‘I’ll come with you,’ says Frank.
Alice is making packed lunches in the kitchen.
‘Where?’ she asks.
‘To drop Romaine at school.’
‘Why?’
He shrugs. ‘To say goodbye. Say goodbye to Derry, too. And Daniel. Also . . .’ He pauses. ‘I just wanted to . . . you know, hang out with you a bit longer.’
Alice smiles and strokes his arm. ‘You funny boy.’
She tears off a piece of cling film and wraps up Romaine’s bagel. She’d been hoping that Frank might have woken up this morning with his memory restored. That he might burst through the back door and say: It’s all fine! I didn’t kill anyone! And I know where I live! I’ll be back tomorrow with my cat and all my stuff and we can start a new life together!
Instead he seems more withdrawn than normal.
‘Not funny,’ he says. ‘Just scared. And sad.’
She stops what she’s doing and looks up at him. ‘’Course you are,’ she says. ‘So am I.’
‘You are?’
‘’Course I am.’ She feels her face flush and turns away from him, unzipping Romaine’s packed-lunch box.
He doesn’t ask her why and she’s glad.
She decides to leave the dogs at home. She doesn’t want to spend her last walk with Frank stopping to collect steaming turds from the cold pavement.
She calls the teenagers in to say goodbye to Frank before they leave the house and then at eight forty they set off. It’s a startlingly beautiful day, not a cloud in sight and already some warmth in the platinum sun. Romaine holds one of Frank’s hands in hers. Frank holds her packed-lunch box in the other. It has a picture of Olaf from Frozen on it and looks impossibly small in his big hand. Without the dogs holding her up, Alice finds herself at the school gates a few minutes early. Derry looks at her askance. ‘What’s going on?’ she says, looking at her watch, theatrically.
‘Shut up,’ say Alice.
Derry looks at Frank impassively. ‘Morning,’ she says.
He nods and smiles.
‘You off today, then?’ she asks.
‘I reckon,’ he replies. ‘It’s been almost a week. It’s time.’
She nods. Then she says, ‘I was thinking – let’s have a coffee, before you go. All three of us.’
Alice and Frank nod at each other. Anything to prolong things.
‘I’ll check my email after nine, see if the editor from the Gazette has written back.’
‘Yes,’ says Alice, ‘good idea. You never know’ – she turns to Frank – ‘depending on what they know, we might not have to go to the police at all.’
‘Assuming they reply,’ says Derry.
‘Assuming they reply,’ echoes Alice.
They all nod. They all know it’s a last chance saloon.
The school gates are unlocked and the children stream in. Alice catches the eye of Romaine’s class teacher from last year, her nemesis. The teacher looks at her and then at Frank. She arches an eyebrow. Alice wants to punch her. Derry puts a soothing hand against her arm and says, ‘I’ll walk them in. I’ll meet you out here.’
‘What’s her problem?’ asks Frank, squeezing hold of Romaine and saying goodbye.
‘She hates me.’ She shrugs. ‘And no doubt someone with nothing better to do with their sad little life has informed the school that I’m housing a deviant in my shed. So she’ll add that to her little list of reasons to treat me like shit.’
Frank sighs. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No!’ she says, more sharply than she’d intended. ‘No. Do not be sorry. Do not be sorry. That’s her problem. It’s not yours. It’s not ours. We are good. Well, we were . . .’ She trails off.
‘We were,’ he agrees. And then he takes her hand in his and he holds it tight, right there in front of the school. Right there in front of the teacher. Alice squeezes it back.
The café is quiet on this Monday morning. A couple of other mums from the school sit outside at pavement tables, smoking and drinking coffee out of mugs; one of them has a Yorkshire terrier on her lap. Inside a young mum sits with her newborn in a pram and two elderly couples sit side by side, still in their coats, nursing mugs of tea, having quiet, broken conversations punctuated by moments of blank contemplation. Frank, Alice and Derry order coffees and bacon rolls at the counter and then sit down.
‘Right,’ says Derry, pulling off her scarf, swinging her red coat over the back of her chair and switching on her phone, ‘let’s see if our friendly local rag editor has come up with anything.’ She swipes the screen, her brow furrowed; then she switches it off again. ‘Nothing yet,’ she says. ‘But it’s only just gone nine. I’ll keep trying.’
They all turn then as the door opens and a tall, attractive woman walks in. She’s very young, with fine, dark hair tied back off her face and wide-set features. She’s wearing a lightweight black Puffa jacket, jeans and high-heeled boots and carrying a plastic bag. She marches straight to the counter and says, fairly loudly and in a strong Eastern European accent, ‘Please, can you help me. I am looking for someone. I wonder if you know her. She is a lady, well dressed, probably middle-aged; she lives in the big house up there.’ She indicates the cliffs to the left of the café. ‘Do you know her?’
Alice and Frank exchange a look.
The man behind the counter says, ‘You mean Kitty?’
‘I don’t know her name,’ says the girl.
‘Well, that’s the only person I can think of. You mean the house around the bend? The white one?’
‘Yes!’ she says. ‘It is white.’
‘Well, yes, then it must be Kitty you’re talking about. Very elegant woman.’
‘Yes!’
‘What did you want to know about her exactly?’
‘I don’t know.’ She sounds excited. ‘Everything, I suppose. I’m married to her son, and—’
He breaks in. ‘Ah, well, no, in that case we’re talking about different people. Kitty has no children.’
The young woman stops. Her shoulders slump. Then she straightens again and pulls something from the carrier bag. It’s a photo album. She opens it and passes it to the man. ‘Here,’ she says, ‘do you know this man?’
Frank and Alice watch with held breath as the man behind the counter studies the book. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Sorry. I can’t say I do. Is that your husband?’ He passes the book back to her.
‘Yes!’ she says. ‘My husband. And he has been missing now since last Tuesday. He told me this woman, this Kitty, was his mother. Do you know where she is?’
‘Kitty?’ he says. ‘Gosh, no. As far as I know she hasn’t been here for years. I mean, you know that house is just her holiday home?’ He laughs incredulously. ‘Apparently she lives in an actual stately home, over in Harrogate.’
‘But I called her yesterday. I called her here. And she answered her phone. Here.’
The woman is beginning to sound aggressive and the man recoils from her slightly. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’m not the oracle. Maybe she’s here. Maybe she’s not. I don’t know.’
Alice gives Frank a questioning look. ‘Her husband is missing,’ she whispers urgently. ‘My God, do you think . . .?’ She has to see the photos in that album. ‘Is she Kirsty?’ she hisses. ‘Frank? Is that Kirsty?’
He shrugs and looks panicked. ‘I don’t think so,’ he whispers back. ‘I don’t know.’
Alice gets up and approaches the woman at the counter. The woman spins round at the touch of Alice’s hand against her arm and gives her a chilling look.
‘Sorry,’ says Alice, ‘I couldn’t help overhearing you and, well, I don’t suppose . . . I mean . . .’ She turns to the table where Frank and Derry are both watching her avidly. ‘You don’t recognise that man, do you?’
The woman turns and gives Frank a withering look. ‘No,’ she says, ‘I have never seen that man before in my life.’
Alice exhales a small deep-seated breath of relief. To say goodbye to Frank now, here, to hand him over to this hostile, impossibly young woman . . . She would rather take him to the police.
‘Oh. OK. But, you know, it’s interesting, because he just turned up here, late on Tuesday night. He came from London on the train. And he can’t remember anything. And then a couple of days ago he remembered that house. The house you were asking about. He said . . .’ She pauses. ‘He said he thinks he used to live there.’
The woman has lost her expression of impatient disdain and stares at Alice now with her mouth hanging open. ‘Oh,’ she says, looking behind Alice to Frank and then back again.
‘I wonder,’ says Alice, ‘would you join us? Just for a minute? We might be different characters in the same story. If you know what I mean?’
The woman nods, and follows Alice to their table, the photo album clutched to her chest.
‘My name’s Alice, by the way. And this is my best friend Derry. And this is . . . well, we call him Frank. But actually we haven’t got a clue what his name really is.’
Alice pulls a chair over for the woman and she sits down. ‘My name is Liljana,’ she says. ‘But people call me Lily.’
‘And where are you from?’
‘I am from Kiev. In the Ukraine.’
‘And you’re married to an Englishman?’
‘Yes. His name is Carl. Although . . .’ She pauses and looks at each one of them in turn. ‘Well, that is not his name either.’ She laughs nervously. ‘No, since I reported him missing to the police, they have told me that his passport is a fake and that no such person as him exists.’ She shrugs. ‘So. Two men with no name. It is weird.’
Alice shivers. There is a dark pit of unknowable badness beneath her words. Two men with no name. It is much more than weird.
‘This is him,’ says Lily, laying the photo album on the table in front of Alice and Frank and pulling it open. ‘This is my husband.’
Alice looks at a photo of a nice-looking man, dark-haired with piercing eyes in a razor-sharp suit.
Then Frank looks at the photo and suddenly he is on his feet, his chair knocked backwards behind him, his face drained of blood, his hands bunched together in front of his mouth.
Alice grabs his arm. ‘Frank?’ she says. ‘Frank. What’s the matter?’