Mr. Nobody(84)

Finally, I look up into his eyes. “Mr. Wilton. What is Stephen’s surname?”

“Ah, well, that’s a tricky one. Now, his mother’s surname was Merriman. Lillian Merriman. But when he started doing his acting he changed it, I think…to McNabb. Yes. That was it. McNabb, I’m sure of it. He told me why he changed it but I forget. I think he just fancied the sound of it. Got more of a ring to it…”

Nigel keeps talking but I’m no longer listening.

An actor? Oh holy fuck.

Matthew is an actor. And apparently, not one that anyone in the country recognizes. The story slams together in my mind. A lonely unemployed man tries to take his life after his mother dies. Something went wrong and he was found wandering by the police. He’s been lying since the beginning. No, wait, he can’t have been lying. I scanned him, I verified a fugue. His memory must have started coming back after the fMRI after that last panic attack. And he kept it to himself. Perhaps that’s what he wanted to tell me on the beach? Perhaps he wanted just a little bit longer playing Matthew. I suppose here, with us, he wasn’t alone anymore. He just didn’t want all this to end. He’s been faking.

    How could I have been so incredibly wrong about this?

My life pasted across the headlines. My career hanging by a thread. For this? For a malingering actor? Did he try to tell me who he really was, was I just not listening?

I rise without a word and stride away from poor Mr. Wilton mid-sentence. Regardless of the whys and the self-blame and everything that will come after, I know with pure clarity that I need to find Matthew, as soon as I can.

When I get back to his empty room, I shut the door securely behind me, drawing the curtain in the door’s window. I search his room, tearing it apart, emptying his locker, rifling through his few spare clothes. I strip his bed, pulling pillows from pillowcases and sheets from the mattress. And that’s when I find it, nestled underneath the mattress up by the headboard. An iPhone in a dirty plastic Ziploc bag. I rip it out and scroll through its history.

Searches.

Oh my God.

Searches on Stephen McNabb. Searches on Stephen Merriman. Notes in the note app titled “Stephen.” An address I don’t recognize in Norfolk, and directions to it. A note headed “Dr. Emma Lewis.” Beneath it a link to the article I wrote on fMRI testing years ago. The times I arrive at the hospital, the times I leave. My old home address. He was there, he saw those gates. I think of his face yesterday when I joked about not having gates, and remember how concerned he looked by my joke. He knew he’d made a mistake. He knew he wouldn’t have long until I figured it out, if the MOD hadn’t worked it out yet already. He knew he’d have to go back to being Stephen and then all of this would stop.

    The notes on me say nothing more. Nothing about my past, nothing about the location of Cuckoo Lodge. It couldn’t have been him in the woods, how would he have known where to find me?

I pause. And how did he know the things he knew about me, about my past? There are no notes on that. No notes about Rhoda. How would he have known that my house had been filled with gas? I scour the phone’s history for some mention of it but there is nothing there. Nothing about Marni, nothing about Rhoda.

How could he possibly know those things about us without looking them up? And last week my identity wasn’t something you could exactly google.

I need to find him.

I find the last search in the phone’s history. It tells me exactly where he’s gone. It’s Google Maps, directions from the hospital to a location. But why would he go there? I stare at the screen confused and slowly the truth of what Stephen is doing clicks into place.

Oh no. No, no, no.

He knows he’s been found out and he’s going back to finish what he started. Two weeks ago Stephen Merriman tried to commit suicide and failed and today he’s heading back to the same spot. He doesn’t want to be Stephen. He doesn’t want to go back to that life. I understand his thinking: Once the press get hold of this information, Stephen’s life will be plastered across the Internet for all to judge. If his life wasn’t hard already, it will be unbearable once his identity breaks. I have to stop him from doing what I think he might be doing. I pocket his phone and run.



* * *



—

I burst out of the security door at the back of the hospital and into the car park, colliding with Rhoda coming the other way. Her hands fly to her chest with surprise but I barely slow to register her before sprinting on toward my rental car. I fish around desperately in my bag for the car keys but I can’t seem to find them anywhere. Frantic, I tip the entire contents of the bag out onto the tarmac. “Everything okay?” Rhoda asks, crouching to help me scoop up the contents of my bag. “Graceford was looking for you. She’s gone to the garden.”

    Shit, Graceford. I don’t have time for that right now, the last thing this situation needs is a uniformed police officer.

“Someone’s taken my car keys,” I blurt instead. “I left my bag in Matthew’s room, and now my keys are gone.” I realize I must look insane to her, scrambling around on the ground sifting through my worldly possessions. Two more missed calls from Peter on my mobile. Ugh. “Fuck, I literally just had them,” I mutter. Either someone took them, or I must have dropped them or put them down somewhere.