelve weeks old. El’s still breastfeeding.’
I’m mad as hell, frustrated, but above all I’m anxious. I can’t help but feel that El must be worried, wherever she is, because she’s fought to breastfeed Cressida after some difficulties with Max and ensures she feeds on demand. This is hard to put across – my wife hasn’t left, you see, because she wants to breastfeed. They ask about El’s line of work, and I explain that she’s a stay-at-home mother but still goes on TV to talk about her work.
‘She set up a small charity some years ago for refugee children and it’s become quite successful,’ I say. ‘She gets asked to do the occasional media event. I guess I’m worried that, maybe … I don’t know. A lot of nutcases out there.’ I know I’m clutching at straws, but my mind is racing, my body buzzing with adrenalin. I keep glancing at the front door, waiting for her to walk in.
‘Did she mention anything of that nature? Threatening letters, stalkers, that kind of thing?’
‘No, nothing.’
He gives me a moment in case something comes to mind, but it doesn’t.
‘Can you describe what she was wearing when you last saw her?’
‘I think she was wearing grey yoga pants and a pyjama top. Like I said, it was seven o’clock at night. I should have called her this morning but I was running late …’
He writes this down, asking for more of a description. Does she have any tattoos or visible scars? No. Any jewellery? I tell him she would likely be wearing her wedding band and engagement ring. I’ve not found them anywhere in the house.
‘Have you asked your neighbours if they saw anyone come into the house?’
I nod. ‘Mrs Shahjalal from across the road was the one to find out she was missing.’
More writing, slow, slow, slow, as if he’s taking orders for a takeaway. ‘We’ll follow up with Mrs Shahjalal. What about your bank accounts? Any withdrawals? We might be able to trace her last steps if we have that information.’
I’ve already checked our bank account on my mobile phone. We have a joint account and no money has come out today, with the exception of direct debits for the water bill and council tax. Of course, I’ve said all this. It was one of the first things I checked.
‘Tell me a little about Eloïse,’ he asks. ‘Age? Height? Weight? Personality?’
Cressida begins to squawk so fiercely that the female police officer rises to her feet and holds her arms out.
‘May I?’ she says.
‘Please,’ I say, handing Cressie to her. The female officer holds her cheek against Cressida’s and speaks softly to her. Ten seconds later the screaming stops. It’s only then that I realise that most of the noise is coming from inside my head.
‘How old did you say she is?’ the officer asks.
‘Twelve weeks. Max turned four in January.’
The officer smiles at Cressida, who gawps back. ‘I have a little boy, he’s ten months old. And he’s huge. But you, you’re dinky!’
‘She was slightly premature,’ I say. It is a huge relief not to be screamed at. I sink down into the sofa beside Max and rub
my temples. The male officer is looking at me expectantly.
‘Eloïse is thirty-seven. She’s about five foot six, fairly slim. Not sure what she weighs, exactly. Maybe ten stone. She just gave birth.’
‘Is that a recent photo?’ he asks, glancing up at the new studio photograph mounted between two thick slabs of glass on the wall behind me.
Cost a fortune, that photo, but we all look so happy and I’m glad I deferred and had it taken. Eloïse is holding Cressida, who’s a scrawny sparrowy thing at three weeks old, and although I know she felt self-conscious, begging me to kneel slightly to the right so my head would cover her swollen stomach, Eloïse looks amazing. Buttery blonde hair hanging loose by her shoulders, that lovely smile and perfect skin of hers, as though her veins contain LED lights – luminescent, that’s the word. I know I married a looker, miles out of my league.
‘Is Eloïse the sort of person who would just up and leave?’ the male officer asks. ‘Has she done anything like that before?’
‘No, no, no. Absolutely not.’
The officer stares, blank-faced. ‘No problems with drugs, alcohol, anything like that?’
I shake my head. ‘Nothing like that. She stopped drinking when she became pregnant with our son. She maybe had the occasional glass of wine. She’s … Look, I can’t emphasise enough that Eloïse is the last person on earth who I would expect to go missing like this. She’s quiet, reserved. You know, a home bird.’
‘So she wouldn’t have, say, popped out to pick up a message? For five minutes or so?’
I can feel myself losing patience, almost on the verge of tears, which freaks me out. ‘Our kids were here. She wasn’t expecting me back from Edinburgh until tomorrow night. There’s no way she’d leave our children on their own. El won’t even leave Cressida downstairs when she’s taking a shower. We’ve a car seat in the bathroom and a baby rocker in the kitchen.’