Then Neil had re-bereaved her after the funeral by telling her he had to return to the Gulf for a further three months.
Without Neil to soothe her, Kate sat on the sofa in the cottage, playing the last year back in her mind. She remembered the emptiness in her dad’s eyes when the prognosis had worsened. Cancer’s a bastard, he’d said. He’d been right. Dad had refused a nurse, or a hospice, so Kate had suffered with him.
Dad.
Kate sighed. Trying to push out of her mind his vomiting, his cries of pain, his final night when she’d held him into peace, she pulled herself off the sofa to get her iPhone from the desk. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and found tears forming in her eyes. It happened every time she saw her reflection. How was she supposed to propel that pale ghost of a self onwards? Or summon the energy to move their stuff back to Portsmouth? Or get the composure to don a suit and speak to a client there – or even her secretary? She couldn’t work remotely forever.
Waking the phone, she checked for mail. Come on, somebody must have something to share – Neil if he’d reached the ship, or a social networking update. Finally, the phone vibrated.
‘Want to stop the world and get off – into somebody else’s world?’
The title of the new email was so apposite that Kate couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. She opted for both. This must be junk mail, though, right? She should delete it without reading it. But she didn’t. She touched through into the email.
‘Dear Kate’ it began. At least they’d bothered to personalise it.
‘Bored? Lonely? Frustrated?’
One out of three, thought Kate.
‘Or just want a change? Here is your chance to take a break from your life and step into someone else’s – while knowing that your own life is in safe hands. This is for serious research for me – but a break for you. If you fancy living somebody else’s life (and in a London flat) for a few months and have your own property that you can offer, look no further. Simply reply to this email with a short description of your property location, job (if you have one) and a contact telephone number, or call the number below. Interview and details to be arranged with suitable applicant(s).’
It then set out a London telephone number, and was signed off by someone called Anna.
Nowhere to enter her credit card number, so she wasn’t being phished, Kate thought. Perhaps it was some new market research tool to get information for a dating site or a property search engine? It was surely far too naïvely constructed to be genuine. Who would expect anyone to pick up the phone to do a property-exchange (or exchange lives, whatever that meant) for the purposes of some mysterious research? No, it must be a scam, she decided, as she pressed delete with relish. There may be some poor fools out there unworldly enough to dial a line on divert to some premium rate number, but she would not be one of them.
Still, she thought, how perfect it would be to step away from all of this and leave it to somebody else for a while, without putting her own way of life at risk. It was as if the marketing person behind the ad had seen into her thoughts. She knew that at some point she would have to rouse herself and start the task of sifting through her dad’s belongings and documents and sort out the logistics of returning to Portsmouth. A sudden bolt to a flat in London would be a blessed escape.
The landline phone rang, breaking the daydream. Kate sighed. She supposed she ought to answer it. She pulled herself off the sofa and made her way over the no man’s land of scattered plates and glasses to one of the handset docks and stretched out a hand, balancing precariously over the sofa. No handset met her grasp. Then, from the corner of her eye she saw the phone’s familiar red flashing spreading out from under a crumpled piece of kitchen roll and lunged to answer it. The answering machine picked up before she did. Holding the handset, she listened as the caller left a message, debating whether to interject. The message was from Neil’s mum, who lived in France. Kate would not pick up.
“Hello, both of you – although it’s probably just Kate now. I thought I might catch Neil before he left. I must say I’d hoped to see more of him after the funeral – you didn’t need to take off with him quite so quickly.” There was some noise in the background of the message. “Anyway, I must go now. Ask Neil to email me if you speak to him. Bye!”
Kate flung the phone across the floor.
“Bloody woman!” she cursed aloud. She could not believe the temerity of Neil’s mum to phone her up and criticise her at such a time. True, Kate didn’t have much of a benchmark, her own mum having left twenty years ago when Kate was eight, but she bet they weren’t all like this. As if it was Kate’s fault Neil was away! Kate took their wedding photo from the mantelpiece and clutched it to her chest. Four happy years ago. Or rather, happy four years ago. She remembered the final whispered conversations on the eve of the wedding, Neil reassuring her that absence made the heart grow fonder, that he wouldn’t always be at sea and that when they started a family, it would be different. She’d exchanged vows happy and excited, Neil in uniform, her in white, both in love. Now, a tear rolled down Kate’s cheek, followed by another one, until the wedding picture was in danger of saturation. She wished the world would stop, like the email had said. Whether she escaped into somebody else’s world or just vanished absolutely, she didn’t care. Anything but this.
In bed that night, exhausted from the latest fit of crying, Kate reflected on her lot. It was clear that something had to give – she could not return to her job as if nothing had happened. She needed time to repair herself, before Neil came back to rescue her. Her mind wandered back to the email of earlier that afternoon from the apparent researcher. She thought about the prospect of being in London again. She had studied there for three years at university, done her law exams there, and lived there with Neil for the first two years of their marriage. Then he’d suggested that it would make life easier if they moved to Portsmouth, where his ship was based. She refused at first, but Neil persuaded her with the promise of being able to see him on weekday evenings when he wasn’t away at sea. There was also the bonus that they were able to afford a sizeable house rather than a flat.
Nothing had prepared her for the boredom. In London, when Neil was away, she could take her pick of theatres, museums, cinemas or bars to go out to, with friends or alone. More than that, there was the buzz of living in the capital, its vibrancy and unlimited possibilities to explore. Portsmouth had none of this. Or if it did, she had not found it. It was fine during the week, when she was at work. At weekends, though, uneventful Saturdays would stretch out into drab Sundays, just filling in time until Monday came round again. And always against the backdrop of ships, historic or contemporary, their presence mocking her with Neil’s absence.
Kate pulled the covers over her head. Oh, to be back in London again, she thought, stretching out her toes. She remembered the energy she had when she was there, and the enthusiasm, rather than this empty half-life. Maybe if she went back there again, just for a bit, and did all the things she used to do, or experimented with new ones, she could go back to her old self? Maybe she could just take a couple of weeks by herself in a hotel or a self-catered apartment? She shook her head. She needed a longer break. Lying in bed in the darkness, she saw a possible glimmer of her old vibrant self. The email inviting her to exchange her identity didn’t have to be the work of a scammer or a marketer. Maybe, just maybe, willed Kate, it was the chance she had been looking for.
Chapter 2
-Kate-
Kate sat staring at her mobile, biting her lower lip. Earlier that morning, she’d retrieved the ‘identity exchange’ email from trash. Her finger hovered over the phone number of ‘Anna’. It was just an initial enquiry, she told herself. She could always hang up if it seemed suspect, or even if it didn’t.
Kate pressed her finger down on the screen. There, it was done. Kate waited as