by C. J. Cooke
‘I’d like amnesia,’ Hazel said. ‘Just a little bit, you know. I reckon I wouldn’t have had to go to therapy for all those years if someone had smacked me hard on the head.’
‘It can still be arranged,’ George said with a grin, and she gave him a twitchy look.
‘I think we all have amnesia to a degree,’ Sariah offered, pouring me a glass of wine. ‘I mean, does anyone recall being born? The most significant moment of your life and not one person remembers it.’
‘Or do they?’ Hazel whispered conspiratorially.
‘I think it says a lot about the human condition,’ Joe says.
‘What does?’
Joe paused, looking blank. ‘I’ve forgotten.’
‘Touché!’ Hazel chirped.
I watched Hazel and George carefully, trying to fathom the dynamic of their relationship. It was hard to place. As I watched them chat that white space in my mind flickered with an image, just for an instant – I was in a room with four other people, and we were sitting around a long table, writing. I tried to think what I was writing, who the other people were. Where the room was. But just as quickly as it had arrived, the memory faded.
‘How did your writing go today?’ I asked.
Joe frowned and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Some days it flows, others it’s like breaking rocks with a fork,’ he said with a sigh.
‘I would have thought the muse would give generously in a place like this,’ I said.
The others made noises of agreement. Joe took off his glasses and rubbed the lenses with the hem of his T-shirt. ‘I got a lot done today, even so. Some editing. A new villanelle. Some ideas scribbled down for tomorrow.’
George arched an eyebrow. ‘And how many words is a villanelle?’
Joe shrugged. ‘It’s not about word count with poetry.’
‘Well, how many lines is a villanelle?’
Joe counted on his fingers. ‘About nineteen?’
George made a ‘ppssh’ sound, as if nineteen was nothing, and Hazel started to chuckle.
‘What?’ said Joe.
George leaned towards me in confidence and tilted his chin at Joe. ‘Last year, me and Hazel finished a whole novel each while we were here. Ask Joe how many poems he wrote. Go on, ask him.’
Joe rolled his eyes.
‘Fifty?’ I said.
‘Six,’ Joe said, and everyone burst out laughing.
‘Six poems in a month,’ George said, shaking his head.
‘Hey, they were intricate poems,’ Joe said, matter-of-factly. ‘Poetry is about the economy of language. Each word has to be weighed—’
‘—and measured,’ Hazel finished. ‘Yes, you’ve told us.’
Joe plucked a leather notebook from the worktop and handed it to me, the page opened to one of his poems. It was handwritten in a spidery scrawl with black ink.
I didn’t really understand the poem – or if I was meant to understand it – and I was keen to keep up the slightly elevated mood. But as I read it, a deeper instinct told me that I had read this poem before. I looked up at Joe.
‘This is one of your poems?’ I said.
He nodded. Then, detecting the edge of disbelief to my voice: ‘Why?’
I looked at it again. Yes, I had definitely read this poem before. I knew this poem, the flow of the sentences, the rhythm of the lines.
‘I thought I recognised it,’ I explained. ‘Like maybe it was written by Alexander Pope, or Shakespeare.’
Everyone laughed, and Joe looked hugely flattered.
‘Gosh, thank you very much,’ he said.
And it was then, right as Hazel was asking me how I knew who Alexander Pope was and whether that meant I was beginning to remember, right as George lit another cigarette and Joe leaned towards me to read the poem for himself, as though he might see it anew, that it struck me: not only did I know the poem, but I also knew Joe. Something about his smell, his long, pale fingers … I stared at him until he caught my eye, and I struggled to form a context for this recognition. Was it the square glasses, the heavy black frames obscuring his eyes? Or the way he always looked down when he smiled, bashful? It didn’t come, but it was there, deep in my bones: an unshakable sense that somehow I knew him from before.
But as I tried to remember how, there was that white space again, a sprawling desert in my mind.
It’s five o’clock: time to head to the dock and meet Nikodemos. I make the bed I’ve been sleeping in, then head downstairs to say my goodbyes to Hazel, Joe, Sariah and George. Sariah is by the range oven preparing a dish that smells divine. When she spots me in the doorway she sets down the oven glove and stretches her arms out for a hug.
‘You’re leaving already?’ she says.
I nod, suddenly anxious. I wish she could come with me, but it would be wrong to ask. She pulls me into a deep embrace and kisses my cheek. Then she leans back and looks me over.
‘You’re going to be fine,’ she says warmly, her dark eyes twinkling. ‘Just fine. What time did George arrange for Nikodemos to come?’
‘Six, I think. I’m guessing he’ll take a little while to search for the missing boat, and then hopefully he’ll take me to the police station.’
‘You want food before you go?’ she says, turning to the pan on the stove that’s emitting steam and a heavenly smell. ‘It’s at least an hour to Chania, maybe more, depending on how the wind’s blowing.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m OK.’
She looks doubtful. ‘You’re sure?’
I nod. My stomach is in knots over leaving the farmhouse and, as delicious as the food smells, I can’t face eating it. I am, quite literally, heading into the unknown – everything I know is right here.
Hazel comes in and sees us embracing. ‘What’s going on?’ she says, then raises a hand to her mouth and widens her eyes as the penny drops. ‘You’re leaving.’
To my surprise, she opens her arms and joins us in a group hug. When she pulls back – Sariah taking both my hands in hers – Hazel folds her arms and flicks her eyes across me, studying me.
‘You’re really leaving? I thought you might have stayed a little longer.’
‘It’s for the best,’ Sariah answers. ‘Remember,’ she tells me in a low voice. ‘Be Pandora.’
‘Be what?’ Hazel says, glancing back and forth at Sariah and me, but neither of us answer.
Joe comes in then, deep in a yawn. ‘Oh, man! You’re going!’ he says suddenly, and I feel tearful. He throws his arms around me and lifts me off my feet. When he lowers me, he tells me to wait right here and races out of the room. He returns with a small jotter and a pen.
‘I said I’d give you something to write in,’ he says, smiling. ‘So here you are.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I wrote in it,’ he says, bashful. ‘In the front page. A gift to remember us by.’
He’s a sweet boy – a gentle giant – no more than twenty, with a huge, caring heart. I will miss him dearly.
‘Thank you, Joe.’
‘Are we ready to go?’ George says, emerging from the stairway with a long wooden walking stick in one hand and a coat in the other. He hands it to me: an old man’s fishing jacket. It smells foul and is covered in dust. ‘Gets nippy down by the beach. Bit big for you, but beggars can’t be choosers, eh?’
‘Thanks,’ I say, putting it on. George straps on a large, empty rucksack to hold the food that Nikodemos is bringing for the others. Joe insists it isn’t big enough, but George tells him to shut up, he’ll be fine.
Sariah insists on giving me food in a paper bag and Joe makes me sit down and have my blood pressure checked before he decides I’m well enough to walk the distance. Then Hazel studies me to ensure I’m organised, though all I have is the clothes on my back and the food Sariah gave me. But Hazel reminds me about the jotter and pen Joe gifted me, and puts them in my pocket with a bunch of tissues. I can’t help feeling like a child going off to school for the first time.
It’s already beginn
ing to darken outside when George and I head down the steps of the farmhouse and take the path through the olive trees towards the far end of the island. The sky’s navy and lilac silks lift my spirits, as do the call of birds and the shapes of boats in the distance, dotted on the clothy texture of ocean like white party hats. Maybe the language barrier won’t be so much of a problem. Maybe the police in Chania will have some sort of database that they can look up and find out who I am, and who is looking for me.
It takes almost an hour to reach the small dock, for the island has virtually no straight paths and the only flats are the dramatic stone banks near the cliffs. The wind grows so fierce that George insists we stay close to the trees, his faint torch picking out a rugged path and scaring off small creatures.
George doesn’t talk much along the way. He hums occasionally, his walking stick knocking against rock and his heavy boots thudding against the dirt path, the empty rucksack making whispers against his back. I’m glad of the quiet; it gives me time to take in the sight of the sunset.
The abandoned hotel is located close to the beach, along with the wind-scrubbed shell of a restaurant and some derelict buildings. Their signage blown away, it’s difficult to pinpoint what their purpose was, though George’s torch picks out evidence: broken pint-glasses; a handful of toy dolphins with ‘Komméno’ stitched along the fin, the price tags still attached; a flip-flop; a menu, Greek and English lettering indicating the intended customers.
‘Sad,’ says George, rubbing his nose. ‘They had high hopes for this place. The whole island. Said it was going to be as big as Kos.’
He points out a small wooden pier beyond a cluster of towering palm trees. ‘He’ll dock there.’ He begins to head towards it. I follow.
Now that I’m here, waiting for Nikodemos, I feel terrified. What will happen in Crete? Will the police help me or abandon me? Where will I go? I have no money, no phone, no friends or family that I remember. I look out over the darkening sky, the skyline populated with shadows of distant ships and islands, and take a deep breath. Six o’clock passes. I take off my shoes and sit down on the end of the pier, dangling my feet towards the sea below. The water is so clear that I can spot slivers of fish in the water, nibbling my toes. The sky bruises, first stars jewelling the clouds. For the first time in a long while, George speaks.
‘Chilly, see? Aren’t you glad of that coat now?’
I nod, pulling it tighter across me. I turn to climb on top of a boulder beside the pier for a better view of the horizon, squinting for any sign of a boat coming to the island.
‘Do you see him?’ I ask George.
‘Who?’ he calls.
‘Nikodemos.’
He clicks his teeth with his tongue, his gaze straight ahead. ‘How will you know it’s really Nikodemos?’
‘What?’
A shrug and a strange curl at the side of his mouth. ‘I said, how will you know it’s really Nikodemos? You’ll be getting in that boat, sailing off. It could be a smuggler. Could be anyone.’
I laugh it off, but when he doesn’t laugh back I wonder whether he’s joking after all. The cold has set in now, making my eyes stream. I rub my eyes and reach into my pocket for a hankie to wipe away tears and snot caused by the cold wind, but all I find is Joe’s notebook. I pull it out, remembering with a smile that he said he’d written a note inside to remember him by. Turning to the first page, I can make out his spidery handwriting, though it takes me a moment to work out what I’m reading.
The letters on the page are meaningless and abstract, and I tell myself this is a name he has assigned to me, made up for me, like a character in a novel. But then there is a chime, a ripple in that white space, announcing that this is my name. Eloïse. This is my name. I am Eloïse Beatrice Shelley.
But how does Joe know this?
George has started to walk back up the pier. I expect him to come towards me but he continues walking. I shuffle down off the boulder and walk after him.
‘Has Nikodemos contacted you?’
He keeps walking.
‘George?’
He won’t respond, but simply lumbers on through the tall blades of grass. With great loping strides across the rocky ground I manage to catch up with him, keeping pace while he prods the earth with his walking stick and whistles.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask him.
‘I’m going back to the farmhouse.’
I’m already out of breath, my heart racing.
‘But … what about Nikodemos?’
‘What about him?’
‘George!’
He stops. I step in front of him, one eye on the pier in case the boat pulls up.
‘Where is Nikodemos?’ I pant. ‘He’s bringing food, isn’t he? And taking me back. Where is the boat?’
George sighs and smiles down a time. ‘Look, it’s for your own good.’
‘What’s for my own good, George?’
‘You’ve got to stay here until you get your memory back.’
My mouth falls open.
‘But – you called Nikodemos. On the satellite phone. You said he was coming today, that he was bringing food for all of you, and that he’d take me to Crete.’
George shakes his head and gives a stupid little laugh. Like this is all a game.
‘It’s for your own good. Trust me.’
‘What?’
‘I have always watched your back,’ he says. ‘Always. And that’s precisely what I’m doing now.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I shout, and my gut is tight and my heart is beating in my throat. He ignores me and walks on.
‘I have to go back to Crete, George. I have to!’ I shake the notebook in the air. ‘I know my name! I know who I am!’
In one quick movement he reaches out and loops his thick arm through mine, pulling me along with him. I reel at his strength.
‘George, let me go! I want … please, let me go to Crete. They’ll be able to contact the Embassy. Please, let me go!’
23 March 2015
Little Acorns’ Playgroup, Twickenham
Lochlan: Eloïse has been missing now for six days. It doesn’t sound that long. Not even a week. Yet it feels like I’m falling through time, each minute a century. My nerves are flensed. It’s like being on LSD, but with the pain of an amputation without anaesthetic. I spent a while last night googling space-time wormholes and considering whether El might have time-travelled. I leap from one extreme to another, like a monkey from branch to branch: black despair to a strange, cocky certainty that she’s about to walk through the door. Every instance that I realise she’s not here, that this is not a dream, is an electric shock to the system.
And then there’s the anger. I have moments, usually in the middle of the night, when fury envelops me and I’d give anything to fight someone. I mean, it’s staggering that someone can go missing in this day and age, given that she’s been on the news, we have a dedicated Facebook page, ‘Help Find Eloïse Shelley’, with over 50,000 shares, and the hashtag #findEloïse went viral for half an hour last night on Twitter after being retweeted by Lorraine Kelly. I read somewhere that the average man or woman is captured by CCTV fourteen times a day and yet all the CCTV cameras that the police have checked show no sign of Eloïse. The whole neighbourhood has been involved in the search. There are posters in libraries, on lampposts and school gates, at the entrances of our local Waitrose and Sainsbury’s and throughout London. And yet it has all amounted to nothing. As though she evaporated.
The thought of her running off with another man now seems at once unlikely and an outcome I almost wish for, given the other possibilities for her disappearance, because at least if she has left me for someone else she is safe. Logic is no longer what I thought it was. The air in our home is stagnant. Her coats hang in the utility room like bats. Her underwear sleeps in the top drawer of her dresser. Envelopes flit through the letterbox bearing her name. Each minute is weighted with unanswered questions.
Magnus, G
erda and I have cobbled together a routine for Max and Cressida. Dean Wyatt reluctantly signed me off on compassionate leave from work. There’s a huge part of me that wishes I could go to work for the normality, the chance to dive into investment forecasts and forget about this hell. Anyway. Having had no real clue where exactly El has been taking our children every day, I managed to get some information from her friends. Max goes to pre-school every afternoon from half twelve to half past three, and in the mornings he attends playgroups, including a singing group, toddler Spanish and a baby massage group for Cressida on Fridays.
I have finally managed to convince Max that Mummy has gone on holiday for a little while, and that Mamie and Grandpapa are here to spend time with him. He seemed more settled by this, more accepting, and it struck me that perhaps he had picked up on how worried I had been, that he’d been reacting to the chaos surrounding her absence. I forget sometimes how sensitive he is, and how intelligent, despite being so young. I’ve promised him that we will go to Thomas Land to see Thomas the Tank Engine as soon as Mummy gets back, and the words were out before I realised the problem in this promise. What if she doesn’t come back? What then?
This morning Max wanted me to take him to playgroup, so I left Cressida behind and brought Max to playgroup. Talk about feeling like a square peg in a round hole. I’m sitting in a long room in a church with a cup of watery tea by my feet watching Max as he runs around the room wearing a Darth Vadar helmet and a tutu, wielding a plastic sword.
A part of me is starting to realise that I don’t know all that much about Eloïse’s life, not any more. The detectives were very keen to know what clothes were missing, as she’d hardly have left the house naked, and if she left certain items behind – shoes, coat, that sort of thing – it could possibly indicate a forced exit. An abduction.
This made me feel sick. I looked and looked through her clothes, but I had no idea if anything was missing. She had some stuff I’d not seen before, some new shoes, dresses, coats. DS Welsh tried to make light of it, saying her boyfriend’s the same, never notices anything, but the guilt is crippling. I haven’t been present, physically or emotionally. When I was moved to the Edinburgh office we planned to make sure that it didn’t affect things. We would Facetime at least twice a day and I’d speak with Max and read bedtime stories to Cressida virtually. It worked at the beginning, but then I got more and more sucked into work and the week would zoom by without a single Facetime. I guess it’s easier said than done, maintaining a relationship properly via a laptop screen.