by Tina Seskis
Jamie, of course, had a completely different point of view to Jemma, and that was part of the problem. Why couldn’t they just enjoy being together, he used to say, when Jemma had still sometimes broached the subject. What was the rush? They’d been so happy, he’d claimed, before marriage had become an unwelcome agenda item, and then a fractious unspoken part of Any Other Business.
As Jemma tried on a pair of oversized, outrageously priced sunglasses, another thought struck her, and it was the worst one yet. Maybe he was having an affair. Perhaps that’s why he went to the gym all the time, why he refused to get married.
Jemma yanked off the glasses, which looked silly anyway, and fled the shop. As she marched towards the gate, she told herself not to be daft, that Jamie might be many things, but he wasn’t a cheat. The balls of her feet were aching in her high boots, so when she reached the never-ending travellator she stopped walking, regretting now that she hadn’t worn her Converse. She was still feeling riled when the Tannoy blared at her: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, flight BA2612 to Naples is now ready for boarding through Gate 57.’ Shit. Not again.
Jemma started to run. When she reached the gate her feet were killing her and Jamie was almost at the front of the queue. Through the window behind the desk the swollen belly of the plane was visible, as was the tunnel which led into it, disgorging the passengers like a birth in reverse.
‘Hi, Jamie.’ He turned around, and Jemma knew he was relieved to see her. His brow was sweating.
‘Where have you been? You can’t just push in.’
‘I’m with you, Jamie. For God’s sake.’
Jemma shuffled along with him, and she thought that he hated her now, wished she would just go away. The couple in front of them seemed so relaxed, and Jemma didn’t know why she and Jamie couldn’t be like that. What was wrong with them? Was it just his fear of flying that made everything else feel so fraught? Or was it because she always managed to make the situation worse? Jemma swallowed, and her throat was tight, as though she had toast stuck in it. He’d never propose to her if she kept on acting like a nutter. She tried to slip her hand into his, but he shook her off.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
‘Nothing.’
‘Why are you being so moody? What have I done?’
Jemma knew she should be quiet, but she couldn’t help herself. The woman in front had turned to look, casually, inconspicuously. Jemma felt years’ worth of anguish welling up inside of her. She mustn’t let it escalate.
‘Nothing, Jem, you’ve done nothing.’ He was trying to appease her, fortunately. She got a tiny glimpse into his world, and felt sorry for him suddenly. She tried to compose herself and the tension eased a fraction – until, at the very final check, Jemma found herself rummaging in her bag for her passport, when everyone else had theirs ready. Jamie seemed so embarrassed by her holding up the queue that he walked quickly ahead, almost running to the plane – and as Jemma felt the distance increase between her and her boyfriend, she was filled with a sick feeling of disquiet, mixed with a kind of relief.
31
Now
Oh God. What is happening to me? It feels as if my breath is about to stop, and it’s an alarming development. There’s a stillness in my head, as though the world is on pause – and then, just when I feel headily half-dead and vaguely glad of it, it jumpstarts again. It’s harrowing.
I call Dad. It seems Veronica has freaked me out, and I don’t know whether her hostility towards me was because she suspects me of being involved in her son’s disappearance somehow, or because Jamie had told her something before he vanished. Either way, I can’t cope any longer. I want my dad.
‘Please come,’ I beg him, and it reminds me of when I was a lost teenager, not knowing how to deal with my mother. I’m pretty sure it makes us both feel guilty.
‘Of course I will, love,’ he says. I can hear Kay in the background, whispering something, and I wonder if she’s trying to stop him.
‘Kay’s got the flights right here,’ he continues. ‘I’ll book them now and call you straight back. Hold tight, love.’
‘Dad,’ I say. ‘I’m scared.’
‘Of course you are, love. Poor Jamie. Poor you.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I really am scared. I don’t feel safe.’
‘What do you mean?’ he says.
I hesitate, and then say it anyway. ‘What if there’s a murderer on the loose?’
‘Jemma, love.’ I can hear it in Dad’s voice, that I always have been a drama queen. But I feel as if the island is closing in on me. The jungly branches are ready to tighten around my throat. When I shut my eyes images of gleaming dead flesh flit through my memory, like bats. Jamie seems so far away now, and yet still he’s near. He’s here. I can feel it. Solitary confinement is sending me mad. I need help.
‘Dad, please hurry up,’ I whisper, and it seems I can’t talk any more. My eyes are flooding. I just about manage to say ‘Goodbye’, and then I put down the phone.
32
Eighteen months earlier
Amalfi was busier than Jemma had imagined. The hotel overlooked the square, where tourists mingled with locals who zipped about on mopeds, or gathered on the steps of the duomo, to chat, or drink coffee, or just generally hang out, looking marvellously Italian. Jemma was still buzzing, and not just because of the view from the balcony. On the trip from Napoli their cab driver had driven like his life depended on it, butting up to the car in front of them at eighty miles an hour on the motorway, winging his way around sunny blind corners where the sea was too blue to crash into, or the houses on the nearside were too ancient to bulldoze. Jemma had enjoyed it, had never even flinched, as if she couldn’t care less if they died, although Jamie had gone quite green – and she knew that this was another thing about her that bemused him. In any given situation she could be calm or hysterical, and he never quite knew which he was going to get – and neither did she. Mostly she tried to be fun and expansive, and her mood would match the light in her eyes and the sunshine in her hair. Yet at other times she behaved like a wild cat, and it appalled him, but once she got going, the more tightly coiled and out of control she became, despite knowing she should stop. And then, at still other times, albeit infrequently, she would become shut down, robotic, scary – and that appalled them both. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want to marry her.
Jamie’s phone pinged. ‘Who’s that?’ Jemma said. Jamie frowned as he accessed his messages. ‘Oh, just work,’ he said.
‘What, on a Saturday? When you’re on holiday?’
Jamie sighed. ‘It’s my boss,’ he said. ‘I need to sort this out. It’s about a deal that was meant to be tied up last week. I won’t be long.’ He disappeared back through the French doors into the hotel room, pulling them shut behind him, and soon Jemma could hear him talking quietly on the phone. Couldn’t Camille ever give Jamie a break? Didn’t she know they were away? Jemma took a deep breath, leaned her arms on the balcony railing, rested her cheek on top of them, and waited, willing herself not to get annoyed.
When Jamie came back he seemed subdued somehow.
‘Everything OK?’ she said.
‘Hmm,’ he said, noncommittally. He stood next to her at the railing as they both looked down onto the throng.
‘Wow, I love this place,’ she said, as she gently swayed her body behind her, like a boat on its anchor. ‘Thank you for bringing me.’
Jamie turned to look at her, and when their eyes met his were loving, a dulcet dove grey. She could feel the atmosphere soften.
‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s cool here, isn’t it?’
‘I love it.’ She grinned, determined to make an effort. ‘Got over your various travel sicknesses yet? Ready for some lunch?’
‘Yeah, well, you know I hate flying, and then that driver was a fucking maniac. I don’t know how I didn’t throw up.’
‘Jamie, I’m taking the mickey. There’s no need to be so defensive.’
‘Well, I never know
with you.’
Jemma’s eyes narrowed, and she gave him an evil look, and even she wasn’t sure whether she was joking or not.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said. He gave her a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Before you throw me off the balcony.’
As they got off the bus and walked up the hill towards the villa, the heat was searing. They reached the peak and saw the bluest of skies melding into the sea, and it was her birthday and Jamie had brought her here, and maybe this was the place. It was so perfect. A single tree presided over the church and the flower boxes and the fat, low palms, and she didn’t know what type the tree was, but its branches were spindly and bare apart from right at the top, where they formed a lush green canopy over the vista of the sea and the cliffs beyond. Jemma paused to take in the beauty of nature, note how humankind occasionally succeeded in enhancing it. But, as Sasha would have said, that was Italy for you.
Jamie took Jemma’s hand and they meandered through the villa’s gardens like new lovers. She really didn’t know what had got into him, but she wasn’t complaining. Finally, they came to the place that she’d read about, where statues were lined up on plinths like soldiers, guarding the view, and the sea and the sky went all the way to heaven. Jemma held her breath. It was her birthday. He loved her. He took her hand, and then he pulled her close and kissed her … and surely this was it; it was happening at last. Jemma concentrated hard, to remember the moment, to tell their grandchildren.
‘Shall we get going?’ he murmured. ‘If we hurry we’ll get back in time for the Chelsea Liverpool game.’
Jemma stared at Jamie, her mouth opening like an imbecile’s, and then she realized he was joking. She faked a swat at him, and he ducked, but the moment had passed, and perhaps that had been his intention. They ended up having lunch in the restaurant, and her hopes were raised briefly again, by the exorbitant cost, the superlative view, the aptness of the setting. But once Jamie had polished off his main course, and she realized that he really wasn’t going to propose after all, in fact seemed oblivious to the fact that she’d expected him to, the anger inside her started burning again, fierce and intense, and her thirst for it grew: to become Mrs Armstrong, which even then she knew was a pointless ambition, and one that was unlikely to end well.
33
Now
The doorbell rings again, and I assume it’s the British police here to see me at last, but it’s Chrissy. Her mood has changed. She’s no longer the fun Chrissy, sexy Chrissy, roll-her-eyes-at-Kenny Chrissy that I’d got to know with my husband. She’s not even the concerned, salt-of-the-earth Chrissy she’d been when he first disappeared. Now she’s super-anxious, although she tries to hide it, and perhaps she really does think this is all my fault after all. It’s a bit much so soon after Veronica’s visit, and I almost ask her to leave. But I don’t. I need her on my side. Instead, I invite her in and fetch her a beer from my minibar, and a Coke for me – just in case – and we sit down on the wooden terrace.
Chrissy’s wearing a tight hot-pink halter dress, and her hair is lustrously blow-dried, but her face is blotchy, as if she’s been crying. Normally she’s chatty, but today she is not. It’s hard to find small-talk – too many conversational roads lead to the apocalypse. She tries to ask me some things about Jamie’s job, which bank he worked for (and yes, I do notice the past tense), things like that, but it seems odd, and she’s making me feel uneasy. I don’t know what she’s trying to get at. I ask her if the British police have spoken to her, and she says that they have, although she doesn’t elaborate on what was said. I wonder again why they haven’t even come near me yet – I’ve still only ever been interviewed by the pin-smart Maldivian officers – and my stress levels rise a notch higher.
Words taper away and disappear over the horizon, as we sit and look silently out across the smooth sheen sea. The perfect shape of the thatched parasol positioned between Jamie’s and my empty beach loungers is a cruel, poignant contrast against the afternoon sky. The sand looks whiter than ever. There are too many greens interwoven into the trees and the sea to decide which shade works best against the deep blue air. Still-unknown birds and animals click and rustle in the undergrowth. The island feels so alive, and it mocks the possible death scene we are presiding over. It is a perfect postcard view, and I imagine scrawling on the back of it, Hi Jamie, Wish You Were Here, and it makes me almost giggle. The horror has become quasi-comical. Chrissy glances at me, and there is an air about her now, and I don’t know if it’s that I can’t trust her, or that she can’t trust me. I wish she would leave.
‘I’m worried,’ Chrissy says, at last.
‘Oh,’ I reply. What does she want me to say?
‘I dunno if the Old Bill are even going to let me and Kenny go home.’
‘Oh,’ I say again. I didn’t even know people really said Old Bill. I find that the most surprising part of her statement. My reaction is therefore almost indifference, as if it’s nothing to do with me, as if she’s talking about another story, one in which I play no part. What am I meant to do about what the police say to her and Kenny? The way she’s acting makes me think she’s convinced I’m to blame, or else she has something to hide herself, but I can’t work out which it is. It occurs to me that Kenny might have sent her.
‘Why d’you think they might not let you leave?’ I say, in the end.
‘Well, we were the last people to see Jamie alive.’ Her tone is odd, not quite threatening. The vowels are whiny and paranoid. ‘And anyway, why would they be sending police out from England now, if they didn’t think it was suspicious?’
I feel a fear surface, one that has been trapped somewhere inside me for as long as I can remember, when I see Chrissy’s expression. Her eyes are colder than I recall. Hers is the face of a stranger. Yet of course it is. I barely know her, not really. We’d become familiar so quickly, but that’s what happens when you’re on honeymoon, thousands of miles from home, with a husband who is driving you insane. What were her and Kenny’s motivations? I’d thought they were just being friendly, but now I’m not so sure. Kenny especially bothers me. On the few occasions that I’ve seen him since Jamie vanished, he’s seemed almost thuggish to me somehow, although he’d been so genial before – with his sunburn, his Sudoku, his endless good humour. Yet now he scares me. Chrissy told me when we first got chatting that she’d met him in a bar, on a Friday night in West India Quay. Apparently they’d been engaged within a month, married in six, in a registry office, with just two witnesses. She’s never even met his parents, she’d proudly squawked, because they live in Spain. I think, not for the first time, how Kenny had been alone, back at their bungalow next door, at the time Jamie disappeared.
Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself. Why would Kenny want to hurt Jamie? And besides, he couldn’t have done anything anyway – he’d hardly been able to walk that night. He had no motive.
Or did he? Did Kenny and Jamie know each other somehow, from the City perhaps? Is that why Chrissy was asking? It’s a very small world, after all. And if so, Kenny was so strong – compared to Jamie, anyway – it might have been quite easy for Kenny to have drowned him.
I feel my head reeling, and I need a drink but I mustn’t have one, and when I open my eyes Chrissy is staring at me, and it’s hard to tell what she’s thinking. There’s something not right in all this, but maybe it’s nothing more than the mysterious issue of there being a huge husband-sized hole in this diabolical island. It’s just adding to my feelings of dissociation, of the world having stopped. It’s an abrupt and total mind-fuck.
‘Well, anyway, I’m sorry to spoil your honeymoon,’ I say, and it comes out huffy. But I’d hoped Chrissy at least was on my side. She stands up and fluffs up her hair, adjusts her halter top for full knockout effect, sucks in her stomach. Her mask is back on.
‘I’m sorry, Jemma, love,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. Are you hungry? Shall I get you some lunch?’
‘No, thanks, I’m fine,’ I say, and I am. Chati will
be sure to come by soon. It has become a routine, and although I still feel a little awkward about it, I find myself almost looking forward to his twice-daily visits. I don’t know whether it’s the food, or the breaking up of the monotony. Or perhaps it’s simply that he’s the only person around here who doesn’t seem to be judging me.
‘I just can’t resist the food here,’ Chrissy says now. She’s trying hard to be normal. She pats her concaved stomach. ‘And so what if I put on a bit of weight?’
I stare at Chrissy’s perfect figure and want to hate her, for being so shallow when my husband is missing, quite possibly dead. But then she claps her hand over her mouth, and goes, ‘Oh, sorry, love!’ We stare at each other. I wonder whether I should smile, even make a quip. Instead I look down at my own stomach, which is softly rounded now, and the thought that there might be a baby in there makes me so sad. This was not how it was meant to be.
‘It’ll be all right, Jemma,’ Chrissy says, after a pause that is so long it appears to eat itself.
‘No, it won’t!’ The desperation in my tone shocks me. I’m almost crying now. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. I’ve lost the love of my life!’ Even I don’t know if I’m acting any more.
Chrissy looks at me, and she doesn’t need to say anything. It’s there in her eyes at last – that she thinks this could all be quite convenient for me.
My heart pumps, then stops, then pumps again. The blood seems too thick to work itself around my veins. I wonder whether Chrissy has told the police what I told her. She will, eventually, if it saves her own skin. But hopefully she won’t, unless she absolutely has to. I try to hold onto the belief that Chrissy and I shared something that made us want to look out for each other, perhaps makes her trust in my innocence. She’s a nice girl, and we’re friends still; I’m sure we are.
