“Mark” must be Mark Henry Evans. It can’t be anyone else. He must have been Anna’s boyfriend, too, otherwise he wouldn’t have “led her on,” as she claimed. So that’s why his wife, Claire, came to Parkside an hour ago to question me about Anna.
Mark, Anna, and Claire were entangled twenty years ago. But how exactly? Did Mark do something terrible to Anna on the night of the Trinity ball, causing her to vanish for nineteen days? And why did Claire not retain any facts from around the same period?
The Daily Telegraph
Mono-Bashing Psychiatrist Pleads Guilty
Budapest, 2 February 2015—A British psychiatrist has admitted to beating Hungarian Monos on their heads with a stick and subjecting them to severe emotional abuse in a bid to improve their short-term memories.
Duo Steve Temple, 47, has pleaded guilty to twenty-five counts of simultaneous physical and verbal abuse. He moved from London to Budapest ten years ago to conduct his research on Monos after receiving a grant from the controversial Equality for Monos Foundation (EMF).
In his defense, Dr. Temple argues that all Mono participants had signed full waivers agreeing to his unorthodox methods. All of them, he insists, had been eager to acquire better memories. Most individuals, he says, were frustrated by their low-status occupations and the discrimination they had endured, especially when it came to opportunities for higher education and better salaries.
Dr. Temple believes that he has managed to replicate in humans the results of a 2005 Harvard University study conducted on mice and that he should be praised and not censured for his groundbreaking efforts. He claims in particular to have converted a female Mono into a Duo through repeated head-whacking and emotional abuse. He also says that he has managed to transform a male Mono into a person with a memory that is “far superior to that of Duos.”
Legal experts have pointed out that Dr. Temple’s defense has been severely hurt by the fact that the so-called Mono turned Duo has refused to testify in court, while the male Mono with a “far superior” memory mysteriously vanished on his way home from work last week.
The trial continues.
Chapter Seventeen
Mark
Emily Wade is standing at the doorway of her apartment. Clotted cream is smeared on the apron around her ample waist. The heady smell of melted butter and caramelized sugar floats around my nostrils. She must be baking something in the kitchen.
But her lips are drawn back in a grim, unforgiving sneer. She is also brandishing a spatula in my direction.
“Claire isn’t here,” she says.
“But you said she was with you.”
“She was indeed.” Emily narrows her eyes. “But she’s gone off now. Left ten minutes ago.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s not true.” Her words roll out in a quiet growl. “I don’t lie. Unlike. Some. Other. People.”
“Please, Em.” I decide to beg, despite the pointed nature of her dig. “I need to speak to Claire.”
“She isn’t here,” Emily says with a snarl, pointing her spatula straight at me. “Left the apartment after you called. Said she needed to get somewhere to figure out the past. Even if she were here, she wouldn’t be speaking to you. Not after what you’ve done. She’s told me everything.”
“You said ‘the past.’ Did Claire mention the summer of 1995?”
I detect a brief flicker of surprise in Emily’s eyes a split second before they’re flooded with hostility again.
“That’s none of your business. You’ve hurt her enough. Claire’s totally serious about divorcing you, by the way. You’ll hear from her lawyer in a couple of days. He’s going to hit you with a fat bill.”
She slams the door with a bang, cutting off the toasty aromas drifting into the corridor.
I need to find Claire at once. To stop her from doing any further damage to herself. To me. To both of us. But I still haven’t got a clue as to where she has disappeared to.
I need to think.
Maybe I should put myself in Claire’s shoes. If she had been snooping around in my “Summer Term 1995” folder, she must be desperate to reacquaint herself with some details about that period. Fact: If she swept it bare, she was either in a hurry to leave my study or she wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for.
But why is Claire suddenly interested in the summer of 1995?
I tap the steering wheel of my Jaguar in desperation.
But insight remains elusive.
Fact: Claire and I first met in the summer of 1995. Could she be determined to track down a significant detail or two from the earliest days of our relationship? Something that preoccupies her more than this dreadful business over Sophia Ayling? If so, what exactly is she trying to work out? Could she…could she be troubled by the tumultuous sequence of events that culminated at the altar of the Trinity chapel? Those drastic triggers for our enforced march down the aisle even before the leaves turned into a riot of red and russet-yellow? I thump the steering wheel even harder, only to conclude that I should consult my own diary records of that fateful, long-ago summer. Reacquaint myself with the necessary facts.
Damn. The contents of my old ink-and-paper diaries are not retrievable at the simple push of a button. Cursing Mr. Jobs for not inventing the iDiary earlier, I start my Jaguar and step on the accelerator as soon as the engine roars to life. I race down Grange Road, paying token attention to the speed limit.
It takes me only four minutes to get home from Emily’s apartment. I slam on the brakes with a screech, jump out of the car, and hurry down the garden path in the direction of my study. Flinging the door open, I head straight for my custom-built platinum safe at the far end of the room (I guess we are all paranoid in our own little ways). Fact: The safe’s twelve-digit code is 280276140669. I key in the number, prompting the solid metal door to glide silently from left to right.
Like my file folders, my ink-and-paper diaries are arranged in neat chronological order. I run a finger along their carefully aligned spines, settling on the volume marked “May–September 1995.” While I haven’t the faintest idea as to where I should begin reading, I suppose I should start from the day when Claire and I first met. Fact: That was on 26 May 1995. I flip through several pages of cursive scrawl before finding the relevant entry.
Its latter part reads:
I took Hannah Astor-Darlington to Varsity Blues for dinner only to have her storm out a few minutes later when the waitress dropped a pen onto her lap, causing splotches of ink to spray out on her skirt. I should write down the scintillating conversation that ensued. I read Professor Highsmith’s “Ten Tips for Writers” yesterday; she said that all aspiring novelists should record snippets of real-life conversations in their diaries if they wish to write good dialogue in their books. Only writers who keep meticulous and truthful records of their daily experiences will become successful authors. Highsmith must be right (though I have a sneaking suspicion that good written dialogue isn’t real conversation, the same way good porn isn’t real sex).
—Oh, no. I’m so sorry, miss.