by J. S. Monroe
‘Just curious,’ Sejal said. I admired her sassiness.
‘For the record, you’ll be working for both. I hope that answers it for you.’
Sejal glanced over at me. We both knew very well that it didn’t, that there will be more questions than answers in what lies ahead.
31
‘You look tired,’ Amy says, sipping on a coffee. Jar had gone back to check on his flat and the lock-up after seeing Carl, worried that he might have been burgled again (he hadn’t), and then headed out to meet Amy at a café in Greenwich Park – her choice of venue. It’s exactly a week since they met in Cromer. Once again, Jar has felt followed – a man at the far end of his carriage on the Docklands Light Railway looked over in his direction once too often – so he got off at Mudchute, walked through the tunnel under the Thames, to the Cutty Sark, and continued up to the park on foot.
‘I’ve never thanked you for giving me Rosa’s diary,’ Jar says, sitting down at the table. He glances around the café as Amy pours him a coffee from a cafetière. Her hand is trembling.
For a moment, he thinks a man being served a pot of tea at the counter is the same person who boarded his train at Canary Wharf.
‘Are you still seeing your American therapist?’ Amy asks, not picking up on Jar’s mention of the diary.
‘I’ve had a couple of sessions on her couch,’ he says, taking one more look at the man at the counter before focusing on Amy. He doesn’t know whether to tell her about Kirsten, his theory that she’s the same woman who counselled Rosa at Cambridge.
‘How about you?’
‘I’m hopeful the therapy’s working. I’m slowly weaning myself off all the medication.’
‘That’s good. What’s the story with Martin?’
‘The police released him as soon as they got back what they wanted,’ she says. ‘It was a joke and they know it.’
‘Is he OK now?’
Amy looks down. Jar notices the red-raw cuticle on her index finger. Rosa only spoke once about her aunt’s marriage, hinting at an unhealthy imbalance.
‘He’s still furious with me for getting someone to look at my computer,’ she says. ‘For getting him arrested. Keeps saying I should have asked him to fix it. But he’s always too busy.’
‘In his shed?’
Amy nods at him and then turns away. Jar remembers their domestic set-up from his visits to Cromer: the large Victorian house on the edge of the town, Martin’s ‘shed’ at the bottom of the garden, a no-expense-spared office where he seemed to live day and night, working on his big novel, when he wasn’t out cycling.
‘The police arrested me, too – after a session with my counsellor on Harley Street. Risky business, therapy. A fella called Miles Cato interviewed me at Savile Row police station about the hard drive. Ever heard of him?’
Amy shakes her head. She doesn’t seem surprised that Jar was arrested, as if it was to be expected, which Jar finds disconcerting. ‘Did he ask about Martin?’
‘He suspects him of possessing indecent images – level four.’
Amy sits back. ‘So why don’t they charge him?’
Jar can’t help wondering if she’s not sure either. ‘They think the incriminating evidence is on the hard drive. I guess they haven’t been able to access it yet.’
Amy sits up, leans in towards him, for the first time looking animated, like Rosa used to. ‘You do realise this has nothing to do with any obscene images, don’t you, Jar? Martin’s arrest, your arrest, Miles Cato. It’s about Rosa, her death,’ she continues. ‘There must have been something in her diary.’
She’s asking a leading question, desperate to know more, but Jar’s not sure where to start. Before the entries began to arrive, there was still a chance that he was deluded, that the authorities’ interest in the hard drive had nothing to do with Rosa. But the contents of her diary have changed everything.
He begins by telling Amy about Dr Lance’s initial concern for Rosa, and then her meeting with Karen, the college counsellor, but he doesn’t mention the likeness with Kirsten, his own American therapist. Not yet. Carl’s words – it’s just a coincidence, Jar – are still ringing in his ears and he has no wish to undermine his case. Amy is listening, leaning in.
He talks about Rosa’s trip to the retreat in Herefordshire, signing the Official Secrets Act, being offered a second chance in life. And then he tells her about Max Eadie’s story on the dark web, its striking similarities with Rosa’s diary.
‘I checked online,’ Jar says. ‘Sejal, her roommate in Herefordshire, “died” a few weeks after Rosa, body never found.’
‘Be careful, Jar,’ Amy says, resting a hand on his arm. Jar looks away, glancing around the café, and then turns to her, holding her gaze.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he says.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Did Rosa ever talk about us, as a couple?’
‘Of course. Why?’
‘This sounds pretty vain,’ Jar begins, before checking himself. ‘She doesn’t write about us very much, that’s all. In her diary. For sure, there’s stuff in there about how we first met, but she never—’
‘Jar, she loved you,’ Amy says, taking both his hands in hers. ‘With all her heart.’
‘Nice of you to say so, but—’
‘I remember her telling me once, before she began at Cambridge, that she hoped she would find someone there to share the rest of her life with. Just like Jim had found her mother when they were students together. It didn’t happen for a while – she was still missing Jim too much – but then, one day, in the summer term, when she came up to Cromer on her own, she took me aside, breathless with excitement, and told me that she’d found that person. We hugged for a long while, cried a bit and laughed. I insisted that she brought this lucky man along the next time she visited. Which is how you and I met.’
32
Cromer, Summer Term, 2012
I’m feeling low tonight. I had hoped that getting out of Cambridge with Jar and staying with my aunt might help, but my downers are getting darker, and each time I wonder if I’ll ever manage to resurface. It’s like slipping over a cliff into an expanse of black material that has no limits and wraps you up as you fall, shutting out the light until you can see nothing but blackness and there’s no longer enough air to breathe. My only solace is that it will all soon be over. I know I’ve made the right decision, even if it means leaving Jar behind and it won’t bring Dad back.
Jar is asleep beside me – he drank too much whisky with Martin after dinner. They get on well, talk a lot about writing. Maybe I’ve missed something about Martin, placed too much on Dad’s distrust of him. A part of me wants to share with Jar how low I am about Dad, but I feel so guilty about our relationship, knowing what lies ahead. In other circumstances, another life, he might have been a part of my future, but that’s not possible now. I shouldn’t have asked him to come up here with me this weekend.
Something weird happened when Martin picked us up from the station in Norwich today. (He does all the driving because Amy’s too much of a liability in the car, with all those meds she’s on, though she’s trying to wean herself off them now.) There was a pheasant lying in the road. I’m not sure if it was alive or whether the wind was just ruffling its feathers, but instead of avoiding it, Martin veered and drove straight over the bird, turning to me after the sickening thud beneath the car. None of us said anything. Jar thought I was making too much of it when we talked afterwards, said Martin was putting an injured bird out of its misery, nothing more, and I should give him a break. Perhaps he’s right. Martin’s just a natural loner, happiest in his own company, high up in the wheelhouse.
A few minutes ago, while I was lying here, I heard Martin and Amy arguing. Jar didn’t stir. (He looks so at peace when he sleeps, it seems a crime to wake him.) Dad used to say he was amazed they ever got married, but then Dad was biased. He and Amy were very close. Dad was always the protective elder brother, particularly when she had a breakdo
wn of some sort in her late teens – too much heavy partying, apparently.
It was never going to work between Dad and Martin. Dad had a thing about Big Pharma, said he’d seen so many horror stories in the developing world: unethical clinical trials, overpriced essential medicines. He said Amy had a natural aversion to it too, until her teenage neuroses blossomed into a full-blown anxiety disorder after uni. The stress of restoring famous paintings, I reckon – scratching away at a £10 million Brueghel with a scalpel and a microscope is enough to make anyone anxious. That’s when Martin stepped in and ‘saved’ her.
She’s a lot better than she has been, but she’s still not back at work, which makes me sad.
Anyway, I tried to hear what Amy and Martin were arguing about tonight, but this is a big home (‘the house that Valium built’, Dad used to joke) and our bedroom is on the opposite side to the kitchen. So I crept along the landing, past the bookshelves, also arranged alphabetically (Knausgaard next to Le Carré), and stood at the top of the stairs, remembering not to step on one particular floorboard that always creaks.
‘You don’t see her for years and now she’s here almost every weekend,’ Martin was saying.
‘I’m her only family now. We should have seen more of her.’
‘She sits in the back, like I’m her chauffeur, and says nothing the whole way. I don’t know what Jar sees in her.’ His voice was heavy with resentment, unaware that Amy was not being entirely truthful, that she and I used to meet up in London for secret shopping sprees, encouraged by Dad, who was acutely conscious of the need for a female influence on my life. In my early teens, it was trips to Oxford Street to buy bras together. Since Dad’s death, it’s been more drinking than retail therapy, Amy showing me the Cambridge haunts of her own youth.
‘They did offer to take the train to Cromer,’ Amy said.
‘It would be all right if she contributed. Walked the dogs. Cooked a meal. I can’t understand why you bother.’
‘It’s what families are meant to do,’ Amy said, seemingly trying to salvage something from the conversation. ‘Care for one another.’
Then there was silence for a bit, maybe because they’d moved to a different part of the kitchen, before they started up again.
‘I know this isn’t an easy time for you,’ Amy said. ‘I get that. I’m just saying it would be nice if you made more of an effort with her.’
A pause. ‘If you promise to make more of an effort with me – us.’
Another pause, then Amy spoke. ‘Martin, not now. We’ve got guests.’
Her voice sounded playful, but then a plate smashed. I listened, straining in vain to catch more of their conversation. Should I wake Jar, I wondered, go downstairs, check Amy’s all right? Martin is tall and physically strong, but he’s never lost his temper, at least not in front of me. I thought I could hear muffled sobbing, but perhaps I imagined it. I walked back down the landing to my room, no longer caring if the floorboards creaked.
Jar hooked a leg over mine when I slipped back into bed just now. I tried to tell him what I’d heard, but he was barely awake.
‘All couples argue,’ he managed to say, a smile waking his sleep-heavy lips. ‘Except us, of course.’
33
‘I owe you an apology. One too many.’
‘We’d all had a few scoops.’
‘It wasn’t professional, I should never have come along.’
Kirsten is sitting behind her desk, Jar is on the sofa. She is back to how she was on their first meeting: buttoned up, businesslike.
‘Can we move forward, as if the other night never happened?’ she asks.
‘We can try.’
‘Great. I still have questions I’d like to ask about your post-bereavement hallucinations, for my research.’
Jar doesn’t say anything. He knows that Kirsten didn’t expect him to come to his morning appointment with her today, after they had got drunk together three days earlier, and he’s had the upper hand ever since he rang her intercom on Harley Street. She played it well, he has to admit, hardly missing a beat as she let him in.
It feels strange being back in this high-ceilinged Georgian room, particularly as he knows he is about to confront Kirsten about Rosa, but he is quite calm. He’s been thinking about today’s meeting ever since he left Amy at the café yesterday. The only surprise is why Kirsten is persisting with the pretence for so long.
‘Can we go back to the most recent sighting, when you saw her at Paddington.’
‘Do we have to?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Do we have to carry on like this? You acting like a sleeveen.’
‘I’m not following you, Jar.’
Jar swallows. He is nervous now. ‘I know about Karen.’
‘Who’s Karen?’
Jar’s had enough. He gets up from the sofa and walks over to Kirsten’s desk. He knows he’s scaring her. He’s scaring himself. He’s not a violent man, never keen on confrontation, but something’s just snapped: five years of frustration, other people’s resolute disbelief.
‘I lied. Last time I was here. Rosa did keep a diary. And she wrote all about you in it. How Dr Lance introduced you to Rosa, how you took her to the retreat in Herefordshire, got her to sign the Official Secrets Act.’
‘Jar, I have no idea what you’re—’
‘Enough, now,’ Jar says, slamming his palm on to the desk. They look at each other for a moment as the noise reverberates in the air around them, then Kirsten sets a mug upright that’s been knocked over. Her hand is trembling. Does she have an alarm somewhere underneath the desk, he wonders, to ring when a patient goes postal? Are burly male nurses about to walk in and bundle him away in a straitjacket? Or maybe Miles Cato will appear from nowhere. After all, Jar knows she rang Cato last time he was here, arranged for him to be picked up in an unmarked police car on the street outside.
‘I just need to find Rosa and I’m figuring you’re looking for her, too, otherwise you wouldn’t have tracked me down, changed your name, pretended it was chance that you met Carl and became my therapist and then tried to become my lover.’
Kirsten inhales deeply, as if she’s calming herself. It’s different from the telltale short intakes of breath she took before. She hasn’t done that today, not yet. It’s a while before she speaks and her eyes are closed as she begins.
‘OK, you’re right. I didn’t find you by chance.’
Jar can’t stop a sudden burst of satisfaction, punching out a sigh from deep inside him, more like a sharp cough. Her adamant denials had begun to sow little seeds of doubt. He walks over to the window and stands with his back to her, looking out through the blinds on to Harley Street, hands thrust deep in his pockets.
‘So why all this pretence? The time-wasting? I need to know what happened to Rosa. Are you here because you think I might find her first? Is that it? That she might have grown disillusioned with her new life and be trying to get her old one back, to seek me out? Who do you work for, Kirsten? Karen? Whatever your name is? Who do you fucking work for?’
He turns around and then faces the window again, without pausing long enough to look at her. He guesses her eyes are still closed as she composes herself.
‘OK, Jar, I’ll tell you. I’m “working” for Amy, Rosa’s aunt, if that’s how you want to describe it.’
‘Amy?’ He turns around.
‘We’re friends. We were at Cambridge together, twenty years ago. She is very concerned about your welfare. You were dating her niece, after all. When she heard that I’m now practising in London, and still have an interest in post-bereavement hallucinations, she asked me to “seek you out”, as you put it. I agreed. She once asked me to talk to Rosa.’
‘Rosa? How long ago?’
‘When I was still in America.’
‘And she was at Cambridge?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you never saw her.’
‘No. Of course I now desperately wish I had. I guess it’s why I said yes
to Amy this time. She knows you’re stubborn, not in the habit of accepting help when people offer it, so I approached Carl as a stranger, made up some story about music in therapists’ waiting rooms, when in fact I’d been given his name by Amy. You’d mentioned Carl to her a few times, I think? And it was easy enough to contact him via your workplace. It was dishonest of me, but we both reasoned that the only way you’d agree to see a therapist was if you thought it was your choice, or at least on the recommendation of Carl, the one person you seem to trust in this world. And when I feared you wouldn’t come to any more sessions, I joined you for a drink, which was totally unprofessional of me, but I was concerned for you. Just like Amy, who loves you dearly by the way.’
Jar turns back to the window. At least Carl isn’t in on this, too, he thinks. He knows what’s coming next and this time he fears she’s not lying.
‘I don’t know anything about a woman called Karen, or a Dr Lance, or Herefordshire.’ Her voice is quiet, calmer now, more confident. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about. Truly.’
‘But…’ Jar knows how ridiculous the words sound even before he says them. ‘Rosa wrote in detail about Karen, her therapist at college. She was American, had blonde hair…’
‘There are a lot of us blonde Yanks about, you know.’
‘And she…’ He pauses again. ‘She sometimes took a sharp intake of breath before she spoke, just like you do.’
His eyes are welling now, his voice more broken.
‘That’s not so unusual, is it?’ she asks.
Jar gathers himself, wipes the back of his hand across his eyes. ‘According to Rosa, Karen once used a particular phrase: “there should be no record, no contrails left in the Fenland sky”. You said something very similar at our first meeting.’
‘That’s probably because I wrote a paper a few years back called “Post-bereavement hallucinations: contrails in the creative mind”.’
