by Tina Seskis
There has been a development, apparently. It is first thing the next morning, the fourth day since my husband vanished, and the chubbier policeman has knocked on the door to my bungalow so early he was perhaps hoping to wake me, but he has failed. I still have not slept. He asks me to come with him, and he waits outside as I put on a dress and my silver Havaianas flip-flops. I run my fingers through my hair and wipe under my eyes with a gritty licked finger, but I don’t dare take the time to clean my teeth. We get in the waiting buggy together, and when we pass one coming in the opposite direction, I keep my eyes firmly on my lightly tanned knees, study my blossoming freckles, just in case it’s Dan and Veronica. When we arrive at the sanatorium, the other policeman is already there, looking pin-sharp as ever, and before I’ve even sat down he’s waving a mask at me, attached to which is a snorkel with yellow tape near the top of it – and I am ninety nine point nine per cent sure it is Jamie’s.
‘Where did you find that?’ I ask.
‘It washed up on the beach on the west side of the island, during the storm.’
I am so stupefied I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing. Does it mean they think Jamie’s alive, or dead? They are studying me, searching my face for clues, and so I let it crumple, and I start to cry. They ask me again about the last evening Jamie and I spent together, and I repeat that I was quite drunk, that I can’t really remember too much of the latter part of it. They look disapproving. I wear too little clothing. I drink too much alcohol. I am a disgrace in their eyes, that’s for sure – but am I a murderer? Or is it the sea that’s the murderer, that has taken Jamie off to the deep, to one day be returned, putrid and dripping in seaweed? When will the answer reveal itself?
‘I feel sick,’ I say, suddenly, and I do. ‘Can I go now?’
The policemen look at each other. They don’t know what to say. There is nothing more to do. They have searched the island and the surrounding seas and found nothing. There is no body, just a mask and snorkel. Jamie might not be found for ages, even if he is dead, and it seems no-one knows.
They let me leave, and I decline Moosa’s sullen offer of a lift in the buggy and instead walk back to my bungalow. I can’t stand the ill feeling radiating off my butler right now. My head remains bowed as my eyes scan the ants and the lizards on the path ahead of me, and the fog in my head gets thicker and ever more blinding. When I reach the terrace, I settle down onto the daybed slowly, carefully, as if my bones might break. I wrap my arms around my knees and pull my sunhat low over my head, in case someone’s watching me. Nothing happens. All is silent: there’s just the faint flare of the air and the gurgle-swirl of the sea. Any action is under the surface, where I know it is livid and teeming. But is Jamie under there? Where on earth is Jamie?
Seconds tick noiselessly by, and their passing feels menacing. It occurs to me that we’re always at the very end of time. It’s always now. And for now there’s just more waiting. But for how much longer? What is the protocol in this infernal scenario? How long do we carry on watching and hoping, before we have to declare defeat, admit that now is finally over. How long do we wait, before we give up on Jamie at last, and go home?
20
Six years earlier
Jamie’s flat was on the ground floor of a Regency house in an up-and-coming part of North London, and it had apparently been decorated with the help of Jamie’s erstwhile girlfriend Sarah (who had recently tearfully removed her spare toothbrush from the holder she had so carefully chosen). The cornicing in the living room had been painted over so many times its pattern was slack, like melting jelly, but as the ceiling was high, it wouldn’t be noticed by the casual visitor, although of course Jemma clocked it. The walls were a muted grey. The floor was hardwood, wide-planked, covered by a plush thick-piled rug. The sofas rocked a fifties vibe. It was nicer than Dan’s flat. She quashed the thought.
Jemma couldn’t help but be impressed by Jamie. Although he lacked the raw appeal of his older brother, he was confident, charming, well-dressed. He had an amusing line in self-deprecating anecdotes. He was a good cook. He even folded his washing properly, as she’d discovered when she’d taken a peek into his bedroom. He reminded Jemma a little of one of her previous boyfriends, a thought she immediately tried to quell.
‘What would you like to drink, Jemma?’ Jamie asked now.
‘Oh, a glass of red, thanks.’
‘Dan?’
‘Just a pale ale, thanks.’
‘Ever the sophisticate,’ said Jamie, and he laughed.
Jemma glanced at Jamie. Was he taking the piss out of his own brother? And in front of his girlfriend? That’s not on, she thought – and she wondered whether Jamie took after his mother. She hoped not, for Jamie’s sake. He didn’t look much like her, at least. His features were smooth and defined, and his eyes were a pale grey colour that was both arresting in its uniqueness and vaguely unsettling. Dan’s face was ostensibly more open, and yet his eyes were darker, veiled even. He was broader too, so he looked less good than Jamie in clothes, but almost certainly way better without them. Jemma blushed at the thought, and then giggled.
‘What’s so funny?’ said Dan, as Jamie disappeared off to fetch the drinks.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. You?’
‘Yeah,’ said Dan, but he seemed troubled somehow. She took his hand and held it until Jamie came back, with two pale ales, as it happened. Jemma decided he must have been joking earlier. It was sometimes hard to tell.
Jamie had cooked a Thai fish curry, and Jemma had to admit it was perfect. It seemed odd in a way that there weren’t four of them, but Jamie had said that life goes on, and that he hadn’t seen the point of cancelling. Over dinner Jemma tried to imagine what it would have been like to have had siblings, and she sensed that there was an underlying edge between Dan and Jamie that perhaps all brothers had. Sometimes she was glad she was an only child, although of course it had made it even harder at home once her dad had left. Jemma pulled back from her thoughts, as if they were too painful, yet still they screeched across the inside of her skull.
‘Hey, Dan,’ Jamie said after they’d finished dessert, which was a lemon tart from Waitrose. (‘Steady on,’ Jamie had said when Jemma had asked if it was home-made. ‘It’s a school night.’) ‘While you’re here, would you mind taking a look at my boiler? It’s making a right racket, and I don’t have a clue.’ He winked at Jemma, and it made her blush. There was something about Jamie that got under her skin, and when Dan disappeared off to the kitchen as requested, she felt unnerved by the way her boyfriend’s brother was looking at her, as if he was laughing at her.
‘So, how did you and Dan meet, Jemma?’ Jamie said, as he topped up her glass.
‘Oh … in a pub.’
‘Really? What, he picked you up?’
‘Er, I guess you could say that.’ Jemma didn’t know what to say. She was fine about it, but she wasn’t sure whether Dan would want his little brother to know they’d met on a dating website. Dan and Jamie seemed so competitive somehow.
‘Well, well, well. Lucky old Dan,’ said Jamie, and at first she thought he was being sarcastic, and then he smiled at her, and asked her what football team she supported, and eventually she gave him the benefit of the doubt, and decided he was just being nice.
21
Now
It’s late afternoon on the fourth day and there’s still no news. I emerge from my bungalow and walk all of twenty yards along the path through the trees onto the beach. I perch on one of the pair of sun beds that are perfectly positioned for my husband and me. It feels too bright out here, too open. I feel too singular. Too alone. Like I’m the only person on a school trip with no-one to sit next to on the coach. It seems I am regressing. I want to go home so badly the thought tears at me.
I lie down and open the book that I was engrossed in, before, but it’s beyond me now. I stare at the pages and struggle not to wail. I don’t know what else to
do, except feel the panic, try to accept it. I’ve changed into a beach cover-up (white, for purity, or perhaps surrender), my biggest, floppiest sunhat, de rigueur dark glasses. The umbrella is as low as it will go. I am a parody of somebody who wants to be left alone, yet really, truly doesn’t.
I yearn to go in the sea now that I’m so close to it, but how on earth would it look? Does a distraught wife whose husband might have drowned go swimming? Yet how does anything I do look? And who really cares? The police do, I try to remind myself – and obviously so do those couples who occasionally stroll by along the sand, as if by accident. We all know they’re rubbernecking, so let them. What difference does it make?
The sun refuses to surrender. It’s still so hot. My legs are getting burnt, so I retreat to the bungalow, where I feel safest. It is a hollow inky kind of safety, though, and I can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching me, perhaps from the trees. I almost wonder if it’s my husband, playing some dastardly trick on me, to get his revenge. An image of our flower-strewn wedding day flashes through my mind, and the memory is laced with such hopelessness that I clamp my eyes shut, yet the tears squeeze through anyway. Sweat pools in the spot above my Cupid’s arrow, and when I wipe at it my skin feels slimy, as if I am putrefying, rotting away.
Jamie has now been missing for around ninety excruciating hours, and as every second passes it feels like the island is getting ever smaller. The image I have of my husband is slowly getting smaller too, as if my memory of him is disappearing over the horizon. I keep turning the crisis around and around in my head, which is fuzzy now, but not in that pleasant, cocktail-induced way you might expect of a honeymooner. The fuzziness expands, melds with the never-ending nausea that my husband’s disappearance seems to have triggered, until my skull bangs with the relentlessness of a death knell.
The phone rings. It is Chrissy, telling me the police want to interview her and Kenny again, and I’m not quite sure why she’s telling me. I don’t know what to say. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t said much about that last night so far, but what if she’s put under pressure? If pushed far enough, will she tell them what else I might have said that last night on the beach? Is she trying to warn me? I stare at my palms, my delicate wrists, the fat blue veins leading away from my lifelines. I press my right wrist, hard, against the solid wooden edge of the bedside table, and it makes me feel better. I’m almost certain Chrissy knows I hadn’t meant any of it anyway. I’d been upset for sure, perhaps even a little demented – but how could I possibly have done anything to Jamie between then and the next morning at breakfast?
What Kenny might think is a different story, of course. But surely he wouldn’t think someone like me is capable of getting rid of a twelve-stone man – my own husband – on an island like this. There’s nowhere to hide. Unless, of course, I’d drowned him. Hysteria rises in my throat like champagne. The dread spirals – especially once it occurs to me that the story could even become interesting back in the UK. Newspapers love honeymoon disasters. To my knowledge no media outlet has picked up on it yet, but I presume they might if Jamie isn’t found soon. I’m sure the other guests must be tweeting about it. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before I become an international pariah. I’m almost tempted to go online and Google myself right this instant, but I can’t bear to know. I stand up from the bed and shake my head, trying to get the bad thoughts out. I wonder what Dan thinks of all this, but I daren’t ask him. He hasn’t come near me since that hideous lunch with Veronica the previous day, which I suppose is hardly surprising. The circumstances aren’t conducive to him offering a publicly supportive shoulder, seeing as I used to go out with him. It wouldn’t be appropriate.
I’m just so restless. I go into the bathroom, do a couple of circuits of the free-standing bath, head back into the bedroom, walk out onto the terrace – and then somehow my feet take me down to the beach again. I can feel hot, hungry eyes preying on my skin. As I sink onto the sand, a young Muslim couple are walking away from me to the right. He is in shorts and a T-shirt, and she’s in a full black burka, and I know from seeing them at breakfast that her face is covered. I wonder how happy they are together. It’s impossible to tell. I long to yell after them, ask them.
Once the couple disappears around the corner, I stand up and walk down to the water’s edge. I let the waves lick at my feet. The sea feels so warm and enticing and I’m tempted, so tempted, but I mustn’t. I stare out across the trillions of gallons of water, searching, ever searching. I crouch down to touch the sea with my hand, and I rest there on my haunches, until eventually my mind sways again and bad memories crowd in. I find myself toppling backwards, and as I land on the sand the thud reverberates up my spine like a hammer blow. I lie still for a moment, a little in shock, and then I give up, just go with it. I stretch my legs out in front of me, into the water. I throw my arms over my head and arch my back, yield to the sun. Its rays feel ferocious, as though they’re pinning me to the beach. I stretch.
I hear a click, and then another sound behind me. A camera? I sit up quickly, pull my beach throw over my legs. I can see that Chati has appeared at the bungalow, with a tray, and he’s putting it down on the outside table, and maybe that was what the noise was. I get up and walk back towards the bungalow. The aroma of the curry is delicate and spiced, and it is served with coconut rice and diced cucumber, and a mango juice, although, as ever, there is no alcohol, which I feel slightly regretful about. Despite myself I feel hungry.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘You’re welcome, ma’am.’ His dirt-brown eyes glow and his smile is as wide as China. ‘Enjoy,’ he says, and then he edges politely away.
22
Six years earlier
Jemma and Dan saw in their second new year together at his place, just the two of them, and it was perfect. They stocked up on cheese and chocolates and champagne, and Dan cooked the most sumptuous dinner she’d ever eaten, and Jemma joked that she was glad that she’d got him into cooking, even if it did mean that her clothes were getting far too tight for her. They watched the fireworks on TV, and drank more champagne, and when they finally went to bed it was even more wonderful than ever, now that she was excited about a future with him in it. She wondered what this year would bring the two of them. She would turn twenty-nine, he thirty-one. Her job was still going well. She’d been officially promoted to Designer, complete with a decent pay rise, and she hadn’t had a career-limiting meltdown in months. The only slight blemish in the overall outlook was that Dan didn’t seem to be very busy in his work – but, Jemma thought, that was hardly surprising over winter. She was sure it would pick up.
On New Year’s Day afternoon Jemma and Dan went to his parents’ house for a drinks party. When they arrived there were twenty or so people already there – a combination of neighbours, family and old friends – and the mood was of general conviviality. Even Veronica’s dislike of Jemma was better disguised these days, and in fact her latest tactic was full-on chummy collusion, although Jemma found that almost as alarming as the erstwhile hostility.
‘Ooohh, Jemma, do come and meet Carol,’ Veronica was saying now, taking Jemma’s elbow in a faux-friendly way and marching her over to a sad-looking older woman who was lurking by the buffet, leaving Dan talking to a voluptuous-looking neighbour, almost certainly by design. Veronica spoke loudly. ‘Carol’s just got divorced, and she’s doing up her new flat. Perhaps you can give her some ideas.’ She let go of Jemma’s elbow, and then turned and called, ‘Peter! Can you put out some more napkins, they’ve all gone!’ She stopped just short of tutting at her husband’s implied incompetence, and as she marched off Jemma found it inconceivable, not for the first time, that Veronica got away with such behaviour.
‘Er, where’s your new flat, Carol?’ Jemma asked now, as she watched Carol hack haplessly at the salmon.
‘Basingstoke,’ said Carol.
‘Oh. That’s nice.’ Carol’s eyes looked like they were about to fill. She piled some new potatoes onto
her paper plate, and one rolled off. ‘And, er, did you have a nice Christmas?’ Jemma continued, as she discreetly stooped down to retrieve it before it got trodden into the carpet.
‘Well, it was –’ Carol stopped and grabbed one of the napkins from the pile Peter had fortuitously just replenished. She started dabbing at her eyes.
‘Goodness, I’m so sorry.’ Instinctively, Jemma put her hand on Carol’s arm, and gently squeezed it. She didn’t know what to say.
‘Auntie Carol!’ said a voice behind them. Jemma turned and it was Jamie. His hair was slightly longer than it had been in the autumn, and he was wearing a beautifully cut jacket. Her heart took a tiny leap, which she tried to tell herself was purely because he’d rescued her.
‘How are you doing, my darling?’ Jamie gave Carol a bear hug, and as Carol stood in Jamie’s arms, he winked at Jemma. ‘Carol’s not my real auntie,’ he explained, as he finally let her go. ‘Just my absolute favourite of Mum’s friends. She even used to take me to Cubs, didn’t you, Auntie Carol?’
Carol’s face was flushed, and she was smiling now, rather than crying.
‘Thank you,’ mouthed Jemma to Jamie. His perceptiveness and kindness had surprised her.
‘How’s Adrian?’ Jamie asked Carol, as she started attacking the plate of cold cuts.
‘Oh, he’s good, Jamie. They’ve just had a little girl, Ella. I’m a granny twice over now!’
