I closed my eyes again, tears spilling over my cheeks as my new reality set in. With Jack missing since last night, come tomorrow there’d be no more talk about a rescue mission.
It would be a recovery operation.
5
THE MAN FROM THE BEACH
A little while after the trailer had set off, I’d gone back to the wardrobe and searched through the bottom, where I located a pair of socks and running shoes. The sneakers were two sizes too big, but I pulled them on anyway, wincing when the insoles pressed against my shredded feet. As I closed the door a T-shirt caught my eye. It had the words The White Stripes on it, along with a picture of a guy in a top hat, and a woman with long brown hair, wearing a red dress. Snippets of a music video went through my mind. Images of red, black and white triangles. A woman... M...something. M... Yes, that was it, Meg.
I had to stop myself from punching the air with a whoop because I’d remembered. Things were coming back. If I could recall something so obscure, surely the more important stuff would return because the image of Meg White—Jesus, I knew her last name now—was so clear, it was almost as if I were watching the video on TV. As suddenly as it arrived, the image faded, replaced by one of a young girl. Her hair was shorter than Meg’s, and instead of drumsticks she smacked a pair of chopsticks together so hard I thought they’d break, but then that picture blurred and faded, too, and after that...nothing. What did it mean? What did anything mean? I didn’t know, and both my brain and body were so exhausted from the effort of trying to place things, I crawled to the bed and lay down, vowing I’d only let myself close my eyes for a second.
I didn’t wake up until the trailer went over a bump, and I glanced at my watch, struggling to believe an hour had passed. The pain in my head had subsided, and when my fingers gently reached for the cut on my skull, I felt a mass of hair stuck together with dried, stiffened blood. Once again, I tried to force my mind to remember something—anything—but it was as if my existence only began on the beach. I looked out of the back window, squinting as the gray light hit me in the face. The winds had lessened but the rain held steady, bouncing across the asphalt in translucent beads.
As I sank back down on the bed, I noticed the corner of a brochure wedged between the mattress and the wall. I pulled it out. It was a take-out menu for an Indian restaurant, and the names of the dishes and the pictures of aloo gobi, samosas and malai kofta made my mouth water. Until now I’d been able to ignore the gurgling of my empty stomach, let the hunger pains transform themselves into a dull ache, but at the sight of food my gut contracted hard. I pushed myself up and headed for the kitchenette cupboards, where I found half a loaf of bread and strawberry jam. I fumbled with the lid and didn’t bother opening the drawer for a knife, but shoved a piece of bread deep into the jar, groaning as I pushed the food into my mouth.
I was rummaging around the fridge and had gulped down half a pint of milk when the trailer slowed and came to a standstill. My heart raced as I heard the car door open and close, and heavy footsteps making their way in my direction. The driver, the big man called Sal, would immediately spot me when he opened the door. My body reacted in the same way as when I’d seen the police car, signaling an acute urge to run, but I wouldn’t make it out of the back window in time and I had nowhere else to go.
The door opened, and as I was about to put my hands up and reassure Sal I wasn’t any kind of threat, I heard his wife, Rita, yell something from the car. “I found them,” she screeched. “They’re in here, you moron. Come on. I want to get home already.”
“You left the trailer unlocked again,” Sal shouted back before slamming the door shut. I heard him turn the key before he meandered to the car at a glacial pace, not in any apparent hurry to do as Rita commanded. As the air rushed from my lungs I collapsed on the bed, vowing the next time the trailer stopped I’d be ready to push open the back window and run. Sal didn’t appear or sound like the kind of person you messed with. Come to think of it, Rita didn’t, either.
With the jam safely stowed in the cupboard, I forced myself to leave the rest of the bread, making sure I wiped away any crumbs from the counter to remove all signs of my intrusion. As I went to put the take-out menu back where I’d found it, I caught sight of the restaurant’s phone number, which began with 207. A sequence flashed in front of my eyes. Two, zero, seven, followed by six other digits, a combination that came over and over, drowning out everything else trying to make its way into my head. It became a steady pattern that made no sense until I realized it was a phone number, I was sure of it, except I was missing a digit. But which one? The first, last, or another somewhere in the middle? Trying to figure out how many possible combinations that represented made my headache start up again, so I jotted down the numbers on a piece of paper in case I forgot them, and stuffed the note in my pocket. Exhaustion invaded me once more, and I headed back to the bed, falling asleep before I’d stretched out my legs.
Sal stopped briefly
