I Found You Read online

  ‘Did he not have a coat then? Before?’

  ‘No. Sitting there in a shirt. Soaked. Asked me where he was.’

  The two children pull themselves up on to the edge of the wall by their fingertips and peer over.

  ‘Where he was?’

  ‘Yes. He seemed a bit confused.’

  ‘Don’t get involved,’ says Derry.

  ‘Who said I was getting involved?’

  ‘You gave him a jacket. You’re already getting involved.’

  ‘That was just an act of simple human kindness.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Derry. ‘Exactly.’

  Alice tuts at her friend and heads away from the sea wall. ‘Are you seriously going shopping?’ she asks her. ‘In this?’

  Derry peers into the dark skies overhead and says, ‘No. Maybe not.’

  ‘Come on then,’ says Alice. ‘Come to mine. I’ll light the fire.’

  Derry and Danny stay for a couple of hours. The little ones play in the living room while Derry and Alice sit in the kitchen and drink tea. Jasmine returns at four o’clock, soaked to the skin with a wet rucksack full of GCSE coursework, no coat and no umbrella. Kai comes back at four thirty with two friends from school. Alice makes spaghetti for tea and Derry stops her opening a bottle of wine on account of her having to go home. She and Danny leave at six o’clock. It is still raining. Small rivers of muddy rainwater pour down the slipway to the beach and cascade off rooftops. And now a howling wind has set to, sending the rain onto the perpendicular, driving it into everything.

  From the top floor of the house Alice sees that the man is still there. He’s no longer in the middle of the beach. He’s moved back towards the sea wall and he’s sitting on a pile of rope. His face is turned up to the sky and his eyes are closed and something inside Alice aches when she looks at him. Of course he may be mad. He may be dangerous. But she thinks of his sad amber-brown eyes and the softness of his voice when he asked her where he was. And she is here in her home full of people, a pile of logs burning in the fireplace, warm and dry and safe. She can’t be here knowing that he is there.

  She makes him a cup of tea, pours it into a flask, tells the big ones to keep an eye on Romaine and goes to him.

  ‘Here,’ she says, passing him the flask.

  He takes it from her and smiles.

  ‘I thought I told you to go indoors.’

  ‘I remember that,’ he says.

  ‘Good,’ she says. ‘But I see you didn’t take my advice.’

  ‘I can’t go indoors.’

  ‘Are you homeless?’

  He nods. Then shakes his head. Then says, ‘I think so. I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Alice laughs softly. ‘How long have you been sitting out here?’

  ‘I got here last night.’

  ‘Where did you come from?’

  He turns and looks at her. His eyes are wide and fearful. ‘I have no idea.’

  Alice pulls away slightly. Now she’s starting to regret coming down here. Getting involved, as Derry said. ‘Seriously?’ she says.

  He pushes his damp hair off his forehead and sighs. ‘Seriously.’ Then he pours himself a cup of tea and holds it aloft. ‘Cheers,’ he says. ‘You’re very kind.’

  Alice stares out towards the sea. She’s not sure how to respond. Half of her wants to get back indoors to the warm; the other feels as though she needs to play this out a bit longer. She asks him another question: ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I think’, he says, gazing into his tea, ‘that I have lost my memory. I mean’ – he turns to her suddenly – ‘that makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s the only thing that makes sense. Because I don’t know what my name is. And I must have a name. Everyone has a name. Don’t they?’

  Alice nods.

  ‘And I don’t know why I’m here or how I got here. And the more I think about it the more I think I’ve lost my memory.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Alice. ‘Yes. That makes sense. Do you … Are you injured?’ She points at his head.

  He runs a hand over his skull for a moment and then looks at her. ‘No,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘Have you ever lost your memory before?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says, so ingenuously that they both laugh.

  ‘You know you’re in the north, don’t you?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘And you have a southern accent. Is that where you come from?’

  He shrugs. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Jesus,’ says Alice, ‘this is crazy. I assume you’ve checked all your pockets.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I found some stuff. Didn’t know what to make of any of it though.’

  ‘Have you still got it?’

  ‘Yes.’ He leans to one side. ‘It’s here.’ He pulls a handful of wet paper from his back pocket. ‘Oh.’

  Alice stares at the mulch and then into the darkening sky. She pulls her hands down her face and exhales. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘I must be mad. Well, actually, I am mad. But I have a studio room in my back yard. I usually rent it out but it’s empty right now. Why don’t you come and spend a night there? We’ll dry out these bits of paper, then maybe tomorrow we can start putting you together? Yes?’

  He turns and stares at her disbelievingly. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘I have to warn you,’ she says, getting to her feet, ‘I live in chaos. I have three very loud, rude children and three untrained dogs and my house is a mess. So don’t come with me expecting a sanctuary. It’s far from it.’

  He nods. ‘Honestly,’ he says. ‘Whatever. I really don’t mind. I’m just so grateful. I can’t believe how kind you’re being.’

  ‘No,’ says Alice, leading the wet stranger up the stone steps and towards her cottage, ‘neither can I.’

  Two

  Lily’s stomach is clenched as hard as a rock. Her heart has been beating so fast for so long that she feels as though she might pass out. She stands and heads for the window as she’s done every couple of minutes for the past twenty-three and a half hours. In thirty minutes she’ll call the police again. That’s how long they said she had to wait before she could report him as officially missing. But she’d known he was missing within an hour of him not coming home from work last night. She felt it like a slick of ice down her spine. They only got back from their honeymoon ten days before. He’d been racing back from work, sometimes early, and certainly never more than a minute late. He’d been coming home with gifts, with ‘two-week anniversary’ cards, with flowers. He’d spring through the door and say, ‘God, baby, I missed you so much,’ and then breathe her in, desperately.

  Until last night. He wasn’t there at six. He wasn’t there at half six. He wasn’t there at seven. Each minute felt like an hour. His phone rang and rang for the first hour. And then, suddenly, it stopped ringing, no voicemail, just a flat high-pitched tone. Lily was filled with blind, raging impotence.

  The police … Well, Lily had not had an opinion either way about the British police before last night. Much in the same way as you wouldn’t have an opinion about your local laundrette if you’d never had to use it. But she has an opinion now. A very strong one.

  In twenty minutes she can call them again. For what good it will do her. She knows what they think. They think: Stupid young girl, foreign accent, probably a mail-order bride (she is not a mail-order bride. She met her husband in a real-life situation, face-to-face). She knows the woman she spoke to thinks her husband is messing about behind her back. Having an affair. Something like that. She could hear it in the slackness of her tone of voice. ‘Is it possible that he just got waylaid after work?’ she’d said. ‘In the pub?’ She could tell that the woman was doing something else as she talked to her, flipping through a magazine maybe, or filing her nails.

  ‘No!’ she’d said. ‘No! He doesn’t go to the pub. He just comes home. To me.’

  Which had been the wrong thing to say, in ret
rospect. She’d imagined the sardonic lift of the policewoman’s eyebrow.

  Lily doesn’t know who else to call. She knows Carl has a mother, she’s spoken to her on the phone, just once, on their wedding day, but she hasn’t met her yet. Her name is Maria or Mary or Marie or something like that and she lives … well, God, Lily doesn’t know where she lives. Something beginning with S, she thinks. To the west? Or maybe the east. Carl told her once; she can’t remember and Carl keeps all his numbers stored in his phone. So what can she do?

  She also knows that Carl has a sister. Her name is Suzanne. Susan? She’s much older than him and lives near the mother in the place beginning with S. They are estranged. He hasn’t told her why. And he has a friend called Russ who calls every few days to talk about football and the weather and a drink they really should have one day soon but it’s so hard to organise because he has a new baby.

  Lily is sure there are other people in Carl’s life but she’s only known him since February, only been married for three weeks and only lived with him here for ten days so she’s still new to Carl’s world. And new to this country. She knows no one here and nobody knows her. Luckily Lily’s English is fluent so there’s no communication issue to deal with. But still, everything is so different here. And it’s strange to be completely alone.

  Finally the time ticks over to 6.01 p.m. and Lily picks up her phone and calls the police.

  ‘Hello,’ she says to the man who answers the phone, ‘my name is Mrs Lily Monrose. I’d like to report a missing person.’

  Three

  ‘Sorry,’ says the woman called Alice, leaning across a small table to open a pair of navy-blue curtains. ‘It’s a bit musty. It’s been weeks since I had anyone in here.’

  He looks around. He’s in a small timber room with a Velux window in the roof and a glazed door which opens into Alice’s back garden. It’s furnished spartanly. There’s a camp bed on one side, a sink, a fridge, a Baby Belling, a plug-in heater, the table, two plastic chairs, grimy rush matting on the floor. But the timber walls are painted an elegant shade of green and hung with an assortment of very attractive artworks: flowers and faces and buildings seemingly made from tonal slivers of old maps, skilfully collaged together. And by the camp bed is a pretty beaded lamp. The overall effect is quite pleasant. But she’s right, it does smell: an unhappy blend of must and damp.

  ‘There’s an outdoor toilet next door. No one else uses it. And you can use our downstairs bathroom during the day; it’s just off the back porch. Come on. I’ll show you.’ Her tone is clipped and slightly scary.

  As he follows her across the gravelled back yard, he takes in the form of her. A tall woman, slim enough, if a bit heavy around the middle. She’s dressed in narrow-fitting black jeans and an oversized sweater, presumably to camouflage the heavy middle and accentuate the long legs. She’s wearing black boots, slightly in the style of DMs, but not quite. Her hair is a springy mass of caramel and honey and treacle and mud. Bad highlights, he thinks, and then wonders how he has an opinion on such things. Is he a hairdresser?

  The tiny door at the back of the house sticks as she attempts to open it and she gives it a well-practised kick at the base. Ahead and down three steps is a galley kitchen, to the left is a cheap plywood door leading into a rather sad bathroom.

  ‘We all use the one upstairs so you’ll pretty much have this one to yourself. Shall I put a bath on for you? Warm you up?’

  She turns screeching taps before he has answered either way. She pulls up the sleeves of her oversized jumper to stir the water and he notes her elbows. The wrinkled misshapen pockets of them. Forty, forty-five, he thinks to himself. She turns and smiles. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Let’s get you something to eat while that’s running. And get these things on the radiator.’ She takes the damp bits and pieces she found in his pockets from him and he follows her again, into the galley kitchen: walls painted magenta, pots hanging from racks overhead, handmade units in soft oak, a sink full of washing up and a corkboard pinned with children’s scribbles. There’s a teenage girl sitting at the tiny table wedged into the corner. She glances up at him and then looks questioningly at the woman.

  ‘This is Jasmine. My eldest. This’ – she gestures at him – ‘is a strange man I just picked up on the beach. He’s going to sleep in the studio tonight.’

  The girl called Jasmine raises a pierced eyebrow at her mother and throws him a withering look. ‘Excellent.’

  She looks nothing like her mother. She has dark hair hacked – deliberately, he assumes – into a brutal bob, the fringe too high up her forehead, but somehow framing well her square face, her full vermilion lips and heavy eyes. She looks exotic, like a Mexican actress whose name he cannot possibly recall.

  Alice throws open a red fridge and says things to him. ‘Ham sandwich? Bread and pâté? I could heat up some cauliflower cheese? Or there’s an old curry. From Saturday. Where are we now? Wednesday. I’m sure it’ll be OK. It’ll be OK, won’t it? That’s what curry was invented for, wasn’t it? To preserve meat?’

  He’s finding it hard to assimilate information. To make decisions. This, he suspects, is why he ended up sitting on the beach for more than twelve hours. He was aware that there were options. He just couldn’t put the options into any kind of order. Instead he’d sat stultified, inert. Until this strident woman had come along and made a decision for him.

  ‘I really don’t mind,’ he says. ‘Anything.’

  ‘Fuck it,’ she says, letting the fridge door shut. ‘I’ll order in pizzas.’

  He feels a surge of relief at another decision being made for him. Then discomfort when he remembers that, bar a loose coin or two, he has no money.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any money.’

  ‘Yeah. I know,’ says Alice. ‘We went through your pockets, remember? It’s fine. My treat. And this one’ – she nods her head in the direction of her daughter – ‘she lives on fresh air. I always end up throwing hers away anyway. I’ll just order what I’d normally order. If you weren’t here.’

  The girl rolls her heavily lined eyes and he follows Alice into a tiny sitting room, bowing his head to miss a low beam. Here sits a small girl with white-blonde curls, nestled into the side of another teenager, this one lanky and of Afro-Caribbean descent. They are watching the television and both turn and look at him with alarm.

  Alice is rifling through a drawer in a desk. ‘This is a man I found on the beach,’ she says without turning around. She pulls a leaflet from the drawer, closes the drawer and passes the leaflet to the teenage boy. ‘We’re having pizzas,’ she says. ‘Choose something.’

  The boy’s face lights up and he sits up straight, unhooking the small girl’s arms from around his middle.

  ‘Romaine,’ says Alice, pointing to the small girl, ‘and Kai.’ She points at the tall teenager. ‘And yes, they’re all mine. I’m not a foster parent. Sit down, for goodness’ sake.’

  He lowers himself on to a small floral sofa. It’s a nice room. There’s a fire burning in the grate, comfortable furniture veering towards the shabbier end of shabby chic but generally well chosen, dark beams and dark-grey walls and Vaseline-glass shaded wall lights. There’s a Victorian street light hanging just outside the window, beyond that a necklace of fat white lights, beyond that the silvery shadows of the sea. Atmospheric. But this Alice is clearly no housekeeper. Dust furs everything, cobwebs hang from the beams, surfaces are cluttered with flotsam and jetsam, and the carpet has possibly never been hoovered.

  Alice begins to arrange the things from his pocket across the top of a radiator.

  ‘Train tickets,’ she mutters, peeling them apart. ‘Dated yesterday.’ She peers closer. ‘Can’t make out the time. Kai?’ She passes the damp ticket to her son. ‘Can you read that?’

  The boy take the ticket, glances at it, passes it back. ‘Seven fifty-eight.’

  ‘Last train,’ says Alice. ‘You would have changed at Doncaster. Got in really late.’ She carries on sorting through the
papers. ‘Some kind of receipt here. No idea what it says.’ She adds it to the top of the radiator.

  Her face is what he might call handsome. Strong features, a slight dip below each cheekbone, a good mouth. She has the smudged remains of this morning’s eyeliner under her eyes, but no other make-up. She’s almost beautiful. But there’s a hardness to her that sets her jaw at the wrong angle, makes shadows where there should be light.

  ‘Another receipt. Another receipt. A tissue?’ She holds it out towards him. He shakes his head and she drops it into the fire. ‘Well, that’s kind of it really. No ID. Nothing. You’re a complete mystery.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ asks Romaine.

  ‘I don’t know what his name is. And he doesn’t know what his name is. He’s lost his memory.’ She says this as if it is normal and the small girl furrows her brow.

  ‘Lost it where?’

  Alice laughs and says, ‘Actually, Romaine, you’re good at naming things. He can’t remember what he’s called and we can’t call him nothing. What shall we call him?’

  The small girl stares at him for a moment. He assumes she’ll come up with something childish and nonsensical. But she slants her eyes, purses her lips and then very carefully enunciates the word Frank.

  ‘Frank,’ says Alice, appraising him thoughtfully. ‘Yes. Frank. Perfect. Clever girl.’ She touches the girl’s curls. ‘Well, Frank’ – she smiles at him – ‘I reckon your bath’s run. There’s a towel on your bed and soap on the side. By the time you’re done, the pizzas should be here.’

  He can’t remember choosing a pizza; he’s not sure if Frank is his real name. This woman is making him dizzy with her officious certainty about everything. But he does know that his socks are damp, his underwear is damp, his skin is damp, that he is cold from the inside to the outside and that he wants a hot bath more than anything in the world right now.

  ‘Oh.’ He remembers something. ‘Dry clothes. I mean, I’m happy to put these back on. Or I could …’

  ‘Kai can lend you some joggers. And a T-shirt. I’ll leave them by the back door for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you so much.’