I Found You (35 page)

She’s going to be Russ and Jo’s au pair. Russ had the idea on the way back from Ridinghouse, he said. Mooted it to Jo who, in a moment of sleep-deprived desperation, agreed to a trial few days, and Lily has been staying with them since leaving Yorkshire, while the police searched the flat for evidence. It is a ridiculous turn of events. She doesn’t even like babies. But, actually, Darcy is quite a pleasant baby. She didn’t even cry when Jo first put her in her arms, just stared at her as if to say:
You look all right
. Jo said, ‘She likes you!’ and then, ‘Did you know that babies are genetically programmed to prefer people with pretty faces? It’s because they look more like babies.’ Which Lily took to be a compliment. But it might not have been. Jo is perfectly nice, if a bit brittle. But more than that she is so very grateful to Lily because now she can go to the gym sometimes and have a little lie-down during the day
and meet a friend for lunch every now and then. They will give her fifty pounds a week. That’s fine. And Russ has given her his old laptop so she can continue her distance-learning accountancy course. Also, Putney is lovely. Much nicer than Oxted. Eventually, hopefully, when she has graduated, she would like to have her own flat here. And maybe, one day – not yet – marry a nice Englishman. She likes Englishmen very much. The women, she is not so sure about, but she is getting used to them. Or maybe it is the other way round.

There is one more thing she needs to do before she leaves this flat. She opens her jewellery box in the bedroom and she searches through the tangle of tacky costume jewellery that she’d brought to England with her from the Ukraine in anticipation of the nights in ritzy nightclubs and celebrity-filled restaurants she’d foolishly imagined might be waiting for her over here. She pulls out a small suedette pouch and peers inside. There are the wedding rings she found in Carl’s filing cabinet. She knows whom they belong to now. They belong to a woman in Wales called Amanda Jones. She married Mark Tate in 2006 after a whirlwind four-week romance. He told her his name was Charles Moore. When she started asking him too many questions about who he was and where he came from, when she started going through his personal belongings trying to find clues to the man she married, he walked out, taking her rings from her finger and calling her a whore.

Amanda Jones recognised his picture from the newspaper reports and turned up at her local police station. She’s remarried now and has a small child. Lily will send her the rings. The money will come in useful for her, Lily is sure.

Then she takes one more look around the flat where she spent ten days of her life married to someone called Carl Monrose and she closes the door behind her.

As Russ pulls away from the car park, they drive past Wolf’s Hill Boulevard and Lily looks up at the flat on the first floor. The light is still flickering. She wonders again what it was about that light that had so troubled her in those days when she was here alone. And then she remembers sitting on the sofa, calling her husband’s phone, frantically, insanely, again and again, and then the sound of an animal roaring, so loud that she’d thought of the wolves that disturbed her sleep sometimes in Kiev. And then . . . silence. Her calls stopped going through. It was the sound, she now knew, not of a displaced wolf but of Graham Ross throwing her husband’s phone against the cooker hood, just before he tried to strangle him to death. It was the sound of a tortured man finally acknowledging his pain.

She’d heard it and she’d buried it, deep inside her subconscious.

A sign by the road says: ‘Central London 12’.

She turns to Russ, a kind man, and she smiles.

Alice turns the lights down in her bedroom, leaving just the kind light of a black-shaded lamp to illuminate her face. She places a large glass of wine on her desk and then goes to the mirror where she prods at her disastrous hair with blunt fingernails. The time is 7.58 p.m. For two minutes she paces back and forth, stopping at the mirror every few seconds to check that her appearance hasn’t suddenly deteriorated further. Then it comes, the lullaby plip-plop-plip of a Skype call. She rushes to her desk and breathes in hard, clears her throat, presses reply.

And there he is: ‘Hello, Alice.’

‘Hi!’

He looks tired.

‘How are you?’ she continues.

‘I’m . . . aaah, well, what can I say? Not so good.’

‘No?’

‘No. Turns out I’m not very good at being Gray Ross. Turns out I suck at it.’

‘Oh, Frank . . .’

He smiles. ‘I do like being called Frank,’ he says dreamily. ‘I miss it.’

‘You’ll always be Frank to me,’ she says.

‘I know. I know. That makes me feel . . .’

‘What?’

‘Kind of sad.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t like being Gray. You know, the kids at school call me Fifty Shades.’ He sighs and Alice laughs loudly.

‘That’s hilarious!’

‘I suppose so. But it’s not that. It’s everything. I mean . . .’ The image on the screen moves as he picks up his laptop and moves it around. ‘Look at my flat, Alice. Seriously. Look at it.’

He pans the webcam around a square room with yellow walls. There are piles of paperwork everywhere, a scruffy cream sofa, a cheap ceramic table lamp. Then he takes her into an unmodernised bathroom with a threadbare bathmat hanging at a slapdash angle on the side of the bath and a dead plant in a pot on the windowsill. His kitchen is piled with dirty dishes and his bedroom has an unmade bed at its centre and broken venetian blinds at the windows.

‘Everything was as I left it. Seriously. This is how I live.’

‘I’ve seen much worse,’ says Alice. ‘Where’s Brenda?’

‘Hold on . . .’ The image jerks as he searches his flat. Then: ‘Hello, gorgeous, there you are.’ The camera zooms in on a stripy red cat sitting curled up on a pile of dirty sheets.

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘she’s lovely!’

‘She hates me,’ he says. ‘She’s been sulking ever since I got back.’

Alice laughs; she can’t help it.

‘It’s not funny!’ he protests. ‘As far as I can tell she was the only friend I had in the world. Seriously, Alice. You wouldn’t want to know me.’

She laughs again.

‘No. I’m being serious. I’m pretty much an alcoholic. Or I was – the fugue seems to have knocked that on the head, thank God. But, Christ, the recycling is ninety-nine per cent beer cans and vodka bottles. I don’t know how I hung on to my job for so long. I’d been given warnings about coming in late and unprepared. Had a reputation for smelling of stale alcohol. And, according to my mum, I’m distant and I don’t call her enough. So.’ He shrugs, makes an L out of his thumb and forefinger and holds it in front of his face. ‘
Loser
.’

Alice smiles. ‘Well, then,’ she says, ‘that just about makes us quits.’

He sighs and his face becomes serious. ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I’ve made a decision. Pretty monumental. I’m in a really bad place. I’m guilt-ridden and I’m angry and I hate my life and I can’t move on. I just can’t. I’ve been seeing my therapist again but it doesn’t seem to be helping so he’s recommended some time away.’ He pauses and his eyes drop to his lap. ‘He’s suggested admitting myself into a psychiatric ward. Just for a little while. Get to the bottom of this memory issue I seem to have. Get to the bottom of
me
. And I think he’s right.’

‘How long?’ Alice feels panicky. She’d been going to invite him up for a weekend visit, had deliberately left the next four weekends clear to ensure that he’d be able to come.

‘No idea. Four weeks minimum. Maybe longer. I just . . .’ He sighs loudly. ‘I can’t be around anyone like this. I can’t be around
you
. And I’d like to be around you. I really would.’

Alice smiles. ‘I’d like to be around you, too.’

He brightens and straightens up. ‘Show me the dogs,’ he says. ‘I want to see the dogs.’

‘OK!’ She lifts the laptop and takes it to her bed where Griff is stretched out and yawning. The dog wags his tail lazily when he hears Frank’s voice coming from the laptop. ‘Ah,’ says Alice, ‘look! He remembers you!’ She moves the laptop on to the landing where Hero is sitting looking grumpy because Griff doesn’t
let her in Alice’s bedroom and then downstairs where Sadie lies shivering in front of the fire in a knitted jumper. Kai and Jasmine wave at him from the sofa. Romaine appears from the kitchen with a toothbrush between her teeth and kisses the screen, leaving toothpaste drool all over it.

Franks sighs. ‘I love your house,’ he says. ‘I miss your house. I miss you. I . . .’ His voice cracks. ‘There’ll be a funeral,’ he says, ‘for Kirsty. Not for a few weeks yet. Will you come?’

‘Of course I’ll come.’

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Good. Then that’s a date. I’ll be better by then, Alice. I’ll be . . . Well, I don’t know what I’ll be. But I’ll be better. I promise.’

‘Don’t make promises,’ she says, ‘just do what you can do. Just be what you can be. However flawed that is. I have very low standards,’ she jokes. ‘I swear, I’ll go with anyone.’

Finally Frank laughs and it’s beautiful to hear.

‘Good luck, Frank,’ Alice says. ‘I’ll see you on the other side.’

Frank kisses his knuckles and places them against the screen. Alice does the same. They stay like that for a moment, their hands touching across the ether, their eyes filled with tears.

‘I’ll see you on the other side,’ says Frank.

‘I’ll be waiting,’ says Alice.

And then the screen goes blank.

Two Months Later

They bury her in Croydon. Where else would they bury her? Not in Ridinghouse Bay where her short, unsullied life came to such a horrible end. And not in Bude where her grandparents lived, where her mother grew up, now it has been revealed that her killer lived there for a few years in the late nineties, date-raped two different women during his time in the town and stalked another into a state of near-suicidal depression.

There was only Croydon. And at least it is a beautiful day.

Alice feels a surge of homecoming as she negotiates the London transport system. She feels her salty seaside mamma persona fall away and she imagines
herself in hipster pavement cafés and graffiti-daubed playgrounds and corner shops run by people with foreign accents. She loves Ridinghouse Bay, but she misses London.

Frank meets her off the train at East Croydon. He looks well. He has kept the beard that had begun to grow during his days in Ridinghouse Bay and it is now a hefty chin-covering wedge of copper and brown. His hair is short and he is dressed in a well-cut black suit with a dark checked shirt and sensible black lace-up shoes. He looks exactly like a trendy urban maths teacher should look. Except that he is not a maths teacher any more. The school gave him extended sick leave when he came back to Croydon but after six weeks on the psychiatric ward he decided that he didn’t want to go back to work. So now he is unemployed. Which is bad, because he won’t be able to take them to the Ritz. But good, because it leaves them both with options.

‘Hello,’ he says shyly, kissing her softly on her cheek and hugging her lightly. ‘You look gorgeous.’

She touches her hair, embarrassed. It would be true to say she has made a very big effort. The badger stripes have gone at some not inconsiderable expense and she is wearing strange twangy pants that hold in her tummy. She is also wearing make-up applied by her daughter, who is quite skilled in make-up application, being a member of the YouTube tutorial generation. And a dress.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

He leads her to his car, a crap Vauxhall with dirty upholstery. He apologises for the dirty upholstery and she tells him not to worry, reminding him that he’s seen her house, that dust doesn’t really figure on her personal landscape. It’s strangely awkward for a while. Alice hasn’t seen him for such a long time and she’s torn between wanting to sit on his lap and cling on to him for dear life and wanting to pretend she really isn’t bothered either way.

‘How are you feeling?’ she says.

‘Sick,’ he says.

‘Well. You’ve been waiting for this for twenty-two years.’

‘Exactly,’ he says, eyes on his wing mirror as he goes to overtake a parking car. ‘Exactly.’

‘How’s your mum?’

‘Nuts,’ he says, eyes on the other mirror, pulling back into his lane. ‘Totally and utterly nuts. No wonder I was such a mess. I’m hoping that this will finally calm her down. Burying her baby. Give her some peace.’

‘Yes,’ says Alice. ‘It must have been . . .’ She thinks of her three babies. ‘I can’t imagine. I really can’t.’

She’s nervous about meeting Frank’s mum. She’s nervous about all of it. The aunts and the elderlies, the grief and the pain and the coffin full of delicate girl-bones.

‘I brought something for your mum,’ she says uncertainly, touching a plastic bag at her feet. ‘I’m hoping . . . I don’t know. It’s risky. She might like it. She might hate it. I wanted to show it to you first.’

‘Sure,’ he says, his eyes going to the bag. ‘Is it one of your pictures?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘How did you guess?’

He smiles. ‘Because you wouldn’t have brought something unless it came from your heart. And your pictures come from your heart. Also, I can see a bit of the frame.’

She nudges him and laughs.

‘I tell you what,’ he says, ‘I haven’t had any breakfast and I don’t suppose there’ll be any food on offer for quite some time.’ He rubs his stomach. ‘Shall we stop somewhere for a bite to eat? We’ve got plenty of time.’

She nods, grateful for an excuse to defer the moment of meeting Frank’s family.

He pulls on to a side road and parks outside an old-fashioned café furbished entirely in orange-stained pine. ‘Bring your picture,’ he said. ‘I can pass judgement.’

They order sandwiches and jacket potatoes, Diet Cokes and cups of tea. They talk about Mark Tate’s court case, about the chances of any convictions being brought in the face of so little physical evidence. They talk about all the women who have come forward
since his arrest claiming to have been assaulted by him, about the ‘other wife’ who came out of the woodwork. They talk about Lesley Wade’s surprisingly fairly-written
Gazette
exclusive which has been syndicated by all of the nationals and is going to be expanded into a ten-page feature in the
Sunday Times Magazine
once Mark Tate has been tried and sentenced. They talk about Kitty Tate, how she was arrested shortly after Mark’s arrest on charges of joint enterprise and is currently on bail awaiting trial and how, within days of the disinterment of Kirsty’s body, Kitty had sold both her houses to a property developer at a knockdown price and was currently living in a rented flat in Ripon. They talk about Alice’s children and her dogs, about how all the teachers at Romaine’s school now treat Alice with a kind of star-struck awe after seeing her name in all the newspapers every day for a week. They talk about Frank’s time in hospital and about his plans for the future. They talk like old friends who once went on a remarkable journey together and have no one else with whom to share the memories. Their eyes meet across the table and there is nothing but warmth between them. She wants to take his hand but she waits for him to take the lead. He is the one who has been broken and glued back together again. He is the one burying the ghostly remains of his sister today. He needs to dictate the pace.