by Rosie Blake
‘Oh I’ve tried, I just saw lots of articles about the man who runs MI5,’ I explained, feeling more than a little absurd.
‘MI5 how wonderful. I would make an excellent spy, can winkle anything out of anyone, and no one would suspect. Your father never knows when I’m lying to him…’
‘When do you lie to Dad?’
‘Oh come on darling, we’ve been married a lifetime. I lie to him all the time. “Yes of course I’ve paid the TV licence, no I don’t think Justin in the Surf Shop is more gorgeous than you, yes it’s gluten-free…”’
‘Right, well…’
‘Oh look,’ Mum’s voice rose as she pointed to the screen, ‘There’re millions of photos, he’s bound to be here. Was he the boy with the funny ears?’ she said, throwing the comment over her shoulder.
‘No, that was Lyndon, and I heard he got them pinned.’
‘Oh shame, strange ears give a man character,’ she said, scrolling down the page. ‘Look, darling, look.’
There were so many photos of ‘Andrew Parker’. Images after images were thrown up and I scanned them all. Google showed me: old Andrew in narrow square-framed glasses, Andrew in a pin-stripe suit and red tie, windswept Andrew posing in a manicured garden, Andrew with a scarf as a turban, a random woman with her tits out in an armchair, Andrew with a clarinet (I peered closer at this one as he was the first to fit within the appropriate age range), Black Andrew holding a cat in a tube carriage and, lastly, Andrew meeting Camilla Parker Bowles in a marquee and then Andrew in sunglasses with a rucksack.
It was between Clarinet Boy and Rucksack Man and with some trepidation, we clicked on Clarinet Boy’s face. A tiny square popped up, a grainy image. ‘Visit Page’. We discovered a few things: it was not a clarinet, it was an oboe. Andrew was really good at playing it and he lived in Utah. So I had just travelled all the way from America to discover Andrew Parker was in fact living in America. The CV was impressive and as I enlarged his face I felt my chest tighten. Andrew was not The Andrew.
Our attentions moved quickly to Andrew the Rucksack Carrier and we visited the page. It was a travel blog from a girl called Melody who was posting photos of her friends on a walking trip to the Alps. ‘Chillin’ with Andrew’, she had typed beneath it and then written a post about how the sunset had been ‘really pretty’. The blog was snippets from other trips, but no other photos of Andrew appeared.
I tilted my head to the side. ‘That could be him,’ I said, noting the wave in the front of his hair. Hadn’t Andrew had a wave right there? Staring at his image, wondering what his eyes were like beneath those sunglasses, I was pretty sure it was him.
‘Type in Somerset House,’ I said, getting excited myself now.
Mum did just that and the images reduced and now we were staring at a tiny square, a headshot of a teacher at an ancient-looking independent day school in Devon. A Geography teacher. With a wave in his hair. This was Andrew Parker, Geography Teacher, Rucksack Carrier and First Husband.
Mum had, of course, shouted most of the story across the hairdressers to Tanya who had been gawping at my efforts to track Andrew down and was impressed, I think, with the mileage. ‘Can’t believe you flew from LA.’
‘I know,’ I said, seeing myself grow red in the mirror as she lifted two lengths of hair and cut.
‘That’s like America!’
‘That it is,’ I confirmed. ‘Land of the Free,’ I added for no discernible reason.
‘So where is he now?’ she said, looking around the hairdresser and almost making me hope he might be here getting his roots done. Actually, he wouldn’t need his roots doing; he didn’t go in for that kind of thing. Or did he? I wondered briefly whether he would be the type of man to go to the barbers or the hairdressers; would he tint his hair? Would he have a beard? I pictured him now all dirty blond and wild and decided he would be a barber man, a ‘Give me a grade four all over’ kind of guy. The no-nonsense sort. He likes his hair like he likes his life: uncomplicated.
‘… and when they found her she had died. Isn’t that beautiful?’
Tanya paused to stare at me in the mirror, her sculpted eyebrows raised, waiting for my response.
‘Beautiful,’ I nodded.
Who died? I thought, curiosity piqued. Why were we suddenly talking about death?
I eyed her hairdressing scissors suspiciously.
‘They say elephants stand over their dead partner for days, so maybe they were like them, unable to live without each other. That could be you and this fella Andrew; elephants, or maybe not like elephants, like penguins or shit who only marry once.’
‘I think that’s swans,’ I said. ‘Penguins only stay monogamous in the mating season and then they choose another one next time round. They’re basically bird slags,’ I said, feeling bad when Tanya looked horrified.
‘That’s a tattoo I now regret,’ she said, pulling up her T-shirt sleeve and showing me two penguins kissing. Oh.
After Tanya had worked her magic, I caught sight of myself in the long mirror. There I was: Isobel Graves, Intrepid Chaser of Husbands and owner of Fabulous New Swishy Hair. Tomorrow would be the day I headed to see Andrew. I vowed to head to Somerset House first thing. He couldn’t possibly say no to this vision from a L’Oréal advert I thought, as I swung my locks from side to side, pouting at my reflection.
‘Yes, you’re very beautiful, darling, but let’s get going, eh?’ Mum called from behind me.
Mumbling something about, ‘Just thought I had a bug in my hair,’ I grabbed my bag and ran outside to join her.
Dear diary,
Today was the best day ever because Andrew and I went crabbing in the canoe lake and we raced all the crabs back. Well, first we put bacon on bits of string and we kept a bucket by the side. Mum said it was cruel if we didn’t have a bucket for them with water in so she gave us one that normally has the mop in.
Andrew was the best at grabbing the crabs as I was a bit scared when they came out of the water and dangled around snapping their spare claw as the other claw was on the bacon. He put them straight into the bucket and some were so big it was brilliant. When I looked into the bucket they were all crawling over each other and Andrew carried it and tipped the bucket over so that the crabs had to race back to the lake and it was so funny watching them move sideways; quick little steps all in different directions and the small one nearly beat everyone but I think he got confused and Andrew had to help him find his way home which Mum said was really nice of him and showed what a kind boy he was. Andrew is always smiling and I think he is kind too.
I x
Chapter 12
Expecting to see empty buildings – as per a school on holiday in July – I was surprised when I appeared at the gates of Somerset House campus to see groups of teenage children wearing orange baseball caps and carrying orange rucksacks wandering about the place. Notices pinned to some of the blocks of classrooms told me that there was a visiting language school in residence.
Three boys – one gangly, one pimply and one with the start of the world’s most pathetic moustache – approached me, a questioning look in their eyes and a square of map in their hands. They said stuff in a foreign language and I froze, nodding at them when they finished. They repeated other words, now with gestures, and I found myself doing a Gaelic shrug and rootled around in my head. I plumped for, ‘Me no understandee,’ which I was fairly confident was Crap English rather than words in a foreign tongue. As they looked at one another I took the opportunity to leg it, speedily walking away, head down so the other orange baseball caps kept their distance.
Moving past classroom blocks, I could make out the main school building in the distance. A large Gothic house surrounded by impeccably neat flowerbeds and a small working fountain in the centre of a circular gravel driveway. To my right, the cricket pitch, mown in stripes, waited for players. At the far end of the pitch a line of trees
obscured the view beyond and emerging from them was a figure in a flapping coat holding a stick.
Yapping and growling filled the air as three labradors spun and circled the stick, racing to compete for it after it had been thrown. One dog, chocolate-covered, its tongue lolling out as it neared me, seemed oblivious to the stick.
‘Koalemos!’ hollered the figure, the low, booming voice causing me to jump.
The chocolate lab raced over to me, not heeding the figure, jumping up playfully and making me laugh.
‘Down, Koalemos, down,’ the woman had started briskly walking to me. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said in an impossibly low voice. ‘Koalemos is completely thick and half-deaf with it.’
‘It’s fine, I don’t mind,’ I said, tickling Koalemos’s ears so he closed his eyes in pleasure. ‘He’s gorgeous. And his name is um…very impressive.’
‘Gorgeous but completely stupid, like so many men I know,’ the woman added. ‘And he is named after the God of Foolishness, so completely apt.’
‘Oh, how very…’ I tailed off, not sure what it was.
The woman looked at me with narrowed eyes, her
short auburn hair severely chopped beneath her jawline. ‘Are you working at the language school?’ she asked.
‘Oh no, I’m…’ I paused, realising I didn’t know this woman at all. ‘I’m sort of looking for someone.’
‘Someone who?’ She had such an authoritative tone and was wearing a tweed cloak (a cloak, who wears cloaks apart from Sherlock Holmes and vampires?) that I found myself responding honestly. ‘Andrew,’ I said quickly, ‘Andrew Parker, he’s a teacher here.’
‘Well I know that, I hired the man,’ she said, turning to call, ‘BAUCIS, PHILEMON’ so that the other two dogs perked up their ears and bounded over. ‘I’m Joan Henderson, the headmistress here,’ she said. I went to curtsy and then remembered that was just for the queen, although this woman had that kind of royal presence. ‘He’s one of the few who live on-site; one of the cottages that back onto the river…’ she said, pointing to the line of trees.
My heart soared with the announcement. A cottage, backing onto a river. It sent a shiver down my back and arms as I thought of my fantasy, played out so many times I could picture the cottage already. Was I picturing the very cottage he lived in? Would it have roses trained around the windows? Would it have a swing seat in the garden?
Honey-stone walls?
‘He’s not there, of course, volunteers every summer holiday; you probably just missed him.’
The last part of her sentence disrupted my thoughts of the cottage, its walls crumbling, roses crushed as I heard her say he was not there.
‘Where is he then?’ I asked, hoping it would be somewhere close by. I really had to get the car back before dinner: Dad was doing the pub quiz around the headland in Port Isaac.
‘Malaysia,’ was the reply.
‘Malaysia, as in, abroad,’ I repeated, stunned and momentarily hoping that Malaysia was a small village in Somerset.
‘Indeed, the country,’ she said, in the same voice that she spoke to Koalemos.
‘Oh,’ I muttered, feeling ridiculously like I might have a little cry.
Malaysia. I had just travelled half the globe to discover Andrew Parker wasn’t even in the country. After all my efforts I had been thwarted. Standing in the grounds of his school, feeling so close to him, it seemed absurd that he was really not there.
‘Tioman Island, to be precise, he did a wonderful assembly on it to the Year 10…’
‘Tioman,’ I repeated. It sounded foreign and exotic and bloody miles away. What was I going to do? Was this really over? My hopes lifted a fraction as I took in the tweed cloak. Maybe this woman was mad? Maybe she knew nothing?
‘It was lovely, all the pupils started clapping when he showed them a photo of a baby turtle in his hand. It cheered us all right up after that dreadful episode of Life – did you see it? Where those birds ripped them to shreds. Brutal animals, birds. Brutal.’
‘Aren’t they,’ I said, wanting her to finish, convinced now this bird-hating, cloak-wearing wizard woman might have it all wrong. ‘I might…leave him a note then,’ I said. He would be at home, I thought, he hadn’t gone anywhere, I could still find him.
‘Well of course, if you like,’ she said, leashing her dogs.
Koalemos started licking the leather.
‘Um where exactly is his house again? I forget,’ I added breezily.
‘It’s the one on the end of the three cottages over there.’ She waved in the direction of some trees, and I could just make out a chimney.
‘Thank you for the help,’ I whispered, moving away, my body feeling heavier with each step.
‘Well he’s an excellent teacher, I’m always happy to help an excellent teacher,’ she said.
‘That’s nice,’ I said, trying to take some consolation from the fact Andrew was an excellent teacher. My beloved had achieved excellence in his area of work: that was good, nice.
Heading towards the chimney, I threw up a little prayer to the sky. Come on, be in, I said to myself. Be in and let the She-Sherlock be wrong.
Nearing the rows of cottages, it was clear Andrew Parker’s house was not going to be the cottage from my fantasy. Shaded by a row of enormous beech trees, the cottages all looked crooked, the white-washed walls bumpy, there were tiles missing from the roof, weeds littering the beds in the front. A peeling label on a small metal box screwed into the wall confirmed that ‘A. Parker’ lived in the one at the end. I touched his name, feeling strange to see it written in bold. A circular for a local garden centre was bursting out of the slot. I pushed it back in gently, feeling the weight of other letters resisting. Maybe he just didn’t collect his mail. It didn’t mean he definitely wasn’t in. And, yes, the lights were off, but maybe he was saving electricity as he was such an eco-warrior. And there wouldn’t be smoke from the chimney; it was July not bloomin’ Christmas.
Taking a breath I pushed open the faded wooden gate, cream paint flaking off its surface, the hinges orangey-brown and resistant. The front door was tiny and had been painted red about a million years ago. Breathing out slowly, I curled my hand into a fist and knocked. No answer. My palms became damp as I looked for a doorbell, a knocker. Nothing. I rapped harder and called ‘Hellooo’ in a voice that sounded like my mother. The silence crept all around me and with the last of my energy I moved down the path and towards the garden. Perhaps he was on the loo, perhaps he had temporarily popped out to the shops, perhaps…
The garden was narrow and neglected. Clusters of stinging nettles sprouted from the disintegrating wooden fence, a path led to a tumbledown shed containing a rusting lawnmower, a garden fork and a dirty mountain bike. So many clues I felt like Miss Marple herself (although younger and edgier) as I tried to piece Andrew together. A man who loathed gardening because he was too busy cycling to places. A grubby white plastic chair, tipped and resting in the long grass, was no swing seat. Thin slivers of the stream at the end could be made out in between the trees and bushes. I looked back at the house from this angle. Net curtains obscured the view of the rooms at the back and frosted glass in a back door ensured all I could make out were dark shadows of a possible coat rack. A dusty windowpane littered with dead insects and remnants of cobwebs put me off peeking in. The house was clearly uninhabited. Andrew was in Malaysia.
It had been a pointless search, a reckless, expensive waste of time and I couldn’t believe I had to return home with the news. Then it would be back to LA and normal life would resume. Tears of disappointment threatened and I blinked. It wasn’t just the disappointment of not finding him here, it was everything the search for him had represented. I had finally started to pursue the life I had always imagined and I didn’t want to just give up now. As I crossed the border back into Cornwall, my mood seemed as immoveable as the clouds over Bodmin Moor. I had failed and mad
e a fool of myself.
‘Darling, you can’t keep moping about looking like you are about to throw yourself into the sea, it is very off-putting.’
Dressed in a hoody and pyjama bottoms, my new fabulous hair falling lank and unloved, I spooned dry cereal into my mouth. ‘I just need a small grieving period. I will try to be depressed out of sight of you from now on.’
‘That would be more favourable, but I’d rather you weren’t depressed at all, darling. What is there to be depressed about?’ she asked, catching a leak in the ceiling with a saucepan, rain battering the windows behind her, trees bent under the wind.
I raised an eyebrow.
‘This is just a teensy shower, it will pass,’ she said watching Dad stooped, shielding his face with his mac as he made his way into the house.
‘God,’ he said as he opened the doorway, shrugging
off his coat and putting a hand up to his wet patch of hair. ‘It is disgusting out there,’ he announced.
‘See,’ I munched, pointing my spoon at Dad, ‘we might as well all spend the day curled up in front of the fire watching movies that make us cry.’
‘Not me,’ said Mum, balancing a bowl on the Aga to catch the latest drip, ‘I will be seizing the day. I will be walking, my darlings, with my new MP3 player that is also a pedometer so clever it knows when I stop to tie my shoes.’
A roll of thunder blocked out my response.
Dad was putting on toast and rubbing his hands together. ‘Gorgeous summer we’re having,’ he muttered to himself.
Rain bounced off the windowsill outside, sliding in blurred sheets down the glass so the sea beyond just looked like a dripping grey watercolour.
Mum sat with her hands round a mug staring at me. ‘You’ve given up,’ she deduced.
I fiddled with the placemat.
‘You can’t give up,’ she said.
‘I have to,’ I sighed, explaining for the tenth time about my hopeless search.
Dad joined us, slapping honey on his toast and causing Mum to growl at him. He bit into it. ‘Staying for a bit longer then or returning to LA?’ he asked.