by Lisa Jewell
‘Well,’ says Derry. ‘That’s not particularly reassuring.’
‘And there’s other stuff. He’s started remembering things. He remembers watching a man jumping into the sea and drowning. He remembers a teenage girl on the carousel at the steam fair.’
‘So,’ says Derry, ‘have you googled it?’
‘Googled what?’
‘Men jumping into the sea and drowning?’
‘What? No. Of course I haven’t. I don’t even know when it happened.’
Derry sighs. ‘Where’s your laptop?’
‘In my room.’
‘Bring it down.’
Alice does as she’s told. Jasmine is sitting at her desk in her room and turns when Alice walks in. ‘Sorry, love, I need the laptop.’
‘When’s he going?’ she asks, closing the browser and putting the laptop to sleep.
‘Frank?’
‘Whatever. Yeah.’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Soon. When he remembers.’
‘But what if he doesn’t remember?’
‘He will, love. It says, on the internet. It’s temporary.’
Jasmine stands up, adjusts her black-framed glasses and shrugs.
‘Griff likes him,’ she says to Jasmine’s back.
‘Right,’ says Jasmine. ‘He’s a dog.’
‘A fussy dog!’ she calls after her daughter, but she’s gone.
‘Man drowned in Ridinghouse Bay’.
Alice and Derry sit, heads almost touching, side by side at the laptop. Derry presses enter and they wait for the results to come up.
It is immediately surprising how many men have drowned off Ridinghouse Bay.
‘We need a year,’ says Derry.
‘I told you,’ says Alice. ‘I have no idea.’
‘You said he remembered a teenage girl. So maybe this happened when he was a teenager. How old do you reckon he is?’
‘Late thirties? Forty maybe?’
‘Right. So, say he was eighteen. And forty now. Twenty-two years ago. Nineteen ninety-three. Roughly.’
‘Very roughly,’ says Alice.
‘It’s better than nothing.’ She adds ‘1993’ to her search. ‘Check on them, will you?’ she instructs Alice.
Obediently, Alice goes to the back door and peers through the window again. The game is still very much on. Frank is voicing the threadbare dog. Romaine has one bare, olive-skinned arm draped nonchalantly around Frank’s shoulder, her hip angled against him. They look as though they could be father and daughter. No one would doubt it for a moment.
Alice sits down next to Derry. ‘He’s murdered them both,’ she deadpans. ‘Cut them to ribbons, is eating their warm flesh off the ground with the dogs.’
Derry nudges her hard. ‘Shut up,’ she says. ‘Look.’ She angles the screen towards her. ‘Not quite a drowned man, but the timings match.’
There is a story on the screen, from the Ridinghouse Gazette archives.
The Coastguard was called out to Ridinghouse Bay at around 1 a.m. this morning after reports of three people struggling off the coast. Two of those involved have yet to be located and are feared drowned. The third, a man named locally as tourist Anthony Ross, suffered a fatal heart attack on the beach moments after being swept to shore. Another man, believed to be Ross’s teenage son, was taken to hospital but released shortly afterwards. Police are investigating the incident.
Derry is already googling the names: ‘Anthony Ross’, ‘Ridinghouse Bay’.
Nothing else comes up.
They hear the back door clatter and the children run in, high on play. Frank follows behind them and stops shyly when he sees Derry sitting there.
‘Frank,’ Alice says, ‘this is my best friend, Derry Dynes.’
‘Hi,’ she says, a softness in her voice that wouldn’t have been there if she hadn’t just read the story about a teenage boy’s father dying on the beach. ‘Mother of Daniel.’ She points at her son.
‘Nice to meet you,’ says Frank. ‘Great kids.’
‘Listen,’ says Alice, exchanging a look with Derry who nods, imperceptibly. ‘We’ve just been looking into things, on the internet, seeing what we could find out about drownings in the area. And we found a story from a good few years back. Two people feared drowned on a summer’s night. A man and his teenage son found on the beach, just here.’ She gestures towards the front door. ‘Apparently the man died of a heart attack. But the son survived. Does that ring any bells? Nineteen ninety-three? Anthony Ross?’
She is talking and talking because Frank is not responding.
‘I mean, it could be entirely the wrong time frame. We were just taking a punt. You know, you mentioned the teenage girl. So we thought it might have been something that happened when you were a teenager. If anything actually happened at all of course.’
Still he does not respond. He is leaning against the kitchen counter, but as Alice watches she realises that he is not leaning but being held up, that he is sliding, that his face has lost all its colour. She sees his hands grip the sides of the work surface, his knuckles white and hard.
‘Frank?’
Derry jumps to her feet. ‘He’s fainting,’ she says. ‘Quick. Let’s get him sitting down. Help me!’
But it’s too late. He falls to the floor like a felled tree.
Twenty-two
1993
Mark returned two hours later. He was wearing a blazer. An actual blazer. To go to the Ridinghouse Grand.
‘What’s on?’ Tony asked, seeing them off at the door.
‘Cliffhanger,’ Mark replied, his hand in the small of Kirsty’s back.
‘Oh, yeah, that’s supposed to be thrilling,’ said Tony.
‘So I’ve heard,’ says Mark.
Kirsty was edging out of the door, looking keen to be on her way. She’d claimed under heavy questioning from Gray that she really did want to go to the cinema and that Gray was imagining things when he’d suggested that she hadn’t looked that keen earlier.
At the sound of their voices disappearing up the street towards town he jumped to his feet. His mum was cooking spaghetti in the kitchen and he stuck his head around to the door to say that he was popping out to buy a bottle of Coke.
‘We’ve got Sprite,’ she said.
‘I want Coke.’
‘Well then, can you get a lump of cheddar while you’re at it?’
Kirsty and Mark had been walking slowly and he was able to catch up with them halfway to the high street without running. They’d stopped to look in the window of an antique shop. There was a display of old china dolls and they were talking about how spooky they were. Mark again put his hand into the small of Kirsty’s back and gently guided her onwards towards the cinema.
He watched from a distance as Mark held the doors open for his sister and gallantly ushered her through. And then they were gone.
Mark brought Kirsty home at ten. Gray could hear them from his bedroom over the street. There was a kind of heaviness about their voices, as though they were on the verge of an argument. He peeled his curtain back a little and peered down on to the crowns of their heads. He saw Mark try to kiss her and he saw Kirsty duck to avoid the kiss.
‘Oh, come on,’ he heard Mark say. ‘Not one single kiss throughout that whole ridiculous movie. And now not even a little one outside your door? That’s not very kind.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m really tired. I just want to go to bed.’
‘You can go to bed very, very soon, I promise,’ he said, looming towards her again with puckered lips.
She ducked away again and said, ‘Honestly. I’m shattered.’
‘Really?’ he said in a disbelieving tone and Gray heard him tut under his breath. Then: ‘What about tomorrow?’ He sounded sulky, petulant almost. ‘Or are you going on another day trip?’
And there it was, the kernel of everything that Gray had been feeling uncomfortable about all week. Mark thought they were amusingly provincial. He thought he was better tha
n them. Yet he was pursuing his sister as though she was the love of his life.
‘I don’t know,’ he heard Kirsty reply. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well then, shall I come and call for you? We could spend the day at my aunt’s. I’ll make you lunch.’
‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘I need to ask Mum and Dad.’
‘Can you ask them now?’ His tone was clipped and impatient.
‘I’ll ask tomorrow.’
‘Why not now?’
‘It’s late. I’m tired.’
He heard Mark tut again and then say, ‘Fine. I’ll call round tomorrow morning. You can tell me then.’
His sister hesitated and then said, ‘OK. See you tomorrow.’
The door clicked shut behind her and Gray heard her talking quietly with their parents before going straight to bed. Through his bedroom window, Gray watched as Mark stood for a moment or two outside Rabbit Cottage, his hands in his pockets, staring darkly at the front door, the muscles in his hollowed-out cheeks twitching slightly. Then he turned and crossed the narrow cobbled street, looked out to sea for a moment before suddenly and fearsomely kicking the sea wall, once, twice, three times, then finally heading away from the cottage, a thin, angry silhouette disappearing from view into the misty summer’s night.
Twenty-three
Lily wakes from her nap with a start. It’s dark and the duvet is twisted around her legs. She looks at the clock by the bed: 8:09. For a moment she has no idea if it is morning or night. Then she remembers that it’s still Saturday night. She’d been dreaming of her family. She’d been dreaming of home. She picks up the phone and calls her mother.
‘Mama,’ she says, her voice full of sleep. ‘He is still gone.’
‘Come home,’ says her mother.
‘I cannot come home. In case he comes back.’
‘If he comes back he will know where you are. He knows how to get here.’
‘He cannot get here. The policewoman still has his passport.’
‘He can phone you and you can come back.’
‘But what if he is hurt?’
‘Lily. He is in his own country. If he is hurt there are people there who will look after him.’
‘I am not so sure, Mama. They came yesterday and took his computer. They said that the kind of fake passport he had comes from the criminal underworld. So he may know dangerous people. He may have crossed them.’
Her mother makes a strange strangled noise. ‘My God. Lily. You must leave! You’re in the flat by yourself. What if they come for you? What if he comes for you and they follow him? You are a sitting target!’
‘I have nowhere to go, Mama! I know no one!’
‘Oh, I knew. I knew this was all wrong. I should have stopped it. I should have made you wait.’
‘I would still have married him and he would still have been lying to me.’
‘No. With more time you would have realised. It is like onions. People reveal themselves to you a layer at a time. That is why you should wait. Wait until you get to the layers near the bottom. Usually where the worst stuff is. And then, if the worst stuff is not so bad, then you marry.’
‘Carl is not a bad man, Mama! We don’t know his story! I think it is possible he was married before. I found some rings. Maybe this other woman hurt him. Maybe something bad happened to him. Maybe he has a false identity to hide from this woman! We don’t know anything.’
She hears her mother sigh. ‘I want you to come home. I can pay for tickets.’
Lily pauses. She can’t deny that she wants to be at home now. She wants her mother and her brothers and her dog and her college friends and the bars and the lost Saturday nights. She wants to brush her hair in the mirror in the bedroom she left behind, still adorned with photos of her and her friends. She wants to link arms with those friends and walk down familiar streets, speak a familiar language, see familiar faces. She wants to be somewhere where she can talk to a stranger without being misread and treated with suspicion.
But – Carl was her ticket to the UK. Without Carl, or whoever he really is, she may not be allowed back. And for some reason, as lonely as she is, and as scared as she is, she wants to be allowed back. She wants to keep the key to the door of this life she has had such a small taste of.
‘I am not coming back,’ she says, ‘not yet. Not until I know for sure what has happened to Carl.’
Her mother sighs and she hears her tongue make a clicking sound against her teeth. ‘You,’ she says, warmly. ‘I don’t where you came from. This strong woman. This woman alone in a foreign country. You are brave and foolish. But I cannot stop you.’
‘No,’ she says, ‘you cannot.’
‘I miss you. I love you.’
‘I love you, too.’
‘And soon, when I have finished this big contract, I will come. OK?’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘A week. Maybe ten days.’
‘Good. Thank you.’
‘And by then, maybe, you will know where your husband is.’
‘Please. Yes.’
‘For what it is worth, I think he is a good man.’
‘He is. Yes. I know.’ Her syllables become more and more clipped as she feels tears surging.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too.’
And then the phone line is silent and the room is silent and the only light comes from the crack in the bathroom door. Lily drops the phone into her lap and cries.
Twenty-four
Frank sleeps all afternoon. When he awakens at just past six he feels as though he is rising from a coma. It’s dark already and the lights in the shed are turned off. As his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, he sees the warm glow of the lights from the back of Alice’s cottage. There’s loud music coming from one of the rooms upstairs and the sound of high-octane teenage discourse. The noise prickles his subconscious in some strange way and he closes his eyes, trying to locate the root of it. But it’s not there. He remembers being in Alice’s kitchen, with Alice and that woman, her friend. Debbie? He’d walked in and they’d both turned and looked at him with the same expression of uneasiness and concern. And then they’d told him about a man called Anthony Ross who’d died on the beach, out there, in the very same spot where he’d sat for all those hours this week. The name had hit his consciousness like a bullet and then he’d blacked out. As he rises from the camp bed he tries to retrace the impact of the name. Anthony Ross, he mutters to himself. Anthony Ross. But nothing comes.
His stomach grumbles and he tries to ignore it. He can’t keep walking into Alice’s house expecting to be fed. He spends a few minutes dreaming of all the things he will do for Alice once he has found his life again. He’ll send them on holiday. He’ll take them out for meals. And, Christ, if he turns out to be really wealthy, he’ll pay off their mortgage for them.
A moment later he sees the garden lighten and hears footsteps crunching across the gravel. He instinctively touches his hair, pushing it into place.
Alice knocks gently at the door. ‘Frank?’
He opens it and smiles at her.
‘Christ. Thank God. You’re alive. I was getting really worried.’
‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘Bit blurry. But fine.’
‘Thank God,’ she says again. ‘Anyway, here.’ She passes him a large carrier bag. ‘It’s all the stuff we bought earlier. I gave it a wash for you. Even the clean stuff smells bad in charity shops, doesn’t it?’
He takes the bag from her and says, ‘Wow. Thank you. I didn’t expect you to do that.’
‘For my own benefit really. Don’t want another stinky house guest.’ She smiles. ‘Listen. I’ve cooked an actual meal. Meat and stuff. Want to join us?’
He wants to say no, because of his guilt. But his stomach speaks for him. ‘That would be wonderful. If you’re sure it’s not an imposition.’
‘God, no, I’m feeding the five thousand anyway, so another mouth won’t make any difference. About ten minutes
,’ she finishes, pushing her hands into the pockets of a huge hairy cardigan. ‘But just come when you’re ready.’
Frank picks out a soft blue shirt and a pair of khaki trousers from the bag of fresh-smelling clothes, then snaps off a pair of brand new socks from a packet. Pulling them on feels like the most civilised thing that has happened to him since he lost his memory, and as he approaches the back door a few minutes later he feels almost like a proper person.
The house is full of good smells, and all the windows in the kitchen are steamed up. Romaine is standing on a step stool over the hob stirring a pan of gravy and Derry is slicing carrots at the kitchen table while Daniel sits on the floor rubbing Hero’s stomach.
‘Through here,’ he hears Alice call from next door. ‘Here.’ She passes him a large glass of wine. ‘What do you think?’ She has cleared the piles of paperwork and homework and books and artwork from the dining table and laid it. There is a small cluster of candles flickering in the centre and purple linen napkins folded into triangles on orange dinner plates, and heavy crackled-glass wine goblets with indigo bases.
‘It looks beautiful,’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ she says, appraising it herself. ‘Pretty classy. If I do say so myself.’ She raises her wine glass to his and says, ‘Cheers. To you not being dead.’
He smiles. ‘I guess.’
‘And you’re sure you’re feeling all right? You went down like a dead weight.’
‘I’m pretty sure,’ he says, feeling the red wine warming the lining of his empty stomach, bleeding pleasantly into his cold veins. ‘I feel normal.’
‘Nothing normal about you, Frank,’ she says.
He laughs. ‘That’s true.’
They are silent for a moment. Frank can feel Alice’s next question hanging in the air between them. He smiles at her.
‘So,’ she says. ‘Anthony Ross.’
‘Yeah. I know. It obviously means something. It’s obviously connected to me. The fact that I came here, the fact I sat right there.’ He gestures at the beach. ‘The fact that I can remember something to do with a man in the sea out there. It’s definitely part of my story. I just wish I knew in what way.’
‘So there’s nothing there now? No recollection?’
