The Love of My Life(35)

I reply to say I’ll let him know if I think of anything.

I read the letter again as the room fills with darkness, then I look up Coquet Island on my phone. There’s every chance Janice is right about the crabs: it’s a perfect place for an isolated species to start changing, undisturbed by other populations, and it would make sense that a dead specimen could wash up on Alnmouth beach from there. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.

But is there any chance she’s on the island, too? Jeremy said not, but is it a cry for help? There’s an old lighthouse there; I guess she could have broken in. But a woman who wants to disappear would not be able to get there without paying someone. And someone who’ll take money to ferry you to a forbidden island is not the sort of person who you can trust not to sell the information to a journalist.

Jeremy’s right. I don’t think there’s any way she could be there.

I reread the letter three, four times. I can’t believe she’s written to me, after all this time. How strange she sounds.

I try to eat some toast but I’m too wired. I go and stand outside the front door, hoping the cold sea air might ground me, but before long I’m shivering.

Later still, I lie awake, thinking about the shock of Jeremy Rothschild and my daughter in the same room. I think about Janice, about Charlie, a young man in London, praying for news of his mother, and it breaks my heart.

From time to time I think about Jeremy, alone in their house, reaching over for his phone in the middle of the night, just in case Janice has sent a message.

I thought this family was unbreakable. I just don’t understand what’s happened.

When I do finally sleep, I dream that a man in a baseball cap walks into my room, trying to talk to me, but I am paralysed. I see the entire room in detail, can hear the herring gulls calling outside, but I can’t say anything, can’t move. When I wake properly, Ruby is sprawled, star-like, next to me. She must have crept in as dawn broke.

Jeremy hasn’t texted.

I look at Wikideaths. Nobody of note.





Chapter Nineteen


DIARY OF JANICE ROTHSCHILD

Seventeen years earlier


April 16th, 2002

Impossible to describe how dark this week has been. Life has changed forever. How will I ever feel safe again?

Am so angry. So fucking angry, so frightened, still so shocked.

Writing this in bed, looking at the picture of the three of us in the hospital when Charlie was a newborn. J and I look so happy – even with that scowling nurse who hated us lurking in the background – but you can see it in my eyes; the way I hold Charlie. I was terrified of something like this happening. Even then, with the joy of that tiny scrap in my arms.

One week ago today, it was. Took Charlie to the sandpit at the park. Just a normal day, C playing happily. Then Bec arrived; talked to her for a bit. Ate most of her cookies and didn’t panic about my weight: progress.

Then realised C was gone.

Horrific. Nobody knows the first thing about fear until they find their child isn’t there anymore.

Was running around the park, calling then shouting then screaming, into the public toilets, big kids’ play area, out of the front exit of the playpark because some fuckwit had left it open.

People looking at me, why is that woman screaming, he’s bound to be somewhere, calm down, god poor child stuck with a crazy mother like that, hey, haven’t I seen her on the telly?

Was screaming HELP ME, HELP ME, and all I could think was that I knew this would happen, I knew.

Going to have to try to come back to this tomorrow. Have been having panic attacks, can feel breath going wrong. That’s what it’s done to me. Can’t even write about it here.

I don’t know what to do. Someone help me. Help me.





Chapter Twenty


LEO


Present day

Robbie Rosen is seven and a half minutes late. Claire, the old friend who signed me in, has long since returned to her desk. The only other person in the BBC canteen is a woman cleaning the now-empty serveries.

I stare out of the windows at the Glasgow skyline, pierced by blackened church spires. It’s stopped raining but droplets of water are still beetling down the floor-to-ceiling glass, and rain has pooled on empty plastic tables on the roof terrace outside. Further down the river, traffic queues on the motorway bridge.

I found the death conference oddly unsettling this morning. Emma’s illness has made death feel personal, suddenly; as if I’ve been stripped of my vocational ability to separate a person’s beginning and middle from their end. I was relieved when it was over; for once I didn’t stop to talk to anyone.

A young man the shape of an apple walks into the canteen. Tight jeans he’d probably be better without. He has a fashionable beard, but for some reason it doesn’t quite hit the mark – I think because his face is so youthful, so pink and plump. He sees me and raises his eyebrows in greeting.

We sit down and he asks if I know how Emma’s doing. He was ‘really upset’ to hear she was so poorly.

I tell him I’ve heard on the grapevine that Emma is doing well, and he seems genuinely relieved. Then I give my rehearsed speech about how I’m writing Emma’s stock obit and wanted to talk to someone on the production team for This Land about Emma’s time in front of the camera. I explain I’ve been just round the corner all day, at a death conference of all things, haha! ‘I thought it’d be easiest to drop by. Just ask a few questions.’