I Found You (16 page)

‘I know,’ says Jasmine, ‘she told me. You fainted.’

‘Yeah. So, I don’t know, that could be the start of unravelling my story.’

Jasmine nods. ‘Like I said,’ she says, her eyes downcast. ‘Nothing personal.’

Frank exhales. He has not uttered so many words in such short succession since he lost his memory. He feels simultaneously depleted and euphoric, as though he has grown himself a new layer of muscle. ‘Thank you,’ he says.

He notices Derry and Alice exchange a look and then Derry says, ‘By the way, after you passed out earlier, me and Alice, we kept on looking. Couldn’t find anything else about the Anthony Ross thing, but I emailed the editor, asked if maybe they had contact details for whoever wrote the piece. Or if they had any other stories.’

Frank catches his breath and waits for the rest.

‘Haven’t heard back yet. But then, you know, it’s Saturday. Maybe we’ll hear something next week.’

He exhales. Nothing new, but the potential for something new, at least. As the conversation warms up again and moves away from him he gazes down at his hands folded around his knife and fork, examines the angles and the creases, the freckles and the hairs. He wonders where these hands have been, whom they’ve touched, what they’ve done. And as this thought passes through his mind, he suddenly feels it again, the heaviness of someone against him, the feeling of hot breath against his face and his hands,
these
hands, tight around a throat, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. He sees the blurry beginnings of a face, a man’s face. A thatch of black hair, dark-blue eyes bulging from a handsome face.

1993

‘So,’ said Gray, ‘what happened last night?’

‘Nothing,’ Kirsty replied defensively.

‘You know my window is right over the front door, right?’

‘Yeah. And?’

‘I heard what was happening. I heard him being arsey with you.’

‘What do you mean,
arsey
?’

‘He got all dark and twisted when you wouldn’t kiss him. And after you went inside he kicked the wall. Really hard. Didn’t look like the date of the century.’

She shrugged. ‘I just wasn’t really in the mood. You know.’

‘My point exactly. At this point in a beautiful new relationship you should be all over each other like a rash, unable to keep your hands off each other.’

Kirsty tutted and raised her eyebrows at him. ‘What would you know?’

‘I know what love’s young dream is supposed to look like, I’ve seen enough movies, and it’s not you two, that’s for sure.’

‘Life isn’t like the movies, Gray.’

He sighed. ‘Listen, Kirst, I’m not trying to get at you, I’m just looking out for you. This is your first boyfriend and I’m getting all kinds of bad vibes about it. About him.’

Kirsty blinked and stared at the floor.

‘It’s just, you need to know that you’re allowed to say no. There’s no law that says you have to go out with someone just because they asked you. He’s a big grown-up guy, he can cope with rejection. He’ll get over it. And he’s going to be coming over here any minute now trying to persuade you to
spend the day
with him and you need to decide now what you’re going to say to him.’

‘I
know
,’ she hissed and Gray knew he’d hit the mark.

‘So?’

‘Can you tell him?’ she said. And there she was again, the baby sister coming to him with a scraped knee. ‘Can you tell him I’m ill?’

Gray held back a victorious smile. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I can do that.’

‘It’s not that I don’t like him. I do. It’s just . . .’

‘You’re not ready.’

She looked at him first crossly and then softly. ‘Kind of. I guess. I mean, he’s maybe a bit old for me. And he’s really intense. About everything. And maybe I should be with someone who’s a bit more fun.’

‘I concur. Wholeheartedly.’

‘But it’s just that he’s
so good-looking
. I keep thinking about my friends. How jealous they’d be if they saw us together.’

‘So, not shallow or anything then?’

She frowned and then smiled. ‘I know. And it’s not like they’d ever see us together anyway.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I can’t quite envisage Mark pitching up in Croydon somehow.’

As Gray spoke they both became aware of a movement behind them, a shadow across the low window that overlooked the street. Kirsty gasped and clamped her hand over her heart. It was Mark, hands cupped against the glass, peering in at them. He smiled grimly as his eye caught Gray’s.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Gray muttered. He turned to Kirsty but she had slipped, fast as light, under the table and was crouching on the floor at his feet.

‘Tell him I’m sick,’ she hissed.

‘But he’s seen you.’

‘He might not have.’

‘Of course he has!’

‘Just go and tell him. Please.’

Gray sighed and pushed back his chair.

Mark stood at the door in jeans and a baseball cap. The baseball cap looked like a rushed afterthought, something he’d thrown on at the last minute because maybe his hair hadn’t looked plastic enough. ‘Yo.’

‘Er, yo.’

‘Can I have a word with your sister?’

‘She’s not well.’

‘But she’s . . .’ He pointed behind Gray at the dining room to the right.

‘She went back to bed.’

‘Oh, come on . . .’

‘I don’t know what you want me to say. She was sick. She went back to bed.’

‘Do you really expect me to believe that?’

‘Yes. I really do.’

There was a dark silence, a few seconds long.

‘She was fine last night.’

‘Yes, well, maybe she ate something that didn’t agree with her.’

Mark rolled his eyes and started to push his way past Gray and into the house.

Gray pressed his hands into Mark’s chest. ‘Er, I don’t think so.’

‘I just want to see her,’ Mark said, his voice reedy with annoyance.

‘She doesn’t want to see you.’

‘How do you know? Did you ask her?’

‘Yes. I asked her. She said, “I don’t want to see him.”’

‘I don’t believe you. Kirsty! Kirsty!’ He began pushing himself against Gray’s body again.

Tony appeared on the bottom step then, wrapped up in a towelling dressing gown, his hair wet from the shower. ‘Morning, Mark,’ he said genially. ‘Everything OK?’

‘I was hoping to see Kirsty,’ Mark said. ‘Your son seems to think she’s ill.’

Gray threw his father a warning glance.

‘Oh,’ said Tony, clearly lying, but Gray didn’t care. ‘Yeah. Bit of a sore throat.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Mark. ‘Two minutes ago it was that she’d been sick. For God’s sake. I’m not an idiot.’

‘Listen, Mark,’ said Gray, ‘it doesn’t matter if Kirsty’s ill or not. The fact of the matter is that she doesn’t want to see you. OK?’

Mark fell back a step, snatched the baseball cap from his head and rubbed his hair back into place. ‘Whatever,’ he hissed, the cap twisted inside his hands. ‘Seriously. Whatever.’ He backed away another step before taking one more forwards and saying, ‘Tell her I called. Tell her I’ll be waiting for her at my aunt’s. When she’s
feeling better
.’

‘We certainly will,’ said Tony, still upbeat. ‘Sorry for the wasted journey.’

Mark gave both of them a furious look before pulling the cap back over his hair and striding away from them, muttering loudly under his breath.

Gray and his dad looked at each other.

‘See?’ said Gray. ‘Do you see now?’

Tony shook his head disbelievingly. ‘What a total dickhead.’

Kirsty appeared from her hiding place under the dining table and then their mum poked her head down the stairs. ‘What was that all about?’

‘Nothing,’ said Gray, ‘just Mark not being able to take no for an answer. He’s gone now.’

The four of them stood together for a moment, gathered around the front door, the backdraught of Mark and his strange anger holding them together like fence posts.

Lily puts on all the lights, even the ones beneath the extractor hood in the kitchen. She cannot bear the darkness for another moment. She switches on the television, finds a movie with a dog in it and then she makes herself eat something. It’s nearly ten o’clock and she hasn’t eaten since her breakfast with Russ. The bread in the breadbin is green so she microwaves herself a packet of basmati rice and eats it with butter. She watches the movie about the dog for a little while, but the couple in it make her feel sad so she turns over and finds a loud dating show instead. Then she pours herself a glass of wine and readies herself for the thing she has known she must do since she was told that her husband didn’t exist. She arranges Carl’s mail into a neat pile and stares at
it for a moment. Then she picks up the first letter and she opens it.

Junk mail from an estate agent.

The second letter is a statement for his current account. She skims it, fast. Everything is recognisable to her. Payments for meals in Kiev, for the hotel where they’d spent their wedding night, then drinks in Bali, airport shopping, the off licence by the station, Marks & Spencer, the railway company, the dry cleaner’s, the pub in the country where they’d had their lunch last weekend. Then more bits and bobs of local spending, ending with a contactless payment of £2.20 to a coffee shop in Victoria in Tuesday afternoon. Then nothing. No more spending. A flat line and a beep.

So, she thinks, lowering the statement to her lap and reaching for her wine glass. There it is. Proof. He is dead. How could he be living otherwise? Without spending money?

She opens two more letters, both junk mail. She opens a bill from the electricity company and a statement from the shirt-making company that he gets all his work shirts from. Then she opens the last letter. It’s from their mobile service provider. An itemised bill, listing every call by number and duration. She draws in her breath and starts to read.

Nearly every call and text is to her phone number. This is no surprise to her. What’s she’s looking for is the call Carl made from her mother’s house in Kiev,
the call to his mother on the day of their wedding. And there it is: 4.46 p.m. on 21 March. Three minutes and five seconds. She takes a pen and underlines it. Then she looks at the time. It’s almost half past ten. Too late, she assumes, to phone someone for a chat. But is it too late to tell a woman that her son is missing? She taps in the number, her breath held hard. Somewhere, maybe east of here, maybe west, maybe in a castle, maybe in a damp flat, a phone is ringing. Somewhere, maybe, a woman is listening to the phone ringing and, for some reason, not answering. Maybe she is sleeping? Maybe she is out? Maybe she is looking at Carl’s number on a caller ID screener and choosing to ignore it. After twenty rings, Lily hangs up. She’ll try again in the morning.

The night air swirls with sodium-lit sea mist. Griff and Hero have run ahead, disappearing into the darkness. Alice and Frank walk slowly behind. Up on the promenade, a few late-night revellers are strolling between pubs, singing and ribbing and calling to each other. Derry and Daniel went home an hour ago and the teens finally left for their party about ten minutes ago. They have left Romaine at home with Jasmine and Sadie while they take the younger dogs out for a quick walk. The fresh damp air is exhilarating after the claustrophobic heat of the cottage with all those bodies in it, the oven going for hours, the red-hot logs in the fire cradle.

Frank has been very quiet since they left the house, since halfway through dinner in fact.

‘I’m sorry about Jasmine,’ Alice says. ‘That was very out of character for her.’

Frank looks slightly confused and then shakes his head and says, ‘No, no, honestly. That was nothing. If anything it made me feel a bit better, let me get some stuff out of my system. Better than feeling like you’re being resented but everyone’s too polite to say anything.’

‘You’re not resented.’

‘Well, not by you, maybe.’

He quietens again after this and they walk in silence for a while.

The dogs have seen something along the coast. Both of them have picked up speed and soon they’ve turned the corner of the bay and are out of sight.

‘Oh, fuck’s sake,’ says Alice. ‘Christ, what the hell are they playing at?
Griff!
’ she roars through cupped hands. ‘
Hero!
’

She picks up her pace and soon they are both running across the beach. As they round the corner it is immediately clear what the dogs had been distracted by. There is a small fox standing at the top of some stone steps leading to the promenade, staring down at the dogs, triumphantly and disdainfully. The two dogs stare up at him, panting and looking at each other as if to say
now what?

‘You fools,’ says Alice, approaching the dogs with their leads. But they’ve got the bug now. The moon
is high and almost full. A couple of seagulls have swooped and are picking amongst the rocks near the tide. The dogs set off again. Alice turns to Frank and shouts out, ‘I’m really sorry about this. You can go back to the cottage if you like.’

He smiles and follows her. The seagulls sense the approach of two large dogs and take flight, the moon’s rays catching the pale undersides of their bodies as they glide away. But still the dogs run. Alice hollers at them and whistles through two fingers the way her dad taught her. Finally they come to a stop at the farthest end of the bay, where in the summer months the steam fair pitches and the tourists come to sunbathe. The café built into the sea wall is shuttered up, the kiddy rides covered over and padlocked. From above comes the clang and clatter of the penny arcade. It’s where Frank says he was sitting all day on Thursday, where he remembered the girl on the carousel and a man jumping into the sea.

The dogs sit panting at Alice’s feet while she clips their leads back on. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I guess we worked off some of that huge dinner.’ She turns to smile at Frank, but he’s not looking at her. He’s staring up at the cliffs that curve away from the end of the bay. He’s got that look about him again, that look she’s starting to recognise. She moves instinctively to his side. ‘What is it?’