by J. S. Monroe
‘You look well,’ Amy lies. Jar knows he’s not in good shape. A darkness around his eyes, too much over the belt.
‘You too now,’ he lies back. Today she looks older than her forty-something years, her hair more obviously flecked with grey. And she seems suddenly anxious, glancing around the empty room. Jar turns too, expecting to see someone, but they are alone.
‘You were lucky to get a table,’ he says.
Amy humours him with a fey half smile. She is wearing more make-up than usual, but it fails to conceal the darkness beneath her own eyes. Rosa never wore make-up, he tells himself.
‘I brought you a present,’ Jar continues, removing a copy of Where Heaven and Mountains Meet: Zanskar and the Himalayas from a cotton bag he’s been carrying.
She takes the book and flicks through it, stopping at a photo of a barefooted pilgrim walking precariously along the frozen edge of the Zanskar River. ‘There was no need,’ she says. Another half smile, more heartfelt this time.
‘It was one of Rosa’s favourites,’ he adds.
‘Thank you, Jar,’ she says. ‘How’s the writing?’
‘Katy Perry’s keeping me busy.’
Jar sounds more defensive than he means to be. He’s used to people asking him about his writing, but he has got no better at explaining that he hasn’t written a word of fiction since Rosa died.
‘How’s Martin?’ he asks. Amy’s husband used to work as a pharmacologist at a contract research organisation, overseeing pre-clinical trials for various drug companies, but he left his job some time ago.
‘Doing more freelance work, still applying for jobs. Cycling more than ever. And he’s determined to finish his novel. You know how it is.’
Jar nods. He hasn’t seen Martin for a while, but not out of choice. He bonded with him at their first meeting, after Martin announced that he had enjoyed Jar’s collection of short stories and was an aspiring writer himself. On the surface, it was an unlikely alliance, given that Jar knew nothing about Martin’s other all-consuming passion, cycling, or the pharmaceutical industry, but Martin turned out to be something of a polymath. He’d been offered a place to read English at Cambridge, impressing the interview panel with his theories on ‘the medicalisation of identity’ in the Beat Generation, but had settled on the more practical world of pharmacology and later specialised in psychopharmacology.
Martin also shares Jar’s reservations about counselling. Amy wants Jar to get help for his post-bereavement hallucinations – she knows some good therapists – but he is less keen.
He is about to ask about Amy’s own job – she is back working two days a week as a picture restorer at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge – when she interrupts him.
‘I know I am a bit paranoid, but…’ She hesitates.
‘Join the club.’
‘Has anyone been keeping an eye on you recently?’
He smiles, holding her gaze. Sometimes he thinks they should actually set up a club together, just the two of them. (Motto: ‘Even paranoids have enemies’.)
‘I feel watched every day,’ he says. ‘Sometimes by Rosa, usually by others, most recently by a man sitting in the window of a Starbucks café. And last night my flat was burgled.’
‘Jar, you should have said. I’m so sorry.’
‘Nothing was taken.’
Amy looks at him for an explanation, but none is forthcoming. Jar is wary of revealing his latest conspiracy theory, that whoever burgled him was trying to establish how much he has found out about Rosa’s death. Amy is fragile at the best of times and he doesn’t want to alarm her.
He watches her fiddle with the single wrapped biscuit that came with her coffee. Her nails are bitten, unloved. Once, when he had accompanied Rosa to Cromer, Amy had sat with them both and painted his nails silver.
‘And you?’ Jar says, resting his hand on Amy’s arm. It pains him to see her like this. ‘Are you’re feeling watched too?’
‘We were always careful when Martin was still working,’ she says, staring out of the window, recalling a faraway past. ‘Kept a lookout, noticed things.’
Jar was aware that Martin’s work had come to the attention of animal rights activists. His career in pharmaceuticals was the main reason why Rosa’s father had fallen out with him shortly after they got married, and why Rosa wasn’t so keen on him, either. That and the speed with which Martin had put Amy on medication for her depression and anxiety.
‘The police used to tell us what to watch out for in the street, around the home,’ Amy continues.
‘Is Martin still a target?’
‘It’s been a while. We keep an eye out.’
‘And?’
Amy sits up, as if she’s suddenly remembered why she is there, and speaks with more animation. ‘I’ve just had this feeling in recent days that our house is being observed, that’s all.’
‘What does Martin think?’
‘He’s says it’s to be expected: paranoia is a common side effect of withdrawal. I’m trying to cut down again.’
‘That’s good,’ Jar says.
‘I’m seeing a therapist. Martin’s not over the moon, as you can imagine. I tried when he first left his job, when I thought we were starting out on life again, but then…’ Her voice falters. ‘Rosa’s disappearance knocked me back a bit.’
‘Of course.’ Jar pauses. Sometimes, because of her medication, Amy talks to him as if he’s a stranger, forgetting the hours they have spent discussing Rosa. ‘It knocked us all. Why do you think you’re being watched?’
‘We have a lot of CCTV and alarms around the place, but they’re more for my benefit. I’m the worrier. Martin thinks life’s too short.’
Her words hang awkwardly in the air. They both know it.
‘You mentioned Rosa in your email,’ Jar says, steering the conversation back.
Amy casts her eyes around the room and then turns to him, focused again.
‘Two days ago, I took my laptop in to a local man in town who fixes computers. I’m trying to be more independent these days. The laptop had died and I wanted to see if anything could be saved. I rang Martin on his bike ride to explain what I was doing. He’s very particular about our computers and I knew he would want to know. Turns out the hard drive was corrupted. He managed to retrieve most of the files, but there was one folder that couldn’t be accessed.’
Amy picks up a plastic bag at her feet and passes it to him under the table with the furtiveness of a drugs dealer.
‘It’s the hard drive. What’s left of it. The man transferred all he could on to my new computer.’
Jar holds the bag in his hands, resisting the temptation to peer inside.
‘Take it,’ she says.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Martin came straight home from his bike ride when I rang him. He took the drive down to his shed and couldn’t open the folder either, but he managed to decipher its name.’
‘And?’
‘It’s called “Rosa’s Diary”.’
For a moment it feels like Jar is gripping Rosa’s hand under the table rather than a plastic bag. She is with them in the hotel, talking about Ladakh, her desire one day to visit the region in winter, walk the icy Zanskar.
‘She must have downloaded it on to my laptop when she stayed that last night,’ Amy says. ‘She often used it for her emails when she was here. It’s probably nothing, but…’ Her voice trails off mid-sentence.
Jar feels sorry for her, the warped world they inhabit, where there are no coincidences, only connections. They can both see the oddness of Rosa downloading her diary on to their computer.
‘We thought you might know someone who could open it,’ she continues, with more confidence now. ‘Maybe one of your techie work colleagues. That guy Carl you’re always talking about. I know Martin didn’t always see eye to eye with Rosa…’ She forces a smile. ‘But the next day, after a particularly long ride – he says he does all his thinking when he’s out on his bike – he returned quite anim
ated, started talking about her in, well, affectionate terms. He also said that you were the only one who had really understood Rosa.’
Jar looks away.
‘Perhaps it was guilt. Later that night, he announced that we ought to hand the diary over to you. It was the right and proper thing to do, he said, seeing as you two were together. He asked me to give it to you.’ She pauses, turning her wedding ring. ‘I think Rosa meant it to be found one day, Jar. It might have some answers.’
8
Cambridge, Summer Term, 2012 (continued)
It was late by the time we reached Jar’s rooms. We’d walked the streets of Cambridge for more than an hour, stopping off in All Saints Passage for a kebab, which we shared and both regretted, and then, finally, he asked what I’d like to do.
I was still feeling cold inside from my dip in the Cam, but I didn’t want our evening to end. He’s a good listener, or perhaps he just couldn’t get a word in edgeways. There’s something about his manner that made me unburden myself, tell him more than I’ve told anyone since I’ve arrived at Cambridge. If only I could talk about the one thing that’s looming ever larger in my life, darkening or brightening the horizon, I’m not sure any more.
‘Can you show me your etchings?’ I asked, linking my arm in his for the first time. He looked at me and then smiled as a group of drunken students pushed past on King’s Parade.
‘Aren’t I meant to ask that?’
‘OK then.’
‘Would you like to come up for a—’ Another student knocked into his shoulder, rocking his broad frame sideways, but he didn’t react.
‘For a what?’ I grinned.
‘For a coffee,’ Jar said. ‘Better make that a whiskey.’
His rooms were spacious compared to mine, a lot tidier, too. Big windows overlooking King’s Parade, a bedroom off a decent-sized sitting room – the sort of Brideshead accommodation that people might imagine when they think of Cambridge. I wandered around, trailing my hand over the worn burgundy leather sofa and armchair. He even had a fireplace. The walls were lined with books – Yeats, Synge, Heaney – and his laptop was resting closed on a desk in the corner, an anglepoise light hanging its head in shame above it. A row of Irish whiskey bottles stood on the windowsill, a Villagers CD propped up next to one of them.
I still had no idea where the evening was heading, but I felt comfortable in Jar’s company, enough to ask him if I could change out of my damp clothes while they dried.
‘I would run you a bath, but it’s a couple of miles down the corridor,’ he said, passing me his paisley dressing gown from the back of the door. ‘We don’t want the neighbours talking now. You can change in there,’ he added, nodding at the bedroom.
‘Here’s fine,’ I said. We were standing in the sitting room, beside the sofa. ‘You saw it all down by the Cam anyway.’
‘I wasn’t looking. Would you like a whiskey?’
‘Not even a peep?’
He didn’t answer as he fetched a bottle and glass from the windowsill and poured a generous measure.
‘Here, it’ll warm you up,’ he said, passing me the glass. ‘Twelve-year-old Redbreast – single pot still Irish whiskey. Sherry cask, first-use bourbon barrels. Plenty of fruit and spice with oak variations.’
‘How can I resist?’ I whispered. We were standing close now, facing each other.
‘That’s what my da says, anyway. He gives me a bottle of the stuff every New Year, along with extensive tasting notes.’
‘Where’s your glass?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I’ve already drunk my life’s allocation.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘I can’t complain.’
‘On me, I mean.’
‘Besides, I write better when I’m sober.’
‘I didn’t know you were planning to write tonight.’
We were so close now our faces were almost touching.
‘It never seems to stop. Let me help you,’ he said, unbuttoning my shirt. His big fingers – clean, manicured nails – were steady, untrembling. I wondered if he was surprised that I wasn’t wearing anything underneath, already had me down as a bra-free feminist.
I took a sip of whiskey, felt it sear my mouth and held it there. As he slipped off my shirt, watching me, my lips, I leant in to kiss him, closing my eyes – properly-deliriously-student-happy for the first time since I arrived in Cambridge – and shared the whiskey. He let it into his mouth and swallowed.
‘Not much resistance there,’ I whispered.
He drew me gently to him, kissed my neck, and then my mouth again. We stopped as I took off his jacket and shirt. I was in no rush, savouring the measured pace, but the rhythm quickened when we kissed again and I felt his bare skin against mine. I slipped my hand into his jeans, holding him tightly as he slid his fingers down the front of my knickers. We stumbled towards the bed, giggling at our awkward, increasingly urgent dance. For a moment he paused above me, and I wanted to tell him everything, but I knew that would be unfair: the burden of my chosen path must rest with me and me alone.
Afterwards, as we drank more whiskey in bed, I apologised if I’d knocked him off the wagon. He hadn’t struck me as an alcoholic, reformed or otherwise. I wanted to talk to him more about his past in Dublin, the life of excess so at odds with his calm manner.
‘It’s nothing complicated,’ he said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘My father runs a bar in Galway, ergo I’ve drunk all my life. I then went to university in Dublin, where I drank some more, usually in The Pav, the campus sports bar, but sometimes off campus at John Kehoe’s, which serves the best pint of Guinness in Dublin.’
‘And now?’
He looked at the whiskey in his glass. ‘The first drop I’ve had since I arrived.’
I nudged him in the ribs, nodding at the row of bottles on the windowsill.
‘Purely medicinal. My life’s better now, more ordered.’
‘Until tonight.’
‘It’s different. I’m not alone.’
He put an arm around me and we lay there in contented silence, my leg hitched over his, under the sheets, until he turned and fixed me with his eyes.
‘You’re not telling me something,’ he said, without any accusation. I could feel my stomach tighten.
‘I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone for a long time.’
‘Are you happy?’
‘I am tonight.’ Happier than he will ever know, but his words had pulled the magic carpet from under us.
‘And do you usually sleep with someone so soon after meeting them?’ he asked, smiling. I wasn’t listening. What had I done?
‘Rosa?’
‘Never,’ I replied, but he knew something had changed. The intimacy of the night had evaporated.
‘Me neither.’
We lay in silence.
‘Can I write something down?’ he said, as if he was asking to turn off the light. ‘I always think I’ll remember later, but I never do.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Late. Stay here tonight. Please.’
I watched him as he got up from the bed, pulled on the dressing gown I’d worn earlier and walked over to his desk, where he opened up his laptop and began to type at once. It wasn’t much of a spectator sport, but I lay back, wondering what he was writing.
‘Almost done,’ he said over his shoulder.
Maybe I’m flattering myself, but I couldn’t help thinking that it was about us, the frisson of our first encounter. My eyes started to well up and I pressed my lips together until they hurt. I knew it wasn’t fair on him. I’ve promised not to get close to anyone, least of all someone like Jar.
I got out of bed and walked across the room, putting my arms around his shoulders as I kissed the top of his head.
‘I have to go,’ I managed to say, my eyes pricking with tears.
9
Jar walks out of the hotel ten minutes after Amy, who insisted that they leave separately. Her anxiety is unsettling rather than
reassuring, a mirror to his own paranoia.
He heads for the beach, telling himself that he wants to fill his lungs with air, listen to the murmuring surge. But the pier soon pulls him with a force he’s unable to resist.
It should hold no significance – Rosa didn’t die here, he tells himself – but as he walks past the Pavilion Theatre and stands at the far end, beside the lifeboat house, the sobs start to come, buckling his knees. It’s been a while since he cried and he allows the tears to flow. The events of the last couple of days have brought things to a head, made him accept what he’s always known. It will be impossible to get on with the rest of his life until he finds out what happened to Rosa.
His hands tighten on the railing as he stares down at the pillars below him, where lengths of snagged old fishing lines blow in the wind like cobwebs. It’s a big drop down to the water – at least forty feet. Jar tries not to think about how long it would take for a body to hit the surface. Next to him is a life-ring and a sign saying ‘No Diving’; beyond that an emergency phone. Did Rosa consider using it?
He looks out to sea, where the distant shapes of wind turbines interrupt the horizon, then turns and walks towards a group of local fishermen and some tourists who have gathered. A few are crabbing, using clear buckets and bright orange reels; others spin with rods. A man is taking a break on a bench that looks more like a bus shelter. There’s a beheaded mackerel and a short black-handled knife at his feet, a half-empty glass of Guinness in his hand. Beside him is an iPad, no doubt to record any catches, and an empty bottle of Lucozade.
