Jack says he’s fine, he’ll take a cab later, he’s got things to do in town first. So the officers let him walk away around the corner to a row of shops, where he pops in and asks directions. The Grand is a large white Victorian hotel on the seafront, easy to find.
‘Good morning, sir,’ says a commissionaire in a black coat hung with gold brocade, dropping a shoulder to pull open the heavy brass door so that Jack may pass into a dreamlike place, a haze of light, a constellation of bulbs and lamps and electric candles reflected in mirrors and gilt and leaf.
‘Welcome to the Grand,’ says a woman in a black suit whose hands are clasped in front of her. ‘How may I help?’
‘Yes. Thank you. Please. I’d like . . . coffee.’
She takes him briskly away from reception and down the hallway to a large, circular space with a massive ornamental fireplace on the far side. ‘This is the Great Hall, where tea and coffee is served,’ she says, already spinning away. ‘Someone will see to you.’
Struck dumb by the quiet, he can hear the hiss of the gas feeding the fake flames, the rattle of a silver spoon in a coffee cup. The clock on the mantelpiece tut-tuts time.
‘Would you like hot milk or cream?’ The waitress is short, slight, pale. She speaks with a soft French accent, eyes averted. She’s pretty.
‘Milk. Thank you.’
She sets out a silver pot, a silver jug for the milk, a silver sugar bowl and a silver spoon. A white china cup on a white china saucer decorated with silver swirls. He taps the spoon against the cup and is startled at the clear ringing sound, which makes heads turn. Stop, he tells himself. Concentrate. It’s hard when he wants to scream and shout out to them all, ‘Where is she? Have you seen her?’
Cookies arrive on a side plate, wrapped in triangles of white tissue paper. They came here for afternoon tea just a few months ago, after walking on the Downs. It was a mistake. The staff kept looking at their walking shoes, which had traces of mud. It’s coming back to him. Sarah was in a state, saying something about a woman in the bathroom just now and telling him to look across at an elderly couple, eating their tea: he with a large cotton napkin tucked into the collar of his shirt as he demolished a vanilla slice; she polishing gold-rimmed glasses on the same kind of cloth, with a tiny slice of fruit cake uneaten on the table before her. The woman had been in the bathroom earlier and had washed her hands, dried them on a fluffy white towel, looked at Sarah and said to her face, simply and flatly: ‘Black bitch.’
Jack found that hard to imagine. His face must have said so.
‘Why don’t you believe me? This is a different country down here. My country ends at the M25 or, I don’t know, maybe the bloody North Circular!’
‘You brought me here,’ he said.
‘I want to leave. Now.’
She was agitated, tugging at her sleeves, crunching sugar crystals under her spoon. She stood up and spoke loudly to the whole room: to the pastry couple, the waitress, the under-manager in her suit, the mutton-whiskered lords and ladies of the past whose faces looked down from portraits on the wall, the ghosts of luxury and exclusion. Sarah almost ran down the long corridor then, out through the revolving door, past the commissionaire, who nodded as though people did this sort of thing all the time.
Jack did not follow. He knew she would walk for a bit and come to herself. This agitated, paranoid woman was not Sarah as he knew her, the Sarah he loved. The fertility drugs were strong, the mood swings brutal. He was willing to wait. He wasn’t expecting the doorman with an outstretched hand.
‘Excuse me, sir. Madam asked me to give you this.’
A sheet of thick, creamy paper with ‘The Grand Hotel’ embossed in gold at the top of the page, and Sarah’s tight little letters forming black words on a slight diagonal. ‘Jack,’ she had written. ‘Go home.’
He found her on the promenade by a squat Napoleonic structure called the Wish Tower. Three wishes. One, for this to end. Two, for Sarah to return to him, the way she was. Three, for a baby. Or no baby. He didn’t care any more; he just wanted it over, one way or another. She was walking up and down the seafront, waiting for him to find her, sorry to have spoilt things. So as Jack searches for her again now, he wonders whether this is really the right place to look. It costs a fortune, but in her state of mind anything is possible.
‘Excuse me,’ he says to the under-manager. ‘You’ve got a guest here, Sarah Jones. Could you let her know I am here to see her, please?’
‘Of course. Who shall I say is asking for her?’
‘Her husband.’
She frowns, just for the briefest moment, before professionalism wipes it away.
‘Sir, are you sure?’
‘Please, tell her.’
More guests arrive, with expensive luggage. They wear formal clothes, as if for a wedding. They need help with the revolving doors. An elegant elderly lady moves slowly across the reception area, immaculate in a navy suit, floral blouse and pearls. She must be ninety, at least. ‘Yes?’ She is speaking to him, in a thin, reedy voice. Her lipstick is bright red, her skin mottled, her hair a whisper. ‘What is this? Young man? I am Sarah Jones . . .’
And so, a few moments later, a retired judge is left standing in the lobby of the Grand Hotel, sincere in her hope that the anxious young American gentleman finds his wife very soon. At the police station, the detective in FCUK glasses is trying to imagine what Sarah is like as she dials her mobile number one more time and gets the answering message again. In another room, the big duty sergeant is thinking of Sarah too, as he finds her profile on Facebook. Not much to go on, but a looker, certainly. He clicks on ‘send’ and a report makes its way to his colleagues in the Metropolitan Police. Another sergeant, seventy-five miles to the north, reads the name of Sarah Bramer and a description of her circumstances, and begins to formulate a response plan that will involve knocking at the door of her flat, speaking to her neighbours to see if there is a key, going to her place of work and calling her next-of-kin, who is listed as her father. A reverend.
Meanwhile, Jack is in a taxi heading for the Downs. The officers who offered him a lift earlier are already there, taking one more slow drive out west along the coastal road to the Gap, where they will pull in to speak to Magda. They know her well. She is also thinking of Sarah, with little more than a name to go on, as she hoovers the bedroom at the pub, which has not had a guest for a while. In the bar, the coxswain of the local lifeboat is working his day job as a painter, stirring emulsion and wondering if his boat will be called out to recover another woman today, as it was yesterday and a few days before. Something weird is going on. There are more people jumping than ever before. He hears the thrum of a helicopter and knows the pilot will be looking along the rocks or in the water. There’s an alert out, the police gave a name. All of these people are thinking of Sarah, wherever she may be.
Sarah Bramer, formerly Jones, reported missing 18 April at 10.13 p.m. Female, 30 years old, born in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Address: 263 Francis Road, Leyton, London E10. Married to Jack Bramer, 30, of the same address. Ethnicity: M1, Scottish and Jamaican. Occupation: teacher at St Joseph’s Community School, Leyton. Height: 5ft 10ins. Hair: reddish brown curls. Distinguishing marks: birth mark on left breast, small tattoo of a soul bird on upper right buttock. Eyes: green like the sea on a hot day. Smile: intoxicating. Laugh: mesmerizing. Brightness: dazzling. Beauty: silencing. Mood swings: infuriating. Sadness: heartbreaking. Whereabouts: unknown.