Читать книгу The Day I Died - Polly Courtney - Страница 12

‘Morning!’ squawked Trevor, the sound grating on her nerves as it did every day.

Jo responded with her usual mumbled greeting, going straight to the back of the teashop to dump her plastic bag. She wasn’t sure why he’d gone to the effort of getting a door key cut for her; he always arrived first.

She returned to the counter, ran the hot water, wiped the surfaces and brought the supplies through from the back. Her mornings had developed a kind of rhythm that was disconcertingly predictable. She could hardly believe that only just over a week had passed since she’d stumbled off the night bus into Trev’s Teashop.

‘I’ll open up,’ said Trevor, needlessly. Jo had learned her lesson on the second morning: opening up was the proprietor’s job. Other tasks he would happily delegate–and generally did–but winding out the awning each day was something he liked to be seen doing. It allowed him to show the world that he, owner and manager of Trev’s Teashop, Oxfordshire, was open for business. He probably thought of himself a bit like the Queen cutting the ribbon on a new institution, thought Jo, watching him sweat with the effort.

‘I’ve got an errand for you,’ said Trevor, propping the door open and waiting for her to look up. ‘I need these things posting,’ he said, patting a pile of letters on the counter.

Jo nodded and started to dry her hands.

‘No–not now. Post office only opens at nine. You’ll need to buy stamps. You can take the money from the till.’ He explained this last point slowly, in case it might be too complex for her.

Jo got back to stocking the fridge, wondering again what she had done for a living before she’d lost her memory. She hoped it was something more challenging than this.

Her contemplation continued as the morning progressed. This being a Friday, the usual eight o’clock rush was less frantic than usual and spread over a longer period. She was on autopilot: taking orders, serving drinks and doing as much ‘flitting’ as was possible, given the lack of seated customers and Trevor’s recent transition into more of a managerial role. Instead of manning the counter, he preferred to busy himself in the background, keeping an eye on Jo’s handiwork, making unhelpful suggestions and trying to strike up conversations with the commuters–most of whom did their best to ignore him.

Jo handed over a double espresso and watched as the suited customer added a mound of sugar, then another, then another. She frowned. The sugar wouldn’t dissolve in that small amount–anyone could tell that. But that wasn’t why Jo felt perplexed. She felt perplexed because of something going through her mind, something she knew.

The man’s espresso was becoming a suspension. That was the proper term for a liquid solution where not all the particles were dissolved. The man hurried out and Jo was left staring at the space where he had been. A suspension. Where had that word come from? And how had she known to use it?

Another customer came in and Jo found herself mechanically filling the shot-holder again, trying to work out what this new piece of information meant–if anything. Perhaps it was insignificant. It was probably something they taught in school that anybody might remember. Perhaps all this meant was that Jo had paid attention in school–which was something of a revelation in itself, but not a particularly interesting one.

Jo watched the dark brown liquid bubble into the paper cup, wondering whether coherent memories would come back to her or whether she’d have to piece things together from clues like this. If she didn’t start remembering things properly, then she’d only have half the picture. She might discover what she liked, what she was good at and what type of person she gravitated towards, but she wouldn’t know why. She wouldn’t know what, in her past, had caused her to be the way she was.

She handed over the coffee, caught up in a complex internal debate about nature versus nurture and the pros and cons of remembering her past. There was still a part of her that didn’t actually want to know what had happened. If they were bad memories, it might be better that she didn’t have them at all. Because once they were back, there was no way of un-remembering them.

What she really wanted was the option of remembering. As if her memory operated like a tap, she wanted the ability to turn it on, gently, then if it started gushing out unpleasantly and making a mess, she could turn it off again. The problem, of course, was that her memory didn’t operate like a tap. She wasn’t in charge. Nobody was. The more she tried to remember, the more elusive the memories became. She just had to wait, and observe, and jot things down.

The media was one possible source of information. Jo had been following the coverage of the bombing all week. She was half hoping, half dreading that one day she’d return from her shift to see her face on the lunchtime news–a grainy version of a holiday snap or a Christmas family photo–with her real name and the word ‘MISSING’ underneath. She insisted on helping Mrs P arrange the newspapers every morning so that she could skim the pages for a reference. But there was no such reference. Every article seemed to be a rehash of the initial coverage, and even that hadn’t said very much. As the week progressed, the news of the Buffalo Club bomb became less and less significant, and this morning the investigation hadn’t even warranted a mention. Clearly the media wasn’t going to help her very much.

There was a lull in customers. Jo distracted herself, wiping the surfaces and rinsing the milk jug, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. Or at least, she wasn’t fooling herself. Her hands were shaking and her eyes kept wandering down to the cupboard under the sink where six dark liqueur bottles sat, teasing her. They were supposed to be for adding to coffees, presumably, but if the crusty, sugary coatings inside the lids were anything to go by, they rarely got used. And there were crusty, sugary coatings inside the lids, because Jo had checked. She had opened them all, sniffed them and put them away again. About fifteen times.

The craving was stronger than ever today, perhaps because it had been nearly a week since her last proper drink. She reached down and extracted the leftmost bottle, unscrewing the lid and preparing to duck behind the counter. Amaretto–not her first choice, but better than the other options, which all smelled rather like petrol and had unrecognisable Italian names. She glanced around, then crouched down.

Her lips made contact with the crystallised sugar and she tilted the bottle, gagging for the sweet, fiery liquid in her throat.

‘Nine o’clock!’

Her head hit the counter.

‘Sorry?’ Jo fumbled around for the lid and replaced the bottle with one hand, holding out the other for the pile of letters. Her body was filled with unfulfilled desire.

‘You hadn’t forgotten, had you?’ Trevor grinned at her stupidly.

Jo flashed a smile and removed her apron. The sense of anticlimax, of getting so close and then pulling away, was exasperating. ‘No, just about to go,’ she said, swallowing a mouthful of saliva. ‘Down the road and on the right?’

‘Down the road,’ he motioned like an obese air steward, ‘and on the right.’

The warm air felt good on her skin, and gradually, with concerted effort, Jo managed to disentangle herself from the yearnings and focus on the things around her. Birds cheeped in the hedgerow, trees rustled in the breeze and somewhere nearby, farm machinery was whirring into action. A cloud skittered across the sky, briefly obscuring the sun and then leaving it to shine, and for a moment, Radley looked like the most beautiful place on earth.

Semi-detached and set back from the road with a pebble-dashed front, the post office looked exactly like somebody’s house except for the rounded red sign on the telegraph pole outside and the billboard announcing the headline, ‘VIOLIN CASE THWARTS ROBBERY’.

Not for the first time, Jo marvelled at how some things seemed so familiar whilst the details of her life remained a mystery. She knew exactly what first-class stamps looked like and how the UK postal system worked. She knew what Facebook was and how to use it. How, then, could she not name a single one of her friends?

She applied the stamps and looked at the swarthy young man behind the counter.

‘I don’t suppose you have an internet connection?’

He nodded over to a large, bulbous monitor in the corner of the store. It looked like a TV from the 1920s.

‘Could I just…?’

‘One pond for fifteen minutes.’

‘But I only—’

‘Three pond an hour.’

‘What about two minutes?’ She smiled virtuously.

Reluctantly, the man smiled. ‘OK, but quickly. Log in as Admin. Password is password .

The internet connection was even more sluggish than the one she’d used before. Jo waited for the Facebook login to appear, wondering whether perhaps, by some sort of administrative error, Radley had been left off the UK broadband rollout map.

She logged in and clicked on the Friends tab. Her face fell.

You have 0 friends.

Then she noticed the message. She clicked on her inbox.

Saskia Dawson

Today at 03.49

Who R U?

Do I know U Jo Simmons?! I don’t accept friends who ain’t got no profile pic…

Jo drummed her fingers against the makeshift desk, frustrated. Of course Saskia hadn’t clicked Accept. The request had come from an anonymous stranger. For all Saskia knew, Jo Simmons was a dirty old pervert looking for cheap online thrills.

‘Time’s up,’ called the guy from behind the counter.

‘I’ve hardly logged on!’ she yelled back, fingers hovering over the keyboard.

Jo Simmons

Today at 09.11

Re: Who R U?

Hi Saskia, sorry for the randomness–I’m using an alias…Long story. Haven’t got round to putting up a photo.

Here’s a clue–long, black hair with a red streak at the front. Know who I am? :-) xx

Jo logged off and ran through the door, the adrenalin still pumping from the brief correspondence. She was so busy devising an excuse for her boss that she slammed straight into somebody on the post office forecourt.

‘I’m so sorry!’

She squatted down to pick up the letters, which had scattered in the breeze.

‘No worries.’

With relief, Jo realised that the man she’d knocked flying had not been one of Radley’s aged inhabitants; in fact, the man seemed quite youthful–early thirties at most. He laughed as she handed over the gritty pile.

‘I’m used to being rugby-tackled.’

She smiled. It wasn’t that she was flirting, exactly, but…well, OK perhaps she was, just a little. The man was handsome: tall, with coiffed light brown hair and a tan. He could well have been a rugby player.

‘Hope they weren’t important.’ She nodded at the letters as he pushed them into the post box.

‘Oh, just replies to my fan mail. Standard responses, you know.’

She laughed uncertainly. Gosh, maybe he was a sportsman, like, maybe the captain of the England rugby team…

He shook his head, smiling and revealing a row of pearly teeth. ‘I’m kidding. It’s bills, mainly. Are you heading for Trev’s Teashop, by any chance? Want a lift?’

Jo was confused again. He must have been a customer at the café. She had probably served him coffee.

‘How did you know where I worked?’

He shook his head and smiled again, motioning for her to get into the passenger seat of a slick little BMW parked on the road. ‘Well I wasn’t deliberately looking at your chest, but…’

Jo groaned at her own stupidity. Of course. The aertex shirt.

She wasn’t sure whether getting into a complete stranger’s car was entirely sensible, but neither, probably, was accepting a job from a complete stranger, or a place to stay. And besides, he had an honest smile.

‘It wasn’t just the shirt, actually,’ he confessed, pulling out and accelerating to quite a speed.

‘No?’

‘No. I’ve seen you in there.’

‘What, you’re a customer?’

‘No. I’ve seen you through the window. I work from home quite a bit so I walk around town. Stops me getting cabin fever.’

‘Oh, right.’ Jo wanted to ask what he did for a living and where in Radley he was based and a whole load of other questions, but they were already at the teashop. ‘Well, thanks for the lift.’

He laughed. ‘Saved you all of thirty seconds.’

‘Well, yeah.’ She released her seatbelt and opened the door. Then, in a moment of boldness, she added, ‘Pop in for a coffee some time. I’ll give you a freebie.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘Free, er, coffee, I mean.’

‘I look forward to it,’ he said, winking through the passenger window. She slammed the door, feeling the blood rush to her face.

She heard the whirr of his electric window behind her as she re-entered the café.

‘By the way, I’m Stu. What’s your name?’

She turned back and smiled.

‘Jo. See you around.’