The Disappearance of Emily Marr (47 page)

I didn’t see her the next day, but the one after that she was back, ringing the doorbell, a bold new step for her. I was in the house on my own and did not answer the door, but she returned after dark when the whole family was at home and Phil made me stay indoors while he handled it.

‘We’ve filed a complaint against you,’ I heard him tell her. ‘If you keep coming back here, we’ll apply for a restraining order. What’s your name? Come on, don’t be a coward, spit it out. Don’t you want your hero to know who you are?’

Only when she was goaded to repeat her answer did I catch it. ‘Emily.’

‘Yes, I know you know
her
name. I’m asking you what
yours
is.’

I understood before he did that she was saying her name was Emily as well. I didn’t believe that, of course: she had simply appropriated my name just as she had appropriated my style of dress. Peering over Phil’s shoulder, I saw with horror that this time she was wearing something that really had once been mine, a black wool jacket with oversized buttons and fake-fur collar that I’d sold back to the vintage shop near work where I’d bought it. Had she followed me that day I’d lugged bin liners down the Grove to the bus stop? Had the shop assistant recognised me and made a virtue of the items’ provenance?
As worn by the famous slut Emily Marr!
Had she, and others like her, taken possession of my entire wardrobe? Were there pieces of me for sale now on eBay?

I called out, ‘I’ll be leaving the country any day now. You won’t find me where I’m going. So whoever you are, just forget this, forget me and go back to your life.’

I felt the words catch in my throat, because it applied to what I was supposed to be doing about Arthur: forgetting him, forgetting us, going back to my life.

Perhaps this woman’s ‘real’ life was as elusive and frightening to her as mine was to me, in which case we were more alike than I had thought.

After she’d agreed to go, Phil, bless him, tried to joke. ‘She puts the fanatic back into fan, eh? If she goes around looking like you, maybe she’ll get a stalker of her own. Now
that
would be news.’ With Julie hovering, I quickly gathered that the levity was for her benefit, and I joined in with a show of laughter.

Julie’s eyebrows were pinched anxiously together. She cared about me very much – I couldn’t have asked for a kinder, more thoughtful sister-in-law – but there was not a single word she uttered or breath she took that did not prioritise concern for her young sons. ‘I bet she’s not the only one out there, Emily. People in these news scandals always get this sort of thing.’

Still aiming to keep the mood light, I told her that at the peak of the media interest I had read that women were saying to their hairdressers they wanted a haircut like mine.

She nodded, face still tense. ‘It’s the blonde thing. Seriously, I bet even Myra Hindley spawned a few sick lookalikes in her day.’

‘She means someone with a distinctive look,’ Phil said hastily. ‘She doesn’t mean you have anything in common with one of the most infamous child killers of the twentieth century.’

This time I could not share the joke. Recalling Nina Meeks’ reference to Lizzie Borden and the other writers’ constant comparisons of me with criminals and low-lifes, I felt tears rise at the idea that my own family could make the same casual references. Mortified, Julie began apologising. I accepted her words but, even so, I was upset.

‘The best thing you did was chop off your hair,’ Phil told me. ‘You don’t need the hat any more. No one will recognise you now.’

‘Well, this woman has,’ Julie pointed out.

‘She’s the only one, though, isn’t she? She must have heard you had a brother, looked up the address, struck lucky to find you here.’

I knew what Julie was thinking: if one louse had come out of the woodwork, any number of them might follow.

No matter. The point was, there was a finality to these conversations that all three of us recognised. Phil had as good as asked me to hide abroad – offered me the money to do it, no less – and I had as good as agreed. I’d delayed and delayed, but now I had to leave them in peace; my refuge here was no longer tenable.

And then, the very next time the house was left empty, came the break-in. As burglaries went it was an orderly, almost sensitive one. She’d broken glass in the kitchen door, but collected up the pieces and placed them on a sheet of newspaper on the kitchen worktop. She disarranged no contents of drawers or wardrobes, upturned nothing. She’d merely picked out the items she needed to complete her Emily Marr wardrobe and while she was at it gained access to my innermost thoughts. She couldn’t have expected
that
bonus material. Soon she would know me almost as well as I knew myself. In the immediate aftermath, I felt sick with helplessness, but later, as I say, I’ve found it was actually the catalyst I needed.

The following evening, after another fruitless report to the local police, I prepared to leave. Without the laptop and other stolen items I had even fewer possessions to take with me than I’d arrived with, and it took less than an hour to pack. I told Phil and Julie where I was going only in the morning, before they left for work. I knew they were filled with pity for me, but also relieved to have me go of my own volition, and I could hardly blame them for that.

Phil promised to transfer some money to my account to top up the little I had. ‘Keep in touch,’ he said. ‘Don’t disappear so well that we can’t find you.’

‘I won’t,’ I promised.

As I went through passport checks at St Pancras I thought I saw the official narrow her eyes slightly at the sight of my name – and my photo, too, which was from my better-known blonde incarnation. She made no comment, however, just handed the passport back to me and let me pass. There was no final humiliation. In Paris, three hours later, there was not a flicker of recognition at Immigration, and as I walked through the Gare du Nord without attracting a single sideways glance, I knew I’d done the right thing.

As Phil says, the best I can hope for is that when I come back – if I ever do – people will have forgotten I was ever anyone they’d heard of in the first place.

The last thing to say is that I have contacted Arthur a final time. I did it the old-fashioned way, by letter, addressed to his Harley Street clinic and marked
Private & Confidential
. I slightly disguised my writing on the envelope and hoped the Paris postmark might pique him into opening it. But of course he must have been receiving unwanted mail just as I have, plenty of it innocently marked
Private
(I imagined it still falling in handfuls through the letterbox of 199, for of course I’d left no forwarding address). As the days pass and no reply comes, I’ve come to suspect that his two secretaries, the ones who denied me any contact by phone, must continue to shield him from any but the essential correspondence. ‘I’m sure you understand,’ they would say.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.

All I know for sure is that I had to write it in the spirit of believing it would be read, otherwise there would have been no point in writing it at all. I told him that I understood why he has been unable to see me or even speak to me since his wife’s and sons’ deaths. I told him I was sick with remorse for contributing to those deaths and that I would give my own life to bring theirs back. I told him that I adored him and always would. I asked him if he remembered my telling him my belief that falling in love could be averted or willed, it was not simply a question of magic. Loving him, then, was my choice. I said that even if we were never again in the same city, much less living as neighbours, that I believed the love still mattered, even if it was only mine now and neither welcomed nor returned. I reminded him of what he said to me the first time we met, and how I still know it is true:

Everybody counts.

Even Emmie Mason.

Chapter 27

Tabby

She found Arthur and Emily in the kitchen, half-eaten servings of chicken salad on dinner plates in front of them. ‘It’s got to be her,’ she said, halting in the doorway. ‘There’s no other explanation. She’s not Emily. She’s not you.’

‘No,’ Emily agreed. ‘Oh dear, you’ve had a shock, I think.’ She got up from her seat and guided Tabby to a place at the table, fetching from the fridge a plate of food for her. She brought salt and pepper, salad dressing, a glass of iced water. Even as she continued to grapple with the larger situation, Tabby registered how very kind Emily was, even further from the woman portrayed by the media than Emmie was – whoever Emmie was.

‘She doesn’t even look like you,’ Tabby told her. ‘I mean, a little bit, but not properly, not now I can compare you one after the other. It must have been so obvious she wasn’t who she said she was, but I was so stupid I wasn’t the slightest bit doubtful. I was totally fooled.’ But the word ‘fooled’ felt wrong. Talking like this felt wrong, like she was betraying Emmie.

‘You weren’t stupid. I think we’re similar enough, and with the hair and make-up, the same clothing, you could easily be deceived if you only had photos for reference. It was quite a distinctive look and she copied it well – that was what unnerved me when I met her. But as it was, there would have been no reason for you to be looking for differences. She told you it was her and why would you disbelieve it? Why would someone make it up?’

‘Why indeed,’ Arthur said. He, Tabby saw, was pallid with exhaustion.

‘For attention?’ Emily wondered.

‘No, definitely not that,’ Tabby said. ‘Until she met me she was living secretly, she wasn’t going around telling people she was famous. In fact, I practically had to force the truth out of her – well, not the truth, but you know what I mean,
her
truth. And there’s no monetary gain, either. She’s not selling her story –
your
story – or dining out on it in any way. She’s working as a cleaner and isn’t paid much at all, but her fear of being recognised means there are only certain jobs she can take.’ Though seated, still Tabby reeled from the shock of it, of her own gullibility as much as the fraud itself.

She noticed Arthur glance at the wall clock. It was half-past ten; not the evening he had expected or wanted. Tabby wondered if she would ever know the end of his and Emily’s story, how they had come to be reunited, when it had seemed so hopeless at the end of Emily’s last written instalment. ‘Whatever this impersonator’s motives, we have to make a decision about what to do about her,’ he said, and he drank deeply from his wine glass.

‘The more I think about it, the more I think she’s not an impersonator,’ Tabby said. ‘I think it’s weirder than that. I’m fairly sure she genuinely thinks she
is
Emily.’

‘I had a feeling you were going to say that,’ Emily said.

‘But what does it mean? How could that be?’

‘It means she must be extremely unwell,’ Arthur said. ‘Whatever’s going on, it’s obsessive and potentially harmful and I think we need to tell the police about her.’

‘But she hasn’t come near me in five months,’ Emily said. ‘Who’s she going to harm?’

‘Herself, for one,’ Tabby said. ‘The reason I came here to look for you was I was very worried about her. She’s having some sort of breakdown. I feel more concerned than ever now. I’m not sure I should have left her on her own.’

‘Exactly my point,’ Arthur said. ‘She needs treatment, psychiatric attention. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we find she already has a therapist here, a history of irrational behaviour of this sort. You were right to come back to England, Tabby: this is where you’ll find your answers.’

Tabby agreed. ‘Before I can do anything, I need to find out who she really is. She calls herself Emmie, but that can’t be her name, can it? She must have got that from the journal.’

‘You didn’t ever see her passport or any other identification?’ he asked.

‘No. I would have questioned the discrepancy if I had. I wouldn’t be here.’

‘Thank God she didn’t steal
my
passport,’ Emily said. ‘Otherwise it could have got very complicated.’

‘It’s complicated enough as it is,’ Arthur said. ‘Do you know where she lived in the UK?’ he asked Tabby. ‘If she was one of the ones who used to come to Emily’s flat, might she have been based in London?’

‘Well, she
said
she’d lived in London. Once she knew I knew, she talked about the Grove all the time, how it was a bus ride from her work and close to St Barnabas’. But of course she read all that in your document. She never mentioned Newbury or anywhere else. Did your brother ever see her again after you left for Paris?’

Emily shook her head. ‘Not that he ever mentioned. But then it would fit with what you say if she went to La Rochelle at about the same time.’

‘Actually, she’s across the bridge from La Rochelle,’ Tabby said, ‘on the Ile de Ré.’

‘The Ile de Ré?’ Arthur and Emily looked at each other, perturbed, dismayed.

‘You mention it in your account, do you remember? I think that must be where she thought you’d be going.’

‘She’s delusional,’ Arthur said, ‘and I mean clinically. As I say, I’d be amazed if she weren’t known to a hospital somewhere over here.’

An image rose to the surface of Tabby’s mind then, causing her to exclaim, ‘Hang on, there is something! The pills. She had medication.’

‘What kind of medication?’

‘I don’t remember exactly, but it had been prescribed by a hospital in London. And her name begins with E, that’s right. I saw the label on the bottle, it was torn… Oh, unless she stole it from you?’

She looked at Emily, who shook her head.

‘No, it’s not mine. She didn’t take anything like that from me. And the only medication prescribed to me was by the NHS Trust in Hertfordshire, not a London hospital.’

‘Hers was definitely London. I can’t remember where. East London, possibly.’

Arthur looked up. ‘The East London Trust? That’s a specialist mental-health trust. I can ring them in the morning and see what I can find out, though the letter E isn’t much to be going on with, I have to say. Do we know a date of birth?’