Final Cut(16)

‘Did they say anything?’ she asked instead, and as I looked up at her expectant, hopeful face I realised this was it, the breakthrough she’d been waiting for during our work together. All that time spent asking me whether I ever did anything and then couldn’t remember it (‘Doesn’t everyone?’ I said), or if I’d ever found anything at home that I couldn’t recall buying (‘What home?’), or if I ever felt my body didn’t belong to me or was being operated by someone else. When it was all done she told me she thought I’d experienced something called dissociative fugue, and that it could be caused by lots of things, and it was obvious my life hadn’t been easy recently, and that it usually just got better by itself.

And this was the breakthrough she’d been hoping for? Again, I felt I had to give her something, or else she’d never stop asking.

‘Just my name,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s good!’

‘My first name.’

‘Right,’ she said, a little more hesitant, a little more disappointed. ‘And?’

I had to think quickly. I couldn’t give her my real name; she’d already talked about a TV appeal, or more contact with the national press. A name floated up from nowhere.

‘Alex,’ I said. ‘My name is Alex.’

‘Alex?’

I nodded.

‘Well, it’s something,’ she said. ‘A big thing! Your name … We can ring them back. You want me to? I can explain—’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it. Later.’

She hesitated.

‘Promise me you will,’ she said doubtfully. I told her I would, and I did. Every day for a week, and every day she asked me and I told her truth. The number was never answered again, and on the eighth day stopped even ringing out. She gave the number to the police at that point but they said it was unlisted, probably a pay-as-you-go mobile. Dr Olsen told me not to worry, that more would come now I had my name.

‘There’s something else, though,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to worry, but we do need to think about discharging you to Outpatients soon. You can’t stay here for ever. You have somewhere to go?’

She knew I didn’t. She’d already referred me to someone who’d said she’d help with that, not that I had any faith they could.

I shook my head. She put her arm on my shoulder and, for once, I didn’t flinch.

‘Don’t worry, Alex, dear. I won’t abandon you. It’ll all be all right. I promise.’





Now





9


Monica and I finish our tea, then I return to Hope Cottage. I know I look nothing like I did back then, but still I’m shaken. I’ve lost the excess weight I was carrying, which was considerable. I dye my hair black – along with my too-bushy eyebrows, which I now pluck assiduously – and wear it short. Laser surgery has removed the need for the glasses without which I never left the house. The gap between my teeth closed up naturally, but I’ve had them straightened and whitened, plus I used some of the money I made from Black Winter to have my ears pinned back, my too-large nose trimmed down and my slightly protruding jaw recontoured with fillers.

But there are other differences, too, more significant. Everything changed when I became Alex, when I got myself off the streets and into employment, when I started taking my film-making seriously. Everything. The clothes I wear, the way I hold myself, the way I walk and talk, my confidence. Even my own mother would struggle to recognise me, though that’s not something I’d relish putting to the test. But people who knew me back then? A passing resemblance, they might say, as if Sadie and I could be sisters, perhaps. But no more than that, I’m certain of it, or else I’d never have come this near Malby. I’d never have let Dan bully me into coming back to Blackwood Bay. I’d never have talked to Monica.

I reach for my glass of water. My laptop sits in front of me, a browser already open. Google is fired up and ready to go. I think back to what Monica said. That maybe me running away was the last straw for Daisy. But she’s wrong. She’s misremembered, or made a mistake. Daisy and I weren’t friends; I barely knew her. I’m not even sure I’d recognise her if she were standing in front of me now. Not that she can, of course. So it can’t be my fault she decided to jump. Can it?

And what did she mean about the rumour I’d turned up? Can it be true? I type my name and press Search. The machine hangs for a moment, but then the list of results fills the screen. I don’t appear on the first page, nor the second. I try again, this time adding Blackwood Bay.

And there I am, right at the top. Local Teenager Missing. My hand hovers over the trackpad. I could click the link, go in deeper, find out what they said about me, whether they linked my disappearance to Daisy’s death, or I could close the window and focus on what I want the documentary to be. I hesitate for a moment longer. Who knows what I might find out, where it might take me? And I’ve gone this long without looking. I should concentrate on my film, not on myself.

But what if the two things are linked? I click.

The article is from the local news. It tells me nothing I didn’t know. I just disappeared, it says. I left home one day – from our house near Malby; I was on my way to visit a friend, according to my mother – and never returned.