What Was Lost Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  EPISODE 1

  EPISODE 2

  EPISODE 3

  EPISODE 4

  EPISODE 5

  EPISODE 6

  EPISODE 7

  Beer Cove

  EPISODE 8

  MRI Suite

  EPISODE 9

  EPISODE 10

  Margate

  EPISODE 11

  EPISODE 12

  Margate 2

  EPISODE 13

  Westcourt Police Station

  EPISODE 14

  EPISODE 15

  EPISODE 16

  EPISODE 17

  EPISODE 18

  EPISODE 19

  Bloomsbury

  EPISODE 19 (continued)

  EPISODE 20

  EPISODE 21

  Beer Cove 2

  EPISODE 22

  EPISODE 23

  EPISODE 24

  Frankfurt

  EPISODE 25

  EPISODE 26

  EPISODE 27

  Westcourt Police Station 2

  EPISODE 28

  EPISODE 29

  EPISODE 30

  EPISODE 31

  New Article 41

  EPISODE 32

  New Article 43

  EPISODE 33

  Burgundy

  EPISODE 34

  Bloomsbury 2

  EPISODE 35

  EPISODE 36

  EPISODE 37

  Islington

  EPISODE 38

  EPISODE 39

  EPISODE 40

  EPISODE 41

  Hyde Park

  EPISODE 42

  EPISODE 43

  EPISODE 44

  EPISODE 45

  EPISODE 46

  Crouch End

  EPISODE 47

  Hornsey

  EPISODE 48

  EPISODE 49

  EPISODE 50

  Islington 2

  EPISODE 51

  Hornsey 2

  EPISODE 52

  EPISODE 53

  EPISODE 54

  Hampstead: Sixteen Months Later

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  What

  Was Lost

  Jean Levy

  Episode One

  The room was bright. Yet, through the half-closed blind, the world outside was still black as night. I watched the nurse arranging my tray. A flash of red interrupted her busy fingers.

  ‘You wanted a ruby!’

  The young woman paused, her empty smile becoming uncertainty. ‘Yes, that’s right! I brought your breakfast. Yesterday. Scrambled eggs. Like this.’ She checked her watch then hurried round to adjust the bed. I could feel myself becoming higher. ‘You wanted a little salt, remember?’

  I reached for the salt pot, then pulled back my hand. ‘How much did I want?’

  ‘Just a little.’

  I shook out a few grains. My fingers seemed strangely disobedient. I changed hands. That was better.

  She handed me a spoon, watched me as I ate, then stepped round to the end of the bed and lifted a chart that was hanging there out of sight. She checked her watch again. Time was important. She nudged a china mug towards the front of the tray then fetched a small beaker from the side table. I watched it approach, removed the two yellow pills and swallowed them, each with a mouthful of tea. The tea was terrible, worse than yesterday. I remembered yesterday’s less-terrible tea. But I knew I was in no position to complain about tea, so I drank it and put my empty mug back on the tray. I hoped I wasn’t making a face. The pills had left a bitter aftertaste that even the terrible tea couldn’t wash away.

  She removed my tray then pulled a chair over and sat down beside me, her hands together in her lap. ‘Can you tell me anything about yesterday, Sarah?’ she said.

  I knew this was a test, I knew I had to say something, so I tried to recall things before today, looked again at the red stone, surrounded by a circle of tiny, sparkling diamonds:

  ‘Your ring.’

  She turned the ring on her finger and smiled. ‘Anything else?’

  I searched the room for inspiration. There was not much to see. Another chair, the side table, a lamp, a jug of water, a glass, a painting on the wall, a window.

  ‘I remember the sun.’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, it was sunny yesterday. Anything else?’

  Anything else? Yes, there was something else but I didn’t want to talk now. I wanted to concentrate. But my thoughts were giving way to the hum of the lights. To the distant laughter of a child. Ridiculing me. I felt myself becoming lower. A heavy door closed. Then footsteps. Two shadows alongside the nurse. One tall and wide. One short and thin. I tried to focus as the ruby-ringed fingers secured the sheet too tightly over my arms. I tried to listen as the same-as-before nurse spoke to the shadows, informed them of things beyond my hearing. As if only they were entitled to know. That today I remembered yesterday.

  Episode Two

  As far as I remember, the day began with waiting. Of course, I had by now come to realise that cats care very little about the passage of time. Only people care about that. So I stood patiently and watched the black and white cat sniff the newspaper around the outside of the plate, lick some invisible scrap of tuna from the newsprint, re-sniff the plate and then, without casting even a glance in my direction to offer some gesture of humble gratitude, pad purposefully towards the cat flap and nose its way through. I had no idea who that cat belonged to. If it had a name I was not aware of it. In fact, my association with this animal depended entirely upon the fact that the door that opened from my dank backyard into my kitchen included this special, cat-sized flap. I had considered resealing it. Parcel tape would probably have been enough to stop the ungrateful animal nudging its way through. But there was always the worry that the parcel tape might turn up at its edges and look a mess and then I’d regret my decision. There was also the possibility that I might miss the cat. Sometimes it purred. I might have missed the purring.

  I watched the flap for a few moments then hurried over to the window to catch a last flash of black tail as it disappeared over into the yard next door. The cat was gone. So I turned my attention to the list on the work surface, took a pencil and added the word TUNA, folded the slip of paper into my jean’s pocket, replaced the pencil and walked over to the back door to confirm that the two bolts were secure. I checked that my wallet, driving licence, notebook with attached pencil, mobile phone and car keys were in my bag, touched the kettle and washing machine plugs three times each, rechecked the back door then hurried out of the kitchen before any doubts might set in. I knew it would be all right once I was in the car. I was always all right in the car.

  *

  The supermarket was anywhere between ten and twenty minutes away depending on traffic, and all the way there I played over the morning so far, from the point when I’d been ready to leave and that black and white cat had popped in through the flap and purred. So now it was after nine and the car park was busy. Too busy. But I knew that driving straight back home would not have been the right thing to do.

  *

  Inside, the aisles were still sparsely populated. So it would probably be OK. I grabbed a trolley and navigated it straight through the opposing rows of crisps and biscuits towards the central walkway. A sharp left took me into the tea and coffee aisle, which stretched deep into the rear of the supermarket. Then, avoiding the stack of Easter eggs abutting the central aisle, I pushed on to cereals, halted my trolley and observed the choices before me. So many choices. So many rectangular boxes, diminishing off into the distance. An intimidating range of nuts, dried fruits, seeds, wheat/no wheat, oats to absorb cholesterol, low salt, low fat, high fibre, additives/no additives stretched out before me. I threw myself into reading
labels, studying carbohydrate contents, pushing my trolley further in past illustrations of happy, healthy other thirty-five-year-olds, whose lives were perfect because they consumed the correct breakfast cereal. The happy images began to coagulate into one multi-coloured muddle of good advice, manufacturers’ commitments, occasional warnings. I could feel myself diffusing into the options that surrounded me. The familiar stirrings of panic were rising up from just below my diaphragm. I controlled my breathing, observing the oat-coloured floor tiles, the matt surface of a shoe. Its partner shoe was hovering slightly off the ground. My eyes traced up the many-deniered tights to a woolly hemline, thick, wintry cloth, grey hair, an outstretched arm, an aged hand reaching hopelessly for a small packet of cornflakes on the top shelf. My own crisis was suddenly dwarfed by the plight of this diminutive shopper. I watched her sag in frustration and help herself to a family-sized box from the shelf below. I had no choice but to intervene.

  ‘Shall I try and reach?’ I whispered.

  The woman glanced round. ‘Oh, would you, dear?’ She replaced her family-sized box and turned to me, wobbling her head slightly as she watched me ease one of the smaller boxes from the top shelf. I handed it over. She thanked me. I smiled graciously and watched her round the end of the aisle before stretching up, taking an identical box and placing it into my own trolley. I stood for a moment staring back along the aisle of wasted opportunity then, clenching the handle of my trolley so hard that it must have looked as if my knucklebones might burst through my skin, I hurried away from cereals. Justifying my decision. Cornflakes are good for you.

  There was a feeling of openness about the fruit and vegetable terrain. Here the produce was arranged on long, sloping stalls. It was like a huge, sterile homage to those fairy-tale markets, where ragamuffins stole peaches and a boy might trade his cow for a handful of magic beans. I brushed past a tall stand of fresh herbs and the air filled with the lush, calming fragrance of basil. A startling yellow and black promotion demanded: BUY ONE GET ONE FREE. I ignored it, hurried on past strawberries and grapes, grabbed a bunch of green bananas, then wheeled my trolley back and helped myself to a pot of basil, re-read the promotion, selected a second pot, put both pots in my trolley, picked one of the pots up and put it back on the stand. Why would anyone want two pots of basil? One’s enough. Why on earth was I getting myself wound up about a pot of basil?

  But it wasn’t really about the basil. Or the cornflakes. I knew that. It was about deciding. Not just about deciding what to choose. It was all those other decisions about what not to choose. Because every choice involves not merely the possibility of choosing the wrong thing but an endless number of possibilities of not choosing the right thing. Too many decisions about not choosing. Dr Gray always insisted: ‘If there are too many decisions, just take a deep breath and walk away.’ So I had walked away. I’d walked so far away that there were now six mountainous banks of food between me and those unchosen boxes of cereal. I took a deep breath, fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my list:

  BANANAS

  CEREAL

  CAT BICUITS

  TUNA

  I read it several times to make sure. Then, just as I was folding it back into my pocket, I glanced up and noticed a perfect red and green apple rolling towards me. Arcing towards my foot. Impact was inevitable. Inevitable. And that’s when it all began. Well, just some of it began. Although, in truth, it really did all begin with an apple.

  *

  I stared at the apple resting against my shoe. It was probably a too-red Bramley, perhaps a too-green Gala. I can’t remember now. But I do remember that, even after everything that had happened, everything I had lost, I could still remember the names of apples. And I could still remember Granny Clark’s stories: how apples came to be called this or that. Barnaby Smith’s old grandma used to hide those hard green apples in a box under her bed so that the night fairies would never find them. Annabel Bramley had been disappointed that only one of her apple pips germinated although she wasn’t to know that trees from that one tiny seedling would one day provide fruit for the best apple pies in the world. I was writing all those stories into picture books. Doing the illustrations myself. In fact, I’d been thinking about Orange Pippins that very morning. Before the black and white cat had purred in through the flap and demanded tuna.

  I stooped to retrieve the unsolicited fruit, lifted it to my nose and was briefly overwhelmed by a memory of pumpkins and autumn sunshine. I read the name on the round, sticky label. Was Braeburn in Scotland? Perhaps that was something I once knew.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t aim that at you!’

  I looked up. He was smiling. The man who had not aimed the apple was smiling. He was, perhaps, early forties, tall with some very pleasing russet stubble, specked golden in the artificial light. His eyes were green: not apple green, more pastel green, like husky eyes made white by the snow. I offered him the apple. ‘It seems OK,’ I said. I really liked the colour of his eyes. Mine are just brown, like most other eyes. ‘But you ought to put it back. In case it’s bruised.’

  ‘Then someone else might finish up with a bruised apple.’

  I felt myself smiling. That in itself was brave of me. ‘Shall I put it back for you?’

  He made a display of coming to a decision. His smile disappeared. But the tiny creases beside his eyes didn’t. ‘No, never get anybody else to do your dirty work. I’ll take it to a member of staff and explain.’

  ‘They’ll put it back when you’re not looking.’ I was amazed at my own boldness.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but at least my conscience will be clear.’ He took the apple, hovered momentarily, then his face broke into a broad smile. ‘See ya!’

  I watched him return to his trolley, replete with vegetables, grabbed a grapefruit I didn’t want, pulled off my scrunchie and reorganised it, then hurried away towards canned fish, where I loaded a dozen small tins of line-caught tuna in spring water into my trolley, before collecting two bags of cat biscuits and wheeling on towards the checkouts. Did tuna live in spring water? I couldn’t remember. I joined the nearest queue and thought about Orange Pippins, remembering what Granny Clark used to say: if they rattle they’re ripe. I could remember her holding those yellow-red apples to my ear and shaking them. I could remember them rattling. I could remember back then.

  ‘Fancy a coffee?’

  I spun round. ‘What?’

  ‘Coffee, do you fancy a coffee?’ The apple man. He was right behind me in the queue.

  I caught my breath, recovered. ‘I have to get back. I’m writing a book. For children.’ I noticed a slight flicker of awkwardness in his pastel-green eyes. ‘But thanks, if I didn’t have to … Do you come here often?’

  He laughed away the awkwardness. ‘Excellent line! You’re clearly a world-class author.’ He took a very obvious deep breath. ‘Mostly Thursdays. Occasionally Saturdays. Not usually as early as this. The name’s Parry. Matthew Parry.’ He offered his hand.

  ‘Can I help?’ The checkout operative sliced through our conversation.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said and hurried four tins on to the conveyor belt.

  ‘Do you need help?’ He lifted two tins and my box of cornflakes and aimed them at the till. ‘Are the cornflakes for you or your cat? I presume you have a cat.’ He scooped up the cat biscuits. ‘Either that or you have a strange taste in biscuits.’

  I forced myself to smile and quickly transferred the rest of my shopping before he could offer further assistance, pushed my trolley past the checkout and hurried everything into my bag, handed the woman my credit card, punched in the number that was written across my wallet, glanced towards the exit and waited.

  ‘I’d like you to have this as a deposit.’ Again I was forced to look round. I was being offered a familiar red and green apple. The shop assistant tutted. He addressed her directly. ‘It’s weighed and included in the price.’ He demonstrated the sticker on his bag of other red and green apples. ‘Do you want to check it?’

 
; The assistant rolled her eyes and ripped my receipt from the till. ‘Next!’ she instructed the conveyer belt, which was already filling with vegetables.

  I accepted the apple, surprised at my lack of embarrassment. Perhaps I’d forgotten how to feel embarrassed. He continued to unload his shopping. ‘Perhaps this Saturday? Same time, same place?’

  I popped the apple into my bag and said nothing – which was pretty much a reflection of what was inside my head – left the supermarket in a blur and drove home, wondering who he was, what he did, where he lived. What he would think if he knew.

  I pulled into the residents’ parking zone, parked in my allocated space, being careful not to reverse into the builder’s skip that was occupying the two visitor parking spaces, hauled my shopping off the passenger seat and stepped out of my car. The black and white cat emerged from under a nearby van, rubbed past the back wheel of my dilapidated Escort and threw its ear against my leg. I hurried inside. The cat knew not to follow.

  Secure in my kitchen, I pulled a tin of tuna from my bag and emptied its contents onto a clean plate. I glanced up as a familiar black and white head purred through the flap, watched as the indifferent animal lapped systematically around the outside of the tuna flesh, savouring the spring water, before attacking the main course. The purring intensified. I washed my hands thoroughly then emptied my shopping onto the work surface, snatched up the apple as it rolled away and tried to remember whether apples ought to be kept in the fridge. It didn’t look as if it did. So I put it in the fruit bowl with the grapefruit and bananas. I stacked the rest of the tins and the cat biscuits into the cupboard under the sink and then returned to the small box of cornflakes, carried it over to the cereal cupboard, and took a deep breath before opening the door and inserting the fresh box alongside all the other identical boxes arranged two deep on all three shelves of the cupboard.