by C. J. Cooke
It’s not that Eloïse isn’t beautiful – she’s slim, blonde and gorgeous – but back then, she wasn’t my type. She’s sensible and quietly confident, probably the smartest person I know. Back then I tended to be drawn to theatrical, insecure women who embarrassed me in the company of friends; the type that tended to slash my tyres after an argument. My relationships were like social experiments. I’d become cynical about love, saying it didn’t exist, that I didn’t even want it, when really I was a blithering idiot with an addiction to sociopaths. And then I found myself two feet away from the girl who had captivated a roomful of millionaires with her earnest passion, and I felt like I’d come home.
She took persuading. None of my old tactics worked. Eloïse wasn’t into fruit baskets or restaurants with dress codes. Neither am I, but I’d been moving in certain circles for so long that I’d assumed these things would woo her. In desperation I cornered a colleague who was friendly with Eloïse and asked her what I should do. ‘Take her to Skybright,’ she said simply. I had no idea what Skybright was. Turned out to be a café run by volunteers, where people could pay what they wanted for the food, enabling the homeless to eat there. I invited Eloïse and she accepted. Three months later, I proposed. She very sweetly said no. A month later, I tried again, on both knees. I knew that I had never, ever felt about another human being what I felt for her, and I wasn’t giving up. Luckily, this time she said yes.
We had two weddings – a real one, attended by the two of us, the priest and a couple of friends in one of Magnus’ properties, and one for our families back in England a couple of weeks later. We spent the next few years backpacking and sailing around the world. El’s a fantastic sailor. Magnus taught her – it was the thing that kept them close, much closer than El and Gerda. We lived in a little beach hut in Goa for months, waking up to the sunrise and swimming in the warm ocean before breakfast. Making love under the stars. We travelled down the Amazon, spotting anacondas and tribes washing in the river. We hiked along the Great Wall of China, then made our way to Australia, where we spent a month sailing around the Whitsunday Islands. I thought I’d struggle, coming home from all of that, but I was so much more in love with Eloïse after that time spent together that I’d have been happy anywhere, doing anything.
I must stress that I adore my children. I really do. I know that I’m a lucky man. But.
The life that we’d lived before Max came along drew to a screeching halt the morning he came into the world. Our spontaneous weekend breaks in New York or Venice: gone. A full night’s sleep: gone. Mental faculties: vamoosed. Whereas El and I had spent the previous four years of our relationship in a state of contented, loved-up bliss, now we only ever seemed to see each other at our worst. I learned that there was actually a spectrum of exhaustion, and I always seemed to have fallen off the far end. We started having fights about things like housework and money. We had more fights during Max’s first year than we’d had in our entire relationship.
I remember about six months into parenthood, both of us demented from sleep deprivation, I was standing in the kitchen making up a bottle and I said to Eloïse, ‘How does any couple stay together after having kids?’
It must have been about two in the morning. Eloïse had crazy bedhead hair and was wearing an old black T-shirt of mine stained with baby sick. It felt like all we did in those days was mop up – or occasionally, catch – bodily fluids, sometimes with our bare hands. ‘I don’t know how anyone stays sane after having kids,’ she said.
Of course, this was all par for the course. We had a group of friends over for dinner one night not long after and shared this story with them, and it turned out that it was a conversation every single one of them had had. Matt reached across the table, took Eloïse’s hand, and said: ‘Every woman thinks about leaving the father of her children. All it takes is for him to stay asleep while you deal with a screaming baby at three in the morning a few times and – boom! Divorce courts.’
I park in one of the staff spaces at the back of the building – it’s so early and yet there’s only a few spaces left. Some of my colleagues work literally a hundred hours a week, every week. They’ll take a fortnight off when it’s quiet and rent a yacht in the Caribbean. Few of them have young families, or if they do, they’re concealing the fact. I know two female colleagues are married but leave their wedding bands at home. Family is seen as a distraction in corporate finance.
The Smyth & Wyatt building on the Victoria Embankment is like something from Star Trek – Dean Wyatt spent ten million on revamping the place a couple of years ago so that the whole place would be made of glass and titanium, with leather couches imported from Italy and commissioned sculptures in the corridors. I get Dean’s ethos: if you spend every day here, from six in the morning until midnight, the place has to be pretty damn nice, and nice it is.
I race upstairs and unlock my office. I can hear someone calling my name, but I ignore it and log on to my computer. The thing loads up as fast as a tortoise on weed.
‘Lockie, boy,’ a voice calls. It’s Paddy Smyth. Paddy’s a Weegie, like me, though my accent has softened considerably: I’ve worked hard to graduate from Billy Connolly to Ewan McGregor. The London clients like it better.
‘You coming out for drinks, later?’ he asks.
‘Can’t, sorry. Got a bit of a crisis on my hands.’
He stuffs his hands in his pockets and ambles into my office, looking over the photos of my children on the cabinet opposite. ‘Yeah, I heard about the Dubai thing. I thought Raj was dealing with that?’
By ‘crisis’, I mean the fact that my wife is missing, but I don’t say anything more. ‘No, I’m not involved in the Dubai thing. I’ve got to sign off this paperwork for the Husain account ASAP.’
My computer finally loads. I type in my passcode and scroll through a list of folders. I see ‘Husain’ and click on it.
‘Oh, I saw you posted something on Facebook last night. Something about your wife. Eloïse, isn’t that right?’
I find a new folder in the one marked ‘Husain’, one my secretary has overlooked. I click on it and hit ‘print’. The printer whirrs into action.
‘Yeah,’ I answer, moving to the printer. ‘She’s … she didn’t come home last night.’
Paddy is standing right next to me, his eyebrows raised. ‘She didn’t come home?’
The crushing feeling in my chest is beginning to return. I wish he’d go away.
‘The police are involved.’
The printer screams out a sound and bright white text runs across the screen. OUT OF TONER. REPLACE IMMEDIATELY. It takes all my composure not to kick the machine.
‘Always running out of ink, these things,’ Paddy says. ‘You got another cartridge thingy?’
I glance at the office opposite where my secretary normally sits. She’s not there. It’s barely seven a.m. She doesn’t come in until nine. I am apoplectic.
‘Use my printer,’ Paddy says. ‘Email the file to yourself and open it up on my screen.’
‘I can’t,’ I say, tugging my tie loose. ‘These files have that new security thing on them that means I can’t email them forward. They’re locked into the computer.’
Which means, of course, that I have only one option: to unhook and unplug my enormous desktop and carry it all the way to Paddy’s office on the next floor. My phone is ringing and buzzing and chiming again, and by the time I set up the computer next to Paddy’s printer I have twelve missed calls, eleven voicemails, twenty-seven Facebook notifications and thirty-four tweets.
‘And a partridge in a pear tree,’ Paddy adds. ‘So tell me, has your wife left you?’
Paddy has had five wives and numerous girlfriends. He treats break-ups as inevitable and women like cars, trading them in every couple of years for a younger model. He’s sixty-three and is dating a twenty-four-year-old.
‘No, she has not left me,’ I say, plugging in the computer and flicking switch after switch. ‘We simply don’t know where she is.’
‘Didn’t she recently have a baby?’
‘Yes. A girl.’
‘So … who’s with the kids now? The nanny?’
I don’t have time to answer his questions. I finally get the thing hooked up and find the ‘Husain’ file. I click it and hit ‘print’, then silently beg God to let the document print. It does. I shove it in an envelope for the company courier and bring up my inbox to inform Mr Husain that all is well. I stop mid-email, and ask Paddy:
‘What time does the courier come?’
Paddy glances at the clock. ‘About eight. Why?’
We’ve recently had some new hires, and one of them was some knuckle-dragging kid covered in tats for company deliveries. Last week my secretary had to call him back because he left behind two packages marked URGENT. For the sake of forty-five minutes I could ensure that the form is picked up and sent off. I could even slip the guy a twenty-pound note and ask him to make this his first drop-off. I’m flapping. Before I realise it, I’m dialling my home number.
It barely rings before Gerda answers.
‘Eloïse?’
‘Hello? No, it’s Lochlan.’
A disappointed sigh on the other end.
‘Look, Gerda, I’m really sorry about this …’
‘And well you should be, Lochlan. I can’t imagine what kind of emergency forced you to go into work when your wife is nowhere to be found. What is going on?’
‘I’m coming home soon. I’ve got to get something sent off and then I’ll be there, OK?’
A pause. ‘Magnus is already driving around the area to see if he can find her. What time are the police coming?’
‘I’ll ring them shortly to update them, don’t worry.’
A resigned sigh. ‘All right.’
‘Bye.’
Eight o’clock comes and goes. Eight fifteen. I walk down to the foyer and pace, envelope in hand. Eight thirty. When the guy comes, I swear I’m going to ram the envelope down his throat. Forget a twenty-quid bribe. By the time it turns nine I am sweating bullets, my heart racing. Two of my colleagues have already walked in and asked if I’m ill. I nod. Yes, yes I am ill. It dawns on me that I expected this place to shake me back into competency, to prompt enough mental clarity to enable me to solve the mystery of my wife’s disappearance. The only clarity I’ve acquired is that I’m an idiot.
At nine fifteen I race back upstairs, intent on arranging a private courier. I should have done this in the first place. My secretary Ramona is at her desk. I go into her office. Ramona is a genius. She’s Chinese, raised by a Tiger Mother, plays the oboe at diploma level and can solve a Rubik’s cube in under five minutes. She’ll fix all of this.
‘What are you doing here?’ she says in a low voice. ‘I thought – didn’t I see something online about your wife?’
I nod and flap the envelope at her before explaining the situation with Mr Husain and the courier.
‘The courier left a message with Joan fifteen minutes ago,’ Ramona says. ‘He’s not coming in today. I was in the process of trying to find a replacement.’
I thrust the envelope into her hands. ‘Please, Ramona. Deliver this for me. I’ll pay you anything.’
She takes a step back and looks puzzled. ‘You want me to deliver it?’
I move to her computer and start looking up directions to the Cauldwell Building in Edinburgh. ‘Here, I’ll email you the fastest route. Did you bring your car?’
She shakes her head. ‘I always come by bike …’
‘OK, book a flight. Use my credit card.’ I take out my wallet and press a Visa card into her hand. ‘Just … whatever it costs, OK?’
Ramona looks a little dazed. I catch a ghostly reflection of myself in one of the glass panels opposite and realise I look like a madman. My tie is gone, my collar is open by three buttons, my hair is sticking up all over the place and I’m shining with sweat. Plus, I’m gripping my secretary by the upper arms.
A knock on the door, the tall, lanky figure of Dean Wyatt visible through the glass.
‘Everything all right in here, Lochlan? I heard shouting …’
I let go of Ramona and smooth down my hair. ‘Everything’s fine, Dean. In light of the fact that we’re down a courier, Ramona’s offered to hand-deliver a very important form this morning.’
He looks grave. ‘The Husain account?’
I nod. He raises a silver eyebrow at Ramona. ‘Good. This has been a very serious matter for the company.’ He flicks his eyes at me, a trace of disapproval there. ‘See you at the meeting in a half hour.’ He turns to leave, but I call after him. I step outside Ramona’s office and collar Dean in the passageway.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to take some time off,’ I say.
He turns slowly and looks deeply confused. ‘I’m sorry, Lochlan, but I’m not quite sure what you mean.’
I explain the situation at home, and I mention the police, but he simply shakes his head as though none of this is possible.
‘What about the Edinburgh branch? You can’t simply up and leave at a time like this.’
I make to answer, but there’s an LCD screen on a wall beside us and the noise is starting to rattle my head. The news comes on, and from the corner of my eye I spy my wife’s face. Both Dean and I turn to see a headshot of Eloïse enlarging on the screen until it is filled.
And in local news, charity campaigner and mother-of-two Eloïse Shelley went missing from her home in Twickenham yesterday. Her family and friends are desperately urging anyone with information to come forward.
Gerda pops up on screen. There’s a microphone in her face and she’s standing in the doorway of my house looking drained and wild-eyed. Her voice shakes.
‘She hasn’t been seen for over twenty-four hours. This really is extremely distressing and urgent. We’ve got two grandchildren, the youngest only twelve weeks old. We plead with anyone who has seen Eloïse to contact us immediately.’
19 March 2015
Komméno Island, Greece
It’s morning. The sky outside the porthole window is grey and brooding. It’s so cold that the bedsheets feel damp to the touch. It takes a few moments to get my bearings. Sleep seems to have made a huge difference to how I feel. The terrible pain in my breasts has stopped. My head isn’t as sore, either. Still, when I move across the floor of the attic to the door, I find it locked, or jammed. Either way, it won’t budge, and it takes a minute or two of pounding my fists against the wood for Joe to come and open it. He explains that the wind must have caught it and offers to help me down the stairs, but I refuse. I cling to the old wooden banister and take each step very carefully.
Eventually I find the bathroom, close the door, testing the lock several times before sinking down to the ground. There’s no shower in here, just a sink and an old tin bathtub with rusty taps and a cobwebbed window. The water doesn’t seem to run any other temperature than ice cold. Sariah tells me they get their water from a cistern out by the hay barn so it’s not particularly plentiful.
I peel off the pyjamas that Hazel lent me and study the naked woman in the small shaving mirror above the sink. This woman who is me. She is Caucasian, slender, somewhere between thirty and forty, with thick honey-blonde hair to her shoulders. A long face, skinny arms and round hips, the chest streaked with blue veins. Her shoulders are defined, and beneath a layer of loose skin around the belly button is a firm six-pack. Lines fan around the eyes. A small, irregular nose, light green eyes and ears that stick out a little. No tattoos or scars. Her nails are unpainted and short, filed into neat ovals. Her left cheekbone and forehead are horribly bruised, and there are aubergine-coloured splodges on her shins, her right hip, and both arms.
Why don’t I recognise myself? Why isn’t my body familiar? Where do I live? Do I work? Do I have kids? The white space in my mind is luminous, unyielding. Why don’t I know my own name?
Gingerly I stretch out the arm that doesn’t hurt as badly as the other and touch the mirror to confirm that this is my
reflection. I want her to talk back to me, to tell me my secrets. I read this body like a puzzle, a remnant of a larger story.
There’s a groove around the base of several fingers, as though I was wearing rings that have since vanished – the third and fourth fingers of my right hand, my wedding finger. Was I married? I rub my thumb up and down the faint circular indentations in my skin, willing myself to remember the ring that has vanished, if not the person who gave it to me.
I find a bar of soap on the side of the bath and slowly scrub the sour smell of brine off my skin and out of my hair, careful not to touch the cut at the right side. It stings so badly. Hazel told me she washed the clothes I was found in yesterday – a bra, pants, yellow T-shirt and jeans – and that she put them on the washing line outside to dry. She also lent me some of her clothes.
Wrapping a towel around me, I stagger painfully to the kitchen and out the back door to the stone steps that lead down into the grassy patch at the back of the house. I find my jeans, T-shirt, bra and pants all swaying on the line alongside the life jacket. I finger it, pulling at the straps.
A wave of dizziness forces me to sit down on a patch of dry grass. I can’t bear to think that someone else died on the trip to this place. Someone I loved, perhaps. After a long while I force myself to focus on my surroundings. George asked me before why I came here. There must be a reason. I must know this place.
I sit for a while and study the farmhouse, pitched as it is on a sudden incline, subjecting it to buffeting winds. It’s bigger than I expected, given how small the rooms seem inside: a tall stone building with patches of crumbling masonry, a spatter of orange tiles on the ground indicating that the roof is in disrepair, too. Metal balconies jut out from two of the upper windows that are crowned by explosions of vibrant pink flowers, lending the place a certain rustic charm. Part of the roof is flat, and there I can make out something that looks like a flat-screen TV with a huge battery attached to the top of it. Perhaps a solar panel – that would explain how the farmhouse has electricity.