The Disappearance of Emily Marr (46 page)
For a second time, Tabby was left alone. She could hear the distant chime of wineglasses knocking against each other, a bottle being opened, while overhead footsteps scurried into a bedroom and then back again, towards the stairs. The door had been left open and she had a side view of the staircase. So indecipherable was the situation, so unfamiliar the atmosphere, she would not have been surprised if the woman returned dressed as Emily Marr, just as Emmie had that strange Saturday night when they’d walked together, arm in arm, down to the port. The shoes would come into sight first, then the flared skirt of the dress, then the bare shoulders, the pink loveheart lips and winged eye make-up of a Fifties siren.
But when the new Emily returned she was dressed just the same. She moved very gracefully, light-footed and silent, like a dancer or a model; it was hard not to be transfixed, to want to keep your eyes on her all the time.
‘Here.’ She’d brought two items: a notebook the size of a paperback novel and a passport. This she showed Tabby first, drawing her eye to the name, Emily Rachel Marr, and the date of birth, which was the same as the one Tabby had seen on Wikipedia and other sites. In the photo she had platinum-blond hair, the trademark style of make-up: this was plainly the face that matched the one in the pictures online and in the print Emmie kept in her folder. Then the new Emily gave her the notebook. ‘Ignore the French,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get very far.’ Tabby saw that the pages at the front contained lists of French vocabulary, household objects and flowers and animal names, the basic foods: beginner’s French, well below Emmie’s impressive level. But Tabby supposed that this discrepancy was the least of what she was about to discover.
‘It’s at the back,’ Emily said, ‘the bit you need to read.’
Arthur arrived to deliver a glass of wine and then the two of them murmured something about food and left her alone to read.
Emily
I’m not at Phil’s house any longer. I’m renting a tiny studio at the top of a house in Ivry in south-eastern Paris. My view across the rooftops is not of Sacré Coeur or the Eiffel Tower but of a warehouse for Chinese foods. It’s a proper hideaway, or maybe a safe house is closer to the truth. I’ve finally managed the disappearing act Nina Meeks advised me to do.
I still fantasise sometimes about going back and getting my revenge – something Machiavellian and intricately plotted – but the truth is I don’t know how to avenge myself on a woman like her and I don’t think I ever will. If I did, I don’t suppose I would have been her victim in the first place, because bullies don’t choose victims of equal strength to their own. She’s a bully, I realise that now, a bully dressed up as a moral crusader, and no one will ever persuade me otherwise.
Actually, since I’ve been here, I’ve thought of myself less as a victim and more as a survivor, which is progress of sorts.
I have enough money to stay for five or six months without working, provided I buy only the bare essentials. If I can find a job, something that requires only minimal French, then I’ll stay longer. If not, I’ll return to England and take my chances. There must be
someone
there who either doesn’t know what I did or no longer cares. I can’t live in solitary confinement for the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll take a new name after all, reinvent myself the correct, legal way, like those juvenile killers who get given a new identity for their adult return to society.
I can’t remember exactly where I ended my story last time or when my last entry was made, but it must have been only a day or so afterwards that Phil’s house was burgled and my laptop taken. I knew my days – perhaps hours – were numbered just as soon as the break-in was discovered. There was no evidence that the intruder had taken anything belonging to Phil, Julie or the kids, but just knowing a stranger had walked through their house and climbed their stairs to the bedrooms was violation enough. I’m sure I would have felt exactly the same in their position.
It was no surprise that everything taken was mine, and none of it of any monetary value: the bottle of bluebell perfume Arthur had given me, a lipstick, a dress, a pair of shoes; a postcard from Arthur that came with a gift he’d sent to me soon after we had fallen in love (I don’t need to record the message he wrote on it: it will never be forgotten, whether I have the card in my possession or not); and the photograph of Matt and me I’d kept, the one from his cousin’s wedding that the
Press
used first and was so widely published afterwards. I’d looked at it now and then since leaving Walnut Grove; it had become an unexpected source of comfort. The signs in Matt’s face of his love of easy times and paths of least resistance: I’d thought how fond I was of him. That, at least, had come of the tragedy.
Though I cried for my stolen belongings, especially the postcard, it was only the loss of the laptop that caused real trepidation, more specifically the one document stored on it that I had authored. It seemed impossible that I could rewrite my story, remember the painful and joyful details, survive a retelling when the telling had been so difficult. But over time I’ve begun to realise that it doesn’t matter that it has gone because I’ve achieved my original aim: in writing it I’ve purged myself of the worst of it and been able to take heart in the best. I don’t need to see it again. As I said at the beginning, it was never meant for posterity.
No, my fear, of course, was that my words should find their way on to the internet or into a newspaper. Were they reproduced in full, it wouldn’t be so bad (it’s the plain truth, after all), but I of all people know how sentences are sliced up, phrases taken out of context and used to damn the author herself.
Though I can make a reasonable assumption that the document will be kept private, I tell myself that even if it does surface and the media appetite for the story is rekindled, I’m away from home, I’m out of range. I’m in old-fashioned exile in Paris, just like Wallis Simpson, whom not so long ago I had the pleasure of appearing alongside in one tabloid’s ‘fun’ countdown of women who’d caused their man’s downfall. I was the only twenty-first-century representative in the list; perhaps there are none in recent years thought likely to stand the test of time.
I won’t either. Someone so easy to fictionalise will be just as easy to forget.
I reported the theft to the police in Newbury, but they were powerless. Of course, I had a fair idea who the thief was, and so must they, given my previous complaints. For in the days prior to the theft I’d come to realise that the sensation I had of being followed every time I left the house was not lingering paranoia but well-honed instinct. There
was
someone shadowing me, a woman. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I recognised her from the regulars at the gate of my Grove flat. Not one of the haters, but one of the sympathisers.
The police were reluctant to use the word ‘stalker’, though Phil and I did – out of earshot of Julie.
I’d noticed her for the first time just as I’d begun to believe I was anonymous again. It was mid-morning, mid-week, and I’d just left the house for a run when I collided with someone in the street, about four houses up from Phil’s. Apologising, I moved off without making eye contact (head low, eyes on my feet: this was habitual now, hence the risk of collision), but not before noticing the person’s shoes. They were green velvet, like the pair I’d included in the bags I donated to the charity shop on the high street near the Grove.
I tried to dismiss it as a coincidence but, reaching the end of my laps and panting towards the gate, I saw the velvet-shod feet again. They belonged to a woman sitting alone on a bench in the drizzle. When I’d crashed into her, she’d been walking in the opposite direction from me, which meant she must have intentionally turned and followed me to the park. Now, quite openly, she rose to tail me again.
Sprinting home, I quickly lost her, not giving her the satisfaction of knowing I was aware of her, but I might as well have invited her to stroll by my side since she already knew where I lived and could find me again whenever she chose. It struck me she must have been watching me for some time, keeping her distance so I’d only sensed the surveillance rather than noticing the observer.
That now altered. Suddenly I saw her every time I set foot outside, if not in Phil’s street then wherever it was I’d walked to. There was no eye contact between us, for I made a point of not looking directly at her. It was surprisingly easy to marginalise her, or, if my mood was particularly upbeat, to see her in a good light, as a guardian angel or a protector – only possible, I imagine, because it was a woman and not a man. But the reality was I did not go out often, rarely more than once a day, and she must have been prepared to wait in all weathers for my sporadic appearances. That meant she could not be holding down a job; was she even sleeping at night, and if so, where? She was devoting herself to me, to staking me out. Male or female, it was unsettling behaviour.
We came face to face just twice and they were two of the strangest experiences of my life.
The first was a Monday. I’d been to the corner shop for chocolate – how modest my adventures! – and was letting myself back into the house when I turned to find her right behind me, just a couple of feet away. She’d followed me up the drive quite silently and I let out a squeal of surprise before composing myself. I pulled off my hat and jangled my keys to signal to her that her presence had not bothered me and I would be putting myself indoors and out of reach within seconds. Phil happened to be working from home that day, so I knew I need only call out to him if I was in trouble. I was quite safe.
Key in the lock, something made me turn back and for the first time look square at her. ‘Can I help you?’ I asked.
Two things startled me. First, the way her face collapsed in front of my eyes. I assumed it was a reaction to the sound of my voice, it had disappointed her in some way, but I was soon put right on this score. ‘What did you do to your hair?’ she asked, the distress audible in her voice. ‘It was so beautiful.’
‘My
hair
?’
But she continued to stare at the top of my head, her eyes quite horrified, as if someone had tipped something unpleasant over me. It was the most peculiar response.
‘I cut it off,’ I told her impatiently. ‘A while ago.’
‘But why?’
‘Oh come on, I would have thought that was fairly obvious. I don’t want to be recognised – and I thought I’d succeeded.’
Her mood seemed to cheer in an instant, facial muscles springing up again, mouth smiling brightly. ‘We have succeeded,’ she said eagerly. ‘No one knows.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I asked, but received no answer, only that continuing vivid beam of a smile. I concentrated then on the second reason I’d been startled by her, the cause of the cold feeling now crawling across my skin: the fact that she looked so very like me. I don’t mean we were doppelgangers – it wasn’t that close in terms of our bone structure – but we were the same height and build, no more than a year or two apart in age, similar enough to be mistaken for sisters or half-sisters. It wasn’t that, though, that chilled me; it was how she was dressed, the way she had done her hair and make-up, and obviously with painstaking care. All of it was a clear tribute to me, or rather to Emily Marr, to the woman in the images that had circulated after the scandal. Standing there, looking at the beige boiled-wool swing coat just like the vintage mustard one I’d once worn, the shoes, which I saw with relief were not my own but a rounder-toed copy, I had a moment of sudden understanding: I’d lost myself, I’d lost myself the first day I stepped from my besieged little flat with my head covered. I’d been in disguise ever since. I’d thought it was the day Sylvie died and Arthur gave me up, but it had come later. Even at the inquest, when I’d wiped off my lipstick and regretted my footwear, I’d still been myself. Now, six weeks later, all that was left of me was imitators like this.
‘Who
are
you?’ I demanded. ‘Why are you dressed like this?’
‘Because we’re the same,’ she said happily.
‘No, we’re not. We don’t know each other.’
To my relief, the front door opened and Phil appeared in the porch behind me. ‘Who’s this, Em?’
‘I don’t know, but she’s been following me. I’m trying to find out why.’ I had half a notion to invite the girl in, satisfy her curiosity once and for all, fail her with so much evidence of my new ordinariness that she would lose interest of her own accord. But Phil had other ideas. He threatened her with the police, rudely telling her to get lost.
‘You have to go,’ I agreed, but more civilly. In spite of the invasion, I couldn’t help wanting to treat her respectfully; she must have been damaged in some way to have let her fascination with me take such a grip of her. She was like a teenager at the stage door waiting for the star, except she was a grown woman and I was no star. I remembered now the ‘protest’ group who had doorstepped Nina Meeks; they’d had special T-shirts made. And there had been fan blogs, too, one of which, I seemed to remember, had brought news of a new girl group called The Emilys.
This fan was not as singular as she supposed and, watching her scamper off down the drive, I felt a little sorry for her.
Inside, Phil begged to differ. ‘Who the hell is that freak show? She looks more like you than you do.’
‘Than I
did
, yes. I think she might be one of the ones who hung around in London. I don’t think she means any harm.’
‘That’s not how Julie will see it.’ It was true that my sister-in-law would be anxious about the children’s safety if she heard someone had been watching the house. ‘It’s not how you should either,’ Phil added. ‘Anyone who’s mad enough to come from London and turn up at a stranger’s house dressed exactly the same as them is potentially dangerous.’
‘Well when you put it like that…’ I tried to joke.
‘We need to report this headcase to the police.’
He duly phoned to report the incident but, without a name or any threat of ill-intent, we could not expect any intervention. I had not had police protection in London when I lived under permanent siege, so I was unlikely to get it now.