I Know My Name

George Street, Edinburgh

Lochlan: I’m having afternoon tea with a client at The Dome when my phone rings. It’s an important meeting—Mr. Coyle is interested in setting up a venture capital fund to invest in some new technological companies—and so I pull it out of my pocket and hit “cancel.”

“Sorry about that.”

Mr. Coyle arches an eyebrow. “Your wife?”

It was, actually. Right before I hit “cancel” I saw her name appear on the screen.

“No, no. Anyway, what were we saying?”

“Google glass?”

I pour us both some red. “Ah, yes. This company’s creating something similar, only better. It integrates seamlessly with new social media platforms and user trials have rated it at five stars. The first product is scheduled to retail for around five hundred pounds in September.”

My phone rings again. This time Mr. Coyle gives a noise of irritation. “ELOÏSE” appears in white letters on the screen. I make to hit “cancel” again, but Mr. Coyle gives a shooing gesture with his hand and says, “Answer it. Tell her we’re busy.”

I stand up and walk to the nearest window.

“El, what is it? I’m in a meeting…”

“Lochlan? Is that you, dear?”

The woman at the other end of the line is not my wife. She continues talking, and it takes a few moments for me to place the voice.

“Mrs. Shahjalal?”

It’s the Yorkshirewoman who lives opposite us.

“…and I thought I’d best check. So when I opened the door I was surprised to see—are you still there?”

From the corner of my eye I see Mr. Coyle hailing a waitress.

“Mrs. Shahjalal, is everything all right? Where’s Eloïse?”

A long pause. “That’s what I’m telling you, dear. I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“It’s like I said: the man from the UPS van brought the parcel over to me and asked if I’d take it as nobody was in. And I thought that was strange, because I was sure I’d seen little Max’s face at the window only a moment before. So I took the parcel, and then an hour or so later I saw Max again, and I thought I’d best go over and see if everything was all right. Max was able to stand on a chair and let me in.”

I’m struggling to put this all together in my mind. Mr. Coyle is rising from his chair, putting on his jacket. I turn and raise a hand to let him know I’ll be just a second, but he grimaces.

“OK, so Max let you into our house. What happened when you went inside?”

“Well, Eloïse still isn’t here. I’ve been here since three o’clock and the little one’s mad for a feed. I found Eloïse’s mobile phone on the coffee table and pressed a button, and luckily enough it dialed your number.”

The rustling and mewling noises in the background grow louder, and I realize Mrs. Shahjalal must be holding Cressida, my daughter. She’s twelve weeks old. Eloïse is still breastfeeding her.

“So…Eloïse isn’t in the house. She’s not there at all?” It’s a stupid thing to say, but I can’t quite fathom it. Where else would she be?

Mr. Coyle glowers from the table. He straightens his tie before turning to walk out, and I lower the phone and call after him.

“Mr. Coyle!”

He doesn’t acknowledge me.

“I’ll send the fact sheet by e-mail!”

Mrs. Shahjalal is still talking. “It’s very odd, Lochlan. Max is dreadfully upset and doesn’t seem to know where she’s gone. I don’t know what to do.”

I walk back to the table and gather up my briefcase. The brass clock on the chimney breast reads quarter past four. I could catch the four thirty to London if I manage to get a taxi on time, but it’s a four-and-a-half-hour train ride from here and then another cab ride from King’s Cross to Twickenham. I’ll not be home until after ten.

“I’m heading back right now,” I tell Mrs. Shahjalal.

“Are you in the city, dear?”

“I’m in Edinburgh.”

“Edinburgh? Scotland?”

Outside, the street is busy with traffic and people. I’m agitated, trying to think fast, and almost get knocked over by a double-decker bus driving close to the curb. I jump back, gasping at the narrow escape. A group of schoolkids on a school trip meander across the pavement in single file. I wave at a black taxi and manage to get him to stop.

“To Waverley, please.”

I ask Mrs. Shahjalal if she can stay with Max and Cressida until I get back. To my relief she says she will, though I can barely hear her now over Cressida’s screams.

“She needs to be fed, Mrs. Shahjalal.”

“Well, I know that, dear, but my days of being able to nurse a baby are over.”

“If you go into the fridge, there might be some breast milk in a plastic container on the top shelf. It’ll be labeled. I think Eloïse keeps baby bottles in one of the cupboards near the toaster. Make sure you put the bottle into the sterilizer in the microwave for four minutes before you use it. Make sure there’s water in the bottom.”

“Sterilize the breast milk?”

I can hear Max in the background now, shouting, “Is that Daddy? Daddy, is that you?” I ask Mrs. Shahjalal to put him on.

“Max, Maxie boy?”

“Hi, Daddy. Can I have some chocolate, please?”

“I’ll buy you as much chocolate as you can eat if you tell me where Mummy is.”

“As much chocolate as I can eat? All of it?”

“Where is Mummy, Max?”

“Can I have a Kinder egg, please?”

“Did Mummy go out this morning? Did someone come to the house?”

“I think she went to the Natural History Museum, Daddy, ’cos she likes the dinosaurs there and the big one that’s very long is called Dippy, he’s called Dippy ’cos he’s a diplodocus, Daddy.”

I’m getting nowhere. I ask him to put me back on to Mrs. Shahjalal, who is still wondering how she is to sterilize the breast milk, and all the while Cressida is drilling holes in my head by screaming down the phone.

Finally, I’m on the train, posting on Facebook.

Night falls like a black sheath. The taxi pulls into Potter’s Lane. We live in a charming Edwardian semi in the quiet suburb of Twickenham, close to all the nice parks and the part of the river inhabited by swans, frogs, and ducks, and close enough to London for Saturday-afternoon visits to the National History Museum and Kew Gardens. A few lights are on in the houses near us, but our neighbors are either retired or hardworking professionals, and so nights are placid round here.

I pay the driver and jump out onto the pavement. Eloïse’s white Qashqai is parked in the driveway in front of my Mercedes, and my hearts leaps. I’ve been on and off the phone to Mrs. Shahjalal during the train ride from Edinburgh, checking in on the kids and trying to work out what the hell to do about the situation. Mrs. Shahjalal is very old and forgetful. More than once El has climbed through the window to open the front door because she locked her keys inside. In all likelihood this is a big mistake; I’ve lost a client while El’s been upstairs having a shower or something. I ran out of battery on my phone some time ago and all the power points on the train were broken. Mrs. Shahjalal hasn’t been able to contact me. But the Qashqai’s here. Eloïse must have arrived back already.

I turn my key in the door and step inside to quietness and darkness.

“El?”

I head into the playroom and see the figure of old Mrs. Shahjalal sitting on the edge of the sofa, rocking the Moses basket where Cressida is lying, arms raised at right angles by her tiny head.

“Hi,” I whisper. “Where is she?”

Mrs. Shahjalal shakes her head.

“But…she’s here,” I say. “Her car is outside. Where is she?”

“She isn’t here.”

“But—”

Mrs. Shahjalal raises a finger to her lips and looks down at Cressida in a manner that suggests it has taken a long time to settle her to sleep. Cressida gives a little shuddered breath, the kind she gives after a long paroxysm of wailing.

“Max is upstairs, in his bed,” Mrs. Shahjalal says in a low voice.

“But what about El’s car? The white one in the driveway?”

“It’s been here all the time. She didn’t take it.”

I race upstairs and check the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the attic, then switch on all the lights downstairs and sift the rooms for my wife. When that proves fruitless I head out into the garden and stare into the darkness. In that moment a daunting impossibility yawns wide. I barely know Mrs. Shahjalal, save a few neighborly waves across the street, and now she’s in my living room, gently rocking my daughter and telling me that my wife has vanished into thin air.

I take out my phone and begin to dial.

Komméno Island, Greece

Somehow I find myself in a rocking chair with a thick orange blanket around me, next to a crackling fire. My right sleeve is rolled up and someone’s tied a belt tight around my bicep. The tall skinny bloke with glasses, Joe, is standing next to me with a cold instrument pressed to my wrist. The room smells funny—like seaweed. Or maybe that’s me.

“Only a couple more seconds,” he says.

“What are you doing?” I say, though it comes out as a strangled whine. The inside of my mouth feels like sandpaper.

“Checking your blood pressure.”

There’s a heated discussion going on among the others in the room and I sense it’s about me. I still feel queasy and limp.

Eventually he removes the belt from my arm. “Hmmm. Your blood pressure is a bit low for my liking. How about the tightness in your chest?”

I tell him that it seems OK but that I’m weak as dishwater. He reaches forward and gently presses his thumbs on my cheeks to inspect my eyes.

“You’re in shock. Little wonder, given that you rowed across the Aegean in a full-blown storm. Let’s get your feet raised up. And some more water.”

The woman—Sariah—lifts my feet and supports them on a stack of cushions.

“How’s your head?” she asks.

“Sore,” I say weakly.

“You don’t feel like you’re going to pass out again?” Joe asks, and I give a small shake of my head. It’s enough to make the pain ratchet up to an agony that leaves me breathless.

“It’s after midnight, so getting you to a hospital has proved a little tricky,” Sariah says, folding her arms. I notice she has a different accent than the others. American, or maybe Canadian. “There’s no hospital or doctors anywhere here,” she says. “George has contacted the police in Heraklion and Chania.”

“Did anyone report me as missing?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She must see how this unnerves me because she lowers on her haunches and rubs my hand, as though I’m a child. “Hey, don’t worry,” she says. “We’ll call again first thing in the morning.”

Nothing about this place feels familiar. It feels like I’m seeing everything here for the first time.

“Do I live here? Do I know any of you?” I ask her.

“We saved you,” George says flatly. I can’t see him, but sense his presence behind me.

“There was a storm,” Joe adds, though something in his voice sounds uncertain, hesitant. “Big sandstorm coming across from Africa, no doubt. George and I went out to check that our boat hadn’t come loose from its moorings. And then we saw you.”

“Where was I?”

“On Bone Beach,” Joe says.

“Bone Beach?”

“The small horseshoe beach with white rocks that look like bones. Down below the barn.” He grins. “Crazy that you managed to survive all that. Someone up there must like you.”

“You were in a boat,” Sariah explains. “You don’t remember if you were with anybody?”

I have a terrible feeling that I should know all of this, that I should know all about the boat and the beach and where I’m from. And I have no idea, absolutely no clue, why I don’t know these things.

“Why did you come to Komméno, anyway?” George asks, moving to the light as he reaches for a pack of cigarettes. “I mean, it’s not like there’s anything here.”

“What’s ‘Komméno’?” I say.

“It’s the name of this place,” Sariah says, a note of sadness in her voice, as if she’s addressing someone very stupid, or ill. “Komméno Island.”

I hesitate, hopeful that an answer to George’s question will surface in me automatically and provide an explanation for all this.

But it doesn’t.

Potter’s Lane, Twickenham, London

Lochlan: It’s after midnight. My wife is officially missing. I’m trying to get my head around this.

The facts are as follows: (1) I Facetimed Eloïse on Monday night shortly after seven while she was making pancakes in the kitchen and our two kids were playing happily in the family room, and (2) sometime between ten and one today, while our children were asleep in their beds upstairs, she disappeared from our home. Also, (3) there is no indication that anyone has been here, Max didn’t see anyone come in, and (4) Eloïse’s clothes, passport, credit cards, car, driving license, and mobile phone are still at home. She has therefore no way of making contact and no way of paying to get anywhere: not the tube, not a taxi, not a flight, and no way of paying for food or drink. Lastly, (5) no one seems to have any clue where she might have gone.

We have run out of expressed breast milk. I’m so out of sorts that Cressida shrieked for an eternity until it dawned on me that she was probably due another feed. An hour ago I phoned a taxi company and paid them fifty quid to go and buy some formula milk at a supermarket and bring it here. Cressida was a little confused at first, both by having to suck a plastic teat again and by the weird taste of formula, but finally she relented and drained it in one sitting.

Mrs. Shahjalal has gone home. She lives alone at number thirty-nine, across the road. She has offered to come again in the morning and help in any way she can. Right now, I’m mired in bewilderment and can’t think straight.

On the train from Waverley I set about contacting Eloïse’s friends to see if anyone had heard from her. Of course, they’d seen neither hide nor hair of her since yesterday or the day before. My Facebook post was met with weeping emojis and well-wishing; in other words, nothing of any use. With great reluctance, I texted Gerda, Eloïse’s grandmother, to ask if El had gone to their place in Ledbury. It was a long shot, of course, given that the kids were still here, but I had quickly run out of possibilities.

I’ve searched the whole house four or five times in total. Wardrobes, the bathroom closet, that weird space under the stairs, even under the beds and in the loft, then running around in the back garden with a torch, checking all the bushes and the shed. I guess I thought she might have got stuck somewhere. I felt like I was going insane. All of this whilst Max was running around after me asking if we were playing a game and could he hide, too, and whilst Cressida realized she was being held by someone other than her mother and wanted half of London to know all about it.

Gerda rang back to say no, she hadn’t seen El since last week, though she spoke to her on Sunday night. She started to ask questions and I stammered something about El not being home when I got back this afternoon. There was a long pause.

“What do you mean, El’s not home? Where are you, Lochlan?”

“I’m back in London.”

“And where are the babies?”

“They’re here.”

“Lochlan, are you saying Eloïse has left?”