The Disappearance of Emily Marr (48 page)

‘Only Emily’s,’ Tabby said. ‘She looks older, though, I would say.’

‘What about other clues?’ Emily said. ‘Family? Has she ever mentioned them?’

‘All she ever told me is what she must have found out from your journal.’ She’d been struck by the phrases Emmie repeated from the manuscript, phrases she hadn’t written herself but must have absorbed and borrowed. Had
anything
been Emmie’s own? ‘She said her parents were dead and she has a brother and two young nephews.’

‘Maybe that’s the true bit? The coincidence that triggered the original interest?’ Arthur suggested. ‘Not a name, but a family parallel, an emotional connection. This could be some sort of grief-related behaviour?’

It was a staggering thought, that grief could cause a person to withdraw from her own life and begin living in a state of complete self-deception. But both Arthur and Emily, and presumably thousands of others up and down the land, were also recently bereaved and they had not hijacked other people’s identities.

‘OK, let’s think this through,’ Emily said. ‘Assuming it’s not a chance family parallel, then her parents or other family may well still be alive, and if they haven’t heard from her in all this time they’ll be worried sick.’

‘She’s had no contact with them since she’s been in France,’ Tabby said. ‘I’m certain of that.’

‘So they might have reported her missing?’

Emily and Tabby looked at each other, neither blinking.

‘Well, there’s your first place to look,’ Arthur said. ‘It sounds obvious, but you could do worse than to start with Missing Persons.’

In the end it was as simple as that. There were fifty white females in Emmie’s age range registered as missing in London and she was one of them. She was neither an Emily nor a Marr, of course, and not an Emmie or a Mason, either. She was called Eve Barron, born in the same month as Emily but three years earlier. It was all there on the website:

Eve Barron 

Date of birth: 2 July 1977 

Eve has been missing from London since 18 March 2012. 

There is concern for Eve’s safety and she is urged to call our confidential Freefone service for advice and support. 

Eve is 5 feet 5 inches tall and of medium build. At the time of her disappearance she had shoulder-length bleached blond hair, worn with a black ribbon. 

The photograph was of a woman whose style inspiration was plain: the hair was the same length and blondness as Emily’s original cut, the eye make-up a faithful replica, the short-sleeved baby-blue cardigan just the kind of garment vintage-loving Emily would have worn. The occasion was not obvious, but there was a cottage window with leaded glass in the background, china ornaments on the sill: it didn’t look like a London flat or an office. A relative’s house, perhaps? Her parents’ home? Eve smiled with a pride that might once have seemed a perfectly ordinary response to the camera, but that now seemed to Tabby to be perverse, volatile, tragic.

Arthur left the room and Emily cleared up quietly while Tabby made the call to the twenty-four-hour helpline. ‘I think I know the whereabouts of one of the people on your website. I think she has mental-health issues and I’m guessing her family will probably know that.’

She gave the reference number from the website before being asked a series of questions about timings, location, whether she had noticed CCTV equipment in the village. When the woman began to ask about Eve’s clothing, Tabby wondered if she’d made herself quite clear. ‘This wasn’t a one-off sighting,’ she said. ‘I’ve been living and working with her. She wears lots of different clothes. I can tell you what she was wearing three days ago, but she’ll have changed by now. And she doesn’t really leave the house at the moment, anyway.’

‘Where are you both now?’

‘She’s still there, at the address I’ve given you. I’m back in England.’

‘Where does she think you are? Does she know you’re making this call?’

‘She thinks I’m visiting my family.’ It occurred to Tabby that she was not so different from Emmie/Eve. While not listed with any missing-persons organisation, she had broken off contact with her family and hardly allowed herself to think of her mother, was generally behaving as if in denial of being anyone’s daughter. She supposed she ought to phone Elaine and let her know she was alive.

‘The next step is for us to get in touch with the police with this information. We’ll do that first thing in the morning.’ The helpline worker told her the service was confidential and there was no way her phone number could be traced; however, the police would probably want to speak to her directly if she was willing.

‘That’s fine,’ Tabby said. ‘You can give them my number, and her family as well. I’m going back to France myself, so I can show them where she is if they like. The house is quite hard to find if you don’t know it.’

After the call had ended, Tabby sat in surprise. She’d said she was going back, but was that true? Shouldn’t she keep her distance now she’d discovered that Emmie was an unstable and troubled individual? But hadn’t she suspected that anyhow? Hadn’t she noted her peculiarities time and again and yet still decided she liked her, still longed to repay her friend’s original act of mercy?

‘Well done,’ Emily said. ‘That’s not an easy thing to have to do.’ She stood with her back to the whirring dishwasher. ‘Arthur’s gone up. He’s shattered.’

‘I should leave you in peace,’ Tabby said, pushing back her chair. ‘Head back into town for the train. You’ve both been amazingly understanding about this situation, when I’m sure it’s the last thing you need to get involved with this person.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Emily said. ‘How can we not be involved? And it’s far too late to be thinking about getting a train. I think you should stay here, in the spare room, get a good night’s rest.’

‘Oh.’ Tabby knew the offer was more than she deserved – and a huge leap of faith on Emily’s part. Somehow, just as Emmie had, she had chosen to trust her. ‘Thank you, if you’re sure. That’s really kind.’

‘Let’s have another drink. It’s been a very strange evening for both of us.’ Emily poured them each another glass of wine. ‘One for the road,’ she said, slipping into her seat, ‘though I must admit I’d hoped we’d got to the end of it by now.’

She really was unusually beautiful, Tabby thought, watching the way she rested her chin on her knuckles, elbow poised elegantly on the table. Her skin was flawless and glowing, those dark blue eyes slightly upturned at the outer corners and extravagantly long-lashed, her mouth broad and curved. She had not needed the painted mask she’d worn. Tabby imagined the men she knew being faced with such a creature: Paul would be in awe of someone so exquisite; Steve wouldn’t dare utter a word of insult or lasciviousness; perhaps even Grégoire might hesitate.

‘I have a favour to ask you,’ Emily said.

‘Of course?’ Tabby said. ‘Anything.’

‘The file you’ve read, and the extra chapter I showed you tonight: could you keep what you know confidential? I don’t suppose anyone’s interested now, but just in case…?’

Tabby’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Of course! I won’t tell a soul. I’ll try to forget, in fact. It will be hard, though. It’s an extraordinary story.’

Emily bowed her head, unable to deny this.

‘I know it’s none of my business,’ Tabby heard herself say, the words as fitting as any others for her gravestone, ‘but I’d love to know one final thing.’

Emily smiled. ‘One final thing you’ll try to forget?’

‘Yes.’ She conceded the absurdity of it, but still longed to ask.

‘I’m sure I can guess what it is, anyway,’ Emily said. ‘How Arthur and I came to get back together.’

‘He read your letter, I suppose? The one you sent from Paris?’

‘Yes. He read it and he came to find me.’ Emily’s eyes glimmered with sudden tears. ‘He just appeared one day out of the blue. It was… it was like a miracle. I’d been trawling the local bars one afternoon, looking for work, but my French was just not up to it, I was getting nowhere, and when I got back to the house he was on the doorstep, sitting there, reading his English newspaper. At first – for ages, actually – all he said was, “Sorry. I’m sorry.” I thought he’d forgotten how to say anything else.’ She paused, and Tabby knew she would not be invited to share the part that followed; she would have to imagine the reconciliation for herself, in all its bitter-sweetness. ‘When he went back the next day, I went with him.’

‘After all that time, he changed his mind? You’d given up on him, hadn’t you?’

‘I thought too long had passed for him to be able to remember us. But now I think there’s no such thing as too long. It was only eight months. I would have waited eight years.’

‘Wow.’ Tabby felt envy so acute it caused internal pain. Had envy also been at the heart of Emmie’s imitation, or whatever it was, not imitation but identification, immersion? The intuitive certainty that this person was special, or at least her connection with Woodhall was. ‘How long have you been up here, in Leeds?’

‘Arthur’s been here since soon after the inquest. He’d already arranged the move, but brought it forward when the
Press
story erupted. I came in May. It hasn’t been easy, as you can imagine. We’ve had to start again, pretty much without friends. We know we can’t ever see anyone from before.’

‘Not even your family? What about Phil?’

‘He’s been all right about it, yes. He’s visited us here with the boys a few times. And Arthur’s brother has been OK too, though not his wife or their sister. And none of Sylvie’s family, none of the nieces or nephews on her side.’ She bit her lower lip, obviously upset. ‘We’re hoping that when they’re older they might decide to get in touch with him again themselves. We’ll have to see.’

‘Are you here long-term, d’you think?’

‘I don’t know; it depends on Arthur’s work. Neither of us wants to go back to London. There are new eye clinics opening overseas, we might go to one of those.’

‘And you’re still writing?’

Emily blinked softly. ‘No, I’ve written all I’m going to write. I’m training to become a counsellor, so I could work anywhere English-speaking, I suppose.’

‘Somewhere people would be less likely to recognise you.’

‘Yes, though it’s been fine here so far. The staff at the summer school where I’m doing my course have been great. They agreed I could register under a different name and so far no one has questioned that. And the few times I’ve been recognised, it hasn’t been as bad as I expected. Often they just know they know me but can’t think where from. Someone thought I’d been on a reality show, one of those singing ones. If only!’

Tabby wanted to ask what Emily’s assumed name was (just out of interest), but Emily had talked enough and said she was going to bed. She showed Tabby the room in which she was to stay and again Tabby acknowledged the significance of a person required to be so vigilant about privacy deciding to lower her guard in this way. It made her feel proud.

Too stirred up to sleep, she asked Emily if she could use the computer downstairs for a little longer.

‘Of course,’ Emily said. ‘Just turn out the lights when you come back up.’

Seconds later, the door to the main bedroom was closed behind her. Tabby could not quite comprehend that in the space beyond was the couple who had so recently incited national damnation, whose reunion was a miracle even in their own eyes. Arthur Woodhall and Emily Marr, together after all. From what Emily had said, they had very little left
but
each other. They’d been prepared to make sacrifices for each other right from the beginning; in the end, the sacrifices were larger, unspeakably graver. Everybody counted, as Emily had insisted, but nobody won.

Downstairs, Tabby returned to the Missing Persons site. She read that the majority of missing adults had chosen to disappear, a significant percentage having mental-health problems, which ranged from mild depression to severe psychosis. In some cases the missing were patients who had absconded from hospital mental wards. One other statistic caught her eye: seventy per cent of those who’d made contact with the helpline said that being missing had positive aspects to it.

Certainly Emmie had been content with her existence: comfortable in Tabby’s company, absorbed by her work for Moira, happy with her little house by the port where you could run either the water heater or the washing machine but not both at once. Life, unsupervised, unmedicated, it
had
had positive aspects to it. She’d only become unhappy when Tabby had insisted on exposing her history. Her ‘history’, she corrected herself. So much concerning Emmie had now to be thought of in inverted commas, including her name.

She found the site for the East London Trust, which, as Arthur said, was a major mental-health facility. Idly browsing this and others linked to it, she came across an alphabetical list of medicine and studied it carefully. She thought she recognised one name near the bottom: Quetiapine. Could that be right? None of the others looked familiar in the same way. She clicked on the link and read:

Quetiapine is a type of medicine known as an atypical antipsychotic. It works in the brain, where it affects various neurotransmitters, in particular serotonin (5HT) and dopamine. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that are stored in nerve cells and are involved in transmitting messages between the nerve cells. 

Dopamine and serotonin are known to be involved in regulating mood and behaviour, amongst other things. Psychotic illness is considered to be caused by disturbances in the activity of neurotransmitters (mainly dopamine) in the brain. Schizophrenia is known to be associated with an overactivity of dopamine in the brain, and this may be associated with the delusions and hallucinations that are a feature of this disease. 

Quetiapine works by blocking the receptors in the brain that dopamine acts on. This prevents the excessive activity of dopamine and helps to control schizophrenia. It is also used by specialists to treat episodes of mania and depression in people with the psychiatric illness bipolar affective disorder (manic depression).