by J. S. Monroe
Jar adjusts his feet, realising that he’s been resting them on a squashed banana. The floor on his side is littered with sweet papers, crushed juice cartons and an empty Paddington Bear lunchbox.
‘I was convinced that Cato was after her diary,’ Jar says. ‘But he really is just a policeman trying to clean up the darker recesses of the web. I accept that now.’
‘Who do you think took Rosa from Cornwall then?’ Max asks, drawing up at the row of toll booths at the far end of the bridge.
Jar waits before he speaks, watching Max pay the toll and accelerate away from the booths. ‘There’s something I need to show you.’ He pulls out a sheet of paper from his coat pocket, the copy he’d made of the confidential memo he’d handed over to Cato in the car. He holds it up for Max to see.
‘Christ, what’s that?’ Max says, as if Jar has just produced a ticking bomb.
‘Top Secret Strap 3, UK Eyes Only, that’s what it is.’
‘Where the hell did you get it?’
‘The original was sent to me at work.’
‘Who by? Edward bloody Snowden? What does it say?’
‘It’s about a programme called Eutychus and gives Rosa’s date of birth and date of death in Cromer.’
‘When did you get this?’
‘Three days ago, on Friday, the day before I saw Rosa.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything, show it to me last night?’
Jar hesitates. ‘I wasn’t sure whose side you were on.’
‘Fair enough.’ Max glances again at the document. ‘It might be a fake, of course.’
‘Or the proof you were looking for when you wrote your article.’
‘I assume you know who Eutychus was? The man so bored of listening to one of St Paul’s sermons that he dozed off and fell to his death from a third-floor window. St Paul was horrified – embarrassed too. Not great if you’re trying to get on the after-dinner-speakers circuit. So he rushed over to the body and managed to resuscitate him. Brought him back to life, Jar. Like Lazarus.’
‘I get it.’
‘And just like all the bright students who supposedly committed suicide and were given new lives,’ Max says. ‘It’s dynamite if it’s genuine – a front-page splash. “Highly shareable content”.’
Jar smiles at Max’s derisive tone and then turns away, looking out across the passing countryside.
‘Sorry. Insensitive.’
‘Not at all,’ Jar says. ‘You’ve got to tell the world. Properly this time. It’s the only way I’ll get Rosa back.’
62
Cromer, 2012
‘We should talk about last night,’ A said, nursing a mug of rooibos tea at the kitchen table.
We have never talked about last night.
‘I said I was sorry,’ I replied, standing at the sideboard, my back to her. I was making another pot of coffee to take down to the shed. Strava was calling. I went out on a long cycle ride first thing this morning to clear my head, avoid the retributions.
‘I know things aren’t easy at the moment,’ she said.
‘I’m fine, honestly,’ I said.
‘I wasn’t talking about you.’
I waited for the kettle to boil.
‘I’m trying to get clean, Martin, wean myself off all my medication. Get my life back. Our life.’
‘I had noticed. You could kill yourself if you come off too quickly, you do know that?’
There’s no danger of that, of course, as I’m still administering her main benzo through her daily ‘sleeping pill’. (It turns out she did forget to take it last night, and took one later, after she eventually emerged from the bathroom.) But she doesn’t need to know. If she thinks she is regaining control of her life by reducing some of the other fast-acting compounds I give her, so be it.
‘I can cope until something like this happens.’
A wasn’t listening to me. ‘And Kirsten’s therapy won’t be enough on its own. Not with your condition.’
‘It reminded me of when we were first together in Cambridge,’ she continued.
‘In a bad way?’
I have only happy memories of that innocent period of our lives. She had just graduated in history of art and started her first job, restoring pictures at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Whittlesford, a few miles south of Cambridge. I was a PhD student, dividing my time between the university and working up the road at the contract research lab in Huntingdon.
‘You once asked me something: whether you could tie my wrists to the bed. We were drunk at the time and I laughed it off, forgot all about it. You never asked again. Last night, I remembered.’
‘It was nothing, Amy. I was being clumsy, that’s all. And I don’t recall ever asking to tie your wrists.’ I was lying, of course. I remember it well.
‘Are you watching porn? Is that what you’re doing in the shed?’
‘I’m trying to write a book.’
‘We should talk about it if you are. I’m not completely naïve, you know… We could watch it together, as long as it’s ethical porn. I was reading about it the other day, would like to see what all the fuss is about.’
‘I’m trying to write my novel, Amy. Finally. That’s all.’
She turned to the newspaper on the table and idly flicked through the pages. ‘With weird sex in it?’ She was smiling now.
‘It’s going to be a spy story. Maybe.’
63
My debut haiku
It took me half the summer
A joke? If only
64
The retreat is more comfortable than Jar was expecting. During the three-hour drive down from London he had imagined a sparse mountain barn where students sat cross-legged on cold stone floors. Instead, he and Max find themselves standing outside a Victorian former farmhouse surrounded by an orchard, a walled garden and clean, converted outbuildings with lots of glass and exposed oak beams.
‘The property sits on high ground at the head of the Olchon Valley, in the shadow of the magnificent Hatterall Ridge,’ the estate agent says. She points first down the valley and then up at the ridge, like a flight attendant gesturing towards a plane’s exit doors. Jar senses that it’s not the first time she’s given this spiel.
‘The famous Offa’s Dyke footpath follows the Hatterall Ridge, marking the border between England and Wales. If you place your right hand palm down, then we say around here that you are holding the Black Mountains: your thumb is the Cat’s Back, over there, your first finger is Hatterall, your second finger is Ffawyddog…’
The estate agent had met them at the house. They’d hatched a plan in the car: the two of them are representing an overseas client – no details offered, Russian if asked – who is keen to buy a weekend country retreat. Now, as they stand outside the front door, waiting for the agent to find the right key, Jar feels quite emotional. He wants confirmation that Rosa came here, that the diary hasn’t been doctored, as Max suggested.
‘This is the main reception area,’ the estate agent says, once they are inside the house. ‘It was used for the larger meditation classes but could easily be converted back into a traditional drawing room.’
Jar looks at the white walls, the pale blue carpet. There are no pictures or bookcases, just one mirror above a bricked-up fireplace. At the far end, in front of a pair of imposing floor-to-ceiling windows, two meditation stools are the only evidence of the room’s former purpose. Jar tries to picture Rosa sitting there, eyes closed perhaps, listening intently to Karen in the morning light as she attempts to make sense of her life, the death of her father, the disappointment of Cambridge.
Upstairs, the estate agent shows them a number of bedrooms, most of them with two beds, some of the bigger ones with four. Again, she talks about how easily they could be converted for private use.
‘Our client’s main concern is security,’ Max says, winking at Jar before turning to look out of a bedroom window on to the Olchon Valley below. Jar glances out too, spots a buzzard soaring in the wind, flying in
the currents rising around Hatterall Ridge. Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer…
‘The nearest neighbour is almost a mile away,’ the estate agent says. ‘And there’s only one road into the valley, so you would know well in advance if you had visitors.’
‘Do you mind if I take a look around?’ Jar asks.
‘Of course,’ the woman says. ‘The place is yours.’ She throws a hopeful glance at Max.
Jar leaves Max to discuss security for their fictitious Russian client and walks out on to the landing, wondering which of the rooms Rosa might have shared with Sejal. Hesitating at the doorway to the smallest room, occupied by twin beds, he decides to take a closer look before going back downstairs. Perhaps she wrote her name on the wall, or carved her initials into the bed?
It’s not a prison, he tells himself. It’s a peaceful retreat – a place of silence. He glances at the two beds, both made up, the duvets tucked in with Indian patterned bedspreads. Rosa would have liked that touch. He turns and is about to go down the varnished wooden staircase, when a voice calls out to him.
‘You know we’re not meant to have visitors.’
Rosa. Jar pauses, checking himself, and then looks around. Rosa is sitting on the bed, smiling coyly at him. She puts her fingers to her lips, to indicate that he should be quiet, and pats the bed beside her, encouraging him to sit down.
‘Rosa?’ he says, the whole weight of his body free-falling through his legs.
‘Sejal will be here in a moment. We haven’t got long. They can be quite strict here.’
Jar closes his eyes. When he opens them again, Rosa has gone. He walks over to the bed and sits down, relieved to be taking the weight off his legs.
‘You OK?’
Jar looks up to see Max standing in the doorway. He pauses before answering. ‘This was the room where she stayed, here in this bed.’ He taps the bedspread.
‘How do you know?’ Max glances back along the corridor.
‘It tallies with what she said in her diary.’
‘Are you coming?’ The tone of Max’s voice suggests an order rather than a question.
Down in the hall, Max continues to discuss other aspects of the property with the agent – power supply, water, planning restrictions – while Jar asks if there is a lavatory.
‘At the far end of the corridor,’ the estate agent says, glancing at Max as if to ask if Jar’s OK. Jar guesses he looks spooked after his hallucination.
‘Thanks,’ Jar says, and walks away from them as quickly as he can without arousing suspicion.
A room had caught his eye when they first entered the property: a small office, off the main corridor. Through a half-open door he’d glimpsed a computer and books on a shelf.
Checking that the agent isn’t nearby, he pushes the office door further open and steps inside. There is a desk littered with paperwork, a phone and an old computer. A wipe board on the wall has a few phone numbers written at a sharp diagonal. Jar pulls out his phone and takes a picture of them.
He can still hear Max and the estate agent chatting in the hall: oil deliveries, security lights. The man’s a born bullshitter, Jar thinks. He turns to look behind the door, where there is an old grey filing cabinet. The drawers are all open, the dark green envelope folders lying empty. Even the index labels have been removed. But it’s what’s on the wall above the filing cabinet that interests Jar: a forgotten patchwork of photographs, at least fifty of them, faded snapshots of young people smiling, posing.
Jar walks over to take a closer look, his eyes moving rapidly from one to the next. It’s a while before he spots Rosa, but there she is, standing next to an Asian girl. Sejal, he guesses. There is snow on the ground and they have one scarf wrapped around both their necks and are leaning in to the camera, smiling.
Jar prises the photo off the wall, extricating it carefully from the surrounding photos. He takes one from the edge of the patchwork and puts it in the gap left by the one he’s taken. There’s a date on the back: March 2012. It chimes with what Rosa told him about having gone on a retreat in Herefordshire before they met.
The emails might not have been written by Rosa, Jar thinks, but Max has got it wrong about the diary. Rosa was here, just as she said she was.
65
Cromer, 2012
It seems that I’m not the only person who’s caught the writing bug. I came down this morning to find Rosa sitting at the kitchen table, tapping away at her laptop.
‘Revision?’ I asked, not expecting an answer. She came up from Cambridge yesterday. Usual friendly routine – barely a word in the car from Norwich, spoke to A over dinner as if I didn’t exist. She’s making it very difficult to like her.
It was a while before Rosa answered. ‘I’m keeping a diary,’ she said, not looking up. ‘Amy said it might help.’
‘With what?’ I asked, thinking it was time we flushed out the subject of her father, if only to agree to disagree.
‘Dad was a special man,’ she said, almost to herself.
‘Time’s a great healer,’ I offered, then immediately wished I’d said nothing.
‘You weren’t close to yours, were you?’
Her question took me by surprise. ‘It depends on what you mean by “close”. Things were different in my day.’
She looked up. ‘In what way?’
‘Parents didn’t try to be their children’s best friends.’
‘So you weren’t close, then.’
No, we weren’t, I thought, but I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of being right in your cod diagnosis. The man I thought was my father was a stranger to me in childhood.
‘I can’t pretend your father and I saw eye to eye,’ I said, deflecting her observation. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand how difficult it must be for you.’
Rosa remained silent.
‘You know,’ I continued, ‘there are a lot of proven medical strategies that can help with bereavement, depression.’
She typed on in silence.
‘They’ve helped Amy to turn her life around,’ I added, but I knew it was a lost cause. A’s been confiding in Rosa, boasting about having reduced her medication. It will only end in tears. ‘I’ve been writing a diary, too,’ I continued, changing the subject. ‘More of a journal.’
‘Was Jar helpful?’ she said, less hostile.
‘We chewed the literary cud together.’
‘He’s a good teacher. Patient.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘Is your Wi-Fi working?’ she asked. ‘I can’t seem to connect.’
‘Let me take a look.’
‘I just need to send some emails.’
I searched for the card, but it wasn’t in the normal place on the mantelpiece. A uses a different router in the house – narrow bandwidth, but enough for her needs. I have my own fibre-optic broadband in the shed. Then I saw the card, over by the phone. I picked it up, glanced at the access code scrawled in A’s illegible hand as I gave it to Rosa, and left the kitchen. Two minutes later, Rosa was at the back door, calling out to me as I recycled our wine bottles. A might be cutting down on the benzos, but she’s drinking more. We both are.
‘There still seems to be a problem with the Wi-Fi,’ Rosa said.
I came back into the kitchen, sat down at the table and looked at her MacBook Air. Rosa had moved to one side and was standing behind me. As I opened up the Wi-Fi preferences, her mobile phone rang.
‘Hi, babe,’ she said, walking away to stand by the open back door. Babe. I glanced across at her. She was looking at me but turned away, as if I was intruding on her conversation. Sometimes I’m taken aback by how much Rosa reminds me of A when she was younger. I wish we could get on better.
Rosa’s gmail inbox window had been minimised, but I wasn’t interested in reading her college emails. It was her diary I was after. I couldn’t resist the opportunity. For purely professional purposes, of course – I wanted to see how a real o
ne measured up against my own attempts at writing a journal – but I told myself there was another reason, too: I need to understand Rosa better if I am to learn to like her, understand her world, get closer. She’s A’s niece, after all. Family. I must make more of an effort.
Turning Wi-Fi off and on in preferences, I selected A’s router. Rosa had entered the code incorrectly. A few moments later, her computer was connected.
I glanced again at the door. Rosa was deep in conversation. Without hesitating, I maximised her gmail window, created an email, attached the diary document, which I found easily enough on her desktop, and sent it to my own address. I then opened her sent emails, deleted the email, selected the deleted box and deleted it from there, too, before I returned the screen to the inbox, as it had been, and minimised. Literary theft. Does it count as a proper crime?
‘All sorted,’ I said, looking up at Rosa, who was walking back over to the kitchen table. I was struggling to control my breathing.
‘Thanks. What was the problem?’ she asked, sitting down at the table.
‘Amy’s handwriting. You’d entered the access key incorrectly.’
‘Jar sends his regards, hopes the novel’s progressing.’
‘I’ve just made an important breakthrough,’ I said, unable to conceal a smile.
66
My guard brought me some ‘civilian’ clothes today – Ali Baba trousers and a fleece. He gave them to me after the session, said it was to reward my good behaviour. I am no longer a non-compliant detainee, apparently.
I won’t wear the clothes. I will keep them for the outside.
He will never let me go, not after this long. My only chance of freedom is if I escape. I try not to be excited at the thought, even though I can feel the adrenaline rising through my body as I write these words. I must remain neutral, on a level, grey. No colour, no joy or sadness. Nothing.
My guard is a man of habit, of order and routine, but he will make a mistake. We all do, sooner or later.
