What She Left

by Rosie Fiore

  ‘And you’ve had no news of her—’

  ‘Until I saw the Facebook post.’

  We sat staring at each other in silence for a long time.

  ‘So maybe,’ Judy said slowly, ‘you can understand now why I have complicated feelings about you hunting her down. Not hunting, if you know what I mean, but looking for her when she’s made it clear she doesn’t want to be found.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sam

  Judy and I said goodbye, and I sat back in my seat, my laptop resting on my knees. What she had gone through, what her family had gone through, was beyond horrifying. It was almost impossible to imagine that those things had happened to my Helen. And it was totally impossible to believe we had lived together so closely, as husband and wife for five years, and she’d never told me a single thing. Not even that she had been married before. Well, one thing was for sure – if Judy had hoped that her story would put me off trying to find Helen, she was wrong. I needed to find her more than ever. I needed to tell her I knew what had happened to her. I needed to ask her, face to face, why she had left me. And maybe if I could find her, I could help her to fix the part of her that was broken and made her run away. I knew now I wouldn’t rest until I found her. The question was – how?

  I stared at Daniel Craig on the screen. He’d got cleaned up and was looking muscular and suave in a dinner suit, snapping his crisp cuffs and walking quickly into some banquet or other. He had it easy. He knew what was what. He just had to leap from carriage to carriage on top of a moving train and shag beautiful women. What did he know about the complexities of life? He was just a spy.

  A spy. Something about the idea brought me up short. Espionage. Counter-intelligence. Those were the techniques Helen had called upon when she disappeared. She’d managed to evade CCTV cameras and electronic tracking. She’d clearly left with enough cash to re-establish herself somewhere else. She’d found a way to create a new identity. She had, in the parlance of novels and films, gone into deep cover. But if she had managed to do it, could I not follow the same thought processes and work out where she had gone?

  I’ve always loved a good spy thriller, or even a bad one, and I began to think about some of the techniques spies use when they have to disappear. Clearly, they need a new set of documents. Easy to achieve in a film, difficult for Joe Public, who lacks the CIA’s resources or access to a dodgy gangster in an East End bar.

  Helen had found a way to create a new identity. At least I assumed she had, because I had found no sign of the right Helen Cooper or Helen Knight in all my web searches. And yet, from my sighting of her, it was almost certain that she was working in a respectable, white-collar job. In my experience, especially working in the fields of marketing and PR, which is her background, it’s impossible to be in a job without there being some kind of internet footprint. You’d be mentioned on the company website, or there’d be a report about your appointment or a notable project in a trade magazine. You’d need a LinkedIn profile so colleagues and clients could find you. So, assuming Helen was working in her old field, whatever her new name was, there’d be some trace of her online.

  I thought about some of the thrillers I’d read and the identities which spies concoct for themselves. Apparently (or at least the novelists would have us believe), these identities or legends often have some elements of the agent’s real life, so they can recall these details with clarity – the same date of birth, the same school attended, the same first name. The latter is often used. If you were on your guard, you’d remember to respond to your codename, but if you were caught unawares by someone calling you from across the room, for example, it would be hard to remember your name was now Geoff when it used to be Bob.

  So what if Helen was still Helen but now Helen Someone Else? There was no point in putting ‘Helen’ into a search engine. I’d get billions of hits. But what if I went on to some of the marketing publications and websites and narrowed the search? What if I only looked for articles in the field of marketing, in London, which mentioned a Helen, and which had appeared in the last year? How many could there be?

  I logged on to a well-known online marketing magazine. I typed ‘Helen’ into the search bar. I got seven hundred hits. I found the tools to refine the search and narrowed the dates down, from the date Helen disappeared to the present day. We were down to a hundred and fifty hits. That didn’t seem an insane number to check.

  I scrolled through and quickly ascertained that at least half of the results related to articles written by a journalist called Helen Brady. I’d met her at a few marketing award ceremonies – a tiny, rabbity woman with white-blonde hair and a look of pink-eyed surprise that suggested she was allergic to everything. She definitely wasn’t my Helen, so I ruled out any results that carried her by-line.

  Across the other articles, there were about ten different potential Helens. I copied their names on to a list and then ran a search on each of them. One by one, I found them on LinkedIn or their company websites. I looked at their CVs and in all cases found pictures of them. None of them was my Helen.

  Maybe this was a road to nowhere, but it was the best, indeed the only possible lead I had. I chose another marketing website and repeated the process. Still nothing. On the off-chance that I had had the wrong idea where the first name was concerned, I repeated the process on both websites searching for ‘Knight’ but again came up with nothing.

  Maybe I was looking in the wrong places. Maybe she hadn’t gone into marketing after all. I tried PR Weekly, and a few big websites devoted to design and advertising. No hits on either, and a disquieting sense that I was getting colder rather than hotter in my search. I paused to think for a moment. What had Helen been doing when we met? What had she focused on? She’d worked on a number of campaigns, but her biggest success was on a razor campaign linked to a world-famous tennis star. Sport. She loved sport, knew a lot about it, and had once told me that she’d worked exclusively in sports marketing in Australia. Was there a website devoted to marketing in sport?

  There was. I ran the search for ‘Helen’, restricting the search dates to the last year. There were only a few entries, and they all related to two Helens – a Helen Berry, who was based in Manchester at a charity which encouraged sport in schools, and another Helen, whose marketing campaign for a big sporting gel brand had had great results.

  I didn’t discount Helen Berry; Helen could easily have been in London for a business meeting, and in a way, fleeing to Manchester would make more sense than staying in London. She didn’t have a LinkedIn profile and I couldn’t find a picture of her online. I did find her on the ‘Contact Us’ page on the charity’s website though. On impulse, even though it was 2 a.m., I dialled her office number, taking care to hide my mobile number before I did so.

  ‘Hi, this is Helen,’ said a perky recorded message. ‘Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’

  Helen Berry sounded in her early fifties at least, with a strong Mancunian accent. Another dead end.

  Which left one last possibility – the one working for Simon Stanley and Associates, a new (as far as I could tell) sports consultancy based somewhere in the east of London. That chimed with having seen Helen in Canary Wharf, but it wasn’t much to go on. But again, I could find no image on Google, no LinkedIn profile, and the name was common enough that Facebook and Twitter threw up hundreds of possibilities. Could this Helen Day be my Helen?

  Helen Day.

  Helen Day. The opposite of Helen Knight. What happens to night when the light comes? Day.

  With trembling fingers, I ran a search for SSA and found their web page. There was no picture of Helen Day, but there was a biography. Born in Australia, marketing degree from the University of Queensland, moved to the UK six years ago. I had found her.

  It was the longest weekend of my life. I fell asleep eventually, on the sofa again. The girls woke me at seven (why was it torture to get them out of bed for school in the week, but they were up at the crack on weekends?). Mi
randa looked at me with ill-disguised contempt, and to my shame, I saw her look around the room, scanning for beer bottles or cans. It was scant comfort that there weren’t any. My hangover from the Canary Wharf binge had lasted long enough to stop me drinking in the evening. Marguerite climbed on top of me as if I were a slightly uncomfortable extension of the sofa and reached for the TV remote. A bright and jangly tune, much too loud, blared out of the TV and the neon colours assaulted my bleary, unready eyes.

  I tipped a grumbling Marguerite off me and stumbled through to the bathroom, then climbed into my own bed, leaving the girls to bicker in the living room. My phone lay on the bedside table and I picked it up. Unsurprisingly, I had no messages. I lay looking at the screen for a long time. It was early, but not so early that Lara wouldn’t be up. Jonah’s an early riser. Tentatively, I typed: ‘I owe you an apology. Can we meet up today so I can say sorry in person?’

  I sent the message and then stared at the screen, hoping she’d reply immediately. She didn’t. After ten minutes or so, I got out of bed and grabbed a quick shower. I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on, keeping my phone in my hand all the time. Still nothing.

  I felt overcome by a kind of restless energy, and while I waited for my tea to brew, I looked around our dingy kitchen. Something needed to be done. The limescale on the draining board got it first. Then I polished the sink and taps to a gleaming shine. All the ketchup bottles and plastic cups that never quite made it back into the cupboards were packed away and I scrubbed the countertops. Then I noticed how grubby the shelves in the cupboard were, so everything had to come out so I could clean each shelf too. An hour later and I was on my hands and knees, scrubbing the linoleum, and my phone was still silent.

  The Cif cream and I were on a roll by then, so I attacked the bathroom next. All the towels went into the washing machine and I started stripping the beds so bedclothes could be the next load. I burned through the flat, hoovering, dusting, tidying away, ruthlessly throwing away toys that were broken or incomplete. The girls regarded me with mute incomprehension, staying out of my way and only intervening to complain when I threw away something they considered precious. Through all of this, my phone didn’t ring or beep. By midday, I was exhausted and the flat was unrecognizable.

  ‘It’s got to stay like this now,’ I told the girls.

  ‘It won’t,’ said Miranda.

  I knew she was right, but it had made me feel slightly better to take control of our space. The flat might be small and cramped, but when it’s clean and tidy, it’s not too unpleasant. And anyway, came the thought unbidden into my head, if Helen returns, we can put things back to the way they were and move home to our house, ultimately.

  Now that I know about Lawrence, I’m certain I can fix things between us. I understand so much more – it makes such sense that that night in the hotel freaked her out. But at least I know that what happened wasn’t my fault. And we can work through it together and make it all better. I’m not delusional, so I know there are a lot of ifs and buts and qualifications that stand in the way of that, but I’m hopeful. I feel sure that if I can find her, we can talk, really talk, in a way we never did when we were together.

  Lara

  My phone burned a hole in my pocket. Sam’s text had been, unsurprisingly, carefully and perfectly worded. No excuses, just a request to be given the chance to apologize. He was good, I’d give him that. A text apology would have been too trite. A phone one would be awkward. But this – this was good. I just wasn’t quite ready for it yet.

  Someone else might say that I was playing games in not responding to the text, but I wasn’t. I needed to work out the right response. And to do that, I needed to be certain I was taking the right course in letting Sam stay in our lives.

  It was easy to ignore the phone for the morning – I took Frances to her dance class (I was unsurprised to see that Sam and Miranda weren’t there), and then dragged both kids through a nightmarish supermarket shop. It was such an awful experience for us all that I splurged on a cheap lunch at the local Italian and we didn’t get back home till after three. Jonah fell asleep almost instantly, curled up on the sofa, and Frances disappeared up into her bedroom with a new book I’d bought her.

  So there I was, sitting at the kitchen table, an hour of quiet to myself, trying to work out how to reply. I took my phone out and let it lie in front of me on the table. Eventually, I typed: ‘I appreciate the thought, but not today. Just need some time.’ And I hit send.

  His reply was almost instantaneous. ‘I respect that. Hope maybe tomorrow?’

  Again, I had to smile. He’d got the balance between grovelling subservience and insistent keenness just right. I couldn’t fault him for that.

  ‘I’ll get back to you,’ I typed, and, hating myself, I added a smiley face. Sam and I had joked about how much we loathed emojis. With that one little in-joke he would know he was forgiven. I wished I had the fortitude to keep him hanging on, worrying, but I didn’t.

  I had to work in the evening, so I got myself moving and made a halfway decent dinner for the kids and Mum, then spent an hour snuggled with a dozy, post-nap Jonah, watching a film, before I went upstairs to shower and dress.

  It was another quiet Saturday night at the pub – always a worry. Every quiet evening we have makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be looking for another job. It’s not as if there aren’t restaurant manager jobs to be had, but I’ve got comfortable there. I know the job inside and out, the commute is easy and the work isn’t stressful. Still, it would be better to find something new at my own pace, rather than finding out we’re shutting down and losing my job overnight. Even thinking about it makes me feel disloyal. I’ve been there for years, on and off – it was where I met Marc – and they’ve always been good to me.

  I looked down the list of bookings, two tables of two at 7 p.m., and a table of six at 8.30. Unless we got twenty or thirty walk-ins, I wasn’t going to come close to covering the cost of the staff we had on for the evening. I frowned at the computer, trying to work out if I should send one or two of the waiters home.

  ‘Don’t frown, you’ll get wrinkles,’ said a voice.

  I kept my eyes on the screen, but even as I did, I felt my stomach plummet to the floor and my hands, resting on the keyboard, began to shake. I gave myself time to take a deep, slow breath before I raised my eyes.

  ‘Marc,’ I said calmly. ‘Well, there you are.’

  There he was. Tall, slender, his hair longer again, the sharp, expensive suit replaced by his more usual jeans and denim shirt. I steeled myself, stepped around the reception desk and offered him my cheek to kiss. He ignored my gesture, slipped his arms around me and drew me to him in a hug. I put my hands against his chest and pushed him away. I took a step back, and then scuttled back behind the reception desk, using the chest-high counter as a shield.

  ‘So is this a flying visit?’ I said coolly. ‘It would have been good if you’d let me know you were coming.’

  ‘I didn’t know till this morning,’ he said, and I could hear he’d picked up the faintest hint of an American drawl. ‘A business thing came up.’

  ‘On a Saturday?’

  He shrugged, in a ‘No rest for the wicked – or the massively successful’ gesture that irritated me profoundly.

  ‘So what is it you’re doing now?’ I asked, trying not to drip sarcasm off every word.

  ‘Have you seen stuff on the Net about these personal rocket packs?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You know, jet packs. Strap them on your back and fly away.’

  ‘What, like Ironman?’

  ‘Ironman has rocket boots,’ he said, slightly impatient with my stupidity.

  ‘Uh-huh. So you’re making rocket packs rather than boots.’

  ‘Not making,’ said Marc, ignoring my tone. ‘Marketing and distributing.’

  ‘Marketing and distributing rocket packs. That sounds like a sure-fire winner.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Marc, his expr
ession hardening. ‘Less than a minute and you’re already being a bitch.’

  ‘Less than a minute and you’re being a flaky, unreliable bastard, involved in yet another hare-brained scheme,’ I said, keeping my tone low and my smile sweet. I’d seen that there were a couple of drinkers ordering at the bar. I really didn’t want there to be a scene.

  Marc shrugged. I knew he was considering turning on his heel and walking out. But to my surprise, he steeled himself and spoke calmly.

  ‘You don’t have to like me, or approve of what I’m doing. But I would like the chance to see my kids. I flew in today, and I’ve got back-to-back meetings from Monday, but tomorrow. . .?’

  ‘You expect us to drop everything at no notice because you happen to be in town?’ I found myself saying.

  Marc’s shoulders sagged. ‘No. Of course not. But even if it’s half an hour. . .’

  He was playing the pathetic, humble card. And, as he had correctly assessed, I was playing the hard-nosed bitch one but would eventually give in. How could I possibly stand between my kids and their dad? If Frances found out her dad had been in London and she hadn’t got the chance to see him, she would be heartbroken. Marc might set my teeth on edge and make me permanently angry, but his daughter adored him.

  ‘As it happens,’ I said begrudgingly, ‘we haven’t got anything planned for tomorrow.’

  His face brightened. ‘Can I take them out? Dinner? Movies? Ice cream?’

  I knew there was no chance he’d be able to manage both kids alone for a whole day. I thought of him taking his eyes off Jonah and letting him get lost, or being unkind to Frances because he was stressed about managing a boisterous three-year-old. I was tempted to say he should just take Frances, but that wasn’t fair on Jonah, who barely knew his dad and deserved time with him too. I sighed. ‘I think you might struggle to manage Jonah at the moment. He’s full-on. Why don’t we all do something together?’

  I saw a parade of emotions cross his face – annoyance that I clearly thought he couldn’t manage the kids on his own, relief that he wouldn’t have to, and something sly, as if he could see advantages in spending a day with me.