‘Bye.’
Eight o’clock comes and goes. Eight fifteen. I walk down to the foyer and pace, envelope in hand. Eight thirty. When the guy comes, I swear I’m going to ram the envelope down his throat. Forget a twenty-quid bribe. By the time it turns nine I am sweating bullets, my heart racing. Two of my colleagues have already walked in and asked if I’m ill. I nod. Yes, yes I am ill. It dawns on me that I expected this place to shake me back into competency, to prompt enough mental clarity to enable me to solve the mystery of my wife’s disappearance. The only clarity I’ve acquired is that I’m an idiot.
At nine fifteen I race back upstairs, intent on arranging a private courier. I should have done this in the first place. My secretary Ramona is at her desk. I go into her office. Ramona is a genius. She’s Chinese, raised by a Tiger Mother, plays the oboe at diploma level and can solve a Rubik’s cube in under five minutes. She’ll fix all of this.
‘What are you doing here?’ she says in a low voice. ‘I thought – didn’t I see something online about your wife?’
I nod and flap the envelope at her before explaining the situation with Mr Husain and the courier.
‘The courier left a message with Joan fifteen minutes ago,’ Ramona says. ‘He’s not coming in today. I was in the process of trying to find a replacement.’
I thrust the envelope into her hands. ‘Please, Ramona. Deliver this for me. I’ll pay you anything.’
She takes a step back and looks puzzled. ‘You want me to deliver it?’
I move to her computer and start looking up directions to the Cauldwell Building in Edinburgh. ‘Here, I’ll email you the fastest route. Did you bring your car?’
She shakes her head. ‘I always come by bike …’
‘OK, book a flight. Use my credit card.’ I take out my wallet and press a Visa card into her hand. ‘Just … whatever it costs, OK?’
Ramona looks a little dazed. I catch a ghostly reflection of myself in one of the glass panels opposite and realise I look like a madman. My tie is gone, my collar is open by three buttons, my hair is sticking up all over the place and I’m shining with sweat. Plus, I’m gripping my secretary by the upper arms.
A knock on the door, the tall, lanky figure of Dean Wyatt visible through the glass.
‘Everything all right in here, Lochlan? I heard shouting …’
I let go of Ramona and smooth down my hair. ‘Everything’s fine, Dean. In light of the fact that we’re down a courier, Ramona’s offered to hand-deliver a very important form this morning.’
He looks grave. ‘The Husain account?’
I nod. He raises a silver eyebrow at Ramona. ‘Good. This has been a very serious matter for the company.’ He flicks his eyes at me, a trace of disapproval there. ‘See you at the meeting in a half hour.’ He turns to leave, but I call after him. I step outside Ramona’s office and collar Dean in the passageway.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to take some time off,’ I say.
He turns slowly and looks deeply confused. ‘I’m sorry, Lochlan, but I’m not quite sure what you mean.’
I explain the situation at home, and I mention the police, but he simply shakes his head as though none of this is possible.
‘What about the Edinburgh branch? You can’t simply up and leave at a time like this.’
I make to answer, but there’s an LCD screen on a wall beside us and the noise is starting to rattle my head. The news comes on, and from the corner of my eye I spy my wife’s face. Both Dean and I turn to see a headshot of Eloïse enlarging on the screen until it is filled.
And in local news, charity campaigner and mother-of-two Eloïse Shelley went missing from her home in Twickenham yesterday. Her family and friends are desperately urging anyone with information to come forward.
Gerda pops up on screen. There’s a microphone in her face and she’s standing in the doorway of my house looking drained and wild-eyed. Her voice shakes.
‘She hasn’t been seen for over twenty-four hours. This really is extremely distressing and urgent. We’ve got two grandchildren, the youngest only twelve weeks old. We plead with anyone who has seen Eloïse to contact us immediately.’
Komméno Island, Greece
It’s morning. The sky outside the porthole window is grey and brooding. It’s so cold that the bedsheets feel damp to the touch. It takes a few moments to get my bearings. Sleep seems to have made a huge difference to how I feel. The terrible pain in my breasts has stopped. My head isn’t as sore, either. Still, when I move across the floor of the attic to the door, I find it locked, or jammed. Either way, it won’t budge, and it takes a minute or two of pounding my fists against the wood for Joe to come and open it. He explains that the wind must have caught it and offers to help me down the stairs, but I refuse. I cling to the old wooden banister and take each step very carefully.
Eventually I find the bathroom, close the door, testing the lock several times before sinking down to the ground. There’s no shower in here, just a sink and an old tin bathtub with rusty taps and a cobwebbed window. The water doesn’t seem to run any other temperature than ice cold. Sariah tells me they get their water from a cistern out by the hay barn so it’s not particularly plentiful.
I peel off the pyjamas that Hazel lent me and study the naked woman in the small shaving mirror above the sink. This woman who is me. She is Caucasian, slender, somewhere between thirty and forty, with thick honey-blonde hair to her shoulders. A long face, skinny arms and round hips, the chest streaked with blue veins. Her shoulders are defined, and beneath a layer of loose skin around the belly button is a firm six-pack. Lines fan around the eyes. A small, irregular nose, light green eyes and ears that stick out a little. No tattoos or scars. Her nails are unpainted and short, filed into neat ovals. Her left cheekbone and forehead are horribly bruised, and there are aubergine-coloured splodges on her shins, her right hip, and both arms.
Why don’t I recognise myself? Why isn’t my body familiar? Where do I live? Do I work? Do I have kids? The white space in my mind is luminous, unyielding. Why don’t I know my own name?
Gingerly I stretch out the arm that doesn’t hurt as badly as the other and touch the mirror to confirm that this is my reflection. I want her to talk back to me, to tell me my secrets. I read this body like a puzzle, a remnant of a larger story.
There’s a groove around the base of several fingers, as though I was wearing rings that have since vanished – the third and fourth fingers of my right hand, my wedding finger. Was I married? I rub my thumb up and down the faint circular indentations in my skin, willing myself to remember the ring that has vanished, if not the person who gave it to me.
I find a bar of soap on the side of the bath and slowly scrub the sour smell of brine off my skin and out of my hair, careful not to touch the cut at the right side. It stings so badly. Hazel told me she washed the clothes I was found in yesterday – a bra, pants, yellow T-shirt and jeans – and that she put them on the washing line outside to dry. She also lent me some of her clothes.
Wrapping a towel around me, I stagger painfully to the kitchen and out the back door to the stone steps that lead down into the grassy patch at the back of the house. I find my jeans, T-shirt, bra and pants all swaying on the line alongside the life jacket. I finger it, pulling at the straps.
A wave of dizziness forces me to sit down on a patch of dry grass. I can’t bear to think that someone else died on the trip to this place. Someone I loved, perhaps. After a long while I force myself to focus on my surroundings. George asked