‘Yes,’ I managed to say. ‘I live there. Alone.’
‘OK. And you know Lara how?’
‘We met on a ferry. I was going across to St Mawes for no particular reason, and she was doing the same thing.’ I told him the story. ‘We kept in touch. I went to her house for tea one afternoon. While I was there, she got a phone call which turned out to be someone offering her the job in London.’
He smiled a tiny smile. ‘That would have been me.’
‘She wanted to talk to Sam about it, I could see that, so I left. I saw her in town after she started working up here, but really her weekends were for Sam. She came to my house on Christmas Eve and we had mince pies. I had no idea she was having an affair or anything like that.’ I carried on talking, setting out my credentials in an eager way that made me hate myself.
‘So when she went missing …’
‘I turned up at their house that Saturday morning, just because I wanted to see her. In fact, I …’ I trailed off, not wanting to say too much about myself. He gave me a kind, questioning look, and I carried on, telling him about my lottery win and my increasing feeling that I needed to do something.
‘I moved to Cornwall for a particular reason,’ I said, hoping that my tone was firm enough. ‘And I was thinking, actually it’s time to move on.’
I paused for a moment. Breathe, I told myself. Go on. Breathe in and out. You need to be able to say this. The wave of grief engulfed me as it had five years ago, and this time I was not going to be able to hide from it.
Leon took a perfectly ironed handkerchief out of an inside pocket and handed it to me.
‘Thank you.’
I made an enormous effort and spoke through my tears. ‘I wanted to talk to Lara because she’s the only person I know down there who’d have been able to advise me.’ I got that far, and blew my nose messily into the handkerchief. ‘Sorry,’ I added.
‘That’s quite all right. And
I’m
sorry. For whatever your trouble was, and for making you relive it. Take your time.’
‘Thanks. So I rang the bell, and Sam answered, and …’ I talked him through that day, and the police, the phone call about Guy being killed, the police taking Sam away for questioning. ‘And I knew she hadn’t done it,’ I finished. ‘I know she didn’t.’
‘Yes. So you’ve unearthed a little of the Asia fiasco?’ His voice was unexpectedly warm. ‘You’ve turned Miss Marple?’
‘If you want to put it that way,’ I said, wiping my face again, ‘sure. If I was a bloke you wouldn’t be so dismissive. Laugh at Miss Marple, fine. I decided to come back to London, which incidentally is an enormous and massively difficult thing for me, and to see if I could work out what might really have happened. But you can belittle that, if you want. Lara wouldn’t.’
‘Sherlock Holmes, then. A female Sherlock. You could use Sherlock as a female name. It would be quite enticing. Apologies if I was sexist. Sincerely, I didn’t mean to belittle you. I’m impressed by you, Ms Roebuck. And when you got here, you went to see Olivia.’
‘She was lovely.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Olivia?’
‘Yes, actually. I was prepared to hate her, but I don’t. I like her. She and Lara had a terrible relationship, but I think Olivia’s had a bit of a raw deal.’
‘Interesting that you say that. OK. You tried the Wilberforces?’
‘I didn’t get very far. Lara’s mum – Victoria? – she would have let me in. But her dad shut the door in my face. I don’t blame him. Obviously.’
There was a tap at the door, and it swung open before Leon could respond. Annie put the coffee tray on the low table beside us and left without a word.
‘Thanks, Annie. Look, Iris. I’m sorry. I really am. I know why Bernie shut the door on you, and it’s the same reason why I had to put you through your paces. I loathe the media and at first you seemed likely to be a journalist. I believe you, as I did from the moment I actually saw you, though I didn’t when you called me. If you’d been a hack, you would have fallen apart when I was finding your so-called house on Google Earth. You wouldn’t have been able to give a convincing cover story. I’m half tempted to call Sam and check who was with him that dreadful morning, but to be honest I can’t face the ensuing conversation. In fact. Annie?’
He had barely raised his voice, but she was back in the room almost instantly.
‘Annie, can you do me a favour? Could you bear to give Sam Finch a call and find out who was with him on the morning of Saturday the fifteenth?’
She didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I’ll do it now.’
He turned back to me. ‘This has been horrific. A living nightmare. I’m trying to tell myself she’ll turn up safe and well. Of course she didn’t kill Guy Thomas. Of course. She wouldn’t be capable of such a thing. And, as you say, she went through an enormous trauma in Thailand which she always thought would catch up with her. I used to tell her it wouldn’t, that it was over, but she never could quite forget.
‘I mentioned it to the police as an urgent line of inquiry, but they weren’t interested, because as far as they were concerned the case was closed and all they need to do is to find her body. Which of course they haven’t done, because she’s still using it. Or so I very much hope.’
I thought of Alex. I thought of the diary, but decided not to mention it until I had read it.
‘Yes. I’ve spoken to the police too, but they weren’t really into looking at Asia either. Look, I’m thinking I might go out there and find her myself.’
He sighed, suddenly looking older and weaker.
‘But Iris. If I may call you Iris?’
‘Of course.’
‘Iris. If she’d flown anywhere, or left the country by any means, there would be a record. And there isn’t. There just isn’t. That’s the one thing that makes me fear for her safety. Lara is a resourceful young lady – I’ve known her all her life. But even she cannot vanish without leaving a trace.’
‘Leon,’ I said. ‘Right. Well, here’s the thing.’
As I was about to tell him about the passport, Annie came back into the room with an apologetic smile.
‘Sorry to interrupt again. I spoke to him. He was initially hostile, but in the end he said he spent that day with Mrs Finch’s friend Iris, and he described Ms Roebuck,’ she nodded to me with a little smile, ‘exactly. She turned up on a bicycle, with two-tone hair. He was grateful for the support. He said he spoke to you this morning.’
‘He did,’ I agreed.
‘Thank you, Annie. Right. Again, apologies, Iris, for the paranoia.’
‘That’s fine. Understandable. Good to be thorough.’ And I told him about the passport, and about the flight to Bangkok.
‘This is astonishing,’ he said. He was on his feet, pacing the room. ‘Then we must get out there and find her. You have brought me the only good news I’ve had in a very long time. I will help you at every stage. I’ll do anything. Funding, whatever it takes.’
‘You – at least I presume it was you – went to a police station with her and she retracted a statement she’d made about drug smuggling,’ I told him. His eyes widened.
‘My God, you are good. If you ever want a job, come to me, seriously. You know about it?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘So you’ll understand how sensitive this is.’
‘Yes.’ I was bluffing, but he was barely listening.
‘She flew to Bangkok.’
‘I want to go out there,’ I heard myself say, again. ‘And search for her.’
He was not looking at me. He was frowning, thinking.
‘Would you? Would you do that? If we could do it ourselves, without involving the police, we might not scare her off. I can’t imagine why she’d go back there. Unless she might not have gone of her own accord. If Jake were at large, if he’d somehow got her under his control. Then, perhaps, I can see why she’d be in Bangkok. When the user of your passport took that flight, do we know if she did it alone?’
‘No idea.’
I was desperate to ask about Jake but I did not. I wanted Leon to think I knew more than I did, so that he would trust me properly.
He sighed.
‘Iris. Come out for a drink with me. Let’s get away from this office and do some proper planning.’
I smiled at him, sensing that, at last, things were moving.
‘OK,’ I agreed, ‘but I’m only on soft drinks today. I overdid it a little last night.’
I woke the next morning stretched out across my hotel bed. I was going to fly to Bangkok: Leon and I had booked my flight last night. He had persuaded me to have one glass of velvety red wine with him, in a little bar in the City, and we had discussed everything.
I had an idea, now, of who Jake might be. Even if Sam had not managed to cross Falmouth to post me the diary (and I was sure, in fact, that he would have thought better of it and gone to the police), I would still be able to go to Bangkok and look for her. I yawned and stretched, luxuriating in the fact that I was not hung over any more. I needed to call Alex.
There was a knock on the door, and I staggered across the room to answer it. It was, I noticed from my phone, half past nine. I had not slept this well for years.
‘Some post for you, madam,’ said a young man, and he handed me a Jiffy Bag. I thanked him, wondering whether he wanted a tip, and put the kettle on before I ripped the envelope open. Sam had scrawled my name and the hotel’s address with a thick marker pen.
The book was a battered hard-backed diary, black and thick, dirty along the edges of the pages. I sat down on the edge of the bed and began to read.
part three
Lara’s diary
March 21st 1999
Sydney
Jake is back!! I can hardly bear it – it’s so wonderful and so tinged with terror. I just want to touch him and look at him.
Nearly time to leave Australia. He arrived this afternoon, from wherever it is he goes in between things, and so this morning, to while away some time, I went and picked up my letters from the poste restante. I wasn’t going to bother, and now I wish I hadn’t. One from Mum, a nasty little postcard from Olivia, and a letter from Leon and Sally, written by Sally.
I dashed off a quick reply to Mum.
I’m in Sydney for a week or so, because I needed to renew my Thai visa
, I wrote primly.
It is a lovely city and I look forward to coming back for longer one day, but for now I need to get back to Bangkok for my job
. That will keep everyone happy. That is the sort of thing golden Lara would have written.
The job I am claiming to have would come with its own visa, but no one would bother to think about that, except perhaps Leon.
I can’t wait to get away from here. Australia is too clean! I need to get back to Thailand. At least I have Jake with me now – it means things are moving.
I wish Dad would tell me whether Mum knows (his part of) the truth or not. Her letter has made me feel really down. I envy other people their motherly mothers. My life would be totally different if I’d had one who would talk to her children as if they were not little inconveniences she vaguely recognised. Imagine a mummy-ish mother who treated school plays etc. as something she actively wanted to go to! She is the person who could have made Olivia and me tolerate each other, but she never bothered to try. If Mum had been open to any sort of meaningful interaction, I would never have had to court Dad so much, and I would not be here now, doing this to bail him out.
So all this is her fault! If I told her that she’d just say ‘Oh, is it? Sorry,’ and drift away.
When we write our little letters, are we both leaving the huge thing unsaid, or is her innocence genuine? ‘Things have been difficult with Dad’s business,’ she said in today’s letter, ‘but onwards and upwards!’
Yes – things have been so difficult with Dad’s business that he asked me to pay him back for my private school, which of course I never asked to go to. And that is what I am doing. Mum can’t know about it or she wouldn’t have written that. Would she?
I ripped up Olivia’s ironic postcard of Buckingham Palace. She didn’t even apologise, just wrote something like ‘I hope you’re having a good time’, which was her at her very friendliest. She’s not going to be hearing from me any time soon, or indeed ever again.
Anyway. The family are on the other side of the world, which is the best place for them. Tomorrow is the day. The thrill of it makes me alive in a way nothing else has ever done.
Now I must go because Jake is waiting for us to go out for some low-key food and a couple of beers. I will force myself to eat even though I am not remotely hungry. I’m too excited to be hungry.
Tomorrow I will be in Thailand. Trip number four. Maybe I should have stopped after three. This seems to be pushing my luck a little, but I know I can do it. I am good at this. Fingers crossed …
March 22nd
Bangkok
It’s hot. Muggy. Smelly. I love it.
I did it. My writing is terrible because my pen is trembling all over the place again. I actually did it.
This is the most incredible high. I want to sing and dance all the way down the Khao San Road. I want to climb on to a precarious corrugated-iron roof and throw my arms up and yell at the heavens. No one beats me. I beat the system.
I wish I could tell Olivia, just to shock her. She would never believe it.
I did nothing that was visible to the outside world. I just did the exact same thing that everyone around me was doing. Then I got a taxi to the Khao San Road to hide amongst the backpackers, and checked into an anonymous fleapit guest house. I was in the café reading a book and drinking my third Coke when Jake arrived, hugged me, told me I was wonderful, while Derek (looking worse than ever – he’s taking that wild hair, wild beard backpacker disguise to its outer limit, I feel) picked up the jacket and vanished. Mission four successfully completed. I was completely calm throughout.
Every time, there’s a part of me that wants it not to work. I couldn’t do it otherwise. If I was desperate to hang on to my normal life and to go home and carry on being the golden bloody girl, I would not be able to keep my head and channel the icy cool. I would be living like every other dull backpacker does round here, treating the world as my playground and thinking I was being original or different.