The Half Life of Stars (8 page)

‘Please…I need to ask you a question.’

‘Cherries ice cream again?’

‘No. Not Cherries. Not this time.’

‘Yes, yes, I recognise this nice man. He used to come in here a lot.

‘Did he watch this programme? Of course, of course, it was his favourite. Many time he used to ask me about it. One time I translate whole episode for him.

‘No, no, he came in here most often
before
the sound got broken. When it busted up he don’t come by so much. Rich man, I think. Very well dress. Always he order otoro sushi. Blue fin tuna, very special fatty cut. Come from top of the tender belly near the…OK, OK, so you’re not so interested in the sushi. What exactly is it you want to know?

‘Where do people go to after they disappear? Hmmn…it depend. Sometime another city, sometime another country altogether. Maybe they get new passport so is OK to leave, but if they can’t get one so quickly they leave by ship.

‘Ship…you know. How do you say it? Stow away. They sometime smuggle away on board a ship.

‘Is it real…yes, of course is real. Is not just a drama, let me tell you. This Yonigeya, it really exist.

‘In Tokyo mostly; maybe all over Japan. People fed up with suicide. Very high suicide rate in Japan. Now some people think is maybe better to disappear, but I’m not sure really is so easy.

‘Why go? For lot of reason. Maybe in debt, maybe have problem. Maybe on the run from the mafia. Some people take whole family with them. The Yonigeya very clever, they can disappear a whole family in the night. They pretend to be pest
control but really they packing up the client house. Take care not to alert anybody. Take care to act normal. Many people that disappear are being watched.

‘Yes. Yes, is true. Most people disappear alone. Maybe have bad marriage or maybe they are sick or have affair. Perhaps they want walk away from marriage without causing too much dishonour. Sometime the reason is sad. Sometime the reason enchanting. I hear about one woman, very romantic story. You want that I tell about her?

‘OK, well, this lady–very beautiful, so they say–her life’s ambition is to be sushi master. Very long training, very important job, but nobody want her to do this. They say woman high temperature will ruin fish. You know, when she has her…yes, menstruation, that’s right. Anyway, she is very special girl, has dreamt of cutting fish all her life. When she is eleven year old her father take her to the docks in Fukuoka where she live and she see a blue fin just landed from the boat; a gigantic and fabulous beast. This fish can weigh as much as eighteen hundred pounds. This fish can swim up to fifty-six miles an hour. This fish have acute hearing and magnetic sensors in its skin that act as extraordinary compass. Can navigate all the way from California to Japan. But the special thing about this fish, the
truly
amazing thing, is that it has to keep swimming all its life. Always moving. Always searching. It is a feature of this fish that it can never slow down or come to rest. If it does, it will suffocate.

‘So, this young lady she is very respectful. When she meets this creature eye to eye she is humbled. She feel that she owe it to this fish to cut its flesh with special care and she swears a solemn oath to regard its spirit. She devote her life to becoming the best sushi chef in all Japan and it turns out, at least this is what I
hear
, she has supernatural flair.

‘No. Still none of the sushi schools decide to take her, so she study in secret for seven year. She is the best cutter, the best shaper, the finest, most dexterous girl you have ever seen. She can know a fish–its sweetness, its freshness, its texture, it’s absorbency, the way it will fall on a plate–just with a blink of
her eye. Her palette so trained, so sensitive that if you cook her a bowl of rice she can tell you which exact river the water that steamed it come from. Maybe it will taste of fresh melt water from the mountains, maybe a leaf of cherry blossom will have fallen into water as it meander its way through valley. If so, she will immediately sense it.

‘Still, nobody will take a chance to employ her. So she get sad and marry a man she doesn’t love. Not a cruel man, just a boring man. Drink too much, work too hard. Want his breakfast and his dinner and his shirts and his shoes and his woman and his life just so. This girl she want to divorce him but she know her husband will never allow it. Family very strict. Family say she must stay.

‘This woman so sad in her marriage and her life, she sometime think she might die. But one day she hear about Yonigeya. She take her small savings and a dish of otoro that she has prepare especially for him. The Yonigeya is so amazed, so thrilled at the taste and the skill of this young lady, that he agree to help her right away. He arrange for her to escape and not charge her too much money. When she set up her own restaurant abroad and make her fortune, then she can send Yonigeya what she owes.

‘One month later her husband awake and there is nobody there to fix his breakfast. Husband furious. When he realise his young wife is set free and escape, he bangs his fist through treasured rice paper screen. To this day no one knows where she go to. Some say Australia. Some say Toronto. Some clever people think London.

‘No. No…ha ha, is not me. This not even my place. No, the Yonigeya not here. I don’t think there are any in London.

‘No. I am not one. Of course not. Is too much trouble…for a simple waitress.

‘Really? This man disappear?

‘No. I don’t see it in the papers.

‘No. I don’t see it on TV. TV was broken, remember?

‘Where do you think he go to, this man?

‘Sorry, sorry. Your brother.

‘No, I don’t know either. He never say anything to me. Just one day I tell him the story of the sushi girl and he seemed to like it a lot.

‘No, I didn’t help him, why you say this?

‘OK, I accept your apology. But this programme is very romantic. Is also a little dangerous, I think. Who in this world hasn’t wondered for a moment what it would feel like to start their life over. To begin again sweet and crisp, like a new spring plum, freshly cut from the tree. No blemish, just perfect and ripe like a newborn, with a life to start over afresh. No mistake, no hang up, no problems. Erasing every one of your wrong turn. How light it would make a person feel. How better to fight his mortality than to give a person a second chance at life. So you see, I don’t have to do anything. I don’t even put the idea in people’s head. The idea already there, snoozing like fat dog with an empty belly. Is there in all minds at some time or another; with this man, maybe was time his dog woke up.

‘No, there’s nothing else I can help you with.

‘No, there is nothing more I can say. If you know him well enough you will guess where he went. They say the sushi lady kept postcards of London bus under her bed, but still the lady family not work it out. Or maybe they not want to know the truth. That she was right and they were wrong. Sometimes is so hard for people to change the way they see a loved one, they prefer not to see them at all.

‘How do I like London? Very nice. Very open. Very green. But the water not so good. Give a funny taste to the rice. They say it go through seven people before it get to tap. Sometime, I think I taste every one.

‘Am I good sushi chef? Of course. How you can ask? I am spectacular chef. A true master.’

My family looks utterly flabbergasted. At my suggestion? At my detective skills? At my logic? Or at the fact that I’m sat here with Michael? They’re staring at me like I’m insane: Mum, Robert, Sylvie, Kay and even–I suspect–Stinky Jools.

‘This is your big idea?’ Sylvie says. ‘That’s why you dragged us all over here, to tell us about a soap opera in a Japanese restaurant?’

‘I think it’s too much of a coincidence, that’s all. The waitress said Daniel went there all the time.’

Kay looks confused. Distressed.

‘Daniel doesn’t like Japanese food,’ she says, quietly. ‘He hates sushi, I know he does.’

‘Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I showed his picture to the waitress and she said he was in there a lot.’

‘Watching this programme?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she thinks there are Yonigas…whatever you called them, operating here in London.’

‘No. She thinks not. But it’s more the idea of it. She was very persuasive. I think this programme might have influenced Daniel.’

‘He wouldn’t eat in a basement,’ Kay says. ‘Daniel hates anywhere cramped.’

‘Yeah,’ says Michael, helpfully. ‘It was a really shabby place. Not the kind of place you’d expect Daniel to go.’

‘Look,’ I say, glaring at him. ‘That’s exactly my point. It wasn’t his usual kind of place but he liked it; he actively sought it out. Who knows how he first stumbled upon it. Perhaps one of his
clients took him there. The food is really authentic. They do this amazing tuna sushi…otoro, it comes from the belly of—’

‘
Claire
, we don’t need to know the entire menu.’

‘Daniel hates tuna…he does. He’d never so much as have it in a sandwich.’

I wipe my eyes. I take a deep breath and try again.

‘Listen to me a minute. What if this programme was on when he first went in there? What if it somehow caught his eye. Maybe he went back from time to time because he found the restaurant quaint or unusual. And when he became depressed, this programme, this waitress, her story…perhaps he found it intriguing, maybe it began to make some sense to him.’

‘He wasn’t depressed. How many times do I have to say it?’

‘Is this what you think, Claire? Honestly? That Daniel ran away because of a TV show?’

‘I don’t know, Sylvie. I’m not sure. I’m just thinking we should tell the police.’

‘Tell them what? That Daniel got fed up of eating in expensive restaurants. That he sometimes liked to eat somewhere cheap? That some bored waitress likes to make-up tall stories to keep her customers amused? She’s probably seen you on the TV. She’s probably read about us in the papers. She’s taking you for a fool. This is her idea of fun.’

They sigh with disappointment and pain, every one of them. And why shouldn’t they? It’s new year’s eve, I’ve called an emergency meeting at my mother’s house, promised them something significant and delivered nothing. I could back things up by telling them about the letter, but not with Kay here, I don’t want to hurt her. And I can’t very easily tell them about the pills: not without admitting that I stole them; not without making Kay look foolish. I should have worked all this out before rushing over here. I should have made some kind of plan.

‘Well, it seems like you’ve had quite an evening,’ my mother says. ‘It seems your imagination has run riot. And what a pleasure to see
you
again, Michael. You were always a great influence on my daughter. You always gave such wonderful…support.’

There’s nothing left to say, no new evidence left to dig through, so everyone gets ready to go. Kay’s heading back to her friend’s house with Julian, and Sylvie is seeing in the new year with Gabe. I stand up to leave along with them but my mother is looking at me strangely. I know what this means; she wants me to wait behind for a moment so she can give me a proper telling off.

‘Not so fast,’ she says, icily. ‘Sit down and talk to me. Not you, Michael, you can wait outside.’

‘In the cold?’

‘You have a coat don’t you?’

‘Yep…yep. I have a coat.’

‘Pity.’

‘Come with me, Michael,’ says Robert, gently. ‘We’ll leave the girls to it. I have some hot coffee in the kitchen.’

The good news is she hasn’t had a drink yet; the bad news is, she’s just about to start. She twists open a fresh bottle of gin and waits for its tight seal to snap apart. It’s clear from her face, she half relishes this process, half loathes it: loves what it will do for her, hates that she’s under its control.

‘What else do you know?’ she says, simply.

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘What do you mean?’

She glares at me.

‘Come on, I’m not an idiot. I know you have more than you’re letting on.’

She has this knack with me, this odd mind-reading arrangement. If only I had it with her.

‘What is it?’ she says, stiffly. ‘Was he sleeping with this waitress, is that it? Has my son turned into one of
those
men?’

‘I think, well…not with the waitress.’

‘Someone else, then?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just…a suspicion.’

I gaze at the floor. I don’t want to show her the letter. I know what she’s like; she’ll be drunk by the time I’m gone and the first thing she’ll do is call up Kay.

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘No. no. You’re OK.’

‘Mind if I have one?’

I shake my head.

She raises the glass to her lips but doesn’t drink from it, then slowly, purposefully, she sets it down. It seems like such an effort, such a trial, that I feel like I ought to reward her.

‘But you’re right,’ I say, ‘there is something else. Those antidepressants that Daniel had in the bathroom. Kay says he never took them, but he did.’

‘You
know
this?’

‘Yes…I opened them. It was an accident really…but all of the tablets were gone.’

She sits down and rubs her hand over her face.

‘When was it?’

‘When what?’

‘Think, Claire. When did he start taking them?’

She’s making me nervous; I can’t think straight.

‘I don’t remember…no, wait, it was February. It was back while I was breaking up with Michael.’

She looks crestfallen. At what exactly? Is she worried at the effect this medication has had on Daniel? Is she displaying some long overdue sympathy for my broken marriage?

‘Look,’ I say, ‘I don’t want you to worry…we’re just catching up. For old times. There’s nothing going on between the two of us.’

She snorts. Her fingers go to her glass, but she pulls them back.

‘What difference does it make?’ she snaps, crossly. ‘Michael, Gabriel, some other low-life that you’ve plucked off the street. How many has it been now? In the last year? In the last six months? None of them do you any good.’

I don’t even have time to take this in. She’s motoring, she’s already moved on.

‘I want you to go and see Tom tomorrow.’

‘Daniel’s partner? Why?’

‘See what he knows. Ask him about the restaurant. See if they
went there together. He’ll know if Daniel was…if he was seeing someone else.’

‘I don’t know, Mum…I’m not sure.’

She leans in to me and reaches for my arm.

‘Do this for me, please, Claire, it’s important. I think you’re the best one to do it.’

This trust, this kindness, this sudden softness in her voice, it leaves me a little disorientated. I wonder if I’m not imagining it, if she’s not fooling or tricking me in some way.

‘Of course, I’d ask Sylvie to go, but she’s busy. Sylvie would have been my first choice.’