Land of the Living

by Nicci French

  "Do you think you've got time?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Before your detective gets here."

  I mumbled something unintelligible.

  "Are you ill?" he said.

  That reminded me. I extracted a couple of pills from the container in my pocket and swallowed them with a gulp of water from the tap. "I get these headaches still," I said. "But that's not really it."

  "So what is really it?"

  I sat at the table and put my head in my hands for a moment. Sometimes if I could find the right position for my head the throbbing eased a little. I heard a clattering sound. Ben was making tea. He brought the two mugs across to the table. He didn't sit down. He leant on the arm of Jo's big chair. I sipped at the tea.

  "I've become this version of the Ancient Mariner. I trap people in corners and tell them my story. I've started to wonder whether there's really any point. The police didn't believe me. The more I tell it, the less I believe it myself."

  Ben didn't reply. He just looked at me.

  "Don't you have a job to go to?" I said.

  "I'm the boss," he said. "I can come and go when I want."

  So I gave him a faltering, fragmented version of my story. I talked to him about my problems with Jay and Joiner's, some of which he knew about because he had been on the edge of them. I told him about walking out on the job and walking out on Terry. Then I took a deep breath and told him about waking up in that cellar, wherever it was, and those days underground and the escape and the days in hospital and not being believed and being ejected back into the world.

  "To anticipate your first question, the one thing I can be really sure about is the bang on my head." I touched it, just above my ear, very delicately. It still made me flinch. "So if the bang could erase bits of my life, maybe it could add bits as well. Do you know, I've never actually said that aloud before? I've thought it, late at night, when I wake up and my blood sugar is low and I think about dying. Maybe if you had an accident and banged your head badly, that might very well be the sort of hallucination you'd have. You might fantasize about being trapped underground and a voice talking to you out of the darkness. Don't you think?"

  "I don't know," said Ben. He looked dazed. "What a nightmare."

  "Perhaps I was mugged somewhere or run over. I might have just been lying somewhere for a few hours. Have you ever had dreams like that? You seem to be living for years, you grow old and then you wake up and it's been a single night. Have you ever had dreams like that?"

  "I don't remember my dreams."

  "That's probably a sign of psychological good health. But I do. You know that when I was there, if I was there, I slept and I had dreams and I remember those dreams as well. Lakes, floating in water, a butterfly on a leaf. Does that prove anything? Is it possible to go to sleep and have a dream, and then in that dream go to sleep and have another dream? Is that possible?"

  "I design taps and pen holders I don't know much about psychology."

  "It's neurology. I know. I've been seen by a psychologist and by a neurologist. The neurologist was the one who believed me. Anyway, that's my story. I've got this bit missing from my brain and I'm going around to see people who probably think I'm insane trying to fill in the gaps. At the same time I'm taking elaborate precautions to hide from someone who probably isn't looking for me. Did you ever do that as a child? You'd play a game of hide and seek and you'd find the most brilliant hiding place. You'd be there for ages, feeling triumphant at first and then bored, and you'd gradually realize that everyone else has given up the game. And furthermore I've got this feeling that I'm just babbling away like a lunatic and you're just standing there being strong and silent and not saying anything. You were wondering where Jo is and you were wondering what I was doing here. Well, I don't know where Jo is and I don't know what I'm doing here, so you can go back to your workshop now."

  Ben came over and took my mug and walked over to the sink with it. He washed up my mug and his own and laid them upside down on the draining-board. He looked around for a dishtowel. But there wasn't one and he had to shake the water off his hands.

  "I think I know what you're doing here," he said. "At least, I know how you met Jo."

  "How?"

  "I introduced you to her."

  Fourteen

  For a moment I felt a wave of excitement as another space of my terra incognita was mapped but it quickly became a sickening lurch. "What are you talking about? Why should you have done that? You didn't seem to know that when you arrived. You were as flabbergasted to see me as I was to see you."

  "I was," he said. "But that must have been what happened." He paused. "Are you serious? Do you really have no memory of meeting her?"

  "I just watched this video that we must have made together of me and her. We seemed to be getting on. I seemed happy. I wish I could remember it. I could do with some happy memories. But, no, I'm sorry, there's nothing there. How did you introduce us? Why?" Ben started to reply and then hesitated. "You're wondering whether to believe me, aren't you? That's great. The police and the doctors don't believe I was abducted. Now you don't believe that I can have lost my memory. Soon I'll probably meet people who don't believe I'm really Abbie Devereaux. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm just impersonating her. It may be a delusion. Maybe I'm really Jo and I'm hallucinating this person called Abbie."

  Ben made an attempt at a smile but then he looked away from me as if he was embarrassed.

  "So I met her on Monday?" I said.

  "Tuesday," he said. "Tuesday morning."

  "I thought you said before that we met on Monday. I'm sure you did."

  "You came back on Tuesday," he said vaguely. "With more questions."

  "Oh. And Jo was at your workshop?"

  "We went and had a coffee down the road, in a cafe not so far from here that she goes to regularly. She was on her way to some appointment, I think. I introduced you. We talked for a bit, then I had to run off. If you want me to reconstruct your conversation, I suppose you told her about needing somewhere to stay. She must have said you could stay here. So there's one mystery solved. Nothing sinister."

  "I see."

  "And you think she's missing?"

  "I told this detective I ... I sort of know. He thinks I'm mad. Well, not mad-mad, of course, but wrong. I hope I am too. I don't know what to do. And for some reason I feel responsible for her. Every time I look up and see her photograph, I feel terrible that I'm not doing more. When I was in that place, a prisoner, I kept thinking that people I knew, my friends, would be looking for me and making a great fuss and worrying all the time, and that kept me going. I had to believe it, it was crucial to feel I was alive in people's thoughts, and one of the worst things about coming back again was to realize that no one had missed me at all."

  "I think' He tried to interrupt.

  "No one had noticed I wasn't around, or if they'd noticed it didn't matter much. It was as if I was invisible. Had died. I mean, it wasn't their fault in the slightest, I know that they're good friends and I think they love me, really, and I'd have done the same in their place. I wouldn't notice if someone wasn't around for a few days -why should I? We come and go in each other's lives, don't we? But I just mustn't do that with Jo. Because I know what it feels like. But I don't know what to do not to do that, if that makes sense. And I'm talking too much and I have this horrible feeling that if I stop talking I may burst into tears."

  I stopped and Ben leant forward and put a hand on my arm. I instinctively jerked away.

  "Sorry," he said, sounding as if he meant it. "It must make you jumpy, having a strange man in your flat. I should have thought."

  "Kind of, I mean I'm sure that .. . Look, I'm like a person stumbling about in the pitch black, if you see what I mean, with my hands outstretched, trying not to fall off the edge. If there is an edge to fall off anyway. Sometimes I think there's some kind of glimmer at the edge of my vision, and I look round and it goes away. I just keep hoping I'll come into the light again
but I don't. Without my memory, it's as if I've lost my map, I'm blundering about and bumping into things, and it's not just that I don't know where I am, I don't know who I am. What is there that's left of me? Especially when other people don't know whether to-' I stopped abruptly. "I'm gabbling again, aren't I?" He didn't answer. He was staring at me in a way that made me nervous. "What was I like when we met before?"

  "What were you like?" He seemed not to understand the question.

  "Yes."

  "Your hair was longer."

  "Well, I know that since it was me who had it cut, but what did I seem like to you? What kind of state was I in?"

  "Um." He looked uncertain and awkward for a moment. "You seemed quite animated."

  "What did we talk about? Did I tell you anything?"

  "Work," he said. "Problems at work."

  "Is that all?"

  "You said you'd just left your boyfriend."

  "I said that to you?"

  "You explained that you were of no fixed address, so you only had a mobile if I needed to call you on business."

  "Anything else? Did I talk about people I'd met recently? Had I met someone else? Did I tell you?"

  "Not exactly," he said. "But I thought you had. At least, I got that impression."

  "You see, I'm thinking maybe the person I met was, you know, him."

  "Him?"

  "The man who grabbed me."

  "I see," he said, standing up. "Tell you what, shall we go and have a drink? You'll probably feel safer with me in a crowd."

  "All right," I said.

  "Come on, then." He picked up his coat from the chair.

  "Nice coat."

  He looked down at it, almost with surprise, as if it were an unknown coat that had been put on him without his knowledge. "It's new."

  "I like those long floppy coats."

  "They're like long cloaks," Ben said. "The sort that people used to wear a couple of hundred years ago."

  I frowned. "Why does hearing that make me feel peculiar?"

  "Maybe you agree."

  The pub was reassuringly crowded and full of the fug of cigarette smoke.

  "I'm buying," I said, and fought my way to the bar.

  A few moments later, we were sitting at a table, with beer and a packet of crisps between us.

  "I don't know where to begin. You're Jo's friend, right?"

  "Right."

  "Does she go away a lot?"

  "It depends. She does different projects for different publishing companies trade mags, things like that and some of them involve research. There was one I remember for a children's encyclopedia and she had to write brief paragraphs about British trees, so she went around visiting three hundred yews, things like that."

  "And she's reliable?"

  "Usually very. She depends on her editing work to make ends meet."

  "Does she stand you up much?"

  He looked thoughtful. "As I said, she's reliable."

  "So, she's not here and she should be. She's not on holiday or anything. Something's wrong."

  "Maybe not," Ben said quietly, staring into his beer. "She might have gone away somewhere to finish her work. She did that sometimes. Her parents own a cottage in Dorset. Very quiet, no interruptions

  "Can you call her there? Have you got a mobile on you?"

  "No interruptions, including no phone."

  "What about her mobile?"

  IOI

  "I've called that number several times already."

  "Oh."

  "Or she might be with her parents. Her father's ill. Cancer. Perhaps he's got worse. Have you tried them?"

  "I didn't know about them."

  "And then she's got this on-off boyfriend, Carlo. The last I knew it was off, but maybe it's on again and she's there. Have you tried him?"

  I took a deep breath. Was I all right? "No," I said. "I didn't know about him. Or, at least, I don't remember knowing about him. But she would have told you, if you were going to meet her."

  He shrugged. "I'm just her friend. Friendships can be put on the back burner."

  "Sometimes."

  "Jo gets depressed," he said slowly, frowning. "I mean, really depressed, not just down. I thought she was coming out of it." He finished his beer and wiped his mouth with the side of his hand. "I'll go back to the flat with you and we can call the people who are close to her Carlo, her parents and find out if they've heard from her." He put his hand in the pocket of his coat and fished out a phone. "Use this. Ring someone, a friend, a colleague, the police, whatever. Say you're with me. Then we can go and make those calls."

  "This is kind of you .. ." I began.

  "It's not kind. Jo's my friend."

  "I don't need to make the call," I said, while a voice inside me said, "Oh, yes, you do, you stupid, stupid, stupid woman."

  "Suit yourself."

  On the way back, I told him how I'd found Jo's flat because of the receipt and key in the glove compartment of my car.

  "It was in the police pound," I said. "I had to pay over a hundred pounds to retrieve it, and now it's got a bloody clamp on it. Look." I pointed, then gawped. It wasn't there any more. There was just a space where it had been. "It's gone. It's bloody gone again. How is that possible? I thought the whole point of a clamp is you can't move it."

  "It's probably back in the pound." He was trying not to smile.

  "Shit."

  I opened a bottle of wine. My hands were shaking again, so it took ages to pull out the cork. Ben dialled a number, listened, then spoke. He was clearly not talking to Jo's mother. He put the phone down and turned to me. "That was the woman who dog-sits for them. They're on holiday and won't be back until the day after tomorrow."

  I poured him a glass of wine but he didn't touch it. He put on his glasses, opened the telephone directory and flicked through it.

  "Carlo? Hi, Carlo, it's Ben, Ben Brody .. . Yes, that's right, Jo's friend .. . What? No, I haven't seen her lately, I was rather wondering if you .. . No, no, I won't tell her that from you. No."

  He replaced the phone and turned to me. "Apparently it's off with Carlo. He wasn't in a very good mood."

  "So what do we do now?" I said, then noticed the 'we' and took a hefty gulp of wine.

  "Have you got anything to eat? I'm starving. Jo and I were meant to be going out for a meal tonight."

  I opened the fridge door. "Eggs, bread, cheese. Lettuce. Pasta, I guess."

  "Shall I make us scrambled eggs?"

  "I'd like that."

  He took off his coat and his jacket, and found a pan in the large cupboard, a wooden spoon in the top drawer. He knew where everything was. I sat back and watched him. He took a long time over it; he was very methodical. I drank another glass of wine. I felt exhausted, rather fragile, and a bit drunk. And I was fed up with being scared all the time, of always being on my guard. I couldn't do it any more.

  "Tell me what Jo's like," I said.

  "Hang on, one piece of toast or two?"

  "One. With lots of butter."

  "Here we are."

  ICM

  I sat at the kitchen table with him and we ate our scrambled eggs in silence. I drank some more wine.

  "She's quite shy until you get to know her," he said, after his last mouthful. "Self-reliant. Frugal. She only buys what she needs. Never go shopping with her. She takes ages choosing the tiniest thing then has to compare prices in different shops. Neat, she hates disorder. Better at listening than talking. What else? She grew up in the country, has a younger brother who lives in America and is a sound engineer, is pretty close to her parents, has lots of friends, though usually sees people one-to-one. She doesn't like big groups."

  "What about her relationship with this Carlo?"

  "Hopeless, really. He's just a young idiot." He sounded harshly dismissive, and I must have looked a bit surprised, because he added, "She could do better. She should meet someone who adores her."

  "We should all do that," I said, lightly.

 
"And she's a depressive, I'd say. She has terrible low patches when she can hardly get out of bed. Which is why I'm worried."

  It was late. My day lay behind me like a long, laborious journey -Todd, that spooky telephone call, Inspector Cross, now this. Ben saw me give a giant yawn. He stood up and took his coat from the arm of the sofa. "I should go," he said. "I'll be in touch."

  "Is that all?"

  "What d'you mean?"

  "Well, she's still missing, isn't she? More missing than ever. So what's next? You can't just leave it like that, can you?"

  "No, of course not. I thought I should drive to the cottage in Dorset. I've been there before and I think I can remember where it is. If she's not there, I'll phone around her friends. Then if nothing comes of that, I'll go and see her parents. After that well, I guess I'll go to the police."

  "I'd quite like to come with you to the cottage. If that's all right." I hadn't known that I was going to say that. The words came out in a rush, and he turned a surprised face to look at me. "When are you thinking of going?"

  "Well, now."

  "You mean, right this minute? Drive through the night?"

  "I might as well. I'm not tired, and I haven't drunk much. And I've got an important meeting tomorrow afternoon, so I can't go tomorrow. And you've made me anxious."

  "You don't hang about."

  "You don't really want to come, do you?"

  I shivered and looked outside, at the cold darkness. I didn't want to, but I didn't want to be here either, lying in bed bathed in my sweat, my heart thumping in my chest, my mouth dry, just waiting for it to be light again when unbearable fear became manageable. Looking at the clock. Falling asleep but then jerking awake a few minutes later. Listening for noises and scared by the wind. Thinking of Jo. Thinking of me. Of him in the darkness, watching me.

  "I'll come," I said. "Where's your car?"

  "Outside my house."

  "Where's your house?"

  "Belsize Park. A couple of stops on the tube."

  "Let's get a cab." I couldn't bear the idea of being underground tonight. I'd had enough scares for one day.

  "OK."

  "I'll go and put some warmer clothes on. And this time I will ring someone, to tell them who I'm with and stuff. Sorry."