Find Me

by J. S. Monroe

  I’m not sure it’s quite my bag, but it’s had a lot of five-star reviews. (Where would we be without friends and family?) I’ve already ordered my copy. If it’s halfway decent, I’ll invite Jar out one weekend with Rosa and shoot the literary breeze. My problem’s not so much writing CVs for my characters, it’s coming up with an original story. Maybe I just need to revisit existing material. Tell it in a new way.

  My tutor also says that I should keep a notebook to write down character observations, snatches of dialogue and so forth, and feed them back into my journal. It’s something I used to do before I went up to Cambridge, when I thought I would become an author and was trying in vain to write a beatnik novel, scribbling down things I’d overheard before passing them through the prism of peyote and other psychedelic alkaloids. So I bought a notebook in Norwich today, when I was waiting for Rosa to turn up (she was late, of course). It’s a Moleskine. While I was there, I bought a new sketchpad too, in anticipation of next week’s life-drawing class. A says it’ll be good for me, all part of managing the midlife crisis she insists I’m having. I tried to get out of it, but she was adamant: I need to keep my mind busy. If only she knew.

  Things are tense between us at the moment, not least because she’s decided to see our ‘changed domestic circumstances’ as an opportunity to reduce the benzos and other medication that I’ve been giving her for the past twenty years. ‘New beginnings,’ she keeps saying, although she hasn’t actually told me that she’s trying to come off her pills and I’m pretending not to have noticed.

  No one should be on anxiolytics for that long, of course, but it’s managed her anxiety disorders over the years. And, as I’ve told her many times, coming off them is no simple matter: it has to be done slowly and carefully to avoid crippling withdrawal symptoms, which tend to mirror the benzo’s primary benefits: sleeplessness rather than hypnotic effects, anxiety rather than calm, tension rather than relaxed muscles.

  I’m also around the house a lot more, even if I’m mostly down here in my shed. I’ve explained that I’ve signed up for a writing course in a bid to rekindle the passion that once made me consider reading English at Cambridge. It’s the first step on the long road to becoming a published author, I told her, but we both know it’s not enough to justify the amount of time I’m spending here. She’s too decent to challenge me about it, accepting that I need space to sort out my head after I was ‘let go’. (I prefer ‘fired’: there’s a sense of propulsion, going places.) If I could eat, drink and sleep alone in this shed, I would.

  I thought that having time to focus, finally, on what I’ve always wanted to do in life – write a novel – would be a tonic, but I’ve forgotten that putting words in the right order on a page is a slow, painful process, after years of dealing with data. I’ve always kept up my reading, devouring several books a week, but it’s no substitute for the process of writing. If I’m honest, I spend more time surfing the web than working on my book, keeping up with former colleagues (today I’ve been reading the latest on serotonin 2c receptors in Molecular Psychiatry) and, OK, comparing my cycling times with others on Strava. That’s the one good thing about the writer’s life: the scope for endless displacement activities. There are more hours in the day for getting out on the bike, for example. But not as much as I thought there’d be: the internet’s a distracting place.

  48

  I started to file my nails today. It wasn’t intentional, not at first. One of them snapped off when I was hammering my fists against the wall.

  I looked down at my other nails, some broken, one removed, several extending by almost half an inch, beginning to curl up like peel, and remembered showing my hands to Dad before Sunday lunch (roast beef, homemade horseradish sauce, just the two of us). He used to take my fingers in his and turn them as if they were the most precious objects in the world. What would he think of them now?

  So I rubbed them all against the walls until they were smooth. Jar had beautiful hands, nails like polished marble.

  49

  Jar keeps having to check himself as he walks back down the track to Gurnard’s Head. The barmaid – she’s told him her name is Morvah – is struggling to keep up with his long, purposeful strides, breaking into an occasional jog at his side.

  He bounced around the pub for half an hour until Morvah’s shift finished at 4 p.m. After she’d fetched a bandage for the bruise on his head and fastened it with an oversized safety pin, her gentle hands lingering afterwards, he’d sat at the bar, drinking Guinness, trying to calm himself down, telling her about Rosa when she wasn’t serving customers. She had listened patiently, throwing him suggestive glances that might, in different circumstances, have stirred something in him. Jar was happy to be distracted when the conversation turned to literature. She read a lot, when she wasn’t surfing, she said: Proust, Joyce, Sebald.

  He’d enjoyed talking to her until he’d seen Rosa, sitting in a corner. She was gone again in a blink, but not before Jar had caught her frowning. He knew it was a hallucination, but it stopped him in his tracks. He was drunk, pretending to admire authors he had never read. And still speaking way too fast. Carl was right: he sounded like he was on amphetamines. His mind was all over the place after he’d spoken to his friend on the phone. Carl’s refusal to believe him about the photo had forced him to doubt what had happened on Gurnard’s Head, whether Rosa had been there at all. He was impatient to revisit the spot with someone, a third party, to reassure himself, validate the moment, and Morvah had offered to come with him. He was aware she’d taken to him, but no one could accuse him of leading her on. He’d made his feelings for Rosa more than clear.

  Now, as they reach the old engine house, they pass an elderly man walking two dogs. When he nods at them both, glancing at Jar’s bandaged head, Jar stops to talk, trying in vain to sound normal, friendly.

  ‘Rare sunny day, did you see anyone here earlier?’

  Slow down, he thinks. The man, wisps of his grey hair flying in the sea wind, looks at Jar and then at Morvah, who comes up to join them. He seems to recognise her.

  ‘Hello, Morvah,’ he says.

  ‘It’s OK, he’s with me, Mr Thorne,’ she says, sensing his unease. Jar thinks she must be a good barmaid, goes the distance, looks out for people in the community, when she’s not surfing. She was meant to be meeting up with friends at Sennen Cove but had bailed and accompanied Jar instead.

  ‘I was just asking if you might have seen anything strange earlier,’ Jar continues. ‘Maybe an hour ago.’

  ‘Depends what you mean by strange,’ Mr Thorne says, growing in confidence, winking at Morvah before nodding towards Jar.

  ‘Mr Thorne lives in the house up the track here,’ Morvah says.

  The man looks at them both and continues. ‘A car drove up the track an hour back,’ he says. ‘I didn’t see it arrive.’

  ‘What sort of car was it?’ Jar asks.

  ‘Green Mini. Rental from Penzance. It had a sticker in the rear window.’

  The same vehicle that had passed him earlier, when he stepped off the bus.

  ‘Did you see who was in it?’ Jar asks. ‘How many people?’ Mr Thorne looks like the sort of man who would have: Neighbourhood Watch material.

  ‘One in the front. Big-looking bloke.’

  Jar manages a smile, trying to seem less deranged. He needs to encourage this man to reveal more.

  ‘My friend here is looking for someone,’ Morvah says. Jar clocks the word ‘friend’, makes a note to thank her later. ‘He thinks she might have been in the car.’

  Mr Thorne seems to sense that no one is being entirely straight with him. He’s right, Jar thinks. All he can think of right now is Rosa curled up in the boot, hands and feet tied with rope, a gag in her mouth.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ he asks, looking from Jar to Morvah.

  ‘Did you catch the name of the hire-car company?’ Jar asks.

  ‘It’s the one down by the harbour.’

  Morvah nods knowingly.
Jar has asked enough. Any more questions and Mr Thorne might ring the police, the last thing Jar needs. He’ll ask Morvah about the car hire.

  Jar thanks Mr Thorne and they hurry on to Gurnard’s Head, Morvah jogging at his side. He pictures her running into the waves, board under one arm. Why do surfers always run down to the sea like that?

  ‘Where exactly are we going?’ she asks.

  ‘I want to show you where she was, where her tent was pitched.’

  ‘I do believe you.’

  ‘I know. I appreciate that. Really. And thanks back there, for reassuring Mr Thorne about me. Do you know the car-hire firm he mentioned? We need to go there after this.’

  Ten minutes later, they are standing on the top of Gurnard’s Head. Jar’s head wound is starting to throb again. Either the painkiller that Morvah gave him at the pub is wearing off, or it’s being back at the scene where he was hit on the head.

  ‘She was here, sitting just here,’ Jar says, indicating the patch of grass by the cliff where he had first set eyes on Rosa a few hours earlier. ‘And this is where her tent was,’ he adds.

  ‘You would expect the ground to be flattened in some way,’ Morvah says, pushing her sunglasses up on to her hair as she looks more closely.

  She’s right, Jar thinks. Why hasn’t the tent left a mark on the grass? It’s thick here, strong tuffs to withstand the sea gales, but there’s no depression. Perhaps she had only just pitched the tent. He turns to the sea and looks out across the bay, where Atlantic waves are rolling in. The afternoon sun is still high, but its rays are beginning to weaken. If the whole thing was a post-bereavement hallucination, then it’s the most convincing one yet.

  He breathes in the fresh air, wishing the photo had got through to Carl.

  ‘We took a selfie, standing right here, a few seconds before she was taken away.’

  His words linger between them.

  ‘I think we should head back, get that cut looked at properly.’

  ‘I’m not concussed, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I know you’re not.’

  ‘She was right here,’ Jar says again, but Morvah is already out of earshot, walking back up the narrow path.

  50

  Cromer, 2012

  A held her life-drawing class tonight. She’s drawing again, thinks it can replace the pills. I tried again to get out of it, but she insisted. There’s only so much resistance a man can offer.

  ‘I don’t feel so good,’ I protested, but she saw through it. Truth is, I felt better than ever, my senses sharpened by the cognitive enhancer I took twenty minutes earlier, and I was keen to see how it would affect my drawing skills. It’s been helping with the writing.

  ‘Come on, babe, you can’t sit in your shed all the time.’

  She knows I like it when she calls me babe: it makes me feel younger, less like an ageing scientist. And it’s what Rosa calls Jar, too.

  I composed myself, adjusted the cuffs on my shirt and walked out of the kitchen. The sitting room was full. It was a nice crowd – A used to love a good party, in the early days – but I needed to be away from there, from the young female student sitting naked on the table in front of me.

  ‘Last week it was a man,’ the only other male, a partner of one of A’s friends, whispered to me as we got out our sketchpads and pencils. ‘Perched on the dining room table like an inappropriate bowl of fruit.’

  Sasha, our model, wore an expression that suggested she would rather be anywhere but naked in a house in Cromer, surrounded by strangers sucking on their HB pencils. I couldn’t blame her. I assumed she was an actress. Most of them are, apparently.

  In some ways, she reminded me of Rosa. Same big hair, full mouth, surly attitude. A good figure, too: more apple than pear. Swimmer’s shoulders, slim hips.

  After forty-five minutes, I took a break to serve some South African Shiraz. A came out to the kitchen, where I was filling the glasses she’d set out on a tray.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she said, resting her hand on my arm, leaning in to me.

  She still thinks I haven’t noticed that she’s reduced her dose – and is drinking more to compensate.

  ‘Some people are put on this earth to draw. I’m not one of them.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ she said, leafing through my sketchpad, which I’d left on the sideboard.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, closing it firmly.

  She assumed I was being playful and snatched the sketchpad away, shielding it with both arms as she held it tight against her chest, her whole body swaying. ‘Don’t be shy,’ she said, smiling.

  I couldn’t protest any longer. Reluctantly, I resumed pouring the wine, trying to picture what I’d drawn.

  A leant against the sideboard as she opened the page, then turned it on its side. ‘It’s good. Not bad at all.’ Then she looked at the picture a bit more closely. My chest tightened. ‘I don’t remember her wearing a choker necklace.’

  ‘Artistic licence,’ I said, and took the Shiraz through to the sitting room.

  51

  Shahrayar’s palace is finally complete in my mind, each piece of marble, every block of granite laid with care and precision in its rightful place. I wasn’t aware of how much I knew about architecture until now. Alhambra arches, no problem: none of those corbelled jobs for me (amazing what I can remember from Dad’s talks on holiday).

  The last room I built was Scheherazade’s bedroom, where she retreated each night to think up the next story to keep her alive. Tomorrow I will start to tell Scheherazade’s stories, followed by some of my own.

  I’m looking forward to the weekend. Dad and I are going on holiday, the best one we ever had. I’m packing tonight and I’m already excited. We will leave for the airport early – warm bacon ciabatta sandwiches wrapped in foil for the car journey – and then, ten hours later – 36,000 seconds – we’ll be in Delhi. It will be a dull plane journey, a lot of sitting around, but I think I can cope with that. At least I’ll be able to choose the movie.

  Now, though, I must keep writing this diary – not the one that I am asked to memorise every day, but this one, which no one knows about. I found some scrap paper and a blue biro down here. I try not to think about what will happen when the ink runs out or if they discover where I hide the paper, behind the sink. Writing a diary is the only thing that’s keeping me sane – that and the mind games.

  My past has become a sickening blur, but when I concentrate, I can still pick out a few snapshots from my memory that I know to be true, like the night Jar and I walked for miles through the streets of Cambridge, ending up at a Turkish restaurant on Mill Road at 1 a.m. They asked us to leave at 3 a.m., but not before I’d realised I’d found the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

  We were drunk and the only people left in the restaurant.

  ‘How long have we known each other?’ I asked, resting my hand on his.

  ‘All of a month,’ he said.

  ‘It already feels like a lifetime.’

  ‘In a good way? Or in a world-weary-married-couple sort of way?’

  I lifted his hand to my lips and kissed it.

  ‘My reality fractured when Dad died – broke clean in two. In one, that split second when I first wake up, he is still alive. In the other, I know he’s dead. Since we met, I am finding the strength to accept my life as it now is – one without Dad. Thank you.’

  ‘I wish I could have met him,’ Jar said, turning my fingers in his big hands.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Will you come over to Ireland this summer? Meet my da and ma?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  ‘I can show you the Connemara coast, Cleggan Head.’

  I paused, losing myself in his eyes. ‘I’m not sure what I’d have done if I hadn’t met you. It frightens me to think about it.’

  ‘Then don’t,’ he said, leaning in to kiss me. ‘Didn’t you say you’d once been on a mindfulness retreat? In Herefordshire or somewhere? They must have tau
ght you how to cut out negative thoughts. And meat. And whiskey…’

  I don’t know what I said next. I wish I did, but I can no longer remember what memories are mine, what really happened on that dreaded retreat.

  52

  Jar and Morvah sit in silence in her VW Beetle, looking out across the car park in Penzance at the green Mini. A surfboard is wedged in the back of the Beetle, its nose protruding between them, pressing against the car roof. After this, Morvah is off in search of waves.

  He studies the Mini, certain it’s the same one that Mr Thorne, the man on the coast path, saw yesterday. And the one he saw passing him at the pub. When they arrived at the car park five minutes ago, the sight of it had stunned him.

  ‘Are you going in?’ Morvah says, glancing across at him.

  Jar puts a hand up to the plaster that she gave him for his head.

  Yesterday evening is a blur. He took up her offer of an empty staff room out the back of the pub and went to bed early, his head aching with the wound and too much Guinness. ‘Irish anaesthetic,’ someone at the bar quipped, and Morvah had smiled nervously. Alcohol seemed the only way to slow himself down and cope with everything that had happened: finding Rosa after five years, only to watch her being taken away from him minutes later.

  He’s now certain that the tall figure on Gurnard’s Head was the same person who tried to board his night train. And he’d led him to Rosa. Acting on Cato’s orders, Jar assumes, the man must have come to Cornwall by car, having missed the train, then followed his bus out from Penzance to Rosa’s hiding place on the cliffs. The night train was an eight-hour journey – the drive from London could be done in six. He’d had plenty of time to wait for Jar.

  ‘He must have hired the Mini when he arrived in Penzance,’ Jar says. ‘Switched vehicles, just to be careful.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask them?’ Morvah nods at the small Portakabin office beyond the Mini.