I Found You (12 page)

Lily nods. It doesn’t sound crazy at all. ‘What about his family? Did he ever tell you anything about them?’

Russ frowns. ‘Not really. I mean, I knew he
had
a family. A mum. A sister. His dad had passed away, I think.’

‘Yes,’ says Lily, relieved that this matches with the facts that Carl had given her. ‘Can you remember the names? Of the mother and sister? Or the place where they live?’

‘No, he never told me. Just said
my mum. My sister.
Have you not met them, then?’

‘No. We only returned from our honeymoon two weeks ago. Carl said there was plenty of time for family but this was time for us. So.’ She shrugs. All the things that had felt so romantic at the time, so special, now reduced to symptoms of his subterfuge. ‘I spoke to her though, the day we married. Carl brought me to the phone and said, “My mum wants to say hello.” It was a short call. A minute, maybe less. She sounded very sweet.’ (And very uncertain, she now recalls, as though keen to end the conversation, as though scared of saying the wrong thing.) ‘I just wish I could remember her name.’

‘Although,’ says Russ, ‘even if you could, it’s possible that maybe her surname would not be Monrose? Assuming that Carl’s surname is not Monrose? So even if you could remember her first name, I doubt it would help.’

‘This is true. Yes. But it feels so strange that I don’t remember. That this woman was my mother-in-law, that I had a conversation with her, yet I don’t remember her name. It makes me feel as though . . . as though I’ve been in a dream. In a trance. Ever since I met him.’

‘Well, yes, that’s what they say about being in love. It’s a chemical state, isn’t it? Messes with your mind.’

‘I suppose. And now, without him, alone, it is as though my mind is clearing. And all I am left with is questions, questions, questions. All the questions I should have asked when he was here.’

‘Well, hindsight is a beautiful thing.’

Lily smiles grimly. She doesn’t know what hindsight is. ‘Listen. Russ. Tell me, does this surprise you at all? About Carl?’

‘Well, yes, of course it does. My God. People going missing, having false identities, it’s not exactly everyday is it? But even so, Carl was quite a closed book.’

‘Why did you want to be his friend, Russ? With all his secretiveness? Why did you bother?’

Russ gently rests his coffee cup on to its saucer. ‘Good question,’ he says. ‘Jo always asks me that: “What do you see in him?” She doesn’t like him much.’ He laughs.

Lily feels mortally offended and takes an instant dislike to this ‘Jo’.

‘But I think there’s just this kind of
mutual respect
between us. Chalk and cheese, but we get each other. What it boils down to’ – he leans towards her and she sees his body language relax as the kernel of the thing dawns upon him – ‘is that I would like to be more like him and he, I think, would like to be more like me.’ He leans back again, satisfied with the distillation.

Lily cannot imagine any way in which her Carl would want to be like this innocuous man, but she manages a smile and says, ‘Yes. I see.’

‘I think he wanted what I had, in terms of a settled relationship, a home, a solid family life. And I would
have liked some of his freedom and glamour and good looks.’ He laughs again.

‘Where did he live?’ she asks, moving the conversation along. ‘Before he met me?’

‘I have no idea.’ He smiles and shakes his head as though suddenly bemused. ‘Not south, I know that. At the end of the night I’d sometimes offer to share a cab and he’d always say, “I’m going in the opposite direction.” But I never asked where that was exactly.’ He pauses and scratches his head. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘it’s funny now, looking at it, how much time I spent with him and yet how little I knew about him.’

‘Did he have any girlfriends? Before me?’

‘Well, yes, but nothing serious. Just . . .’ He looks at her uncertainly. ‘It’s a harsh thing to say, but I’d say he was a user. Well, at least that’s the impression I got anyway. He’d use women for sex. Never any names, just
this girl I met on Friday
or
this girl I shagged on Saturday
. Came and went. He seemed almost . . .
disdainful
? As though they’d lessened themselves by being with him. He could be quite cruel about them. I often thought maybe he’d been hurt in the past? That hard shell, you know?’ He taps his fingertips against the edge of the table, looking suddenly downcast. ‘But then you came along.’ He brightens. ‘And it was different. Totally different. He adored you. I think he thought that you were going to change everything. And now . . .’

‘He is dead,’ she finishes for him.

‘Well, I don’t suppose he’s dead. But he is in trouble. False identity. He must have done something bad. Or someone must have done something bad to him. Nobody changes their identity unless they really have to. Unless they’re desperate. I’d like to help you – if I can?’

‘Yes please,’ she says. ‘Please. I know no one in this country. No one. The policewoman hates me. And no one wants to help me. No one seems to care.’ She finds that she’s crying and angrily takes the paper napkin that Russ offers her, rubs hard at her tears before anyone else sees them. ‘I am sorry.’

‘No, don’t be sorry. Please. Listen, I’m going to talk to Jo when I get home, see what we can do. We might be able to . . .’ He stops, clearly thinking better of sharing his next thought. ‘Well, I’ll talk to her. We’ll do everything we can. You must be in hell.’

‘Yes,’ says Lily, nodding hard. ‘Yes. In hell. That is where I am. That is exactly where I am.’

What a charming family unit they make: Alice, Frank and Romaine. Alice, who has no experience whatsoever of being part of a conventional family, feels like a fraud. She wants to tell people that he’s not her husband, that Romaine isn’t his daughter, that she’s not that normal, that she’s not that good at making life choices.

The sunny morning has brought out half the town and it’s fairly buzzing. There’s a French food market setting up in the square and they stop to buy freshly baked croissants and strong, milky coffees. Alice feels strangely proud of her lovely little town – and then a glow of happiness at the idea that she now thinks of this place as
her little town
. She has felt like an outsider for so long.

‘You know, they’ve filmed all sorts here,’ she says, wanting to prolong the fleeting sense of belonging.
‘They once shut the whole place off for two days to film
Pirates of the Caribbean
. Seriously. We weren’t allowed in or out of our houses. For forty-eight hours. And not even a sideways glimpse of Johnny Depp.’

She looks at Frank and realises that he has no idea what
Pirates of the Caribbean
is or who Johnny Depp is and she remembers that he is essentially an alien. They’re outside the Ridinghouse Grand. It’s a tiny cinema, far from grand, built of breeze blocks and showing one film at a time. She notices that he is staring at the cinema intently.

‘Are you remembering something?’ she asks.

He half nods, half shakes his head. ‘I’m not sure. I think I might. It’s . . .’ He clasps his head by the temples and turns away abruptly. ‘I can see that girl again,’ he says. ‘The one with the brown hair. I saw her going in there.’ He points at the heavy glass doors. His hand moves from his head to his chest and he starts kneading at his heart. ‘I feel . . .’ he said. ‘I don’t know. I feel sick. I feel . . .’ His skin is clammy and grey. Alice leads him to a bench and sits next to him. She takes his coffee cup and puts it by her side, then she takes his hand and offers him the brown paper bag that her croissant came in. He bats it away.

‘Stay with me, Frank,’ she says. ‘Stay with me. We don’t want you doing another overnight stint on the beach. Breathe. Breathe.’

He grips on to her hand and she feels his breath slowing.

‘That’s it,’ she says. ‘I’m here. It’s OK.’

Romaine stands and watches, curiously. ‘Are you going to be sick?’

He shakes his head and forces a smile.

‘You can be sick in that bin, if you want.’

‘No, thank you.’ His voice is shaking. ‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’

They sit for a while and wait for Frank to emerge from his panic attack. Because that is clearly what it is. Alice has had enough in her time to recognise the signs.

‘OK?’ she asks a few minutes later.

‘OK.’ He smiles. She passes him his coffee and he gets to his feet. ‘Right,’ he says, ‘let’s keep going.’

‘You sure? We can always come back later if you’re not up to it?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘This has gone on for long enough. It’s all in there: I can feel it. It’s there and I want to get it out. I want to know. Let’s keep walking.’

‘Good,’ she says. ‘Fine.’

She looks at him as they pass the cinema again, his gaze fixed upon the front doors. He looks terrified, she thinks. He looks distraught. What happened to Frank in this town? And what part did he play in it all?

1993

Kirsty and Mark were having a wonderful time. True to fairground cliché #1, Mark had won her a big, ugly soft toy, which she was clutching to her chest. They’d also had candy floss: fairground cliché #2. And he’d whacked the big weight thing with a mallet and made it go ding-dong: fairground cliché #3. And now, yes, right on target, just when Gray had begun to think it wasn’t going to happen, they had emerged from the Tunnel of Love with their mouths attached.
Full house
.

Gray could barely stomach it.

It was half past nine. The sky was indigo with some lingering streaks of lilac. His sister was kissing a man. He was torn between going home and telling his mum and dad what was going on and not wanting to
leave this spot in case something bad happened. And what, he wondered, did he mean by
bad
? He couldn’t quite put the feeling into words, but it was there, like a lump in his throat. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t handle the prospect of his sister falling in love, of his sister having sex, of his sister growing up. It was more than that. It was darker than that. It was
him
. Mark. There was just something off about him. Something shadowy and cruel. There were too many angles in his face. Too much thought behind each gesture, each word, each action. Even his hair colour was too uniform, Gray felt, as though he could tug at it and Mark’s whole face would come off to reveal his true identity, like a Scooby Doo villain.

He watched them climb out of the Tunnel of Love carriage and now they walked hand in hand, the ugly toy under Mark’s arm. What would they do now? Gray wondered. They’d done the fair. Kirsty was too young to take to the pub. It was dark. They sauntered towards the exit; Mark threw back his head to laugh uproariously at something Kirsty had said. Gray couldn’t imagine what. And then he watched with a growing sense of unease as Mark led Kirsty away from town and towards the sea. He slid down from the shelf he’d been sitting on and followed them. The lights from town barely shone here, and the music from the steam fair was a distant, slightly eerie murmur. All that lit the way was the creamy moon. Gray
held back inside the silvery shadows and tried to hear what they were saying, but the smack and fizz of the tide against the sand muffled their voices. Eventually they stopped walking, silhouetted by the moon hanging dead centre between them, and Gray watched with horror as they turned to face each other and began to kiss, at first tenderly and then with increased fervour. He turned his head slightly not wanting to watch but also not wanting to stop watching in case he missed the moment that Mark did something to hurt his sister.

But a few minutes later, Mark pulled away from Kirsty, cupped her face with his hands, kissed the end of her nose and they both turned. ‘Come on,’ Gray heard him say, ‘it’s getting late. I should get you home.’

Gray was home ten minutes before Kirsty, slightly breathless from running the whole way.

‘Where’ve you been?’ said his mum, looking up from a thick second-hand novel with yellowed pages.

‘Nowhere,’ he said. ‘Just walking.’

‘Nice dinner, wasn’t it?’

‘It was all right.’

‘And funny bumping into Mark. Of all people.’

‘That wasn’t a coincidence, Mum.’

‘What do you mean? ’Course it was.’

Gray rolled his eyes at her naïvety. ‘Don’t you mind?’

‘Mind what?’

‘Kirsty. Going off with him. When he’s so much older.’

‘Oh, come on. He’s only nineteen. I had a twenty-year-old boyfriend when I was Kirsty’s age.’

‘Yes. But we don’t know him.’

‘We’ve been to his house, Graham! We’ve met his aunty! That’s more than most parents get when their child starts a relationship.’

Relationship?

His mum checked her wristwatch and as she did so there was the sound of laughter outside the front door and the clatter of the letterbox being opened and shut and Gray’s dad came to the door and there were Kirsty and Mark and the ugly bear.

‘Come in! Come in!’ said Tony.

Mark looked curiously around the house. ‘Would you mind?’ he asked. ‘I’ve walked past these little houses so many times and I’ve never been inside one.’

‘Of course not!’ Tony held the door wider and gestured Mark inside. ‘Please.’

‘Wow,’ said Mark, ‘it’s like a dolls’ house! So tiny!’

‘Well,’ said Tony, ‘they built these houses for tiny people. You know, back in the sixteen hundreds, when this place was built, we’d all have been giants!’

Mark bowed his head to go from room to room. Gray watched him curiously. Then he turned and glanced at Kirsty. Her face was pink and pinched with what looked like embarrassment.

‘And up here?’ Mark asked, peering up the staircase.

‘Bedrooms,’ said Tony. ‘Want to see?’

Mark turned and smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I get the idea.’

‘Can I get you a beer? Or something?’

‘No.’ Mark looked at his watch. ‘Thank you. I’d better get back. Promised Kitty I’d clean up the kitchen after dinner. Didn’t even tell her I was going out!’ He laughed, a hard bark that seemed somehow unrelated to him. ‘But maybe I’ll see you on the beach tomorrow? Forecast looks good.’