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  FIND ME

  J.S. Monroe

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About Find Me

  It has been five years since her funeral. But he recognises her face at once…

  Five years ago, Rosa walked to Cromer pier in the dead of night. She looked into the swirling water, and she jumped. She was a brilliant young Cambridge student who had just lost her father. Her death was tragic, but not unexpected.

  Was that what really happened?

  The coroner says it was. But Rosa’s boyfriend Jar can’t let go. He hallucinates, seeing Rosa everywhere — a face on the train; a figure on the cliff. He is obsessed with proving that she is still alive. And then he gets an email.

  Find me, Jar. Find me, before they do…

  Is Rosa really dead? And, if she is, who is playing games with the ones she left behind?

  For Hilary

  I found her a few minutes ago, in the corner, her upright wings pressed together like hands in prayer. Did she take one look at my life and choose to conceal her beauty? I can’t blame her.

  Dad taught me to love butterflies. If one was trapped in the house, he would abandon whatever he was doing to set it free. Yesterday, when we were out on his boat, he found one – a pearl-bordered fritillary, he said – resting on a sail bag in the sunshine. He called me over, but it flew off as I approached. We watched in silence as it flitted away, carefree, brave, too far from land to survive.

  I’m not sure what this one is. I want to prise open her wings, bring some colour into my rinsed-out life, but that would be a violation. And there’s been too much of that already.

  ‘It’s just resting,’ Dad says. I didn’t see him appear, but his voice never startles me. He’s been here a lot in recent weeks, leaving as quietly as he arrives. ‘The underwing markings help to keep it unnoticed.’

  I will try to go unnoticed, keep what beauty I may still possess for Jar. And one day, with Dad’s help, I will spread my wings in the sun again.

  Though I am old with wandering

  Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

  I will find out where she has gone,

  And kiss her lips and take her hands

  –W. B. YEATS, FROM

  ‘THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS’

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About Find Me

  Dedication

  Excerpt

  Epigraph

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Part 2

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Acknowledgements

  About J.S. Monroe

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  1

  It is five years since her funeral, but Jar recognises her face at once. She is standing on the up escalator, he is descending, late again for work after another night out on the wrong side of town. Both escalators are crowded, but he feels that they have the Underground to themselves, passing each other as if they are the last two people on earth.

  Jar’s first impulse is to call out to Rosa, hear her name above the din of rush hour. But he freezes, unable to say or do anything, staring at her drift up to the surface of London. Where is she going? Where has she been?

  His heart rate picks up, palm moistening on the black rubber handrail. Again he tries to call out, but her name sticks in his throat. She looks distracted, anxious, out of sorts. The stowaway hair has gone, replaced by a shaved head, at odds with his memory of her. And her posture is less upright than he remembers, weighed down by an old rucksack, with a floral-patterned tent bag hanging below. Her clothes, too – baggy Ali Baba trousers, fleece – are dishevelled, unchosen, but he’d know her shadow on a furze bush. Teal-blue eyes dancing beneath a serious brow. And those pursed, mischievous lips.

  She glances down the escalator, searching for someone perhaps, and steps into the flow of passing commuters. Jar scans the people below as a sheet of newspaper slides past him in a warm blast of wind, twisting and folding in on itself. Two men are pushing through the crowds, moving people aside with the quiet confidence of authority. Behind them, a row of digital adverts flip like playing cards.

  Frustrated, Jar looks to either side of a knot of tourists blocking his way, as if this might somehow disperse them. Don’t their London guidebooks explain about standing on the right? He checks himself, remembering his own first hesitant days in town, fresh off the plane from Dublin. And then he is free, skidding around the bottom of the escalators like a child before making his way back up again, opting for the central flight of steps, two at a time.

  ‘Rosa,’ he calls out, approaching the barriers. ‘Rosa!’ But there is no conviction in his voice, not enough belief for anyone to turn around. Five years is a long time to keep the faith. He scours the crowded ticket hall and guesses that she has turned left for the main concourse at Paddington.

  A few minutes earlier, more broke than he should be a week before payday, he had slipped through the barriers behind an unsuspecti
ng commuter. Now he must do the same again, tailgating an elderly man. He takes no satisfaction from this, no pleasure from the ease with which he avoids detection as he shows the man where to put his ticket and steps through the barrier with him. Deceit masked as the kindness of youth.

  He runs until he is at the centre of the concourse, where he stops for breath, hands on knees, beneath the high arcing span of Brunel’s austere station. Where is she?

  And then he spots her again, heading towards Platform 1, where the Penzance train is preparing to leave. He zigzags through the crowds, cursing, apologising, trying to keep her rucksack in sight.

  As he spins around the corner of a booth selling greetings cards, he sees her up ahead, beside the first-class carriages of the train, glancing over her shoulder. (They used to slip cards bought from shops like this under each other’s college-room doors, trying to impress with student irony.) Instinctively, he turns around too. The two men are walking towards them, one with a finger to his ear.

  Jar looks back at the platform. A guard blows her whistle, ordering Rosa to stand aside. Rosa ignores the shrill warning, swings open the heavy door and shuts it behind her with a finality that reverberates around the station.

  Now it’s his turn to approach the train. ‘Stand away,’ the guard shouts again, as the carriages start to move.

  He runs to the door, but she is already walking down the aisle, looking for a space, apologising as she knocks against someone’s seat. Keeping parallel with the accelerating train, he watches her place the rucksack in a rack above her and sit down by the window. For the first time, she seems to be aware of someone beyond the glass, but she ignores him as she settles down, picking up a discarded newspaper, glancing at the luggage rack.

  The train is moving too fast for him now, but as he runs, Jar smacks his hand against the window. She looks up, wide eyed with alarm. Is it Rosa? He can’t be sure any more. There’s no flicker of recognition, no acknowledgement that she knows him, that they were once the loves of each other’s lives. He falters, slows to a walk and stops, watching the train pull away as she stares back at him: one stranger to another.

  2

  Cambridge, Summer Term, 2012

  I know I’m not meant to be writing this – there should be no record, no contrails left in the Fenland sky, as my counsellor would say – but I have kept a diary all my life and I need to talk to someone.

  I went out again tonight with the drama crowd. Looks like I’ve got the part of Gina Ekdal if I want it. I keep telling myself I’m doing all this for Dad.

  Well, not quite everything. I dropped an E when we first arrived in the pub. The candles on the tables burned like crucifixes – beautiful, prophetic perhaps – but it was not what I had hoped for. I think I kissed Sam, the director, and possibly Beth, who’s playing Mrs Sørby. I would have snogged the entire cast if Ellie hadn’t intervened.

  I won’t try that again, but I’m determined to wring every ounce out of what time I have left here. I know this crowd, this life, isn’t me, but it’s an improvement on my first two terms (‘Michaelmas’ and ‘Lent’, as Dad insisted on calling them – I’m sticking with the seasons). It’s so easy to fall in with the wrong set, harder to extricate yourself without causing offence or coming across all superior.

  After the pub we went for a meal, even though I wasn’t hungry. I don’t know where it was, some place down by the river. I was still pretty drunk – until it was time to pay.

  And that’s when I met him. Why now, with so little time left? Why not in my first term?

  He was making his way around the table, taking payment from each of us. One bill, split fourteen ways, can you believe it? But this guy never complained, not even when he came round to me and my card didn’t work.

  ‘The machine’s acting up,’ he said, so quietly I could hardly hear him. ‘We’re out of range. Best you come up to the till now.’

  ‘Sorry?’ I said, looking up at him. I’m not short, but this guy was tall, a big bear of a man with a clean-shaven chin and a soft Irish brogue.

  He leant down, checking that no one else could hear. His breath was warm and he smelt clean. Sandalwood, maybe.

  ‘So we need to try your card again, nearer the till.’

  There was something about the look he gave me, an avuncular, reassuring smile, that made me get up from the table and follow him over to the till. And I liked his big tidy hands, a discreet ring on his thumb. But he wasn’t my type at all. The wide sweep of his jawline came together too sharply at the chin and his mouth was pinched.

  It was only when we were out of earshot that he turned to me and said in a louder voice that my card had been rejected.

  ‘I’ve been advised to take the card from you and cut it up.’ He grinned. His big face brightened and gained better proportions when he did that: the chin softened and his cheekbones rose up.

  ‘What do we do?’ I asked, pleased that we seemed to be in this together. I’ve been broke since the day I arrived.

  He looked down at me, realising for the first time, I think, quite how drunk I was. And then he glanced across at the table.

  ‘The cast?’ he said.

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘No tips.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll leave one in cash,’ I said, suddenly defensive of my new friends.

  ‘That would be a first.’

  ‘You’re not an actor yourself then,’ I said.

  ‘No. I’m not an act-or.’

  He made me feel embarrassed by the word, rhyming the second syllable with ‘roar’. ‘So what do you do when you’re not being rude about my friends?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m a student.’

  ‘Here? At Cambridge?’

  It was a stupid, patronising question and he spared me an answer.

  ‘I write a bit, too.’

  ‘Great.’ But I wasn’t listening. My mind was already wandering back to my contribution to the bill and the fact that I had no means of paying. I don’t want any of the cast to know I’m penniless, even if it goes with the profession. And I can’t tell them that my financial worries – all my worries – will soon be over. I can’t tell anyone.

  ‘There’s enough money in the tip box, from other diners, for me to cover it,’ he said.

  For a moment I was lost for words. ‘And why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Because I think it’s the first time you’ve hung out with these people and you’re trying to impress them. Not being able to pay might cost you the part. And I’m already looking forward to coming to watch. Ibsen’s all right, you know.’

  We looked at each other in silence. He caught me by the elbow as I swayed too much. I was starting to feel very sick.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Can you take me home?’ The tone of my voice – slurred, pleading – sounded all wrong, as if I was listening to someone else talking.

  ‘I’m not finished for another hour.’ He was looking at Ellie, who’d come over. ‘I think your friend needs some fresh air,’ he said to her.

  ‘Has Rosa paid?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘All done now.’ He handed back my card.

  And that’s as much as I can remember. I didn’t even get his name. All I’m left with is first impressions: a man unhurried by the world, living life at his own measured pace – time on the ball, as Dad used to say. And beneath that calm exterior, is there a wildness in check, passion restrained? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

  I feel ashamed now. Neither of us had any money, but there he was, an Irish writer working in a restaurant, without complaint, serving tight-fisted students to pay his bills, and I am defaulting on a maxed-out credit card.

  Part of me – a big part – hopes to see him again, but I don’t want him to be involved in what lies ahead. I’m still scared that I’ve made the wrong decision, but I can’t see another way out.

  3

  Jar sits at his desk reading through the excuses from colleagues who have failed, like him, to
make the daily 9.30 a.m. conference. Every day he is amazed by the chutzpah of other people’s explanations. Yesterday, Tamsin group-emailed to say that she would be late after the fire brigade had had to rescue her from her bathroom. Cue lots of gags about firemen’s lifts when she finally arrived, flushed-faced, blouse wrongly buttoned.

  Today’s offerings are more prosaic. Ben’s washing machine has flooded the kitchen floor; Clive blames a cow on the line for his late train in from Hertfordshire; and this from Jasmine: ‘Left house without wallet, now retrieved, running late.’ Maria, the grande dame of the desk, is on better form: ‘Husband’s eaten children’s packed lunch, will have to make them another.’ Not bad, Jar thinks, but nothing to rival Carl’s peerless excuse from last summer: ‘Just getting my act together after Glastonbury. Might be a few days late.’

  Carl is Jar’s only real ally in the office, on for a pint after work, relentlessly cheerful, always wearing headphones around his neck. (If he’s doing the tea run, he goes around the office signalling a large T with his hands.) He’s a jungle MC when he isn’t running the music channel on the arts website they both work for, telling everyone who will listen that jungle isn’t retro, never went out of fashion and is more popular than ever. He also has an unhealthy knowledge of computers, often forgetting that Jar has no interest in app development or programming paradigms.

  Jar had considered group-emailing the office from Paddington, to explain his own lateness, but he wasn’t sure how it would have gone down: ‘Just seen my girlfriend from uni who took her own life five years ago. Everyone tells me I’m imagining things, that I must move on, but I know she’s alive, somehow, somewhere, and I’m never going to stop looking until I find her. She wasn’t ready to die.’

  He has told Carl everything, but not the others. He knows what they think. What’s a prize-winning young Irish writer, debut collection of short stories a critical if not commercial success, doing in the seventh circle of office hell in Angel, chasing web-traffic figures by writing click-bait on Miley Cyrus? It was unfortunate that the first piece he was asked to file was on writer’s block: ten authors who had lost their mojo. Sometimes he wonders if he ever had it.