I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.
All I know for sure is that I had to write it in the spirit of believing it would be read, otherwise there would have been no point in writing it at all. I told him that I understood why he has been unable to see me or even speak to me since his wife’s and sons’ deaths. I told him I was sick with remorse for contributing to those deaths and that I would give my own life to bring theirs back. I told him that I adored him and always would. I asked him if he remembered my telling him my belief that falling in love could be averted or willed, it was not simply a question of magic. Loving him, then, was my choice. I said that even if we were never again in the same city, much less living as neighbours, that I believed the love still mattered, even if it was only mine now and neither welcomed nor returned. I reminded him of what he said to me the first time we met, and how I still know it is true:
Everybody counts.
Even Emmie Mason.
Chapter 27
Tabby
She found Arthur and Emily in the kitchen, half-eaten servings of chicken salad on dinner plates in front of them. ‘It’s got to be her,’ she said, halting in the doorway. ‘There’s no other explanation. She’s not Emily. She’s not you.’
‘No,’ Emily agreed. ‘Oh dear, you’ve had a shock, I think.’ She got up from her seat and guided Tabby to a place at the table, fetching from the fridge a plate of food for her. She brought salt and pepper, salad dressing, a glass of iced water. Even as she continued to grapple with the larger situation, Tabby registered how very kind Emily was, even further from the woman portrayed by the media than Emmie was – whoever Emmie was.
‘She doesn’t even look like you,’ Tabby told her. ‘I mean, a little bit, but not properly, not now I can compare you one after the other. It must have been so obvious she wasn’t who she said she was, but I was so stupid I wasn’t the slightest bit doubtful. I was totally fooled.’ But the word ‘fooled’ felt wrong. Talking like this felt wrong, like she was betraying Emmie.
‘You weren’t stupid. I think we’re similar enough, and with the hair and make-up, the same clothing, you could easily be deceived if you only had photos for reference. It was quite a distinctive look and she copied it well – that was what unnerved me when I met her. But as it was, there would have been no reason for you to be looking for differences. She told you it was her and why would you disbelieve it? Why would someone make it up?’
‘Why indeed,’ Arthur said. He, Tabby saw, was pallid with exhaustion.
‘For attention?’ Emily wondered.
‘No, definitely not that,’ Tabby said. ‘Until she met me she was living secretly, she wasn’t going around telling people she was famous. In fact, I practically had to force the truth out of her – well, not the truth, but you know what I mean, her truth. And there’s no monetary gain, either. She’s not selling her story – your story – or dining out on it in any way. She’s working as a cleaner and isn’t paid much at all, but her fear of being recognised means there are only certain jobs she can take.’ Though seated, still Tabby reeled from the shock of it, of her own gullibility as much as the fraud itself.
She noticed Arthur glance at the wall clock. It was half-past ten; not the evening he had expected or wanted. Tabby wondered if she would ever know the end of his and Emily’s story, how they had come to be reunited, when it had seemed so hopeless at the end of Emily’s last written instalment. ‘Whatever this impersonator’s motives, we have to make a decision about what to do about her,’ he said, and he drank deeply from his wine glass.
‘The more I think about it, the more I think she’s not an impersonator,’ Tabby said. ‘I think it’s weirder than that. I’m fairly sure she genuinely thinks she is Emily.’
‘I had a feeling you were going to say that,’ Emily said.
‘But what does it mean? How could that be?’
‘It means she must be extremely unwell,’ Arthur said. ‘Whatever’s going on, it’s obsessive and potentially harmful and I think we need to tell the police about her.’
‘But she hasn’t come near me in five months,’ Emily said. ‘Who’s she going to harm?’
‘Herself, for one,’ Tabby said. ‘The reason I came here to look for you was I was very worried about her. She’s having some sort of breakdown. I feel more concerned than ever now. I’m not sure I should have left her on her own.’
‘Exactly my point,’ Arthur said. ‘She needs treatment, psychiatric attention. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we find she already has a therapist here, a history of irrational behaviour of this sort. You were right to come back to England, Tabby: this is where you’ll find your answers.’
Tabby agreed. ‘Before I can do anything, I need to find out who she really is. She calls herself Emmie, but that can’t be her name, can it? She must have got that from the journal.’
‘You didn’t ever see her passport or any other identification?’ he asked.
‘No. I would have questioned the discrepancy if I had. I wouldn’t be here.’
‘Thank God she didn’t steal my passport,’ Emily said. ‘Otherwise it could have got very complicated.’
‘It’s complicated enough as it is,’ Arthur said. ‘Do you know where she lived in the UK?’ he asked Tabby. ‘If she was one of the ones who used to come to Emily’s flat, might she have been based in London?’
‘Well, she said she’d lived in London. Once she knew I knew, she talked about the Grove all the time, how it was a bus ride from her work and close to St Barnabas’. But of course she read all that in your document. She never mentioned Newbury or anywhere else. Did your brother ever see her again after you left for Paris?’
Emily shook her head. ‘Not that he ever mentioned. But then it would fit with what you say if she went to La Rochelle at about the same time.’
‘Actually, she’s across the bridge from La Rochelle,’ Tabby said, ‘on the Ile de Ré.’
‘The Ile de Ré?’ Arthur and Emily looked at each other, perturbed, dismayed.
‘You mention it in your account, do you remember? I think that must be where she thought you’d be going.’
‘She’s delusional,’ Arthur said, ‘and I mean clinically. As I say, I’d be amazed if she weren’t known to a hospital somewhere over here.’
An image rose to the surface of Tabby’s mind then, causing her to exclaim, ‘Hang on, there is something! The pills. She had medication.’
‘What kind of medication?’
‘I don’t remember exactly, but it had been prescribed by a hospital in London. And her name begins with E, that’s right. I saw the label on the bottle, it was torn… Oh, unless she stole it from you?’
She looked at Emily, who shook her head.
‘No, it’s not mine. She didn’t take anything like that from me. And the only medication prescribed to me was by the NHS Trust in Hertfordshire, not a London hospital.’
‘Hers was definitely London. I can’t remember where. East London, possibly.’
Arthur looked up. ‘The East London Trust? That’s a specialist mental-health trust. I can ring them in the morning and see what I can find out, though the letter E isn’t much to be going on with, I have to say. Do we know a date of birth?’
‘Only Emily’s,’ Tabby said. ‘She looks older, though, I would say.’
‘What about other clues?’ Emily said. ‘Family? Has she ever mentioned them?’
‘All she ever told me is what she must have found out from your journal.’ She’d been struck by the phrases Emmie repeated from the manuscript, phrases she hadn’t written herself but must have absorbed and borrowed. Had anything been Emmie’s own? ‘She said her parents were dead and she has a brother and two young nephews.’
‘Maybe that’s the true bit? The coincidence that triggered the original interest?’ Arthur suggested. ‘Not a name, but a family parallel, an emotional connection. This could be some sort of grief-related behaviour?’
It was a staggering thought, that grief could cause a
person to withdraw from her own life and begin living in a state of complete self-deception. But both Arthur and Emily, and presumably thousands of others up and down the land, were also recently bereaved and they had not hijacked other people’s identities.
‘OK, let’s think this through,’ Emily said. ‘Assuming it’s not a chance family parallel, then her parents or other family may well still be alive, and if they haven’t heard from her in all this time they’ll be worried sick.’
‘She’s had no contact with them since she’s been in France,’ Tabby said. ‘I’m certain of that.’
‘So they might have reported her missing?’
Emily and Tabby looked at each other, neither blinking.
‘Well, there’s your first place to look,’ Arthur said. ‘It sounds obvious, but you could do worse than to start with Missing Persons.’
In the end it was as simple as that. There were fifty white females in Emmie’s age range registered as missing in London and she was one of them. She was neither an Emily nor a Marr, of course, and not an Emmie or a Mason, either. She was called Eve Barron, born in the same month as Emily but three years earlier. It was all there on the website:
Eve Barron
Date of birth: 2 July 1977
Eve has been missing from London since 18 March 2012.
There is concern for Eve’s safety and she is urged to call our confidential Freefone service for advice and support.
Eve is 5 feet 5 inches tall and of medium build. At the time of her disappearance she had shoulder-length bleached blond hair, worn with a black ribbon.
The photograph was of a woman whose style inspiration was plain: the hair was the same length and blondness as Emily’s original cut, the eye make-up a faithful replica, the short-sleeved baby-blue cardigan just the kind of garment vintage-loving Emily would have worn. The occasion was not obvious, but there was a cottage window with leaded glass in the background, china ornaments on the sill: it didn’t look like a London flat or an office. A relative’s house, perhaps? Her parents’ home? Eve smiled with a pride that might once have seemed a perfectly ordinary response to the camera, but that now seemed to Tabby to be perverse, volatile, tragic.
Arthur left the room and Emily cleared up quietly while Tabby made the call to the twenty-four-hour helpline. ‘I think I know the whereabouts of one of the people on your website. I think she has mental-health issues and I’m guessing her family will probably know that.’
She gave the reference number from the website before being asked a series of questions about timings, location, whether she had noticed CCTV equipment in the village. When the woman began to ask about Eve’s clothing, Tabby wondered if she’d made herself quite clear. ‘This wasn’t a one-off sighting,’ she said. ‘I’ve been living and working with her. She wears lots of different clothes. I can tell you what she was wearing three days ago, but she’ll have changed by now. And she doesn’t really leave the house at the moment, anyway.’
‘Where are you both now?’
‘She’s still there, at the address I’ve given you. I’m back in England.’
‘Where does she think you are? Does she know you’re making this call?’
‘She thinks I’m visiting my family.’ It occurred to Tabby that she was not so different from Emmie/Eve. While not listed with any missing-persons organisation, she had broken off contact with her family and hardly allowed herself to think of her mother, was generally behaving as if in denial of being anyone’s daughter. She supposed she ought to phone Elaine and let her know she was alive.
‘The next step is for us to get in touch with the police with this information. We’ll do that first thing in the morning.’ The helpline worker told her the service was confidential and there was no way her phone number could be traced; however, the police would probably want to speak to her directly if she was willing.
‘That’s fine,’ Tabby said. ‘You can give them my number, and her family as well. I’m going back to France myself, so I can show them where she is if they like. The house is quite hard to find if you don’t know it.’
After the call had ended, Tabby sat in surprise. She’d said she was going back, but was that true? Shouldn’t she keep her distance now she’d discovered that Emmie was an unstable and troubled individual? But hadn’t she suspected that anyhow? Hadn’t she noted her peculiarities time and again and yet still decided she liked her, still longed to repay her friend’s original act of mercy?
‘Well done,’ Emily said. ‘That’s not an easy thing to have to do.’ She stood with her back to the whirring dishwasher. ‘Arthur’s gone up. He’s shattered.’
‘I should leave you in peace,’ Tabby said, pushing back her chair. ‘Head back into town for the train. You’ve both been amazingly understanding about this situation, when I’m sure it’s the last thing you need to get involved with this person.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Emily said. ‘How can we not be involved? And it’s far too late to be thinking about getting a train. I think you should stay here, in the spare room, get a good night’s rest.’
‘Oh.’ Tabby knew the offer was more than she deserved – and a huge leap of faith on Emily’s part. Somehow, just as Emmie had, she had chosen to trust her. ‘Thank you, if you’re sure. That’s really kind.’
‘Let’s have another drink. It’s been a very strange evening for both of us.’ Emily poured them each another glass of wine. ‘One for the road,’ she said, slipping into her seat, ‘though I must admit I’d hoped we’d got to the end of it by now.’
She really was unusually beautiful, Tabby thought, watching the way she rested her chin on her knuckles, elbow poised elegantly on the table. Her skin was flawless and glowing, those dark blue eyes slightly upturned at the outer corners and extravagantly long-lashed, her mouth broad and curved. She had not needed the painted mask she’d worn. Tabby imagined the men she knew being faced with such a creature: Paul would be in awe of someone so exquisite; Steve wouldn’t dare utter a word of insult or lasciviousness; perhaps even Grégoire might hesitate.
‘I have a favour to ask you,’ Emily said.
‘Of course?’ Tabby said. ‘Anything.’
‘The file you’ve read, and the extra chapter I showed you tonight: could you keep what you know confidential? I don’t suppose anyone’s interested now, but just in case…?’
Tabby’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Of course! I won’t tell a soul. I’ll try to forget, in fact. It will be hard, though. It’s an extraordinary story.’
Emily bowed her head, unable to deny this.
‘I know it’s none of my business,’ Tabby heard herself say, the words as fitting as any others for her gravestone, ‘but I’d love to know one final thing.’
Emily smiled. ‘One final thing you’ll try to forget?’
‘Yes.’ She conceded the absurdity of it, but still longed to ask.
‘I’m sure I can guess what it is, anyway,’ Emily said. ‘How Arthur and I came to get back together.’
‘He read your letter, I suppose? The one you sent from Paris?’
‘Yes. He read it and he came to find me.’ Emily’s eyes glimmered with sudden tears. ‘He just appeared one day out of the blue. It was… it was like a miracle. I’d been trawling the local bars one afternoon, looking for work, but my French was just not up to it, I was getting nowhere, and when I got back to the house he was on the doorstep, sitting there, reading his English newspaper. At first – for ages, actually – all he said was, “Sorry. I’m sorry.” I thought he’d forgotten how to say anything else.’ She paused, and Tabby knew she would not be invited to share the part that followed; she would have to imagine the reconciliation for herself, in all its bitter-sweetness. ‘When he went back the next day, I went with him.’
‘After all that time, he changed his mind? You’d given up on him, hadn’t you?’
‘I thought too long had passed for him to be able to remember us. But now I think there’s no such thing as too long. It was only eight mont
hs. I would have waited eight years.’
‘Wow.’ Tabby felt envy so acute it caused internal pain. Had envy also been at the heart of Emmie’s imitation, or whatever it was, not imitation but identification, immersion? The intuitive certainty that this person was special, or at least her connection with Woodhall was. ‘How long have you been up here, in Leeds?’
‘Arthur’s been here since soon after the inquest. He’d already arranged the move, but brought it forward when the Press story erupted. I came in May. It hasn’t been easy, as you can imagine. We’ve had to start again, pretty much without friends. We know we can’t ever see anyone from before.’
The Disappearance of Emily Marr Page 39