When I got to the apartment I rushed up the winding staircase and into the living area, but the key was not on the coffee table where I’d left it and the door was locked. I knocked and there was no answer.
‘Afra,’ I whispered, ‘are you asleep? Can you open the door for me?’ I waited like that with my ear to the door, but I could hear nothing, no answer and no movement, so I resigned myself to catching a few hours’ sleep on the sofa. I was just lying down when I heard the key in the lock and the door open. Afra stood there. I looked at my wife’s face and I immediately knew something was wrong. The morning light that reflected so coldly off the walls of the other buildings revealed a scratch on her face, red and raw, running from her left eye to her jawbone. Her blonde hair was a tangled mess around her face. In this moment, she was not my wife. I could not recognise her. I could not find her. Before I could say anything, she turned away and went back into the bedroom. I sprang up and quickly followed her, closing the door firmily behind me.
‘Afra, what happened?’ I asked. She was curled up on the bed with her back to me.
‘Won’t you tell me what happened?’ I put my hand on her back and she flinched, so I lay beside her without touching her or asking any more questions. It was early afternoon by the time she spoke again. I hadn’t slept at all.
‘Do you really want to know?’ she said.
‘Of course.’
‘Because I’m not sure you really want to know.’
‘Of course I want to know.’
There was a long pause, and then she said, ‘He came in here – Mr Fotakis. I thought it was you because you’d locked the door. I didn’t know he had the key. He came in here and he lay down beside me, just where you are lying now. I realised it wasn’t you because of the smell of his skin when he came closer to me, and I called out and he put his hand over my mouth and his ring scratched the side of my face, and he told me I should be quiet or you would come back and find me dead.’
She didn’t need to say any more.
13
THE SKY IS BIG AND blue and full of seagulls. They sweep across and dip down into the sea, and up again, up and up and up, into the heavens. There is a cluster of multicoloured balloons above me, rising and becoming smaller until they fade into the distance. There are voices around me and then someone has my wrist in his hand. He is checking my heartbeat.
‘Strong heart,’ the man says.
‘What’s he doing here?’ A woman is standing in the sunlight.
‘Maybe homeless.’
‘But why is he in the water?’
Neither of them asks me, but I don’t think I could speak anyway. The man lets go of my wrist and drags me by the arms so that I am on the dry sand. Then he heads off somewhere. The woman stands there still, looking down at me as if I’m a seal. She takes her coat off and lays it over me, tucking it in around my chin. I try to smile at her but I can’t move my face.
‘It’s OK,’ she says. There is a catch in her voice, a shimmer in her eyes, as she looks at me upside down, and I think maybe she is crying.
The man returns shortly with some blankets. He takes off my wet jumper and wraps the dry blankets around me. After a little while I see blue flashing lights and people are lifting me onto a stretcher and then I am inside and warm and we are moving fast through the streets, the siren screaming. My eyes close as the paramedic beside me begins to check my blood pressure.
When I wake up I am in a hospital bed, wired to a heart monitor. The bed next to mine is empty. A doctor comes to see me because she would like to know who I am and what I was doing sleeping on the beach with my body in the water. She tells me that when they brought me in I was suffering from hypothermia.
‘My name is Nuri Ibrahim,’ I say. ‘How long have I been here?’
‘Three days,’ she says.
‘Three days!’ I bolt upright. ‘Afra will be worried to death!’
‘Who is Afra?’
‘My wife,’ I say. I try to search my pockets but I’m no longer wearing trousers.
‘Please can you tell me where I can find my phone?’
‘We didn’t find a phone,’ she says.
‘I need to contact my wife.’
‘I can contact her for you, if you give me the details.’
I tell her the address of the B&B and the landlady’s name, but I don’t know the number. The doctor asks me a lot of questions: Do you have thoughts of killing yourself, Mr Ibrahim? How is your memory? Do you find that you are forgetting important events? Do you forget little everyday things? Do you feel confused or disorientated? I try to answer as best I can. No. My memory is good. No. No. No.