I Found You

by Lisa Jewell

  Alice hasn’t noticed his change of mood. She’s too busy settling Sadie on a grubby sheepskin rug brought from the cottage, trying to work out what Romaine wants from the menu (‘They don’t have omelettes on a Sunday, fusspot’), trying to get Jasmine to take her earphones out and turn off her phone. By the time he has her attention, the moment has passed and he feels normal again.

  ‘Beef, pork or chicken?’ says Alice.

  He brings his attention quickly back to the menu and turns to Romaine who has chosen to sit next to him, and says, ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Roast potatoes.’

  ‘Just roast potatoes?’

  ‘Yes.’ She’s sulking. Her arms are folded across her chest.

  Alice raises her eyebrows at him and sighs. ‘Don’t judge me,’ she says. ‘She claims that meat tastes of blood. Unless it’s got breadcrumbs on it, or comes in a bread roll with cheese, or is minced up and cooked with tomatoes.’

  Frank nods and says to Romaine, ‘Well, I was going to have what you’re having but now I’m thinking I might have the chicken.’

  Romaine shrugs as though she couldn’t care less and Alice and Frank exchange smiles over the top of her head.

  ‘Tired,’ Alice mouths.

  Frank nods and holds her gaze. ‘I remembered something,’ he says as the conversation between the three children picks up.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiles. ‘I’m fine. It was different this time. It was clear and clean. I saw a singer, standing out there.’ He points towards the main lounge. ‘With a pianist. And I remembered the girl. The one with brown hair. I remembered her properly. And Alice,’ he says, joyfully, ‘I remembered her name!’

  Alice raises her brow. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes! Kirsty! She’s called Kirsty.’

  Something passes over Alice’s face then, something cloudlike. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘wow! That’s amazing, Frank!’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I think this might be it. I think everything’s going to start coming back now. Just like you said it would.’

  ‘And who was she?’ she asks pensively. ‘Do you remember who she was?’

  ‘Not quite,’ he says. ‘But I remembered that I loved her. That I loved her very much. And that …’ He clutches at his heart again. The ache has come back at the thought of that sweet-faced girl from his past. ‘And that I miss her. I really miss her.’

  Alice stretches her arm across the back of Romaine’s chair and squeezes his shoulder softly. ‘Was she your wife?’ she says, almost in a whisper.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘Funny to think, isn’t it, that you might have a wife?’

  He shrugs. It’s not funny, not really. It’s awful. He remembers what Jasmine said last night over dinner, about how he was being cruel not finding out who he was, that there might be people worrying about him. And until now he hasn’t been able to imagine what that might really mean. He’s felt nothing for anyone beyond the people in the room with him. Now, suddenly, he loves someone from before. He loves Kirsty.

  He sees Alice force a smile. She rubs his shoulder and then swiftly brings her hand back on to her lap.

  The waitress arrives with a notepad and Frank turns to her to give his order, but not before noticing Alice staring blindly into the middle distance, a film of tears across her eyes.

  Alice doesn’t seek out Frank’s hand on their way home. The kids would freak out for a start, but beyond that she doesn’t want to. It’s coming, she realises, the end of this thing; it’s sitting on the horizon and she doesn’t like the look of it at all. It looks cruel and mean. It looks like her, sitting alone in her room, cutting up maps to make art for people to give to people they love. It looks like her watching TV on a crumb-strewn sofa, surrounded by stinky dogs and moody teenagers, and then going to bed with a greyhound and waking up the next morning with greasy badger hair and not caring and starting the whole thing all over again. It looks like this beautiful man with his autumn hair and his gentle eyes and his warm breath and his strong hands walking out of her life and leaving her here, in a life she was quite happy with before he turned up on the beach five days ago. It looks like the best thing that could have happened to her at this exact moment in her life being snatched away before she’s even had a chance to enjoy it.

  She’s quiet on the walk home. Sadie limps along at her side. Jasmine has plugged herself back into her music and is walking ahead, looking moody and vulnerable: a stance purposely affected, Alice assumes. Kai is holding hands with Romaine and they’re chatting about this and that. Gulls weave and swoop across the horizon where a giant cruise liner twinkles dully, so far removed from the smallness and ancientness of Ridinghouse Bay that it looks like something from another planet.

  ‘Are you OK, Alice?’ asks Frank, looking down at her with soft, concerned eyes.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Just pensive. You know.’

  He nods and looks into the distance; then he turns back and says, ‘She might be dead, you know? The girl. Kirsty. Maybe she was my girlfriend when I was young. I mean, she looks really young. A teenager. It’s unlikely I’d still be with her now, even if we were in love back in 1993. Or whenever it was I was here.’

  She genuinely doesn’t know what to say. ‘Kirsty’ could be anyone: his wife, his daughter, his first love, his sister. That’s not the point. The point is that he loves her. Loves her present tense. Which means that she can no longer pretend that Frank exists in a bubble. She can no longer pretend that he is exclusively hers.

  He sighs and says, ‘Well, whatever it is, we’ll find out tomorrow and after that I’m not sure you’ll have any desire to know me any more anyway. Whether I’m married or not.’

  She stops then, and turns to face Frank. He doesn’t get it, she thinks, he really, really doesn’t get it. ‘I’ll always want to know you, Frank,’ she says. ‘One way or another. It’s whether or not you’ll want to know me, that’s the real question.’

  Thirty-seven

  1993

  Mark’s knife made an indent in the flesh of Kirsty’s neck. Her fingers pulled at his arm where it was wrapped tight across her chest.

  ‘Don’t fucking move,’ Mark hissed at her. ‘Just sit still. OK?’

  Gray sat forward and made a swipe for the knife. Mark kicked him backwards again. ‘Do you want me to kill her? Because I really will.’

  Gray looked desperately at the back of the house, willing someone to come outside now. Anyone. He began to pull himself up. If he could just get into the house, tell the others what was going on. Mark wouldn’t kill her. He couldn’t.

  ‘Don’t even think about going anywhere, you little runt. You’re part of this. OK? You’re staying here. Or this slices through her jugular. And I wouldn’t even blink an eye. OK?’

  Gray nodded. He’d do whatever Mark asked. For now. For as long as the tip of his knife was making that painful-looking indent into his sister’s throat.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he asked. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘No,’ Mark replied bluntly. ‘I’m not crazy at all. I’m completely sane. You’re the one who made this happen. You and your whole shitty little family.’

  ‘What!’ Gray asked. ‘What did we do?’

  ‘You know what you did. I could see you all on the beach, talking about me; I saw the way you all looked at me, sizing me up, wondering if I was going to be good enough for your precious little princess. I did everything I could – I baked you all a cake. A fucking cake. And you all sat there like I’d presented you with a turd.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I’m not stupid, Graham. You hated me then and you made it your goal to make sure everyone in your family hated me too. You turned them all against me. Including Kirsty.’

  Gray opened his mouth to say something, to tell Mark that he’d turned Kirsty against him all by himself just by being a fucking freak. Then he saw the knife pressing harder and harder against
Kirsty’s skin, Kirsty’s eyes growing wider and more terrified. He decided to try empathy.

  ‘I’m sorry you think that,’ he said mildly. ‘I suppose maybe I was just being an over-protective big brother. You know. Kirsty’s never had a boyfriend before. I just wasn’t that comfortable with it.’

  ‘And that episode last week,’ Mark continued wildly. ‘When I came to see Kirsty, to ask her out. And you all stood there in the doorway like a bunch of illiterate bodyguards. So offensive. In my whole life I have never been treated like that before. Never. It was disgusting.’

  ‘Again,’ said Gray, holding hard on to his urge to punch Mark in the face. ‘I apologise if you felt that way. Kirsty had told me that she was feeling maybe too young to be in a relationship. That she was nervous about hurting your feelings. She asked me to say she wasn’t feeling well, so that she would have time to think about whether or not she wanted to continue with the relationship. I was just looking out for her. Complying with her wishes. I thought you’d respect that. I wasn’t expecting you to try and muscle your way in. It took us all by surprise.’

  ‘Listen, mate,’ Mark snarled, ‘no one does that to me, OK? No one acts like they’re better than me. Least of all a rancid little shit like you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mark. Seriously. I’ve been unfair to you and I apologise. Now please, please, will you let my sister go? You’re scaring her.’

  ‘Do you know what I’ve been through in my life, shitbag? Do you have any idea? Of course you don’t. You live in your lovely, cosy little mummy-daddy-brother-sister bubble. Of cosy cottages. And pub dinners. Of day trips. So excuse me for falling in love with your sister. And, oh, excuse me for not understanding how your sister’ – he shook Kirsty slightly, increasing the pressure of his hold on her chest – ‘can one minute be standing on the beach with me, in my arms, telling me she loves me and the next minute decide she’s “not ready” for a relationship. Eh?’ He shook her again and she whimpered.

  ‘Come on,’ Mark said, dragging Kirsty to her feet. ‘Get up.’

  ‘Where are you taking her?’

  ‘Her? I’m not taking her. I’m taking both of you. Get up, you little runt. Get up!’

  Gray couldn’t move.

  Mark’s face twisted with disgust and for a brief moment he took the knife from Kirsty’s throat to take a swipe at Gray. ‘Get the fuck up!’

  Gray grabbed Mark’s wrist and for a moment he had it firm within his grasp. ‘Kirsty!’ he called out hoarsely. ‘Now. Run now!’

  Kirsty tried to slip out from under Mark’s arm, but he yanked her back by the hair and pulled her back under his arm. Then suddenly he’d shaken Gray’s hold from his wrist and was twisting Gray’s arm backwards, pushing his hand upwards against his wrist joint, harder and harder. And the world seemed to splinter into about a thousand black and red pieces as the bone cracked and pain arrived at the edges of his consciousness and sat there like a terrible dark bird waiting to swoop and carry him away. Gray looked down at his arm, at the appalling angle between the heel of his hand and his wrist, at the improbable bulge of bone through the skin. The sky seemed to darken around him and for a moment he thought he was going to pass out. But then the pain arrived, waking him up, fully, shockingly.

  Mark had the knife back at Kirsty’s throat.

  ‘You try and run and I’ll break the other one,’ he hissed. ‘Get the fuck up and come with me.’

  Thirty-eight

  Lily and Russ have left the south-east and are on a motorway heading north.

  ‘So,’ says Lily, ‘how did you and Jo meet?’

  ‘Oh, God, now you’re asking.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I am.’

  He smiles and says, ‘At work.’

  ‘The same place where you met Carl?’

  ‘No, the place I worked before that. She was my boss.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Lily. ‘Yes. That makes sense.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Yes. Because she is bossy.’

  Russ laughs out loud. ‘She is not!’

  ‘She is! She doesn’t want you to have breakfast with me. She doesn’t want you to take me to Yorkshire. She throws your lunch at your head!’

  ‘Oh, seriously. That’s just … she’s just tired a lot. That’s what that is. And she gets a bit kennel-mad during the week—’

  ‘Kennel-mad?’

  ‘You know, like a dog in a cage. Desperate to get out. She lives for the weekends, when I’m at home, so we can share the childcare. Do nice things together. Spend time with Darcy.’

  Lily shudders slightly. She does not want a child until she is thirty-five. She told this to Carl and he said he’d wait as long she wanted him to wait. But she can relate to this woman, Jo, now. She has felt ‘kennel-mad’ too at times these past two weeks. She would have been extremely unhappy if Carl had left her for a whole day on the weekend to drive another woman across the country. And she doesn’t even have a baby to look after. She nods and says, ‘I understand. Please will you tell her that I’m very sorry? That I am very grateful. And that I will buy her a gift.’

  ‘Oh, no need, no need. But I will tell her. She’s not scary, really. She’s a sweetheart. She’s the best girl ever. I’m so lucky to have her.’

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ he says and she wonders if he means beautiful like her, or just beautiful compared to him. ‘Red hair. Green eyes. Stunning.’

  Lily looks at Russ, at the glow that emanates from him when he talks about his wife. This is how she feels when she talks about Carl. As though she has been enchanted.

  ‘Here.’ He reaches into the inside pocket of his sensible jacket and pulls out a wallet. ‘There’s a photo in there. Have a look.’

  She takes the wallet from him and opens it. The photo shows a nice-looking woman in spectacles holding a blob of a baby. She passes the wallet back to him. ‘Very beautiful,’ she says. ‘You are very lucky.’

  She feels inside her coat pocket for the keys she found in Carl’s filing cabinet, for the reassuringly solid sphere. And then her fingers find the roll of twenty-pound notes she’d brought, just in case she needed to take a room in a hotel or buy a train ticket home. In her carrier bag she has the wedding photo album to show Carl’s mum and some pictures of her own family, back in Kiev. She is holding on to the hope that the woman will soften once Lily is there, on her doorstep. That she will invite them in, pour them tea from a pot, take an interest.

  ‘How about you?’ says Russ. ‘How did you meet Carl?’

  ‘He didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No. Need-to-know basis, as with everything.’ He laughs. ‘Just got back from the Ukraine and told me he’d met someone special.’

  She tells him the story about the conference back in February, about the cash-in-hand job she’d taken as a favour to her mum, about the first time she saw him and how she’d just known.

  ‘So when did he ask you to marry him? Was it then?’

  ‘No. No, he came back a week later.’ Her face softens at the memory. ‘With a ring. It was the best moment of my whole life.’

  ‘And what …?’ He hesitates, begins again: ‘What is he like? You know? Day to day? I’m just – I can’t imagine him as a domestic being.’

  ‘Day to day he is wonderful. He brings me things, every day, a chocolate truffle, a rose, a hairslide. He sends me texts, with words of love. When he comes home he looks after me, he cooks for me, he runs me a bath and brings me towels. He worships me.’

  ‘Wow,’ says Russ, peering into the wing mirror and the rear-view mirror before pulling into the middle lane. ‘That’s amazing. I kind of can’t imagine.’

  ‘I can’t explain it,’ she says, ‘it’s like nothing I ever experienced. It’s more than love. It’s obsession.’

  ‘Which can be, well – there’s a dark side to that, isn’t there? To obsession?’

  ‘There’s a dark side to everything, Russ.’

  ‘Ha!’ He smiles. ‘Yes, I
suppose that’s true. I suppose it is.’

  ‘I am a very dark person.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that …’

  ‘No, because you don’t know me. But it is true. I am dark. That doesn’t mean I can’t have fun. I can have lots of fun. But when it is just me, alone, with myself – there is no sunshine.’

  Russ nods and moves the car back into the fast lane. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Lily. ‘It is.’

  ‘In this country, I think, people spend a lot of time worrying about the darkness. We all want to be sunny. We’re scared if we’re not.’

  ‘You are sunny.’

  ‘Yes, I am, or at least I try to be. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have moments of … introspection.’

  ‘This word? Looking inside?’

  ‘Yes, looking inside. Wondering who I am and why I’m here. Questioning everything.’

  Lily absorbs this and then nods. ‘I think Carl is also very dark,’ she says a moment later.

  ‘Yes,’ says Russ, nodding emphatically. ‘Yes. I think you’re probably right.’

  She turns then, to look through her window. The scenery is a blur of green fields and blue sky and occasional blasts of golden rape. A big green road sign says ‘THE NORTH’. She thinks of Carl’s darkness, of the moments when he would become silent, when he would shrug away her hand, or not reply to a question. She remembers the nights when he would talk in his sleep. Thrash from side to side. Call out. Once he strangled her, in his sleep. She awoke to find him above her, his eyes not looking at her, his arms raised, then his hands meeting together around her throat and squeezing and squeezing and her eyes filling with tears and the blood pulsating through her temples and her knee at his groin and then the shock in his eyes as he awoke and looked at her, the expression of sickening realisation, his hands loosening around her neck, his fingers finding her face, groaning, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it was a nightmare, I was having a nightmare,’ kissing her, holding her, then making love to her more tenderly than ever before.