& I paid a fisherman to take me out there once to look at the birds and although you’re not allowed to land there I saw many things including, I’m sure of it, one of your crabs . . . I guess you only really get bird lovers going out there so nobody’d notice an unusual crab, they’re all there for the puffins and roseate terns
I’m sorry I’ve kept this information from you for so long. I should have told you years ago. I mean it I am so sorry.
sorry again Emma
Janice
I take the letter to the kitchen, where I sit and read it again. Then again.
I haven’t spoken to Janice in nearly two decades, but Jeremy’s right – nothing about her sounds right here. The lack of punctuation, the repeated apology – the very existence of this letter, this friendly communication with a woman she hates, feels wrong.
But it’s her. Jeremy’s right about that, too. It’s definitely her, I know her handwriting. And, unless she’s broken her silence about how intimately we’re connected, nobody other than the three of us know she was with me the day I found the crab.
This letter is off, I message Jeremy. I agree.
He replies immediately.
You can understand my concern about her mental state. Is there anything I’ve missed? Anything that might tell us where she is?
Despite my complicated feelings about Janice, I can’t help feeling guilty as I scan through the letter again. There are few things she’d be more horrified by than the idea of Jeremy and me discussing her mental health.
Nothing obvious, I write. Apart from the fact that she’s talking about Northumberland, but I’m guessing that’s why you’re up here – to look for her?
Jeremy replies: Yes. But I don’t think she’s here. We get a message if anyone deactivates the alarm at the cottage, but there’s been nothing. Besides, if Janice had been up here, somebody would have spotted her. I’ve asked practically everyone in Alnmouth, nobody’s seen her. And I’ve checked, just to be certain, but there’s no possibility she could be hiding on Coquet Island. It’s still off limits to everyone other than RSPB wardens. I’m not giving up, because I can’t, but I really don’t think she’s here.
I reply to say I’ll let him know if I think of anything.
I read the letter again as the room fills with darkness, then I look up Coquet Island on my phone. There’s every chance Janice is right about the crabs: it’s a perfect place for an isolated species to start changing, undisturbed by other populations, and it would make sense that a dead specimen could wash up on Alnmouth beach from there. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.
But is there any chance she’s on the island, too? Jeremy said not, but is it a cry for help? There’s an old lighthouse there; I guess she could have broken in. But a woman who wants to disappear would not be able to get there without paying someone. And someone who’ll take money to ferry you to a forbidden island is not the sort of person who you can trust not to sell the information to a journalist.
Jeremy’s right. I don’t think there’s any way she could be there.
I reread the letter three, four times. I can’t believe she’s written to me, after all this time. How strange she sounds.
I try to eat some toast but I’m too wired. I go and stand outside the front door, hoping the cold sea air might ground me, but before long I’m shivering.
Later still, I lie awake, thinking about the shock of Jeremy Rothschild and my daughter in the same room. I think about Janice, about Charlie, a young man in London, praying for news of his mother, and it breaks my heart.
From time to time I think about Jeremy, alone in their house, reaching over for his phone in the middle of the night, just in case Janice has sent a message.