I Know My Name

‘Where was I?’

‘On Bone Beach,’ Joe says.

‘Bone Beach?’

‘The small horseshoe beach with white rocks that look like bones. Down below the barn.’ He grins. ‘Crazy that you managed to survive all that. Someone up there must like you.’

‘You were in a boat,’ Sariah explains. ‘You don’t remember if you were with anybody?’

I have a terrible feeling that I should know all of this, that I should know all about the boat and the beach and where I’m from. And I have no idea, absolutely no clue, why I don’t know these things.

‘Why did you come to Komméno, anyway?’ George asks, moving to the light as he reaches for a pack of cigarettes. ‘I mean, it’s not like there’s anything here.’

‘What’s “Komméno”?’ I say.

‘It’s the name of this place,’ Sariah says, a note of sadness in her voice, as if she’s addressing someone very stupid, or ill. ‘Komméno Island.’

I hesitate, hopeful that an answer to George’s question will surface in me automatically and provide an explanation for all this.

But it doesn’t.

18 March 2015

Potter’s Lane, Twickenham, London

Lochlan: It’s after midnight. My wife is officially missing. I’m trying to get my head around this.

The facts are as follows: (1) I Facetimed Eloïse on Monday night shortly after seven while she was making pancakes in the kitchen and our two kids were playing happily in the family room, and (2) sometime between ten and one today, while our children were asleep in their beds upstairs, she disappeared from our home. Also, (3) there is no indication that anyone has been here, Max didn’t see anyone come in and (4) Eloïse’s clothes, passport, credit cards, car, driving licence and mobile phone are still at home. She has therefore no way of making contact and no way of paying to get anywhere: not the tube, not a taxi, not a flight, and no way of paying for food or drink. Lastly, (5) no one seems to have any clue where she might have gone.

We have run out of expressed breast milk. I’m so out of sorts that Cressida shrieked for an eternity until it dawned on me that she was probably due another feed. An hour ago I phoned a taxi company and paid them fifty quid to go and buy some formula milk at a supermarket and bring it here. Cressida was a little confused at first, both by having to suck a plastic teat again and by the weird taste of formula, but finally she relented and drained it in one sitting.

Mrs Shahjalal has gone home. She lives alone at number thirty-nine, across the road. She has offered to come again in the morning and help in any way she can. Right now, I’m mired in bewilderment and can’t think straight.

On the train from Waverley I set about contacting Eloïse’s friends to see if anyone had heard from her. Of course, they’d seen neither hide nor hair of her since yesterday or the day before. My Facebook post was met with weeping emojis and well-wishing; in other words, nothing of any use. With great reluctance, I texted Gerda, Eloïse’s grandmother, to ask if El had gone to their place in Ledbury. It was a long shot, of course, given that the kids were still here, but I had quickly run out of possibilities.

I’ve searched the whole house four or five times in total. Wardrobes, the bathroom closet, that weird space under the stairs, even under the beds and in the loft, then running around in the back garden with a torch, checking all the bushes and the shed. I guess I thought she might have got stuck somewhere. I felt like I was going insane. All of this whilst Max was running around after me asking if we were playing a game and could he hide, too, and whilst Cressida realised she was being held by someone other than her mother and wanted half of London to know all about it.

Gerda rang back to say no, she hadn’t seen El since last week, though she spoke to her on Sunday night. She started to ask questions and I stammered something about El not being home when I got back this afternoon. There was a long pause.

‘What do you mean, El’s not home? Where are you, Lochlan?’

‘I’m back in London.’

‘And where are the babies?’

‘They’re here.’

‘Lochlan, are you saying Eloïse has left?’

‘I’m saying she’s not at home. Her car is still there, her keys and her mobile phone. Everything.’

‘Call the police.’

‘I’ve already done it.’

I checked El’s mobile phone, examining all her messages in case there was some unforeseen emergency she’d been called away for, but all I found was an eBay enquiry about a high chair, emails from Etsy, Boden, Sainsbury’s and Laura Ashley, as well as Outlook reminders about Max’s parent-teacher meeting at nursery next Friday and Cressida’s jabs at the health clinic.

At eleven o’clock Max came downstairs, bleary-eyed and wrapped in his Gruffalo robe, his blond hair longer than I remembered it being, dandelion-like with static.

‘Hi, Daddy,’ he said, yawning.

‘Hey, Maxie boy. How are you doing?’

He padded across the room and climbed up on my lap. I kissed his head, flooded with a sudden tenderness for him.

‘Is Mummy back?’

How much it pained me to tell him that she wasn’t.

He curled into me. ‘Did Mummy have to go to the shops? Did she forget that me and Cressida were in the house?’

‘I don’t think so, Max.’

‘Did she get lost coming home?’

I shook my head, and he started to grow upset.

‘Want Mummy, Daddy. Where’s Mummy?’

When I began to feel overwhelmed at my inability to console him – and by the thought that he might well wake Cressida – I told a fib.

‘I think maybe she’s gone to take her friend some flowers.’

‘Which friend?’

‘Uh … the lady with the long black hair from playgroup.’

He straightened. ‘Sarah?’

‘Yes, Sarah.’

‘No, it can’t be Sarah, ’cos Sarah got her hair yellowed.’

‘Niamh, then.’

‘Why is Mummy taking Niamh flowers? Is Niamh sad?’

‘I think so.’

‘What kind of flowers?’

‘I don’t know, Maxie.’

‘Can you call Niamh on your mobile and tell her that we need Mummy to come back to us now, please?’

‘Soon, darling, soon. Let’s go back to bed.’

In a fleeting moment of clear-mindedness I remembered the high-spec baby monitors that El had installed when Max was born – seriously, they’re like surveillance cameras – and checked El’s phone to see if any footage had been recorded. But no, the recording facility had been switched off ages ago. Of course it had.

I bribed Max to go to sleep without Mummy bathing him and reading him his favourite story by promising to take him to Thomas Land. Even so, he insisted on staying downstairs with me and cried himself to sleep.

It’s almost two in the morning when a police car pulls up outside and two uniformed police officers appear at the door, a man and a woman. I show the officers into the living room and attempt to console Cressida so that I can actually hear what they say. Her face is beetroot-red, tears rolling down her cheeks, and she punches the air with her fists. Max has fallen asleep on the sofa, holding the quilt Eloïse made for him up to his chin and murmuring occasionally.

‘When did you last speak with your wife, Mr Shelley?’ the male officer asks as I rock Cressida back and forth.

‘I already gave all this information on the phone,’ I say. I want answers, resolutions, for the police to wave their magic wands and materialise my wife.

‘Sorry, but there’s some information we’ve got to confirm. We’ll ask a few additional questions before we begin enquiries.’

‘I’ve been in Edinburgh since Monday but I spoke to her around seven on Monday night via Facetime,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Sometimes I call during the day as well, but it’s been really busy at work. I didn’t get a chance.’

‘Where do you work?’

I shift Cressida into a different position, away from my ear. She’s still tiny at three months so she fits along the length of my arm. I bounce her there and she lets out a huge belch. I say ‘Good girl!’ but she starts to cry again.

‘I work at a company called Smyth and Wyatt. Four days a week I’m based in Edinburgh, the rest of the time I’m at the London branch on Victoria Embankment.’

The male officer jots this down as ‘Smith & White South – a bank’.

‘It’s not a bank, it’s a corporate finance firm.’

He scores out his note. ‘OK. Did you and your wife have any disagreements? Anything that might have made her leave?’

‘Look, I’ve already explained this. My wife has not left. Cressida’s only twelve weeks old. El’s still breastfeeding.’

I’m mad as hell, frustrated, but above all I’m anxious. I can’t help but feel that El must be worried, wherever she is, because she’s fought to breastfeed Cressida after some difficulties with Max and ensures she feeds on demand. This is hard to put across – my wife hasn’t left, you see, because she wants to breastfeed. They ask about El’s line of work, and I explain that she’s a stay-at-home mother but still goes on TV to talk about her work.

‘She set up a small charity some years ago for refugee children and it’s become quite successful,’ I say. ‘She gets asked to do the occasional media event. I guess I’m worried that, maybe … I don’t know. A lot of nutcases out there.’ I know I’m clutching at straws, but my mind is racing, my body buzzing with adrenalin. I keep glancing at the front door, waiting for her to walk in.

‘Did she mention anything of that nature? Threatening letters, stalkers, that kind of thing?’

‘No, nothing.’

He gives me a moment in case something comes to mind, but it doesn’t.

‘Can you describe what she was wearing when you last saw her?’

‘I think she was wearing grey yoga pants and a pyjama top. Like I said, it was seven o’clock at night. I should have called her this morning but I was running late …’

He writes this down, asking for more of a description. Does she have any tattoos or visible scars? No. Any jewellery? I tell him she would likely be wearing her wedding band and engagement ring. I’ve not found them anywhere in the house.

‘Have you asked your neighbours if they saw anyone come into the house?’

I nod. ‘Mrs Shahjalal from across the road was the one to find out she was missing.’

More writing, slow, slow, slow, as if he’s taking orders for a takeaway. ‘We’ll follow up with Mrs Shahjalal. What about your bank accounts? Any withdrawals? We might be able to trace her last steps if we have that information.’

I’ve already checked our bank account on my mobile phone. We have a joint account and no money has come out today, with the exception of direct debits for the water bill and council tax. Of course, I’ve said all this. It was one of the first things I checked.

‘Tell me a little about Eloïse,’ he asks. ‘Age? Height? Weight? Personality?’

Cressida begins to squawk so fiercely that the female police officer rises to her feet and holds her arms out.

‘May I?’ she says.

‘Please,’ I say, handing Cressie to her. The female officer holds her cheek against Cressida’s and speaks softly to her. Ten seconds later the screaming stops. It’s only then that I realise that most of the noise is coming from inside my head.

‘How old did you say she is?’ the officer asks.

‘Twelve weeks. Max turned four in January.’

The officer smiles at Cressida, who gawps back. ‘I have a little boy, he’s ten months old. And he’s huge. But you, you’re dinky!’

‘She was slightly premature,’ I say. It is a huge relief not to be screamed at. I sink down into the sofa beside Max and rub my temples. The male officer is looking at me expectantly.

‘Eloïse is thirty-seven. She’s about five foot six, fairly slim. Not sure what she weighs, exactly. Maybe ten stone. She just gave birth.’

‘Is that a recent photo?’ he asks, glancing up at the new studio photograph mounted between two thick slabs of glass on the wall behind me.

Cost a fortune, that photo, but we all look so happy and I’m glad I deferred and had it taken. Eloïse is holding Cressida, who’s a scrawny sparrowy thing at three weeks old, and although I know she felt self-conscious, begging me to kneel slightly to the right so my head would cover her swollen stomach, Eloïse looks amazing. Buttery blonde hair hanging loose by her shoulders, that lovely smile and perfect skin of hers, as though her veins contain LED lights – luminescent, that’s the word. I know I married a looker, miles out of my league.

‘Is Eloïse the sort of person who would just up and leave?’ the male officer asks. ‘Has she done anything like that before?’

‘No, no, no. Absolutely not.’

The officer stares, blank-faced. ‘No problems with drugs, alcohol, anything like that?’

I shake my head. ‘Nothing like that. She stopped drinking when she became pregnant with our son. She maybe had the occasional glass of wine. She’s … Look, I can’t emphasise enough that Eloïse is the last person on earth who I would expect to go missing like this. She’s quiet, reserved. You know, a home bird.’

‘So she wouldn’t have, say, popped out to pick up a message? For five minutes or so?’

I can feel myself losing patience, almost on the verge of tears, which freaks me out. ‘Our kids were here. She wasn’t expecting me back from Edinburgh until tomorrow night. There’s no way she’d leave our children on their own. El won’t even leave Cressida downstairs when she’s taking a shower. We’ve a car seat in the bathroom and a baby rocker in the kitchen.’

The police officer nods. ‘OK. When you came home were there any signs of someone having been here? Any signs of an intrusion?’

I shake my head. ‘Everything was locked up.’

‘What about the back door. It was locked?’

I think back. Was it?

My hesitation prompts him to glance around the room. ‘What about any other entrances to the house? Windows? Back doors?’

‘We have had a problem with the back door, now that I think about it. The lock froze and it’s not been closing properly. I meant to get it fixed, but …’ I’ve been so busy. I close my eyes and sigh, speared with panic. How careless could I have been to leave the back door accessible?

He rises and walks to the back of the house. I follow. It’s dark, however, and the view from the window isn’t helpful.

‘What’s behind your garden?’

‘A back alley, then the gardens of the street behind us. Larkspur Terrace.’

He writes this down. ‘You keep any money in the house? Any valuables, expensive items?’

‘We’ve a couple of hundred quid in a box in the kitchen. For emergencies.’

‘Is it still there?’

I nod. ‘So is all of El’s jewellery.’

‘Are you sure?’

The doorbell cuts me short. I stride into the hallway to answer it and find Gerda and Magnus standing there, both angry and worried. I tell them that the police have arrived.

‘She’s still not returned?’ Magnus barks. Magnus is Eloïse’s grandfather, bull-ish, well-dressed, and immortal, like Clint Eastwood – the man’s had I don’t know how many triple bypass surgeries and cancer treatments and yet he only seems to grow more robust with age. Not quite as po-faced as Gerda, a little more down-to-earth, but still not the sort of man I’m ever likely to get drunk with.

‘Did you come from Herefordshire?’ I ask. They have properties all over the place – Switzerland, Greece – and I had wondered whether El had gone to one of them. But they’re all completely remote and impossible to get to. And besides, El would have no reason to go there.

Gerda ignores me, having swept into the living room and spotted Maxie asleep on the sofa. ‘The children aren’t in bed? Isn’t it rather late?’

The police officers make brief introductions in sober tones. Gerda sits down beside Max, pursing her lips as she tucks the blanket around him. Magnus walks around the room as if trying to identify something out of place.

‘This is Gerda and Magnus Bachmann,’ I tell the officers, remembering how I would always add fresh from the crypt under my breath when I was referring to them. El would give me a slap on the arm, though she’d always laugh. ‘Gerda and Magnus are Eloïse’s grandparents. Naturally, they’re very concerned.’

I don’t explain that they’re the world’s most interfering in-laws. Gerda flips open a gold mobile phone and dials a number with a manicured finger. ‘Eloïse, darling, it’s Mamie. This is the twentieth time I’ve called you, and I won’t be stopping until you reply. Please can you call one of us soon to let us know you’re all right?’

Gerda’s accent is elocution-English with clipped Swiss tones. It reminds me how El occasionally sounded foreign from the years she spent in Geneva as a teenager. She speaks French and German fluently, as well as conversational Italian, and has been teaching Max. I go to tell Gerda that Eloïse’s mobile phone is sitting on the dining table next door, but right then it rings loudly. For a faint moment Gerda’s eyes light up, as though she’s found Eloïse, and then the penny drops.

The house feels deathly still, hollowed out. In a daze I pour Magnus a whisky and make cups of tea for me and Gerda. Then the five of us sit in the living room, bewildered and lost for words. Despite how late it is my mobile phone continues to bleep with texts and Facebook messages, and although I check every one of them I find nothing that tells me where my wife may have gone.

‘Have you spoken to her friends?’ Gerda asks.

‘Of course he’ll have done that,’ Magnus snaps.

I give a weary sigh. ‘I’ve contacted the baby groups she sometimes goes to. I’ve spent all afternoon on the train phoning libraries, cafés, the swimming pool, our GP, the dentist … until my batteries died. Everyone I can think of.’

Magnus sits down, then stands again. ‘That’s good. Someone’s bound to have come into contact with her.’

I say, ‘I made a list of people who saw her yesterday, but no one saw her today. Except the kids.’

‘What did Max say? He must have seen something,’ Gerda says for the hundredth time.

‘He said they made gingerbread men in the morning and then he had a nap. When he woke up he searched the house and garden but couldn’t find her. That was when Mrs Shahjalal came over.’

I stand and begin to collect everyone’s glasses and cups. ‘Well, I best be getting the children to their beds. I’ll call you both in the morning, shall I?’

Gerda looks affronted.

‘Oh, no. We’ll be staying. I’m sure Eloïse will be back soon but until then the children will be needing us.’

18 March 2015

Komméno Island, Greece

I wake to find myself in bed in an attic room. Dust motes visible in the air, picked out by bright sunshine streaming through a porthole window. The ceiling is criss-crossed with ancient wooden beams and spiderwebs in the corners. Hewn stone walls and a cloying stench of dust and damp make the room feel like a cave.

I pull myself upright, gasping from the pain in my head and from a series of aches that announce themselves in my right shin and ankle, my upper back, all the muscles in my neck and forearms terribly strained. It feels like I got in the way of an elephant stampede. I reach around and touch the spot where my skull had been cut open. No fresh blood, but I can feel where the bleeding has matted my hair.

The events of last night turn over in my mind like stones. The people I met, the ones that saved me from a boating accident on the beach. They were writers, weren’t they? Here on a retreat? I try to summon my name to mind. It doesn’t come, so I say it aloud. My name is … My mouth remains open as though the sound of my name will find its way inside of its own accord. I have the strongest sensation of having left something behind somewhere, and although I pace and try to will it to surface, it won’t reveal itself.

Water. I need water. I move my legs to the edge of the bed and drop my feet to the floor. Cold. I’m wearing a T-shirt with a faded pineapple print on the front and baggy black swimming trunks.

I hobble like a foal towards the door, but when I turn the door knob I find it is shut tight. I tug at it, one hand on top of the other, wrapping my fingers around the knob and twisting with all my strength. The knob turns and turns but the door won’t budge. For a moment I really think I’m going to lose consciousness. With a hand pressed against the wall I let myself sink slowly down to the floor and rest my forehead against the door, taking long, trembling breaths. A large grey spider taps across the floor by my bare feet. I flinch, and in a second the spider is gone, darting into one of the dusty crags in the walls. I’m left with enough adrenalin to lift a fist against the heavy wood of the door, banging it once, twice, three times. I can hear a low murmur of voices somewhere in the house.

Eventually, the door pushes open, knocking into me. Someone swears and squeezes through the gap before helping me to my feet.

‘The door was locked,’ I say, trying to explain.

‘Locked?’ Joe’s voice. He inspects the door quickly and says, ‘Not locked. Always jams, this door. Come on, let’s get you something to eat.’

After shouting downstairs for one of the others he slips a hand on the back of my head and the other firmly on the small of my back. Soon one of the women is there, too, and I recognise her as the kind one from last night, the woman who looked at me with such concern. Sariah. She helps Joe lift me to my feet and, very slowly, we all head down a winding stone staircase, one, two floors, Joe in front of me, Sariah behind, in case I fall.

The architecture of the house suggests it was once an old farmhouse, with remnants from its past hung on the wall as vintage ornaments – old breast ploughs, some fairly mean-looking pitchforks, and the wheel of a chaff-cutter, as well as cow or goat bells. A room at the bottom of the stairs features a rocking chair – I remember sitting there last night, hunched over and trembling – and a beautiful inglenook fireplace that smelled of burnt toast.

The kitchen looks different in daylight – long and brightly lit, with a large range oven, refrigerator, white granite worktops, and a wooden table in the middle surrounded by four wooden chairs. A little decrepit and dusty, but nowhere near as creepy as it seemed last night. The room has an earthy odour about it, as though it’s been unused for a long time, though as I head towards the cooker it gives way to the rich smell of grilled tomatoes and fresh pitta. Sariah says, ‘Let’s get you something to eat,’ and makes for a pan on the hob.

Joe walks me slowly to a chair by the table, then makes for the sink. He’s a good deal younger than I’d placed him last night. Maybe early twenties, a whiff of the undergrad about him. Long, pale, and thin, his black hair standing upright on his head in a gelled quiff, black square glasses shielding his eyes.

He hands me a glass of water, which I gulp down. Sariah fills a plate with the contents of a pan. Dressed in a red skirt and floaty kimono patterned with orange flowers, she looks magnificent: long dark fingers ringed with gold bands, heavy strands of colourful beads looping from her neck, ropes of black hair coiled on top of her head and tied with an orange scarf. She sets a plate of food in front of me – fried cherry tomatoes, olives, pitta bread.

‘Thank you,’ I say, and she grins.

‘Mind if I take a little look at your head?’ Joe asks.

I feel his hands gently touch the wound through my hair at the back of my head.

‘How does it look?’

‘Clean. Some bruising around the area. How’s the neck?’

His fingers brush the sides of my neck gently and he tries to move my head from side to side.

‘Stiff.’

‘I’ll find some painkillers.’

A kettle whistles to the boil on the hob. Sariah walks towards it and begins to make coffee, asking if I’d like milk. It all feels so strange and disorienting. I say yes to the milk but even that seems odd, the sound of my voice distant and distorted. I dart my eyes around the room, willing it to make sense, to become familiar. It doesn’t.