Desire Line, page 24
Should’ve said, ‘Sleep tight, Sara. You’re bad luck.’
‘What you got there?’ Glenn wanted to know.
‘It’s no sig.’
‘What’s no sig, Yori? D’you want my take on this?’
I didn’t.
‘The work-hours you’re putting in— and you’ve put in already— they’re never gonna be paid for. Since you went on your little holiday, you’re a whole bloody team on your own. You’re bringing in done stuff that was an idea and three squiggles the day before. Look at you! It’s half past seven on a Friday night. That’s a brand new elevation, that is, the foot-crossing by the old clock tower. I think, me, you’ve got seven types of sodding sorrow here with all those different levels. And you’re just starting on it.’
I moved my arm to try and block his view of PalmWalk.
‘Don’t bother boy. Seen it. Estimated task time: five point three hours. Task time elapsed: 41 minutes.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Say again, Why you doing this?’
‘You’re still here.’ My simulation surges forward in time, one year, two years, the gaps close up as soft landscaping matures to give arrow-slit views of a restored Harkers Arcade, then of my all-glass CrystalBox, the shopping mall entrance. Clouds are suddenly scattered. Mid-morning sun ignites the glazing. Seascapes appear in each of its five thousand reflective panes. It’s so beautiful it makes my breastbone ache, the ache travelling down across the soft belly parts and into my genitals. It excites me more than Tess. Even Glenn’s hypnotised. ‘That’s quite good,’ I suggest.
‘Fucking gorgeous! Beside the point.’ He leaned over, his face deliberately in mine. ‘Tell us.’
Earnest, methodical, dependable and impetuous. These are the qualities of my blood group, Type A, my father’s blood group. He’s passed the knowledge on only recently. ‘But,’ I said, ‘these are opposite traits.’ Through a small window at his back the mountain’s showing seasonal colour but the sky above it changes hourly. ‘Methodical and impetuous?’
‘Research was old,’ Tomiko said, ‘and when new had enemies.’
Glenn had produced nothing useful as long as I’d known him. His Certificate in Urban Studies from a college that doesn’t exist any more entitles him to come up with the background of any site I express an interest in, just to thwart me. Tried it there— didn’t work. And he’s a hooligan as a house guest and still tells you about sex with Alice even once you’re rid of him. I have never liked Glenn Hughes, though I put less importance on liking than most people do. (Does the washing water make friends with your skin?)
‘Isn’t Omar about?’ I asked.
‘Yeah right. He’s working his notice. Gone at four these days.’
Of course. Omar that I’d never bothered getting to know would be leaving for good at the end of next week. Then there’d be just us. Laughable really. To thoroughly humiliate me, the simulation charged on unattended, brushed a gilt illuminated SkyTower and a sparkling series of pools and pavilions opening out into a restored Drift Park. Lusher and tougher. And suddenly unbearable. I got rid. Glenn didn’t protest. But – encouragement! – he said, ‘It’s a small place.’
‘It is.’
‘And rock bottom now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could be fixable?’
‘Can be.’ I should know better. ‘Haven’t you thought This is our chance? How good we could make it if—’
‘Only three— no, four times since starting here. First was— 2016, that would be. ’
I gave in. I’d been had again. (How old was he?) My killer arguments, 1. that big cities were failing everywhere 2. critical mass suburbs had been outed as more divisive than the caste system 3. but six out of seven social classes live well in SMTs— small to medium towns, the Shangri-La of human existence, were all there to be said. I ached to say This is now orthodoxy evenin Beijing. And I even know how to put Rhyl back and to what— I just can’t find the start. Wanting to score points made me change tack and describe Westport to Glenn. But of course I had to go and mention Josh. And carry on to Eurwen— and Sara. (Again why? Showing off?) The first two names were small mouli. But Sara he’d heard of. ‘Fucking hell.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘That’s the same one that—? And they came and told you? You just went off to Ireland after they came and told—? Fuck me. You should’ve been on everywhere, not that American woman! Why weren’t you?’
Gaining and losing respect in equal amounts now, ‘Because other people still alive would be—’
He cut me off with, ‘Got it.’ His embarrassingly huge Adam’s apple I can’t look at bobbed while he digested the new Yori. Then he went typical Glenn, getting out his other Rhyl vanishings stories. To tarnish mine. One he called The Case of the Rhyl Mummy, a squalid domestic murder everybody’s heard of. I tried to make him to stop but no— we’re straight into The Kicker. OK, more original and tragic.* Both are out of place here. They were out of place there. It was his personality. Only finally he could circle back to asking questions— and the least welcome? ‘And you reckon he killed her?’
‘No. Who knows? Just being in Rhyl and the alcohol more like. I’ve got her papers. He wouldn’t have handed them over unless he wanted me to— but he might be ill. I’m having trouble reading them.’ (Josh had just hit Sara and then walked so the trouble was with him).
‘I’d bloody read them.’
‘Yes,’ I said. The office was quiet with just Glenn and me left and the floors below still unusable. ‘You would. It’s her journal and it stops before she died.’ I raised my hands for so no good. Glenn actually seemed to be thinking, his mouth at rest. The atmosphere was bleak. Our illuminated ceiling had greyed, the workplace nudging us out so its systems could fall into a low-energy trace. Next to my screen Glenn’s fingers fiddled with Alice Norman’s given ring, too tight to remove – all Alice Norman’s fault, this, back from Spain but leaving him spare energy to torment me.
Suddenly he’s on his feet. ‘Ever been over to Store 20?’ he says.
The metal staircase squeaked under us. Nobody was loitering at the back of the building— there’d been a looters warning again in the afternoon— but Glenn was enough to scare away a ghostly army of onyudos, kashas, satoris. Then we were onto the Promenade under a night sky like a low ceiling. It was still and cool. East and West Parade were cleared but the replaced street lights only showed up the shambles left between the road and beach. Temporary solid panels filled gaps in the Victorian railings where concrete had crumbled underneath them and jarred loose their old joints— so even the sea’s slight phosphorescence, the only beauty, was interrupted. We walked on patched tarmac, hearing the Holyhead train make for its crossing further up the river and once it died away Glenn Hughes grunted, ‘I give in! All right you miserable little bugger, aren’t you going to ask me? Don’t you want to know what’s in Store 20?’
‘I know what’s in it.’
He came to a complete stop. ‘You know?’
‘Something you want me to see.’
‘Bollocks to you, Yori. Bloody, hairy, hundred-year-old bollocks! Come on, then.’
He’s keen. Soon I’d have to trot at his heels like a dog and at this speed we’d attract the attention of the police vehicle cruising our way. But he took a sudden left into a street I couldn’t (how unusual was that?) put a name to. Here the occasional house had been reoccupied and as we passed the first, its lit window showed a stage set— a table, a screen, a sofa, all in a bare room. The next had piled up cartons still unpacked and a woman carrying a child looked out, like she felt she was being watched and I had to turn away, guilty. The interiors should’ve suggested fresh starts and the human spirit and all that but the reports were of people coming back to uninhabitable dwellings rather than live as refugees. What’s a vestry? the presenter had asked, trying to get a smile out of his squatter family. I felt ashamed. Even Glenn said, ‘This fuckin’ place.’
Where the houses stopped someone at the turn of last century had dumped a square industrial building, flat-roofed, at odds with the street and matt black till a security beam caught Glenn in front of its double height doors. The smell of fresh lubricating oil hung in the air.
‘Store 20,’ Glenn said. ‘Guess what? – not an empty dried out metal shed as promised by Borough for sole use of Forward Rhyl but a half-empty metal shed. The bastards had already nipped in and off-loaded some of their own junk, sorry invaluable records, down here. Including three sealed packs of old hard-drives. They’re digitised CCTV footage of the town centre. Several years’ worth.’
‘Why bother to even look at the inventory?’
‘I’m interested in all sorts,’ he said vaguely, ‘—if it’s about Rhyl.’ (Ungenerously, I had the fake poster flash into my mind. And how many other forgeries?) ‘I just did, all right? Lucky for you. I noticed 2008 among others. Even that far back we must’ve needed watching. Your Sara was in Rhyl? You can see her. You can watch her going round the town. If you want. Enjoy.’
Sarcastic or sincere? Because he was curious about Sara, trying to be helpful and running in parallel, insulted I’d told him zero re: myself so far. While there was nothing to tell, this had been tolerated but now I’d rectified the fault, it turned into a crime. ‘Yeah, take it all,’ he said. ‘Long as you need! Told you I’d do you a favour.’ I must have looked less than gratified. It was shock. ‘So I’ll be hearing the full deal if and when, yeah?’
At home Libby Jenkinson was in the hall.
‘Doke!’ (Move, you!)
Actually, ‘Hello, Libby— it’s not too bad out there!’ I said and while she was thinking how to prove me wrong I got past with, ‘No shopping! Not cooking!’ After slamming the door I put my ear against it for the stairs’ creak. It came after an interval— as if Libby knew I was up to something and we had a mental battle going on through the pitch pine. (Fond of her? I really needed to be out here.) Avoiding the desk, it was straight to the kitchen now. I dropped an extra 50mg of while standing at the sink— waited. A short delay and here it comes on the tenth or twelfth exhale, a sense of rightness that never lets you down. Not for everyone, I know, but for me. So what if there’s a new story every day, lecer’s Downside!!!? (Thinning of the skin post seventy, some loss of colour vision, laughably the latest, an overmanufacture of ear-wax!) This injection of CanDo into me is the drug’s main upside, being a member of the lucky set it works for. I close my eyes and let the sensation build, watching the streets and groves and roads and crescents and parades splayed out from Gaiman Ave all come to attention. A sort of ripple of reordering goes through them. Pavements shake like rugs. A spotless tide sweeps in and cleans the sand. Trees sprout. That festering lakeside void fills itself with a sleek multi-purpose building— coated in Chromyle tm.*
Why hurry? Enjoy. Sara’s waited a lifetime.
But I can’t wait for—
—the first time I saw Sara, a sunny afternoon, the last week in September.
Every sense is on the cusp of alert. My mood soars like it hasn’t done for weeks, with or without as Cruise Control, promises the total footage in which my grandmother features. No great achievement because against the packed background of the first frame, she’s unmistakable. My screen’s a second-hand Panasony SelfCleaning, and doing the best with what it’s got. But even I could identify this character in mid-tone trousers and a pale top, a bag slung over one shoulder. A flash of brickwork and Sara’s in motion across it, very upright with a stride that whisks her through the camera’s sector. Out again. I’ve never seen her walk. Lacking none of the grace I allocated her, she still takes me by surprise. Doesn’t matter. Stop, refind her, zoom in on a grainy Sara instantly retouched. Hand gestures are the real giveaway in speech. To that passerby she’s just accosted, her fingers must seem like they’re making a grab. But whether scared by a gull too close for comfort or suggesting ‘Avonside?’ as though she’s asking too much, I can tell the hands are really begging. It’s pathetic. Remember I only knew Sara at a desk or in a chair, made up for the camera with her expensive silk shirt, one button undone, and the questions, pre-submitted I’ll bet. Here she’s somebody else, a stranger. Lost in Rhyl. Following on less positive sightings are on offer from a long list. A few seconds’ action— a figure appears on the Church Street camera and hurries in the direction of the library. Probability of nominated subject 86%. You have to admire CC’s understatement because it’s definitely her. I order up everything, fifty-nine clips that spread across September, October and November in various conditions. The last isn’t dated 17.11.08. The Disappearance. But of course. You got this from Glenn, didn’t you? Typical— no plot and an incomplete timeline.
So I speed on. Is this how she felt, on the trail? All the time thinking, Yes!
OK, everyone may have poked round in this mess but I’m me and this is now and it’s going to end well. Hadn’t it for Thomasina and her?
There are some scenes almost professionally lit from the east, Sara setting out over Blue Bridge, never very early and only the jacket on or off to mark this start from another. At first she looks determined. Though fine weather always goes with the positive on film, it’s what we’re used to, still you wouldn’t say this is somebody abnormal, not in these early scenes. Anxiety’s not wafting after her to the extent people are left staring. She’s just busy and not from round here, as Tess says. What I’m not prepared for is she’s also Eurwen. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was tracking my mother. The profile’s Eurwen’s, more so than full face which is why photographs haven’t caught it, and the way the head sits on the neck. However many single frames you examine, they don’t tell you this— she and Eurwen are moving sisters to the eye. A single actress could take on both roles like ‘Madeleine’ and ‘Judy’ in Vertigo. A change of hairstyle and footwear— you’d never get Eurwen in those cute little heels— and they’d roam the town as each other.
(But Eurwen had to grow into the part and watching that must’ve driven Josh slowly mad.)
Monochrome Rhyl’s more nineteenth century than twenty-first. Back at Sara’s Day One, I can confirm nothing’s left of Ocean Park Funfair but a giant billboard. The impulse to linger and get a look at the promised development was strong— then comes a shot from a static lens pointed at the main show, the first real Rhyl vista CCs come up with. A hint of harbour, further along the seawall’s spattered with tourists while more of them spill out of the camera’s remit, dodging each other and the traffic under a white sky.
24.9.08 top right. 12.33 pm comes up bottom left. Sara arrives.
33 becomes 34. No refuge for Sara from virtual pursuit, two or three shots are enough to convince the programme. The woman’s possessed in microscopic detail. Even through windscreen glass, her brow ridge and cheekbones are measured, then chin to nose tip, and shoulder width, as her left forearm comes up to fend off the collision about to happen. She’s fixed, dissected and reassembled so her grandson can witness at leisure what most people present missed – oh, and I know this next bit! – how she’s within millimetres of clipping crazy Kim that crosses busy West Parade like it’s public green space. Sara’s shaken. Checks the rearview for the pedestrian’s fate. (You’re not meant to be enjoying yourself, Yori and you forgot to do a thorough search for that jaywalker as you promised you would.)
Since you can’t see the mother and not think of the daughter, what about her? (My mind slinks off again.) And Tomiko, champion of ignorance. On the subject of family etc, etc, don’t ask and never give— so, Father, where exactly are you right now? No need to do a search because you’ll have kept a low profile. And anyway, does it better for me, joins all the pieces together, lets me ‘see’ Eurwen and Tomiko flit in and out of Butterton Road like stowaways, clear of any surveillance Josh had access to. They wouldn’t be caught for the simple reason they hadn’t been— don’t lose sight of the story, it’s Eurwen that’s missing just now and they didn’t find her. Easy to picture the bossy teenager on Rosemont’s path, her tone, ‘Not that way! It’s broad daylight. We’ll have to go round by River Street or— d’you know what? Let’s not bother. Neil can take us in the van. Later.’ And Tomiko retreats, back into hiding. Only in Rhyl would it’ve worked because, yes, it’s a small place with a population the same as Penzance but that’s where the similarity ends**. Its residents always came and went— from Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Japan and the sort of people they were means Tomiko can be living ten minutes from Avonside, ten minutes to Josh’s doorstep— to saying, ‘Dr Sara Meredith—san, My name is Sato Tomiko from the city of Kochi. I am sorry. Forgive me. Forgive us. Your daughter is well. I am sorry. Come now to be with— ’ And your best bad English wouldn’t have been laughed at because she wasn’t like that.
But you didn’t. Pleased with yourself, are you otosan?
So there’s an end to the 2008 season, gone in one night— the crowds thin out and fewer children are in the mix. Heavy rain and winds start regular work. Hours shoot by and then a whole autumn day when it must’ve turned shockingly winter-like to judge by the miserable looks, all the dashing from cover to cover. Coming up are the last few sightings— so I’m informed at 1.06 a.m. Top right 15.11.08. More importantly, it’s two whole days before Sara vanished. But we’re into the run-up. Probability 25%—
I’m not hoping for much.
Look at the arcades! They’re still open but the flicker and dazzle’s wasted on just emptiness behind the plate glass as definitely Sara slips inside anyway and I wait politely for her to reappear. What else is there to do? It’s the early hours in Sara’s nether-world and mine. My flat’s heating clicks down into coldness. On the corner of Conwy and East, the one I used for sketching, she stands out in the November weather, her hair ruffled by it, catching the glow, close enough to touch. A real Hitchcock heroine tonight.
She’s dazed apparently and, though I’m no expert, drunk. Some grim thing is going to happen to her— that’s how it works, or why else would we be lingering if not to let the tension build?
