Coco du Ciel

by Elise Noble

  Desk Lady clicked away with her mouse, but when Rhys glanced at the framed Don’t Drink and Drive poster on the wall behind her, he saw the reflection of a game of solitaire in the glass. Good to see his taxes were hard at work.

  “This morning? So she hasn’t been missing for more than twenty-four hours?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so. I suppose she might have been, but she can’t remember.”

  “We can’t do anything until she’s been missing for more than twenty-four hours.”

  “But she has amnesia. In twenty-four hours, she probably still won’t know who she is.”

  “Well, come back tomorrow and file a report.”

  Rhys had never been a violent man, but he stuffed his hands into his pockets just in case the urge to wipe the superior smile off the woman’s face became too strong.

  “That’s—”

  The brunette interrupted. “I understand you’re busy, but I can’t remember who I am or where I came from. So unless you want me sleeping in your lobby, I’m going to need your help to find my family.”

  “You can’t stay here.” Desk Lady pointed at a handwritten No Loitering sign. “We’ve got rules.”

  “Do the rules mention playing solitaire during working hours?” Rhys asked.

  Busted. His turn to smile.

  “Fine.” If looks could kill… “Fine, I’ll call the duty sergeant, but I don’t suppose he’ll be able to do much.”

  What happened to serving the community?

  CHAPTER 4

  ANOTHER HALF HOUR passed before the sergeant turned up, and then he spent ten more minutes explaining to the woman with ragged fingernails why he couldn’t arrest her neighbour for having a bonfire too close to her washing line. She slammed the door on her way out too.

  “Right. I hear you’re looking for a missing person?”

  “No, I’ve found a missing person.”

  “You’ll have to explain.”

  So Rhys did, and now he understood why vigilante justice was a thing. Was a written report too much to ask for?

  “So, love, you say you can’t remember your name?” the sergeant asked the girl.

  “No.”

  “Or when you came to the country? Your accent doesn’t sound Welsh.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll have a look at the missing persons database, but if no crime’s been committed, I can’t do much else.”

  The clock on the wall was ten minutes slow—even inanimate objects couldn’t be bothered to work properly around there—and the room was a soulless space, probably designed that way on purpose so people gave up waiting and went home. No magazines, no pamphlets, not even a vending machine. They were missing a trick there. In all the excitement, Rhys had skipped breakfast, and by the time the sergeant strolled back in, he was craving a packet of crisps.

  “Did you find anything?”

  The sergeant shook his head.

  “Nobody fitting your description’s gone missing locally for months,” he told the girl. “You might want to try the university. It’s what, five miles away? They take a few foreign students. Maybe someone there’ll recognise you.” His no-nonsense expression softened infinitesimally. “Good luck.”

  Good luck.

  Rhys didn’t need luck, he needed help. Over beers in the pub, finding a naked girl in the garden might sound like a comic-book fantasy, but as Rhys was finding out, the reality was very different.

  “Are we going to the university now?” the girl asked as they walked to the car.

  “Let’s try the hospital first.”

  Assuming it had a psychiatric department, there was a better chance she’d come from there than the uni anyway. The girl climbed back into the car, obedient. Submissive, almost, and Rhys found that unsettling. If Stacey had been in this situation, she’d have been freaking out by now. This girl, she just put on her seat belt, folded her hands in her lap, and waited. Waited for the next paragraph of her story to be written. For the page to turn.

  The problem? Neither of them had a clue about the plot.

  At the hospital, they found a parking space right beside the entrance to A&E, which seemed like a blessing until Rhys reached the ticket machine.

  “Four quid an hour to park,” he grumbled as he stuck the ticket to the windscreen. “That’s taking the piss. Do they think everyone’s made of money? Bet we’ll be waiting for ages too.”

  “Sorry.”

  The wobble in the girl’s voice took the edge off his annoyance. “It’s not your fault.”

  She didn’t answer, but as the automatic doors parted, she suddenly pressed one hand to her forehead. Her face screwed up in pain as she clutched at Rhys’s arm, and his heart raced. What was wrong? Was she having a stroke? Some sort of panic attack?

  The receptionist took one look at her and beckoned them both past the other people waiting. A kid with a Lego brick stuck to his arm glared, and Rhys glared back. Whatever was wrong with the girl certainly trumped stupidity with superglue.

  “Are you okay, love?”

  Would they have come to A&E if she were?

  “I-I-I tripped and f-f-fell,” the girl said.

  What? No, she didn’t.

  “You hit your head?”

  The girl nodded and winced. “It hurts.”

  “Did you black out?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.”

  The receptionist turned to Rhys. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I’m not sure. I just found her outside my house like this.” At least that part was true.

  “Is she a friend of yours?”

  “I never met her before this morning.”

  The receptionist sucked in a breath and gave a single nod. “Right. Right, I’ll get you booked in, love. What’s your name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Rhys’s turn to speak. “When she said she didn’t remember anything, she meant she doesn’t remember anything.”

  “But…”

  “Not one single thing,” the girl said.

  “What about ID?” the receptionist asked. “Do you have a wallet? A phone?”

  “She was naked when I found her.”

  The woman’s eyes widened, and Rhys noticed that everyone else in the queue was listening too. Perhaps he should have been peeved, but right now, the more people who knew the story, the better. The local gossip mill might be able to shed some light on the girl’s identity.

  “Naked?” the receptionist repeated, as if she might have misheard.

  “No clothes in sight.”

  “Well, you did the right thing by bringing her here. Take a seat, love, and I’ll get the doctor to see you right away.”

  They sat, and the chairs in the hospital weren’t any more comfortable than the ones in the police station. But hopefully they’d be sitting on them for less time.

  “Why didn’t you tell me your head hurt?” Rhys whispered. “I could have given you paracetamol.”

  “Given me what?”

  “Paracetamol.”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  Huh? “Then what do you normally take when you have a headache?”

  “Acetaminophen.” And Rhys had no idea what that was. “Hey, I remembered something. That’s good, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And I don’t have a headache. I just said that so we wouldn’t have to wait in line again.”

  “Uh, nice one.” Although now Rhys felt guilty for glaring at the kid with the Lego. “Well, I believed you. Maybe you used to be an actress?”

  “Do you think?”

  “I’d give you an Oscar.”

  And it also gave them a potential lead—if the hospital and the university were dead ends, Rhys could try local theatre groups.

  Five hours later, the girl had been thoroughly examined, not only by the doctor but by half a dozen medical students too. Because why n
ot use this horror show as a teaching experience? They’d taken blood and urine samples, checked her blood pressure, and run an ECG. Then they’d given her a pregnancy test, and when that came back negative, they ran a CT scan. When that showed nothing, they tried an MRI scan as well. Apart from the results of a few blood tests that were yet to come back, the investigations yielded a big fat zero.

  “So far, everything’s clear,” the doctor declared. “To all intents and purposes, you’re a healthy girl in your mid-twenties.”

  “Then why can’t I remember anything?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. There’s no evidence of head trauma. It’s possible that you may have dissociative amnesia, which is caused by emotional shock, but the good news is that the condition is usually temporary.”

  “Emotional shock?” The girl clutched at Rhys’s arm again, and he wasn’t so sure she was acting this time. “What do you mean, emotional shock?”

  “Some sort of stress, an event that you witnessed or were involved in.”

  “Such as what?”

  The doctor shifted from foot to foot. “Possibly physical or sexual abuse, the death of a loved one, something like that.”

  Rhys focused on two words in that sentence. Sexual abuse. He’d found her naked, for crying out loud. The girl had gone even paler, if that was possible, and what the hell was he meant to say?

  “Did you, uh… The sexual abuse… Did you check?”

  The doctor nodded. “There are no obvious signs.”

  Thank goodness. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t seen something terrible, and what would be bad enough to make a girl lose her entire memory? Rhys didn’t even want to think about it.

  But he could hardly walk away, could he?

  “What happens now?” the girl asked. “Where do I go?”

  “I’m afraid we can’t keep you here. We just don’t have the beds. But I can refer you to a counselling service, and if you need the number of a local hotel, Janet at the reception desk will be able to help.”

  “But I don’t have any money. Not a penny.”

  “The council has a program to help the homeless. I think we have leaflets somewhere—I’ll ask Janet.”

  “Okay.”

  One word, so tiny and quiet. The doctor mustered up a kindly smile.

  “I know a reporter for the local paper. They might be able to run a picture, see if anybody recognises you. Do you want me to find his details?”

  A nod.

  “I’ll be back in a jiffy. Just wait out the front.”

  In the waiting area, the girl sniffled quietly as she perched on one of the hard plastic seats. Rhys hated to see her upset, and at the same time, he was surprised she’d managed to hold it together for so long. It couldn’t be easy having your whole life disappear into a black hole. She had courage, and he had to admire that.

  “I’m staying at my uncle’s house for another week. There’s a spare bedroom if you want it?”

  “Really? He wouldn’t mind?”

  Probably not, and Rhys didn’t even intend to tell him. Call it payback for Albert’s claim that the broadband was super-fast when it was barely a megabyte above dial-up.

  “Nah, it’s fine. Perhaps in a day or two, you’ll remember something?”

  And what else was Rhys meant to do? Find her a cardboard box for the night?

  CHAPTER 5

  WHEN THEY GOT back to the house, the stereo was pumping out Mariah again. The girl looked at Rhys, confused.

  “Someone else is here?”

  “No, and this isn’t my music, I swear. It’s my uncle’s way of reminding me to water the plants.”

  “Maybe I could help?”

  “Don’t you need to rest?”

  “I’m not tired, and I think… I think that I should just try to act normal?”

  “Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind… There’s a tap by each door.”

  The process went much faster with two pairs of hands. They split the six greenhouses between them, and Rhys explained which plants needed a lot of water and which hardly needed any. Honestly, these plants couldn’t have been more pampered if they spent the weekend at a health spa. Six more days to go…

  With the watering finished, Rhys turned off the squeaky tap in the final greenhouse and rolled up the hose. Uncle Albert might have had green fingers, but Rhys certainly hadn’t inherited them. Gardening made returning to his student dive and putting up with Gary and Stacey seem like an attractive option. Where was the girl? Yelling “Hey you” seemed rude, so he traipsed through the other greenhouses until he found her standing under the coco du ciel palms, staring up at the huge spiky leaves.

  “I wish they could talk,” she said. “They’d be able to tell me where I came from.”

  “If these plants started talking, we’d have an even bigger problem.”

  “I guess.”

  “Keep your chin up—we’ll solve the mystery. Maybe that copper was on to something when he suggested trying the university? Students do crazy things when they’re drunk.”

  “How crazy? Do they run around with no clothes on?”

  Rhys thought back to some of the wilder parties he’d attended. He might not have socialised often by choice, but he wasn’t a complete hermit, and Stacey had dragged him out most weeks. He recalled the bikini vodka fight on the roof, skinny-dipping in a local duck pond, that time one of Gary’s mates had got himself arrested for public indecency…

  “Uh, yeah. Sometimes they lose their clothes.”

  The girl looked him up and down with fresh eyes, and Rhys felt a sudden pang of regret when he recalled the gym membership he’d taken out during freshers’ week and rarely used. Not that it mattered what she thought of him. Give it a day or two, and she’d be gone. Hopefully.

  “We’ll carry on asking around in the morning,” he promised in an attempt to move the conversation along. “But in the meantime, what should I call you?”

  A shrug. Please don’t cry.

  “Perhaps a nickname?”

  “The doctors called me Patient A.”

  “Sounds a bit James Bond, doesn’t it? You know, having a letter instead of a name? I could call you A.”

  The girl didn’t smile. Did she even know who James Bond was?

  “Wouldn’t that confuse people?”

  Probably. Rhys glanced around, seeking divine inspiration, and what do you know? It came.

  “How about Coco? Like the trees?”

  “Coco? Isn’t that kind of…girly?”

  “Well, you are a girl.”

  Rhys realised his gaze had dropped to her chest. What a bloody arsehole. His cheeks burned as he focused on her face again. Had she noticed his faux pas? Yes, it seemed—her lips had flattened into a thin line, but then she caught herself too and forced a smile.

  “Fine. Call me Coco.”

  Dinner was an interesting affair. Eating fish and chips in silence felt awkward, but what did two people discuss when one had no memory of any events before the previous day?

  “So… The weather’s meant to be nice tomorrow.”

  “Sunny?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “I think… I think I like the sun. Where are we again? You said the name of the village, but I forgot it.”

  “We’re in Llanefion, North Wales, and the nearest city is Bangor. Ring any bells?”

  Coco shook her head. “Have you lived here for long? You sound different from the other people we spoke to. Your accent, I mean.”

  “No, I live near London. I’m only here for a couple of weeks, house-sitting.”

  “And you’re a student? I saw a bunch of textbooks in the living room.”

  “I’ve just finished a computer science degree.”

  In some ways, it was like speaking with a child. Almost every sentence that came out of Coco’s mouth was a question.

  “How long does a degree take? Four years?”

  “Three years. But I started late. My…” Rhys paused to take a breath. T
his was the part that hurt. “My mum died when I was nineteen. Sudden—a drunk driver knocked her off her bike while she cycled home from work. So things got…delayed.”

  He’d been backpacking at the time, working on a farm in Australia. The call had come in the early hours. One day, he’d been picking fruit and flirting clumsily with girls in the local bars, and the next, organising a funeral. The driver had been uninsured. Money had been tight. Rhys had deferred his uni place for another two years while he saved up enough to live on, and then finally moved to Uxbridge.

  Coco squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry about your mom.”

  Rhys jolted at her unexpected touch, but as quickly as she’d reached out, she snatched her hand away.

  “It happened almost five years ago. I’ve learned to live with it.”

  A bland answer, and one that glossed over the pain that still burned in his gut. He’d found that was the best way to deal with the past. To pretend it didn’t exist.

  “What about your dad?”

  “Not in the picture.”

  “I’m sorry for that too.”

  “Don’t be—he was an arsehole.” Rhys barely remembered the man, only the yelling. He’d been glad when his father left. His mum had been happier as well, but now Uncle Albert was the only family he had left. “I don’t suppose you remember your parents?”

  Coco gave a helpless shrug. “Sorry.”

  The questions carried on… What year was it? Was it winter? No, summer, although it didn’t seem like it. Did it rain every day in Wales? Where was Uncle Albert? Why did he have so many plants? After dinner, Rhys turned the TV on, and although Coco vaguely understood football, she only recalled the American game which was more like rugby with a bunch of standing around.

  But underneath the confusion, she was whip smart, maybe even too smart at times. Tell her something, and she analysed and challenged. Coco might have been forgetful, but she definitely wasn’t stupid. And Rhys enjoyed the evening with her more than he’d ever thought he would.

  The grandfather clock had chimed midnight when he finally showed her to the nicer of the two empty guest bedrooms. Woodside Lodge was far too big for one man, but at the same time, Rhys couldn’t imagine Uncle Albert living anywhere else. An eccentric old house for an eccentric old man and his menagerie of plants. Albert would go stir crazy in a retirement flat.