Mr. Nobody(105)

I hope he died happy. I hope I helped that lost soul trapped inside him just a little bit at the end; I hope he had some small piece of happiness between all that horror.

It’s funny, I remember watching Ben Taylor’s parents leave the hospital that day, their receding figures walking away down the corridor, hand in hand. I hoped then that they’d find it in themselves to stop looking, to stop searching for the thing they’d lost, and to finally carve out their own little piece of life in the time they had left.

    I’m not sorry for what I did. For lying. I’m happy to take the money and walk away. Because there’s a limit to how far we should go for others.

I watch Bahareh as she talks, her voice soft and meandering, her plight so clear, so poignant. If she could only see herself through my eyes. But that’s my job, isn’t it, to shine a light back on her.

I still find it strange how easy it is to see solutions for others but not for yourself. Those years I slogged out sixteen-hour days, no weekends, no holidays, no life—it’s hard to recognize compulsion when you’re in the thick of it. The compulsion to fill the hole you left, Dad. It’s only now I really see it. I’ve been replaying the same story. I’ve been replaying you, with every patient, replaying the imagined moment I could have fixed you. Over and over again. Classic PTSD. But I couldn’t have fixed you then. And I can’t fix you now.

I didn’t see you that night at the bottom of the stairs, Dad, you didn’t put your coat on and leave; you were just a figment of my addled brain. You’re gone.

At the back of my mind, I suppose, I always knew you died, but I was so enamored with the idea you might come back one day and explain it all. Explain it all away. Tell me you didn’t do what you did. Or I’d explain it for you, through someone else, through my job; finally I’d work out why you did what you did. Why people do the things they do. Somehow I’d uncover your reasons. But I’ve been scrambling around for too long now trying to gather together the broken pieces of you, the shattered fragments you left all over our lives. I’ve been so focused on putting those pieces—and you—back together again that somewhere along the way I came apart at the seams.

But now it’s time for me to put myself back together.

Bahareh’s warm eyes find mine. “I just don’t know why I’m doing any of it anymore. You know?” she coos. “I used to try so hard to please him, to make him love me…but now—” She breaks off, lost in thought.

    “Now?” I prompt.

“Now I realize. We can’t change people, can we?”

“No. No, we can’t,” I answer. “People have to change themselves.”





       FOR ALL THOSE CHASING GHOSTS





Acknowledgments


Thanks go to my fantastic editors at Penguin Random House in the U.S. for all their hard work, faith, and creative support on Mr. Nobody: the brilliantly inspiring and supportive Kate Miciak, and the truly wonderful Kara Cesare. And in the UK, at Simon & Schuster, huge thanks to the genius that is Jo Dickinson. It has been such a pleasure to get to work with this world-class team of women.

I’d like to thank my wonderful, clever, and creative agent Camilla Bolton at Darley Anderson. Thank you for answering that first email and everything that followed. You’re an absolute diamond!

And thank you to the rest of the fantastic teams at Penguin Random House: Kara Welsh, Sharon Propson, Quinne Rogers, Allison Schuster, Kim Hovey, and Jesse Shuman—and at Simon & Schuster: Jess Barrett, Hayley McMullan, and Anne Perry.

This book would never have come about without a news story that lodged in my head back in 2005. The story of the Kent Piano Man was the jumping-off point for this novel and when I took the idea to my publisher and subsequently looked into the history and research around the fugue cases I was hooked. Dissociative fugue is a truly fascinating/horrifying condition that has the ability to instantly catch the imagination. I encourage anyone who is interested in learning more to search out one of the many fascinating documentaries on fugue sufferers. The moral and philosophical questions this neurological condition raises on the nature of self are endlessly engaging.

    Thank you to Dr. Anthony Jack, associate professor of philosophy, psychology, neurology, and neuroscience at Case Western Reserve University, for your medical/neuroscientific eye and technical advice—thanks for making sure Emma knew her stuff.

To Sam Carrack, thanks for letting me pick your brains on the Piano Man case and the media manipulation around it. It was great to meet someone else who was as captivated as I was by the story of an unknown man found fifteen years ago.

Finally, thanks to my wonderful husband, Ross Armstrong, for his week of loneliness in the Caribbean whilst I sat in a hotel room and put the finishing touches to my first draft #deadline #firstworldproblems—Ross, you’re a constant source of happiness and inspiration—thanks for being such a lovely and understanding human being.