by J. S. Monroe
“Then I might be her father.”
“Okay.” Sean says, more serious now. Almost respectful. “That does kind of change things.”
“Will you help me find out if she is my daughter?”
“Sure.”
“And drop all the Russian shit?”
“That might be harder.”
“I’ve done a lot of searching this afternoon. Think I might have managed to track Freya Lal down in India. The Punjab.”
“The land of five rivers,” Sean says. “Breadbasket of India.”
But before Luke has time to reply, his phone vibrates in his pocket.
It’s from Freya, replying to his message request. She wants him to call her tonight.
CHAPTER 31
“It will come back, you know, your memory,” Tony says, as we sit down for dinner. The lighting has been lowered, and there’s music playing; REM, I think. It’s strange what I remember. The house is looking more spotless than ever, fresh flowers on the table, tea towel folded neatly on the oven rail. I mustn’t let it upset me. I’m doing better now than I was earlier in the evening, managing the fear.
“That’s what everyone keeps saying.” I watch him pour two glasses of water from the glugging jug. Where have I heard that sound before? “I just want to find out what happened to me, who I am.”
“It’s not Alzheimer’s. I know the signs,” he says, passing me a glass.
“That’s reassuring, thank you.”
“Are you going to write notes tonight?” he asks, starting to ladle chowder from an orange Le Creuset pot.
“Last night’s notes have helped today. Saved me a lot of embarrassment. Dr. Patterson says I should write notes every evening.”
“What are you going to say about today?” he asks, looking up at me. “This evening?”
“I must be careful.” I pause, looking down at the bowl of steaming chowder in front of me. “A nice quiet dinner on my own in my room at the pub, I guess.”
He smiles conspiratorially and reaches for the bottle of Pouilly-Fumé. “Do you want some wine?”
“No, thanks,” I say. “Dr. Patterson says I should stay off the alcohol.”
“She’s right. Bad for the brain. I might have a small glass.”
He talks further about his gallery café, how he’s getting more passing cyclists and narrow-boat tourists than he thought, and then there’s a lacuna in our conversation. We’ve finished the chowder and I’m sipping on another mint tea, holding the mug with both hands in the hope that it prevents any more shaking.
“Can you describe how it feels?” he asks. “To not remember?”
I think for a moment before I answer. I know I should talk to him about amnesia—it’s important—but I’m finding this all so difficult.
“It’s like I’m on a speedboat, racing across the wide-open sea,” I begin. “When I look back, expecting to see a wake behind me, there’s just calm empty water, stretching for miles and miles, no evidence that I’ve even been there. And what’s really weird is that the water ahead looks empty too. It’s almost as if I’m unable to imagine a future if I can’t recall my past.”
“Are you frightened about tomorrow morning, having to start all over again?”
“When I read everything that’s gone on today, I won’t believe that it all’s happened to me, that it’s my life.”
I begin to feel tearful, hearing myself summarize the day I’ve had. I’ve done well this evening to hold it together.
“The thing is, I’m starting to forget things myself,” he says. “Little things.”
“Like what?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, and when he does, his voice is quieter, more thoughtful. “It’s not so much not being able to find the car keys, but wondering for a split second what they’re for when I do find them.”
“Does that worry you?”
“It terrifies me.” He pauses. “Like a glimpse into old age.”
“My life has only just begun,” I say, managing a laugh. “I’m two days old.”
He smiles but I know his heart isn’t in it, his mind elsewhere. He gets up from the table and starts to clear the dishes.
“I don’t like the thought of you waking up on your own, in that pokey old pub room,” he says, his back to me at the sink. “You’re welcome to stay here, you know. Down on the sofa, or up in the guest room. I just think you might need someone around in the morning.”
“Dinner was lovely. Delicious. But I need to go now.” I dab at my lips with a napkin. The shaking has started again. “I’m tired. And I’ve got a lot to write up. To remember.”
“As you like,” he says, turning to me. He wipes his hands on the tea towel and folds it neatly.
“But thank you,” I say, getting up from the table. I need to be away from here, and head through to the sitting room.
“It’s better you use the rear door,” he says, calling out after me. “And at least let me walk you over to the pub.”
“I’m fine, honestly,” I say, trying not to panic. It’s as if we’ve embarked on a frantic dance, maneuvering around each other.
I manage to resist running out into the street, and make myself return to the kitchen, where he has opened the back door. He puts a hand on my arm to stop me as I pass him. I know what’s coming next, how our dance will end.
“Let’s do this again,” he says, switching on that serene smile of his. He glances around and leans forward to kiss me on the lips. I close my eyes and count—one, two, three, thinking of Fleur, my pulse racing—and step back into the garden, away from him.
We stare at each other for a moment, and then I walk away, as fast as I can without running.
“Don’t go putting that in your notes,” he calls out after me. “We can have a first kiss all over again tomorrow.”
I think I’m going to be sick, and then his mobile phone starts to ring. For some reason the sound makes me stop in my tracks, suppresses my nausea. I’m already at the bottom of the garden, fumbling for the latch on the wooden gate. I hope it’s Laura, calling to say she’s okay.
“I’m going to leave this here—in case you change your mind,” he says, taking a key out of his pocket and placing it under a small upturned pot, one of several by the back door.
“Okay,” I say, watching him hide it, desperate to run.
“I need to talk to Laura now.”
CHAPTER 32
Luke studies the message again, which is short and simple. So good to hear from you! And after the last so many years! Please, I will call tomorrow morning, 7am IST. 2:30 BST? I should be sleeping now... More tomorrow. Fx
He looks up and glances around the Windsor Castle, which is almost empty. He’s been unable to stop smiling since he first read the message. Too many acronyms for his liking, but he can live with that. Now that he knows Freya exports pashminas for a living, he can see that hers is the language of international business. Sean has left to stay over with his brother, leaving Luke on his own with another pint and his phone. He’d shown his friend the message before he went, and they had discussed it briefly, but Sean didn’t share his excitement. He was tired—and a little aggrieved that the message appeared to prove that Jemma isn’t a Russian sleeper.
He glances at his watch—another two hours before he calls her. Regardless of whether Jemma turns out to be their daughter or not, he’s excited to have made contact with Freya, given how adrift he’s been feeling. For the first time in years, he feels connected—tethered. His teenage years, at least the memory of them, feel a part of the person he is today, a reminder that he is a product, a consequence, of the decisions he made then. A reassuring line now runs back through his life that he wasn’t aware of before.
It’s only when he starts to read through Freya’s Facebook page in detail that his heart sinks. He’s not bothered that she’s married or that
her husband looks annoyingly nice in the photos. He’s glad she’s found happiness. It’s the pictures of all the young people. They seem to adore her and he’d assumed they were her children, but each one turns out to be a nephew or a niece and none of them look like Jemma.
He takes a deep draft of his Guinness. No children. He can’t deny he’s disappointed. He has been idly looking for her online ever since his split with Chloe, but the arrival of Jemma in the village has given his search a new urgency. Now, though, it doesn’t seem so important. If Freya was pregnant—still a very big if—she most probably had an abortion, which means Jemma isn’t their daughter.
Finishing his pint, he decides to head down to the river and walk to Battersea Park, where he will kill time before contacting Freya. It’s almost 1:00 a.m. as he crosses south over Chelsea Bridge, but London feels alive. He feels alive. And young—far younger than his fifty years. At his parents’ house in the village he would be asleep by now, lulled by the pure air and circadian rhythms of the countryside. He adjusts his Carhartt baseball cap, only worn in London (Milo gives him too much of a hard time about it at home), and lengthens his stride.
The park shuts at 10:30 p.m., but there’s a place on Queenstown Road, hidden by bushes, where he and Freya had once climbed over, more than thirty years ago. He’s still confident that he can scale the wrought-iron railing, but it looks much higher than he remembers. He glances around and levers himself up without any difficulty. Pleased to have defied his years, he jumps down the other side, only for the bottom of his trouser to catch and rip. He falls to the ground with a grunt and lies there for a few seconds.
Freya will be up in an hour or so. Dusting himself down, he heads toward the Peace Pagoda overlooking the Thames. It was here that they had sat and planned their future together with all the optimism and naivete of teenagers. They had talked and talked, first at the pagoda and then on long looping walks around the park. When the attendants were closing up for the night, they had hidden in the bushes and talked some more before making love for the first and only time.
It seems an appropriate place, poetic even, to establish contact with Freya again, but she doesn’t need to know exactly where he is. He will tell her only if it seems right.
All he has to do now is wait.
CHAPTER 33
“I hope it wasn’t my mother’s curry,” Abdul says, as I come out of the shared bathroom at the end of the upstairs corridor in the pub.
“No,” I say. “Your mother’s curry was delicious.”
Unfortunately, I bumped into Abdul when I came back from dinner with Tony. He watched me run down the corridor to the bathroom and heard me throw up.
“Can I get you anything?” he asks, standing in the doorway of his room. He’s wearing baggy shorts and an ill-fitting Bath Rugby Club shirt.
“I’m fine, thank you.” I feel better after cleaning my teeth. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”
“I saw you walking to Tony’s house this evening,” he says without accusation.
“We had dinner,” I say. “He’s been very helpful, his wife Laura too. I stayed there last night, when I arrived in the village.”
“My brother and me, we are teaching him how to play cricket.”
Abdul gestures as if he’s a caveman with a club and shakes his head despairingly.
“I must go to sleep—thank you again for the curry. It was very sweet of you.”
Back in my room, I lock the door and sit down to write about the day, beginning with reading my notes when I woke up at Tony and Laura’s house, and ending with dinner with Tony tonight. There seems little point pretending I was in the pub. Nothing goes unnoticed in this village. I wonder if Abdul saw me coming back from Tony’s house too. My eyes start to close as I finish the day’s entry. I lie back on the bed, still feeling sick.
An hour later, I wake to the sound of a piercing scream. Has Abdul been shouting in his sleep? Having nightmares about overturned boats and bloated bodies in the sea? I lie there in the moonlit quiet of a village night, watching the breeze play with the curtain, and realize the scream was mine.
Am I asleep now? Or in that liminal state of waking? Fleur is lying supine, staring at me, fear in her eyes. I try again, and this time I fall onto the floor, where I stay, looking into Fleur’s bewildered, frightened eyes. Slowly, I crawl toward her on all fours, one hand in front of me in a hopeless attempt to reach out to her. But I collapse again, my body pressed flat against the floor until it is too late and Fleur’s screams have died in the night.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Hello?” I call out.
“Are you okay?” It’s Abdul.
“I’m fine,” I say, propping myself up on one elbow. “Bad dream, that’s all. Thank you.”
“Me too.”
There’s a pause. I’m glad Abdul is still there, standing on the other side of the locked door. I realize I’m shaking and drenched in sweat.
As his footsteps recede down the corridor, I turn to face the wall, waiting for sleep to take me again. I hope I will have forgotten my nightmare by morning.
CHAPTER 34
The call comes at exactly 2:30 a.m. and wakes Luke from a light sleep. He is hunkered down in the corner of the pagoda and props himself up against the wall to answer the call. Taking off his baseball cap and rearranging his hair, he holds the phone out at arm’s length and up a bit to avoid a double chin. His hand is shaking as the call connects even though it’s a warm night.
“Oh my God,” Freya says, smiling at the camera, a dupatta scarf draped loosely over her head. “It really is you!”
She is sitting in what looks like an office, a ceiling fan stirring the air in the background.
“It’s me,” he says, regretting the banality.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine.” God, can’t he think of any better to say? “I’m so sorry, for contacting you out of the blue like this. You must think I’m some kind of weirdo Facebook stalker but—”
“It’s so great to hear from you, really,” she says, interrupting him. “You haven’t changed one jot.”
“Nor have you—in a good way, I mean.”
She blushes and looks around her. For the first time he wonders if she’s not alone.
“Where are you, by the way?” he asks.
“In my office. The family business. I came in early, to make this call.”
“I’m sorry if that was a problem.”
“Not at all. We often have to come in early, to talk to China, the Far East.”
“It sounds like it’s all going well. The business.”
“It’s good, yes,” she says, hesitation in her voice.
“Pashminas?” he asks.
“How did you know?”
“I’m journalist. Well, I was. I am. Sort of. Used to work in newspapers, national ones. Now I look after a magazine for smelly old cars.”
“That sounds so great.”
“I changed career when my wife died,” he says. Luke feels he owes it to his wife to introduce her into the conversation, but inevitably it alters the tone.
“I was so sorry to hear about that,” she says, casting her eyes down respectfully.
“How did you know?” he asks.
“I Googled you, of course. After you messaged me. You wrote an article about her once. It was very moving.”
He’s still in two minds whether that had been the right thing to do. To go public on something so private. But writing about his grief had undeniably helped him to move on.
“Where are you, by the way?” she asks. “Some kind of temple?”
“I’m in the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park,” he says. It doesn’t seem inappropriate to tell her, but he tenses as he waits for her reaction.
“No way.” She doesn’t appear to be upset.
“You remember?
”
“Of course I remember.” Her voice is quieter now, reflective.
“Happy days,” he says, more out of hope than anything.
“They were—so happy.”
“I’m sorry you had to leave at the end of term.”
“Me too.”
“I did write to you, many times.”
“I know. My father got your letters. Burnt them all.”
“Oh God, were they that bad?” Luke’s tone is light, but his stomach lurches. It sounds as if he is right. Her family put pressure on her to cut all ties with her life in Britain and return to live in India. Was it because she was pregnant? With their child?
They both fall quiet, the first silence in their conversation. Luke glances across at the river, dark and fast flowing. He begins to feel more sad than vindicated, lost in a confusion of thoughts.
“I had to leave the UK,” she says quietly. “That was the deal.”
“A deal with your parents?”
She nods, looking around her.
“Are you alone?” he asks.
“For the moment. The first workers will be arriving soon.”
“What was the deal?” he asks. He needs to know what happened, even though he appreciates it was her business. Her choice. It’s a while before she speaks.
“Why did you contact me?” she asks. “After all this time?”
“Someone turned up in our village yesterday, where I live. She looked just like you, when you were younger.”
“I haven’t aged that badly, have I?”
“I don’t mean it that way.” It’s his turn to pause now. “You look great. Fantastic, in fact.”
“Who is she then? This person who looks like me before I became old and wrinkly?”
“No one knows. That’s the thing. Even she doesn’t know who she is. She’s suffering from amnesia, temporary we all hope. But in the meantime, some of us are trying to establish who she is.”
“And you think she might be connected to me in some way?”
He takes a deep breath. “Maybe related.”
