When I Find You

by Emma Curtis

  About the Book

  What do you do when someone takes advantage of your greatest weakness?

  When Laura wakes up after her office Christmas party and sees a man’s shirt on the floor, she is horrified. But this is no ordinary one-night-stand regret.

  Laura suffers from severe face-blindness, a condition that means she is completely unable to identify and remember faces. So the man she spent all night dancing with and kissing – the man she thought she’d brought home – was ‘Pink Shirt’.

  But the shirt on her floor is blue.

  And now Laura must go to work every day, and face the man who took advantage of her condition. The man she has no way of recognizing.

  She doesn’t know who he is … but she’s going to make him pay.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Acknowledgements

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Also by Emma Curtis

  Copyright

  When I Find You

  Emma Curtis

  ‘Good-bye, till we meet again!’ she said as cheerfully as she could.

  ‘I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet,’ Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake: ‘you’re so exactly like other people.’

  Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

  1

  Laura

  I OPEN MY eyes one at a time, wincing, nervous of what I might find, muddled images from last night making me curl my body into a tight ball under the covers. Beside me, he is fast asleep, an unfamiliar and worrying hump in the darkness, his face to the wall, his back and shoulders covered by the duvet. Teeth gritted, I tentatively reach out before snatching my hand away.

  Oh God, Laura. You are an idiot.

  There are things I could have done, people I could have found some way of asking, but I didn’t. I was caught up in the moment, euphoric and pissed. Then it occurs to me that he’ll have a wallet in one of his pockets. If I can find that before he wakes up, there’s my problem solved. I’ll know his name. I am disproportionately pleased with myself for thinking of that.

  I slide on to the floor, toes first and then hands. He rolls over and mumbles while I crouch frozen beside the bed. When I’m certain he’s deeply asleep I pull myself up and stumble along the corridor, my palm pressed against the wall. In my bathroom, I find painkillers in the cabinet above the basin and swallow two of them.

  The woman in the mirror is me, that much is clear. She looks terrible; make-up smudged, lips puffy, hair tangled. I splash my face and clean my teeth. I remember that I liked him and that he seemed to like me. I wonder if he still will. I wonder if he’s even single. I suppose he must be if he’s stayed the night here without a qualm. Mostly I wonder who he is. I probably shouldn’t have done it, but there’s no point pretending that it didn’t happen. And it was so good; so hot and sweaty and downright steamy. I grimace and cringe. It’s such a surprise to know that I can do that, be the woman who gets off her face and goes home with a … not a stranger, no, but a man of whose identity she is ignorant. Explain that to your mother.

  My mind drifts. Maybe we can spend the morning together. I could cook him a fry-up. I have eggs in the fridge and half a loaf of bread. I have coffee and milk. I could nip down to my local Tesco for bacon and fresh orange juice. It opens at seven. We could curl up and watch a movie, or we could go for a walk on the Heath. I assess the sick pain in my head and groan. If he wakes up feeling anything like I do, that is not going to happen.

  Last night I knew him by his pink shirt. This morning his nakedness renders him anonymous.

  I should explain what it is about me that got me into this situation in the first place.

  My name is Laura Maguire, I am twenty-eight years old and I am face-blind. I do not have a terrible memory for faces, I am not so uninterested in other people that I don’t remember them from one day to the next, I do care about my friends, my family and colleagues and I do not have a mental health issue. Face-blindness has nothing to do with poor memory but everything to do with the way the brain receives visual information. Imagine your eye sending light to the back of the retina where the resulting image is interpreted as a face, checked against any information you already have and filed away for future reference. In my case, my brain picks it up, but instead of filing it, chucks it straight into Trash. It doesn’t even stay in Trash. I could be talking to someone, turn away, and next time I looked it would be as though I’d never met them before. In and out in a millisecond. But only with faces. Bizarrely, the part of my brain that processes data about a million other objects works fine.

  The scientific term is prosopagnosia. Deriving from the Greek: prosopon for face, agnosia for ignorance. Pronounce it how you like. Personally, I put the emphasis on the first syllable.

  A surprising number of people experience some level of face-blindness – two in every fifty – but mine is the most profound case Professor Deborah Robinson, who runs the Centre for Face-Processing Disorders at Southampton University, has ever seen. Which is why she adores me.

  I suppose I can best describe living with the condition by asking people to imagine walking through a field of sheep. I see faces, not a confusion of features, but I don’t perceive any difference between them. I rely on hair, ears, gait, clothes and, most importantly, context. If a colleague is sitting behind her desk and has the attributes I know are hers – shoulder-length brown hair or whatever – then I can make a safe assumption that she is who I think she is, but I won’t spot her standing near me on a tube platform. She might wish me a good morning, and then I’ll know that I ought to know her, but I still won’t have a clue. I’ll begin to feel anxious; my palms will sweat, my fingers start to itch.

  Imagine not being able to recognize your husband, your child, your neighbour. Imagine seeing a stranger walking towards you and then realizing that you are walking towards a mirror. Imagine introducing yourself to a close friend at a party or being expected to introduce people, especially when both assume you know them. Wriggle out of that one. Imagine ending up in Lost Children at a ski resort or a theme park so often that your parents are taken aside and given a stern talking to. I
magine going into a nursery to pick up your toddler and attempting to take the wrong one.

  When I open the bathroom door I leave the light on so that it shines into the corridor, on to the pale laminate floorboards. I smile at our clothes strewn along them and I’m about to reach for his coat when something stops my breath. I stand, transfixed, as the Vent-Axia fan whirrs. I pick his shirt up, let it flop across my hands, then drop it as if it has suddenly wriggled into life.

  The shirt is blue.

  I blink, frowning, then pick it up again. I turn it around, bring it to my nose and smell it, pull the sleeves through my hand from shoulder to cuff. Whichever way I look at it, this is a different shirt. I arrange it exactly as I found it, slip back into the bathroom and close the door.

  Who is the man in my bed? I realize my fingers have formed fists, my knuckles whitening as scraps of last night penetrate my hangover. Do I confront him? Or do I act like I haven’t noticed that there’s something wrong? I close my eyes and search my dulled memories.

  Imagine waking up to discover the man lying beside you is not the man you thought you invited into your bed last night. Pink shirt. Blue shirt. What happened?

  What happened to me?

  2

  Laura

  The Day Before

  AS I PUSH my bike into the large, light-filled reception of the Gunner Munro Advertising Agency, angling my back against the door and trying not to hit my shins with a pedal, someone brings his bike up behind mine. He leans over, stretches out an arm and helps me through. I cross the shiny floor and press the button for the hospital-sized lift. David Gunner, who is a bit of a genius, famous for making stay-at-home dads sexy and selling a million tubes of toothpaste into the bargain, had the old goods lift from when the building was a clothing factory extended to the roof and designed a state-of-the-art bike shelter with lockers and a row of shower cubicles. They are eccentric and Scandi in style; a witty juxtaposition against the jagged London skyline. I cycle too sedately to need the showers, but I like coming up here, sniffing the wind, taking in the panoramic views before I start work.

  I have no choice but to get into the lift with this man, shuffling my bike to the side and taking off my helmet. I run my fingers through the kinks in my hair. His forehead shimmers with beaded sweat and there are dark patches under the sleeves of his high-vis jacket.

  ‘One more day,’ he says to me. ‘What’re you doing for Christmas?’

  ‘Going to stay with my mother. My brother and sister and their families are coming, so it’s going to be a full house.’ I jabber on, trying to keep up a flow of general conversation as the lift doors close and we jerk into motion. ‘What about you?’

  He grumbles about having to drive down to the West Country with his cousin. I don’t know who he is, but as I listen my mind works, triangulating his face, looking for clues. Blokes in body-hugging Lycra are a problem, as hard to tell apart as insects.

  ‘You are coming to the party tonight, aren’t you?’ he says, as the lift clunks to a stop and the doors slide open.

  ‘I can’t, I’m afraid.’

  We wheel our bikes across the flat roof, still puddled from yesterday’s rain, and clip them into the stands. No one bothers with locks up here. I look out over the leaden sky, listen to the sounds beyond Percy Row; traffic and drills, mainly, with the occasional blast of a siren.

  I should have had an excuse up my sleeve, but, stupidly, I’ve failed to prepare.

  He goes to the showers. I get back in the lift.

  Most of the first floor, where I work, is open plan with rows of back-to-back desks running from one end to the other. Eddie and I have the luxury of an office because we need to be able to shut out the chatter. The other creative team, Guy and Jamie – or Jay, as I secretly refer to them since I can’t tell them apart – have to be content with screens. But then they’ve only been with the company for three months.

  On the other side of the building there is a large terrace, accessed from our floor, furnished with wooden picnic tables and benches. It means that workers from all parts of the agency pass through from time to time and it makes the media floor the most sociable area of the building.

  We don’t wear suits at Gunner Munro but there is a uniform all the same and amongst the men it’s black jeans and a casual shirt. A lot of them have beards and tattoos – the tattoos are great as far as I’m concerned, but whoever invented beards has made my life hell. Women show a more helpful flair for individuality, but they are apt to change on a whim. I cope by not making assumptions. If someone turns up with a brand-new bob and a fringe, I don’t panic. I wait and see where they go.

  People think I’m a dreamer, that my thoughts are elsewhere, focused on the product, ideas crowding out real life. I come up with the goods, so I’m forgiven my social inadequacy.

  Eddie hasn’t arrived when Rebecca Munro walks into our office on a waft of the expensive perfume that is her signature scent. I know what make it is, because she keeps a bottle in her bag and I’ve seen her spray it. Joy by Jean Patou. Not that I need help recognizing her. My boss is fabulous; she has style and pizazz, an unmissable presence and a head for business. She is highly successful and in demand as a speaker. Her TED Talk on Women in Advertising has had over ten thousand hits and is well worth a listen.

  She gives me a look, part sympathetic, part speculative. ‘Do you have a minute, Laura?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  I try to read her tone and feel that familiar, unwelcome tension in my diaphragm that precedes anxiety.

  ‘Apparently, you’re not coming to the Christmas party this evening.’ Rebecca rubs her temple.

  ‘You know parties are hell for me.’ I say it with a grimace, brushing it off as though it doesn’t matter at all. I wonder who dropped me in it.

  Rebecca rolls Eddie’s chair out from behind his desk and sits down. She folds her arms across her ample breasts, crosses one slender leg over the other and studies my face.

  The problem for me is that I’ve chosen a career in which mixing with people is part and parcel of the job. Being an Art Director isn’t just about the ideas, it’s about enthusing the client, getting your passion for their product across. It’s vital to be able to engage with others, and for me that means working harder than my colleagues.

  ‘Laura,’ Rebecca says, ‘I understand that it’s tough for you, but this business doesn’t make allowances. If you’re going to cut it, you’ll have to make more of an effort.’

  I nod, but I’m hurt. It isn’t about effort with me, and she does know that, she just doesn’t seem to see why it can’t be overcome. Rebecca is the only person outside my family that I’ve told about my face-blindness. I felt I had to when she took me on. She understood, as a woman, why it makes me feel vulnerable, why I would insist on keeping it quiet, even though telling people would surely make my life easier. She promised that I could trust her to keep it confidential. It doesn’t mean I get special treatment though.

  ‘I don’t want to upset you,’ she says, ‘but we’re about to enter a brand-new year. It’s a good time to check in on staff, pick up on any little things that need tweaking. I know you have your difficulty. But you’re an adult, you’ll just have to deal with it.’

  I can feel the heat rising up my neck to tinge my cheeks. ‘I always go to the campaign launch parties.’ I often have a hand in their organization. It gives me a degree of control over what happens on the night and where to expect to find particular people. It’s the other stuff; the drinks after work, the matey games of ping pong in the basement, the endless opportunities to make mistakes and cause offence that give me problems.

  She runs her fingers through her long dark hair and sweeps it behind her shoulders. She’s wearing diamond studs. Although, at a glance, one person’s earlobes look very similar to another’s, they actually differ a lot. I watch her mouth as she speaks.

  ‘But you don’t come to staff socials and these things matter. I understand we can’t all be party animals,
and between you and me I can’t think of anything worse. But despite that I will be there tonight, and I will be seen to enjoy myself, because I am part of the team and I value my teammates. You can’t let your face-blindness affect your ability to do what this company needs you to do. You know that.’ She glances at her watch. This is almost over. She takes a deep breath and sits forward.

  ‘I hate to say this to you, but if you don’t come, what the rest of the team might take from that is that you don’t see yourself as an integral part of Gunner Munro. And if that is the case, then maybe you should think about how much you really want to work here.’

  My jaw drops at the unfairness of it. I am fiercely loyal to the company and incredibly grateful, but the idea of walking into a bar full of people I’m meant to know makes me feel physically sick.

  ‘I love my job. I just don’t enjoy parties. I get into a panic because I don’t know who’s talking to me.’

  ‘Laura, you told me that you created your own strategies as a child and got by. Maybe you need to create some more, to deal with your adult life.’

  As if I don’t already.

  She stands up and pats me on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Cheer up. It’ll be fine. You’ll wing it. And you can always come to me if you’re stuck.’

  I nod because I can’t think of anything to say. She’s right. If I’m going to survive and prosper in a job I love, I have to make it work. It’s my problem, no one else’s.

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I’ll be there.’

  ‘Good, I am glad. Because if you’re happy then I am happy, and Gunner Munro is happy.’

  As she opens the door Eddie comes in. He looks from her face to mine and raises his eyebrows. Eddie is no problem. Although I don’t recognize him either, this is his office and I know that he has a beard, wears a wedding ring and most usefully has the Arabic for love tattooed on his right wrist. I thought it was a sledge.

  ‘Morning,’ he says. He pulls a tissue out of his pocket and blows his nose. ‘Sorry, filthy cold.’

  ‘Poor you.’ Rebecca edges away from him. She leaves the room and he drops down on to his chair.