by C. J. Cooke
The police officer nods. ‘OK. When you came home were there any signs of someone having been here? Any signs of an intrusion?’
I shake my head. ‘Everything was locked up.’
‘What about the back door. It was locked?’
I think back. Was it?
My hesitation prompts him to glance around the room. ‘What about any other entrances to the house? Windows? Back doors?’
‘We have had a problem with the back door, now that I think about it. The lock froze and it’s not been closing properly. I meant to get it fixed, but …’ I’ve been so busy. I close my eyes and sigh, speared with panic. How careless could I have been to leave the back door accessible?
He rises and walks to the back of the house. I follow. It’s dark, however, and the view from the window isn’t helpful.
‘What’s behind your garden?’
‘A back alley, then the gardens of the street behind us. Larkspur Terrace.’
He writes this down. ‘You keep any money in the house? Any valuables, expensive items?’
‘We’ve a couple of hundred quid in a box in the kitchen. For emergencies.’
‘Is it still there?’
I nod. ‘So is all of El’s jewellery.’
‘Are you sure?’
The doorbell cuts me short. I stride into the hallway to answer it and find Gerda and Magnus standing there, both angry and worried. I tell them that the police have arrived.
‘She’s still not returned?’ Magnus barks. Magnus is Eloïse’s grandfather, bull-ish, well-dressed, and immortal, like Clint Eastwood – the man’s had I don’t know how many triple bypass surgeries and cancer treatments and yet he only seems to grow more robust with age. Not quite as po-faced as Gerda, a little more down-to-earth, but still not the sort of man I’m ever likely to get drunk with.
‘Did you come from Herefordshire?’ I ask. They have properties all over the place – Switzerland, Greece – and I had wondered whether El had gone to one of them. But they’re all completely remote and impossible to get to. And besides, El would have no reason to go there.
Gerda ignores me, having swept into the living room and spotted Maxie asleep on the sofa. ‘The children aren’t in bed? Isn’t it rather late?’
The police officers make brief introductions in sober tones. Gerda sits down beside Max, pursing her lips as she tucks the blanket around him. Magnus walks around the room as if trying to identify something out of place.
‘This is Gerda and Magnus Bachmann,’ I tell the officers, remembering how I would always add fresh from the crypt under my breath when I was referring to them. El would give me a slap on the arm, though she’d always laugh. ‘Gerda and Magnus are Eloïse’s grandparents. Naturally, they’re very concerned.’
I don’t explain that they’re the world’s most interfering in-laws. Gerda flips open a gold mobile phone and dials a number with a manicured finger. ‘Eloïse, darling, it’s Mamie. This is the twentieth time I’ve called you, and I won’t be stopping until you reply. Please can you call one of us soon to let us know you’re all right?’
Gerda’s accent is elocution-English with clipped Swiss tones. It reminds me how El occasionally sounded foreign from the years she spent in Geneva as a teenager. She speaks French and German fluently, as well as conversational Italian, and has been teaching Max. I go to tell Gerda that Eloïse’s mobile phone is sitting on the dining table next door, but right then it rings loudly. For a faint moment Gerda’s eyes light up, as though she’s found Eloïse, and then the penny drops.
The house feels deathly still, hollowed out. In a daze I pour Magnus a whisky and make cups of tea for me and Gerda. Then the five of us sit in the living room, bewildered and lost for words. Despite how late it is my mobile phone continues to bleep with texts and Facebook messages, and although I check every one of them I find nothing that tells me where my wife may have gone.
‘Have you spoken to her friends?’ Gerda asks.
‘Of course he’ll have done that,’ Magnus snaps.
I give a weary sigh. ‘I’ve contacted the baby groups she sometimes goes to. I’ve spent all afternoon on the train phoning libraries, cafés, the swimming pool, our GP, the dentist … until my batteries died. Everyone I can think of.’
Magnus sits down, then stands again. ‘That’s good. Someone’s bound to have come into contact with her.’
I say, ‘I made a list of people who saw her yesterday, but no one saw her today. Except the kids.’
‘What did Max say? He must have seen something,’ Gerda says for the hundredth time.
‘He said they made gingerbread men in the morning and then he had a nap. When he woke up he searched the house and garden but couldn’t find her. That was when Mrs Shahjalal came over.’
I stand and begin to collect everyone’s glasses and cups. ‘Well, I best be getting the children to their beds. I’ll call you both in the morning, shall I?’
Gerda looks affronted.
‘Oh, no. We’ll be staying. I’m sure Eloïse will be back soon but until then the children will be needing us.’
18 March 2015
Komméno Island, Greece
I wake to find myself in bed in an attic room. Dust motes visible in the air, picked out by bright sunshine streaming through a porthole window. The ceiling is criss-crossed with ancient wooden beams and spiderwebs in the corners. Hewn stone walls and a cloying stench of dust and damp make the room feel like a cave.
I pull myself upright, gasping from the pain in my head and from a series of aches that announce themselves in my right shin and ankle, my upper back, all the muscles in my neck and forearms terribly strained. It feels like I got in the way of an elephant stampede. I reach around and touch the spot where my skull had been cut open. No fresh blood, but I can feel where the bleeding has matted my hair.
The events of last night turn over in my mind like stones. The people I met, the ones that saved me from a boating accident on the beach. They were writers, weren’t they? Here on a retreat? I try to summon my name to mind. It doesn’t come, so I say it aloud. My name is … My mouth remains open as though the sound of my name will find its way inside of its own accord. I have the strongest sensation of having left something behind somewhere, and although I pace and try to will it to surface, it won’t reveal itself.
Water. I need water. I move my legs to the edge of the bed and drop my feet to the floor. Cold. I’m wearing a T-shirt with a faded pineapple print on the front and baggy black swimming trunks.
I hobble like a foal towards the door, but when I turn the door knob I find it is shut tight. I tug at it, one hand on top of the other, wrapping my fingers around the knob and twisting with all my strength. The knob turns and turns but the door won’t budge. For a moment I really think I’m going to lose consciousness. With a hand pressed against the wall I let myself sink slowly down to the floor and rest my forehead against the door, taking long, trembling breaths. A large grey spider taps across the floor by my bare feet. I flinch, and in a second the spider is gone, darting into one of the dusty crags in the walls. I’m left with enough adrenalin to lift a fist against the heavy wood of the door, banging it once, twice, three times. I can hear a low murmur of voices somewhere in the house.
Eventually, the door pushes open, knocking into me. Someone swears and squeezes through the gap before helping me to my feet.
‘The door was locked,’ I say, trying to explain.
‘Locked?’ Joe’s voice. He inspects the door quickly and says, ‘Not locked. Always jams, this door. Come on, let’s get you something to eat.’
After shouting downstairs for one of the others he slips a hand on the back of my head and the other firmly on the small of my back. Soon one of the women is there, too, and I recognise her as the kind one from last night, the woman who looked at me with such concern. Sariah. She helps Joe lift me to my feet and, very slowly, we all head down a winding stone staircase, one, two floors, Joe in front of me, Sariah behind, in case I fall.
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br /> The architecture of the house suggests it was once an old farmhouse, with remnants from its past hung on the wall as vintage ornaments – old breast ploughs, some fairly mean-looking pitchforks, and the wheel of a chaff-cutter, as well as cow or goat bells. A room at the bottom of the stairs features a rocking chair – I remember sitting there last night, hunched over and trembling – and a beautiful inglenook fireplace that smelled of burnt toast.
The kitchen looks different in daylight – long and brightly lit, with a large range oven, refrigerator, white granite worktops, and a wooden table in the middle surrounded by four wooden chairs. A little decrepit and dusty, but nowhere near as creepy as it seemed last night. The room has an earthy odour about it, as though it’s been unused for a long time, though as I head towards the cooker it gives way to the rich smell of grilled tomatoes and fresh pitta. Sariah says, ‘Let’s get you something to eat,’ and makes for a pan on the hob.
Joe walks me slowly to a chair by the table, then makes for the sink. He’s a good deal younger than I’d placed him last night. Maybe early twenties, a whiff of the undergrad about him. Long, pale, and thin, his black hair standing upright on his head in a gelled quiff, black square glasses shielding his eyes.
He hands me a glass of water, which I gulp down. Sariah fills a plate with the contents of a pan. Dressed in a red skirt and floaty kimono patterned with orange flowers, she looks magnificent: long dark fingers ringed with gold bands, heavy strands of colourful beads looping from her neck, ropes of black hair coiled on top of her head and tied with an orange scarf. She sets a plate of food in front of me – fried cherry tomatoes, olives, pitta bread.
‘Thank you,’ I say, and she grins.
‘Mind if I take a little look at your head?’ Joe asks.
I feel his hands gently touch the wound through my hair at the back of my head.
‘How does it look?’
‘Clean. Some bruising around the area. How’s the neck?’
His fingers brush the sides of my neck gently and he tries to move my head from side to side.
‘Stiff.’
‘I’ll find some painkillers.’
A kettle whistles to the boil on the hob. Sariah walks towards it and begins to make coffee, asking if I’d like milk. It all feels so strange and disorienting. I say yes to the milk but even that seems odd, the sound of my voice distant and distorted. I dart my eyes around the room, willing it to make sense, to become familiar. It doesn’t.
The other woman – Hazel, I hear Joe call her – scuttles in from somewhere else, rubbing her hands and muttering about tea. She’s short and thin, orange curls leaping on her head like springs, an oversized black woollen jumper pulled over a bottle-green skirt. She holds something in the crook of an arm. A notebook.
She stops in her tracks when she spots me, as though she hadn’t expected me to be here. ‘Hello,’ she says warily, and she sits down, placing the notebook carefully on her lap. Her accent is English, like Joe and George.
‘Hello.’
‘Are you going to stay with us?’ she asks.
Sariah answers from the sink. ‘We’re still working out how to get her to see a doctor.’
Hazel glances from me to Sariah. ‘Joe’s a doctor, isn’t he?’
‘I do first aid,’ Joe corrects from the other end of the room.
‘I found these,’ he says. ‘Paracetamol.’
‘Thanks.’ I press a couple of tablets out of the foil and take them with a swig of coffee.
I feel Hazel watching me, her small grey eyes absorbing every inch of me. ‘You were in quite a state last night,’ she says. ‘It was all very exciting. Do you remember what happened?’
I suspect she means if I remember what happened before I ended up in their kitchen. There’s a smile on her face, as if the sorry state of me amuses her. It makes me wary.
‘And you still don’t remember how you ended up here?’
‘I don’t think so …’
‘What about your name?’
I open my mouth, because this should be right there, right on the top of my tongue. But the space in my mind that should be bright with self-knowledge is blank, closed, emptied.
Hazel’s eyes blaze with excitement at my hesitation. I see Sariah giving her a look of caution, and instantly she looks away, shame-faced.
‘Don’t sweat it,’ Sariah says. ‘You’ve had a rough night, a bump on the head. Give it a few hours. It’ll all come back.’
The sound of heavy footsteps grows louder at the back door. Moments later, George appears, glistening with sweat and exhaustion, his grey vest soaked through. Hazel fidgets in anticipation as he heads towards us.
‘Did you find it?’ Sariah asks.
George shakes his head, too worn out to speak. He’s very overweight and so red in the face that I brace myself for the sight of him falling to the ground with a tremendous thud. He pulls a towel from the shelf above the sink and wipes sweat from his brow and face.
‘You mean, the boat?’ Hazel says in a shrill voice. ‘We’ve lost the boat?’
No answer. Hazel and Sariah watch George as he leans back in the chair and catches his breath. Both of them look worried. The mood in the room has plummeted.
‘What boat?’ I ask, and my voice is small and hesitant. It sounds odd to me, as though someone else is speaking.
‘We rented a powerboat from Nikodemos so we can travel back and forth to Crete for supplies,’ Sariah says in a low voice.
‘The only reason we found you was because Joe and I went out to check that the boat was moored properly during the storm,’ George pants, pulling off his wet boots, and then his socks. The sour smell of sweat hits me instantly. ‘And then we came across you. But the boat’s gone.’
‘I thought Joe said it would likely be washed up on one of the beaches,’ Hazel says.
George tilts his head from side to side, emitting loud cracks from his neck. ‘I’ve checked everywhere, trust me. Boat’s gone. Sunk, most likely.’
‘What will Nikodemos say about his boat sinking?’ Hazel says. ‘He’ll be cross, won’t he? Very, very cross.’
‘What will Nikodemos charge for his boat sinking?’ George corrects. ‘That’s the question.’
‘We’re covered by insurance, aren’t we?’ Sariah says, turning back to the hob to crack eggs into a pan. Her movements are rough, erratic.
George scratches a rough belt of stubble under his chin. ‘We’ll need to work out another way to get supplies from the mainland. Not to mention delivering our guest back to wherever she came from.’
I feel that this is my fault. I don’t belong here. I shouldn’t be here, and I feel helpless and awkward. George and Hazel acknowledge this with a quick glance in my direction, which only confirms that they feel I’m to blame. ‘I’m so sorry about your boat,’ I say.
‘We’ll work it out,’ Sariah mutters without turning, and I wonder if she’s detected that I’m feeling pretty awful. Joe is at the back door, a bundle of peaches gathered in the hem of his black T-shirt. George opens his mouth and begins to tell him about the boat situation, but Sariah cuts in.
‘Want some breakfast, Joe?’
Joe dumps his peaches on the worktop. He rubs his hands and glances at the pan on the hob. ‘Thanks.’
‘George, you want some?’ Sariah asks.
‘Okey-dokey.’ He glances up at me. ‘Sariah’s the cook in this operation, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘And what am I in this operation?’ Hazel pipes up from the table.
‘The cleaner,’ Joe says through a mouthful of omelette. He looks at me. ‘Hazel likes to clean and tidy everything in sight. She’ll take a glass out of your hand before you’ve even finished drinking to wash it.’
Hazel shrugs, clearly bristling. ‘Nothing wrong with being clean, is there? Next to godliness.’
‘Still, I’d hold on to your plate,’ Joe tells me. ‘She’ll take it off you.’
‘And what about you?’ I ask Joe. ‘What do you do
?’
He tosses a cherry tomato in his mouth. ‘First aider.’
‘She means, what do you do here, dumb-dumb,’ George says.
‘Oh. Well, I tagged along, didn’t I?’ Joe says. ‘I’m the – provider of medical attention?’
‘House first-aider,’ George interprets.
‘George is the fixer,’ Hazel tells me.
‘And what does that mean?’ George asks.
‘It means you fix things, George,’ Joe says. ‘Unless “fixer” is Mongolian for “grumpy old git”.’
‘I’ll fix you in a minute.’
‘See?’ Joe says to me, arching a thick black eyebrow.
Sariah brings the last of the food, a plate of chopped figs and tomatoes. She removes her apron and slings it on a hook by the oven, then sits at the table beside me while George cups water on his face and armpits at the sink. Despite how terrible I feel, I’m incredibly relaxed in their company, as though I’ve known them for ages. It makes an otherwise alarming situation quite bearable.
‘So, if you can’t remember your name, how come you can remember how to talk?’ Hazel asks.
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Joe tells her. ‘It’s called amnesia. It doesn’t stop people’s ability to function.’
She purses her lips. ‘So, you can’t remember if you’ve got any weird fetishes?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I tell her.
She looks thrilled, a sudden energy sweeping through her. ‘I want to study you for my new book. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?’
I go to say that I don’t mind, but Joe interrupts.
‘Look at you, such a busy-body,’ he tells Hazel, throwing her a wry smile.
She shoos his comment away with a wave of her hand. Then, to me: ‘Do you know what you like to eat?’
‘I guess I liked what I just ate.’
But Hazel isn’t satisfied. She tosses question after question at me: who’s the current President of the United States? What year it is? What’s the name of my primary school? When was I most embarrassed? And so on. I’m still too foggy-headed to answer most of these, though I’m relieved that I’m aware of what year it is. But not who I am.