by Lisa Jewell
She looks at him as though he’s simple and says, ‘School.’
‘Ah, yes. Of course.’
She switches off the iPad and folds over its case. ‘Do you reckon you’ve got any children?’
‘Christ.’ The thought had not occurred to him. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I’ve got loads. I don’t even know how old I am. How old do you reckon I am?’
She examines his face with her grimy, green-blue eyes. ‘Somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five, I reckon.’
He nods. ‘How old are you?’
‘You’re not supposed to ask a lady that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK. I’m not really a lady. And I’m forty-one.’
‘And your children,’ he says. ‘Their father?’
‘Ers,’ she says. ‘Fathers. I’ve totally failed in the providing-a-conventional-family-unit-for-my-children department. Jasmine’s dad was a holiday romance. Brazil. Didn’t know I was pregnant until I’d been home for two weeks and had no way of tracking him down. Kai’s dad was my next-door neighbour in Brixton. We were – excuse the expression – fuck buddies. He just disappeared one day, when Kai was about five. A new family moved in. That was that. And Romaine’s dad was the love of my life but …’ She pauses. ‘He went mental. Did a bad thing. He lives in Australia now. So.’ She sighs.
He pauses, trying to find something to say that won’t sound like he’s insulting her. ‘Have you never been married, then?’
She laughed drily. ‘No. Never managed to snare a man.’
He pauses again, looks down at his hands. ‘I’m not wearing a wedding ring.’
‘No, you’re not. Doesn’t mean you’re not married though. You might be one of those bastards who refuses to wear one.’
‘Yes,’ he says vaguely. ‘I guess.’
She sighs and pushes the sleeves of her checked shirt up her arms. She has a long dip between her radius and the flesh of her forearm, which reminds him of someone.
And there! Immediately, overpoweringly. His mother. His mother has that dip. She also has that little pouch of crinkled flesh at the nib of her elbow that he noticed yesterday on Alice. He has a mother. A mother with arms! He smiles and says, ‘I just remembered something! I just remembered my mother’s arms.’
‘Oh,’ she says, brightening. ‘That’s good. Can you remember any other bits of her?’
He shakes his head sadly.
‘Listen,’ she says. ‘I went on to Google last night, to look up your symptoms. Apparently, unless this is all a massive wind-up, you are in something called a “fugue state”.’
‘Right.’
‘Does that mean anything to you?’
‘No.’
‘OK.’ She runs her hand over her forehead. ‘Well. It’s a kind of amnesia, but it’s not brought on by head trauma or alcohol or drugs or anything like that. It’s usually caused by an emotional trauma. Or a shock to the system. Often it can be caused by seeing or remembering something from your past that you might have been repressing. And the brain kind of shuts down, like a self-protection mechanism, and people do just what you’ve done. Turn up in random places with no memory of who they are or where they come from or what the fuck they’re doing there. It’s pretty fascinating actually.’
‘What happens to these other people? I mean, will I get better?’
‘Well, that’s the excellent news. Well, sort of excellent. They all recover. Sometimes within hours, usually days, occasionally a few weeks. But it is temporary. You will get your memory back.’
‘Wow,’ he says, nodding slowly. He feels numb. He knows he should be pleased. But the concept of remembering who he is is hard to grasp when he can’t remember who he is.
‘And look,’ she continues, ‘you just remembered your mother’s arm. I mean, it’s not exactly a revelation. But it shows it’s all still there, just waiting to be unlocked. So, the big question is: What now?’
‘What do you mean?’ What now. It’s a phrase that holds no meaning for him.
‘I mean, we should probably take you to the police, shouldn’t we?’
His response to this suggestion is visceral. All his muscles contract, his fists curl tightly inwards, his breathing quickens, his pulse speeds up. It’s the strongest onslaught of sensation he’s had since he found himself on the beach two nights ago.
‘No,’ he says, as softly as he can, but he can hear the … what is it? Anger? Terror? He can hear it in the bass of his voice. He has a sensation of pushing someone, pushing them hard against a wall. He feels hot breath against his cheek. ‘No,’ he says again, even more softly. ‘I don’t think I want to do that. I think … Can I just stay here for one more night? See if I get my memory back first. Maybe we can go another time. If …’
Alice nods, but he senses that she is unconvinced. ‘Sure,’ she says after a short pause. ‘One more night. Sure. But after that, if you still don’t know who the hell you are, you know. Because that room, I usually rent it out, extra income, so …’
‘I understand. One more night.’
She smiles uncertainly. ‘Good. But in the meantime, keep ’em coming. The memories, I mean.’ She stands up and reaches for a box of eggs so fresh that there are feathers stuck to the cardboard. ‘Fried?’ she says. ‘Scrambled?’
‘I have no idea,’ he says. ‘You decide.’
Six
Lily sits in the waiting room at the police station. She is clutching a carrier bag containing a small album of wedding photos and Carl’s passport. She found nothing else in her search of his drawers and filing boxes. Nothing at all. No baby photos. No birth certificate. No identifying paperwork of any kind. There was one locked drawer but when she put her hand into it from the drawer above, it seemed to be empty. It was rather strange, she thought. But she assumes that everything must be at his mother’s house. Carl is a tidy man and a minimalist. It makes sense that he would not want to clutter up his beautiful new flat with things he has no use for.
In her other hand she holds a paper cup of coffee. She shouldn’t have bought it; she has thirty-eight pounds in cash in her purse and no access to a bank account. Carl paid for everything, He was setting up a separate bank account for her, was going to put money into it for her every month until she finished her accountancy course. She will have to ask her mother to send her some money. But she knows it will take time for her mother to do that. So. Thirty-eight pounds. She should not have bought the big coffee. But she needs it. She has not slept at all.
The big policewoman called Beverly appears with a small smile. ‘Good morning, Mrs Monrose. Do you want to come this way? I’ll find us a room where we can have a chat.’
Lily follows her down a corridor and into a small room that smells of stale cake.
‘So,’ the WPC says as they both sit down. ‘Still no sign of Mr Monrose, I assume?’
‘No. Of course. Or I would not be here.’
‘It was just a turn of phrase, Mrs Monrose.’
‘Yes,’ says Lily. ‘I understand.’
Beverly smiles a strange smile. ‘So, you want to make an official missing-person report.’ She clicks a pen and turns a page in her notebook.
‘Yes. Please.’
‘I did run your husband’s name through our system yesterday, Mrs Monrose. Nothing came up. He’s not in any of the London hospitals; nothing came up at any of the Met stations.’
Lily has no idea what a ‘met station’ is but nods, because she’s already sure this woman thinks she is an idiot. ‘And what about the police stations?’ she says. ‘Did you check there?’
Beverly gives her an odd look. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Like I said. Nothing.’
Lily nods again. ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘I searched the flat. For anything I could find. And, you know, it’s a new flat. We only just moved in. I think, probably, he has left all his paperwork with his mother.’
‘And have you been in touch with his mother?’
‘I have not. I do not know where she lives. Her phone number is on
Carl’s phone. It is not written down anywhere.’
‘Her name?’
‘Maria. Or something like that.’
‘So, Maria Monrose?’ She looks at Lily for confirmation before writing it down.
‘And where does she live?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere to the west. Beginning with an S.’
Beverly grimaces. ‘Slough?’ she suggests. ‘Swindon?’
‘I don’t know,’ say Lily with a shrug. ‘Maybe.’
‘OK. And what about other family? Brothers? Sisters?’
‘He has a sister called Suzanne. Or something. She lives in the same place.’
‘Married?’
‘I don’t know. Yes. I think. I think there is a nephew.’
‘So, possibly Suzanne Monrose. Possibly not?’ She writes this down.
Lily pulls the carrier bag on to her lap and feels for the passport. ‘I found this,’ she says, placing it in front of Beverly.
Beverly flicks though it and says, ‘It’s current. That’s good. At least we can eliminate the possibility that he’s gone abroad.’
Lily snorts. ‘Of course he has not.’
She sees Beverly roll her eyes very slightly and take in a small breath of impatience. ‘I’ll need to keep this,’ she says, touching the passport, ‘run it through our system.’
‘Sure. And then there is this.’ Lily slides the photo album across the table towards Beverly. ‘Some better photos of him. Ones where he is smiling so you can get a better idea of what kind of a man he is. So you can see that he was happy and not about to run away from me.’
She watches Beverly flick through the album. ‘And this was in …?’
‘Kiev. Yes. He wanted to marry me in my home country, to be surrounded by my family and my friends. He wanted me to be happy and relaxed. Not stressed out in a strange place. With strange people. He is the best man in the world. My friend, my father, my lover, my husband. Everything.’ She finds she has her fist clutched against her heart and that there are tears in her eyes. ‘I am sorry,’ she says.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ says Beverly. ‘It’s understandable for you to feel this way. Now, is there anyone you can call? Any relatives in this country? Anyone who can stay with you for a while? Take care of you?’
‘No.’ She bunches her hands together in her lap. ‘No. There is no one here.’
‘Oh,’ says Beverly. ‘That’s a shame. Well, maybe you could ask someone from home to come over for a while?’
‘Yes. Maybe.’
On the staircase up to her flat later, Lily is subsumed by a horrible blend of excitement and dread. Might he be there, she thinks, on the other side of the door? Sitting in his rumpled shirt and tie with some story of woe? But she knows with every fall of her step that he will not be. She pushes open the door into a vacuum of aloneness. The stillness is appalling. She has never been alone before. Never. She stands for a moment, rocking slightly as though the emptiness has a hold of her, is trying to shake reality into her. She hears a single drop of water hit the bottom of the kitchen sink, the rumble of the fridge, the sound of the front door downstairs being opened and closed. And then she jumps at the sound of the phone.
She runs to the phone and grabs it up. ‘Yes.’
‘Hi, it’s WPC Traviss. Is that Mrs Monrose?’
‘Yes. Yes it is.’
‘I’m calling because … well, this is quite strange, but we’ve run your husband’s passport through our system and, well, to put it quite plainly, Mrs Monrose, your husband doesn’t technically exist.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘His passport is fake, Mrs Monrose. There is no Carl John Robert Monrose.’
PART TWO
Seven
1993
They rented the same house every year. A higgledy-piggledy coastguard’s cottage in the town of Ridinghouse Bay in East Yorkshire. It was, perversely, not as nice as their own actual home in Croydon, which was modern and clean and had shiny white bathrooms and cream carpeting and double-glazing.
Rabbit Cottage was damp and ill-furnished. The kitchen was small and the walls were nicotine-beige. There was a tiny bedroom off the kitchen and two even tinier bedrooms on the top floor; the mattresses were lumpy and all the bedding was worn and holey. Things leaked when it rained and there was a strange odour about the place: briny and mackerely, damp and smoky. But for some reason Gray and Kirsty’s parents were entranced by the place. Something to do with the atmosphere, they said, and the people. Not to mention the views and the air and the walks and the fish. They’d loved the place as children, all wellies and crabbing and funfairs and chips. But now Kirsty was fifteen, Gray was seventeen and Rabbit Cottage was virtually the last place on earth either of them wanted to be. They arrived on a damp July afternoon in poor spirits after what felt like a much-longer-than-it-used-to-be journey up the M1, during which Tony, their dad, had refused to let them put on their own music and did the thing he always did of chasing local radio stations in and out of frequency to keep himself abreast of traffic reports.
Parking restrictions had changed in the years since they’d first come to Ridinghouse Bay. Back then you could park right outside the house and unload all your stuff in the middle of throngs of holidaymakers. Nowadays you had to park your car in a car park on the edge of town and walk in. So here they were, unloading cardboard boxes packed with breakfast cereals and long-life milk, toilet rolls and Heinz soups, and trudging up the hill into town with suitcases and rolled-up towels and duvets. A light summer drizzle fell upon them as they walked and by the time they’d emptied the car and closed the door of Rabbit Cottage behind them they were steaming like New York pavements and all in rather bad tempers.
‘Christ,’ said Gray, resting a cardboard box on the Formica-topped table in the kitchen and looking about. ‘Is it possible that they have actually painted Rabbit Cottage?’ It was true that the walls had lost their tarry patina and there were also ‘NO SMOKING’ signs attached here and there about the place that had not been present before.
He heaved his rucksack up the narrow staircase and dropped it on to the single bed (unmade, sheets and blankets left in a folded pile at the foot of the bare bed). His room overlooked the sea. His parents liked the room at the back because it was quieter; the street below could get quite noisy during these summer months: there were three pubs on this road alone, not to mention the steam fair that came to town every summer with its loud pump organ music, which carried up the coast on the slightest breeze.
But Gray didn’t mind the noise. It made a nice change to the silence of the quiet street they lived on in Croydon, where the only noises at this time of year were droning lawnmowers and honey bees. He liked the sound of drunk people calling out to each other, the echo and reverb of footsteps on the cobbles in the dark.
They were here for two weeks. Gray had tried to persuade his parents to allow him to return home a week early; there was a party he wanted to go to, there was a girl he liked. Plus the weather forecast for the south was glorious in comparison. But they’d said, ‘No.’ They’d said: ‘Next year. When you’re eighteen.’ And Kirsty had looked at him with searing, beseeching eyes, a look that said: No, please don’t leave me here alone.
They were reasonably close, as far as brothers and sisters went. She’d played him well as a small child; gone to him with sore knees and unlaced shoes; left him alone when he asked her to. They looked out for each other in a rather detached way, like well-meaning but somewhat reserved next-door neighbours. So, he’d agreed to the full two weeks and hoped that the girl he liked would still be available when he got back.
Downstairs, Gray’s dad was building a fire and his mum was unpacking food into cracked Formica-covered kitchen cabinets. Kirsty was on the sofa folded into a pile of gangly limbs and cheap knitwear, reading a magazine. Outside, the rain was still spritzing against the windowpanes but a band of hopeful brightness sat on the horizon forcing a gap between the clouds.
‘I’m going out,’
said Gray.
‘Going where?’ asked his dad.
‘Just for a walk up the prom.’
‘In this?’ His dad indicated the rain-spattered windows.
‘I’ve got a waterproof. And anyway, looks like it’s brightening.’
Kirsty looked up from her magazine. ‘Can I come?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
She raced to the front door, pulled on her trainers and grabbed a cagoule from the coat pegs.
‘Don’t be long,’ Mum called from the kitchen. ‘I’m making a pot of tea and there’ll be cake.’
Away from the claustrophobia of Rabbit Cottage, Gray felt his temples relax, his jaw loosen, the cool rain freshen his travel-worn skin. She was almost as tall as him now, his sister, all legs and hair, not quite grown into herself but almost there. The resemblance between them was startling enough, he hoped, for it to be obvious that the gawky, scruffy girl in a damp cagoule, patterned nylon jumper and faded baggy jeans walking alongside him was not romantically connected to him in any way. She was a slow developer. She’d worn her hair in a plait down her back until only recently and still didn’t wear make-up. But she was suddenly quite desirable, he could see that, raw and new like a half-blossomed flower, embarrassingly beautiful in fact. He felt a surge of awful fear rise through him, a strange mix of disgust and tenderness. Disgust at himself for being a man, for every bad thing he’d ever thought about a girl, for his base instincts, his low-level throbbing urges, predatory needs, filthy mind, for all of it. Disgust at the knowledge that now men like him would look at his sister and think things and feel things and then purge themselves over her. And tenderness because she did not know.
They walked in silence for a few moments, Gray absorbing and processing, the rain drying, and there, at last, a blade of sunshine at their feet.
‘Have you got any money?’ asked Kirsty.
He felt his pockets for coins, pulled out a pound and some mixed change. ‘A couple of quid. Why?’
‘Sweets?’
He rolled his eyes, but tipped the coins into her upheld palm. She’d had her braces off a few weeks ago and was celebrating by eating as many hard, chewy sweets as she could. He watched her shuffle into a gift shop, one of those with cone-shaped bags of floss hanging by the door, carousels of postcards, garrotted nets of buckets and spades. He turned and watched the sun filter through the striated clouds over the sea, the light changing from gold to silver, the sea glittering in response. Further ahead he saw the steam fair. It was empty; no one came to the fair in the rain – all those damp seats.