Hide and Seek (30 page)

At least Neil had been there to fulfil husbandly duties, the Navy having flown him home for the funeral. He’d even come to the pulpit with her when she’d read, gently caressing her fingers when she began to cry.

“Don’t worry,” he’d whispered, smiling that sweet Neil smile. “I’m here.”

Yes, she had thought, returning his smile, Neil was there. He would protect her, and soon they’d be laughing together again, reminiscing about happier times.

Then Neil had re-bereaved her after the funeral by telling her he had to return to the Gulf for a further three months.

Without Neil to soothe her, Kate sat on the sofa in the cottage, playing the last year back in her mind. She remembered the emptiness in her dad’s eyes when the prognosis had worsened. Cancer’s a bastard, he’d said. He’d been right. Dad had refused a nurse, or a hospice, so Kate had suffered with him.

Dad.

Kate sighed. Trying to push out of her mind his vomiting, his cries of pain, his final night when she’d held him into peace, she pulled herself off the sofa to get her iPhone from the desk. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and found tears forming in her eyes. It happened every time she saw her reflection. How was she supposed to propel that pale ghost of a self onwards? Or summon the energy to move their stuff back to Portsmouth? Or get the composure to don a suit and speak to a client there – or even her secretary? She couldn’t work remotely forever.

Waking the phone, she checked for mail. Come on, somebody must have something to share – Neil if he’d reached the ship, or a social networking update. Finally, the phone vibrated.

‘Want to stop the world and get off – into somebody else’s world?’

The title of the new email was so apposite that Kate couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. She opted for both. This must be junk mail, though, right? She should delete it without reading it. But she didn’t. She touched through into the email.

‘Dear Kate’ it began. At least they’d bothered to personalise it.

‘Bored? Lonely? Frustrated?’

One out of three, thought Kate.

‘Or just want a change? Here is your chance to take a break from your life and step into someone else’s – while knowing that your own life is in safe hands. This is for serious research for me – but a break for you. If you fancy living somebody else’s life (and in a London flat) for a few months and have your own property that you can offer, look no further. Simply reply to this email with a short description of your property location, job (if you have one) and a contact telephone number, or call the number below. Interview and details to be arranged with suitable applicant(s).’

It then set out a London telephone number, and was signed off by someone called Anna.

Nowhere to enter her credit card number, so she wasn’t being phished, Kate thought. Perhaps it was some new market research tool to get information for a dating site or a property search engine? It was surely far too naïvely constructed to be genuine. Who would expect anyone to pick up the phone to do a property-exchange (or exchange lives, whatever that meant) for the purposes of some mysterious research? No, it must be a scam, she decided, as she pressed delete with relish. There may be some poor fools out there unworldly enough to dial a line on divert to some premium rate number, but she would not be one of them.

Still, she thought, how perfect it would be to step away from all of this and leave it to somebody else for a while, without putting her own way of life at risk. It was as if the marketing person behind the ad had seen into her thoughts. She knew that at some point she would have to rouse herself and start the task of sifting through her dad’s belongings and documents and sort out the logistics of returning to Portsmouth. A sudden bolt to a flat in London would be a blessed escape.

The landline phone rang, breaking the daydream. Kate sighed. She supposed she ought to answer it. She pulled herself off the sofa and made her way over the no man’s land of scattered plates and glasses to one of the handset docks and stretched out a hand, balancing precariously over the sofa. No handset met her grasp. Then, from the corner of her eye she saw the phone’s familiar red flashing spreading out from under a crumpled piece of kitchen roll and lunged to answer it. The answering machine picked up before she did. Holding the handset, she listened as the caller left a message, debating whether to interject. The message was from Neil’s mum, who lived in France. Kate would not pick up.

“Hello, both of you – although it’s probably just Kate now. I thought I might catch Neil before he left. I must say I’d hoped to see more of him after the funeral – you didn’t need to take off with him quite so quickly.” There was some noise in the background of the message. “Anyway, I must go now. Ask Neil to email me if you speak to him. Bye!”

Kate flung the phone across the floor.

“Bloody woman!” she cursed aloud. She could not believe the temerity of Neil’s mum to phone her up and criticise her at such a time. True, Kate didn’t have much of a benchmark, her own mum having left twenty years ago when Kate was eight, but she bet they weren’t all like this. As if it was Kate’s fault Neil was away! Kate took their wedding photo from the mantelpiece and clutched it to her chest. Four happy years ago. Or rather, happy four years ago. She remembered the final whispered conversations on the eve of the wedding, Neil reassuring her that absence made the heart grow fonder, that he wouldn’t always be at sea and that when they started a family, it would be different. She’d exchanged vows happy and excited, Neil in uniform, her in white, both in love. Now, a tear rolled down Kate’s cheek, followed by another one, until the wedding picture was in danger of saturation. She wished the world would stop, like the email had said. Whether she escaped into somebody else’s world or just vanished absolutely, she didn’t care. Anything but this.

In bed that night, exhausted from the latest fit of crying, Kate reflected on her lot. It was clear that something had to give – she could not return to her job as if nothing had happened. She needed time to repair herself, before Neil came back to rescue her. Her mind wandered back to the email of earlier that afternoon from the apparent researcher. She thought about the prospect of being in London again. She had studied there for three years at university, done her law exams there, and lived there with Neil for the first two years of their marriage. Then he’d suggested that it would make life easier if they moved to Portsmouth, where his ship was based. She refused at first, but Neil persuaded her with the promise of being able to see him on weekday evenings when he wasn’t away at sea. There was also the bonus that they were able to afford a sizeable house rather than a flat.

Nothing had prepared her for the boredom. In London, when Neil was away, she could take her pick of theatres, museums, cinemas or bars to go out to, with friends or alone. More than that, there was the buzz of living in the capital, its vibrancy and unlimited possibilities to explore. Portsmouth had none of this. Or if it did, she had not found it. It was fine during the week, when she was at work. At weekends, though, uneventful Saturdays would stretch out into drab Sundays, just filling in time until Monday came round again. And always against the backdrop of ships, historic or contemporary, their presence mocking her with Neil’s absence.

Kate pulled the covers over her head. Oh, to be back in London again, she thought, stretching out her toes. She remembered the energy she had when she was there, and the enthusiasm, rather than this empty half-life. Maybe if she went back there again, just for a bit, and did all the things she used to do, or experimented with new ones, she could go back to her old self? Maybe she could just take a couple of weeks by herself in a hotel or a self-catered apartment? She shook her head. She needed a longer break. Lying in bed in the darkness, she saw a possible glimmer of her old vibrant self. The email inviting her to exchange her identity didn’t have to be the work of a scammer or a marketer. Maybe, just maybe, willed Kate, it was the chance she had been looking for.

Chapter 2

Kate sat staring at her mobile, biting her lower lip. Earlier that morning, she’d retrieved the ‘identity exchange’ email from trash. Her finger hovered over the phone number of ‘Anna’. It was just an initial enquiry, she told herself. She could always hang up if it seemed suspect, or even if it didn’t.

Kate pressed her finger down on the screen. There, it was done. Kate waited as the phone rang. She would give it one more ring she decided, then try again later. As she was about to hang up, there was an answer.

“Hello, Anna Roberts speaking.”

Kate’s first impulse, which she only just managed to curb, was to put the phone down.

“Hello?” said the voice again, sounding wary.

“Oh, hi,” started Kate, clearing her throat. “I’m calling about the advert?”

“Which advert?” came the cold reply.

As I expected, thought Kate, her heart sinking – the email must be just one of many ads sent out by an agency.

“Oh, sorry – the email about ‘Stop the world and get off’ and the identity exchange,” Kate clarified. Almost before she had finished speaking, the person at the other end cut in, this time in much warmer tones.

“Of course! Sorry if I sounded abrupt – I get so many cold marketing calls, don’t you? I try and field them as best I can. And then of course I forget that now I’ve put out an advert myself the shoe’s on the other foot!” A torrent of words came down the phone. Kate relaxed. This did not sound like the expert patter of a salesperson. Kate let her continue.

“So I take it you’re interested, then?” asked Anna.

“Well, maybe, but I just wanted to get a bit more information, if I can? The ad didn’t really give that much away,” replied Kate, reminding herself that she was in control.

“Yeah, of course. I don’t want to be sending total strangers my ideas for my PhD! I just wanted to get the right people to call.”

Kate laughed. “Well, here I am!”

“And you’ve no idea how pleased I am about that. So – let me tell you all about it. The basic idea is that you live in my flat near Camden and take over my life there for three or four months. At the same time I would come and try to live your life, as you, wherever you are now. Work, hobbies, love-life et cetera, et cetera – what’s mine is yours, and vice versa. I won’t bore you with the details of the thesis but broadly speaking it’s about the interrelation between property, pursuits and identity – blah, blah, blah. We can have a debrief at the end and see where we’ve got to. Then I get the hard work of actually writing it up!” Anna paused at the end of this obviously rehearsed spiel to take a much-needed breath. “You do have a property to exchange, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, up in Northumberland – we’ve been living in Dad’s cottage up here but he’s, um, well he’s just died. ” Kate’s voice tremored and there came a sympathetic murmuring on the other end of the line. Kate carried on, trying to keep her voice even. “We’ve got a house in Portsmouth but we’re renting that out as a monthly let at the moment. It’s a bit remote up here,” she apologised. “It would be a far cry from London.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” reassured Anna. “I have been outside London, you know – I went to uni in Nottingham. The more remote it is the more I can really embrace the minutiae of what it is to be you. Your husband’s away at the moment then, is he?”

Kate frowned.

“I don’t think I said I had a husband,” she challenged.

There was a slight pause.

“No, no you didn’t. I confess: I’ve been doing a bit of digging on the internet. All your social networking site profiles are public, so I had a look. Bit stalkerish, I know, but I wanted to make sure I only sent emails to people who might be worthwhile.” Anna paused again.

Kate blushed. Of course, she should have realised that if this was a genuine project, Anna wouldn’t be picking names out of a phone book. Her friends had chastised her for not using on-line privacy settings properly. But nobody could steal her identity by just accessing her public thoughts, right?

“Yes, my husband’s away,” Kate acknowledged. “He’s in the Navy, as you may have gathered. He’s due to be gone for about three months. That’s partly why I’m thinking of doing this, to be honest.”

“It must get a bit lonely?” asked Anna.

“Oh, you know, I get by. How about you? You mentioned swapping love-lives – I can’t quite see how that would work. Are you actually seeing anyone at the moment?” queried Kate, adroitly turning the focus of questioning back to Anna. Four years of marriage had taught her she didn’t miss Neil any less by talking about it – and how to divert questions by friends, family and often passing acquaintances. Besides, she wanted to know about Anna’s romantic arrangements and the part she was expected to play – she didn’t want to stumble inadvertently into some kind of swingers’ club.

“There was somebody. But it didn’t work out. It was a shame. I thought he was the one.” Anna sounded wistful, but then caught herself and continued breezily. “Still, his loss really – sure he wouldn’t make that mistake again if he had the choice! There’s nothing doing at the moment, but I’m working on the internet dating so who knows, by the time we set this up you could be in business!”

Kate laughed, pleased the conversation had taken on a lighter tone again. “No worries – I’m a happily married woman!”

“Of course you are. So let’s move on. What else do you want to know?”

Kate considered. She didn’t really seem to have learnt much beyond the thesis (which, frankly, sounded a bit thin, but that wasn’t her problem) and the flat in Camden.

“You said you’re a PhD student. Doesn’t that mean you’ve got students to teach? Surely I’m not expected to do that?” she asked. If she was going to have to take on a job that required her to become postgraduate level in whatever social science it was that Anna specialised in, she might as well forget about this experiment now.

“No, don’t worry,” soothed Anna. “I’ve been allowed a special dispensation because of this project. I’m just doing some freelance proofreading to keep me in funds. You can easily fill in for me – I just get sent whatever they need me to work on, nothing specialist.”