“What is it, Em?” he asks, instantly serious.
“I’ve been offered a new job and I don’t know if I should do it, or even if I want to do it yet, so I don’t want you mentioning it to her. I don’t want her to worry about it. I don’t want her going through anything she doesn’t have to….But—I might have to go back to Norfolk.”
His gaze hardens at the word.
“Why?” he asks bluntly.
It’s a good question.
If I didn’t have his full attention before, I have it now. He stares at me grimly, as if he’s seen a ghost. And in a way he has. We don’t talk about the past; all of that got left behind with the house.
“It’s a job opportunity, Joe. A big one. Have you seen the news?”
He’s silent for a moment before he speaks.
“Er, yes, I have. Why? Which story? This isn’t to do with the dead girl on Hampstead Heath, is it?” He looks away, rubs his eyes, suddenly tired.
What dead girl on Hampstead Heath? God, another thing I haven’t even heard about. And Hampstead Heath isn’t too far from my apartment either. I really need to start watching the news.
“No, it’s nothing to do with a girl on Hampstead Heath. Joe, they found a man on a beach near Holkham. They have no idea who he is, or where he’s come from, and neither does he apparently. Like the Piano Man, in Kent. You remember him, right?”
“The guy on the news? You mean Matthew, right? Yeah! That’s happening in Holkham, is it? Jesus! I thought this one was in Kent too. Shit. Must have got those two stories mixed up in my head. Yeah, I’ve seen the story. Yeah, Matthew’s such a weird story.”
Wait! Matthew?
“Hang on, Joe. What do you mean Matthew? Are you saying the guy on the beach is someone named Matthew? How do you know that?”
Joe scowls, baffled by my flurry of questions.
“Joe, nobody knows what his name is, or who he is, that’s the point of them hiring me! I mean, they’re calling him Mr. Nobody, so how the hell do you know what his real name is?” Literally everyone seems to know more about my potential patient than I do.
“What are you talking about, Em? Matthew’s not his actual name, that’s what they’re calling him at the hospital. I guess they can’t call him Mr. Nobody in a hospital, can they? Apparently, this nurse just started calling him Matthew and it stuck. I suppose they’ve got to call him something, but it’s all a bit, well, a bit stupid, to be honest.” Joe rumples his hair. “They called him Matthew because apparently something odd happened in the hospital,” he says skeptically. “I dunno.” He studies my face and puts two and two together. “You’re seriously thinking about taking this job and you haven’t even researched it yet, have you?”
My brother can read me like a book. “No. No, I have not,” I admit tentatively.
“Let me guess, because of work?”
“Yes. Work. That is correct.”
He sighs. “Well, Emmy, you’re in for a treat when you finally do get around to it; it’s an absolute shit show up there. Get googling. The press are already camped out all over Kings Lynn. It’s a media circus. That Piano Man case on crack. Oh, and Matthew means ‘gift from God,’ by the way, just so you know the level of crazy we’re working on here.” He studies me, disapproval written large across his lovely face. He sighs again, loudly. “I’d say run a nautical mile from this crap, but something tells me you’ve already made your mind up and you just want me to agree with you. Don’t you?”
I smile penitently. “Yeah, I think you’re right, Joe. I think I do.” There’s no use lying to him. I’ve never been able to anyway.
“Can you handle going back, though, Em? Seriously. I mean, really, can you handle it? I know you’ll say you can and you’ll make it work somehow, but could you?”
“If I’m honest? I don’t know, Joe. I won’t know until I get there, I suppose. But I have to give it a try, don’t I?”
“No. No, you don’t have to give it a try, Em. Sometimes you can just let things go. Let an opportunity go, if it’s not right for you. Sometimes it’s not a test, or a challenge or whatever….Sometimes it’s just you, pushing yourself too far.”
I know deep down he’d want me to do everything differently. From the start. That if he’d had his say, I wouldn’t even have gone into medicine. I’d have been an artist, a painter; I was good at art when we were young. But things happened. Life happened and here we are. We’re so different, he and I. It’s funny how different two people with the same genes can be.
“Well, I do have to do it, Joe.”
“You don’t, but okay. That’s your answer then. Do it. And I’ll be here if you need me.” Then his brow creases. “But what will you do if they find out what happened? There’s a lot of press up there, Em.”
“They changed our names, Joe. No one will know who I was or that I was ever there before. That was why we moved, right? The police, the social workers—that was the point, wasn’t it, that no one would find out? Unless the police themselves decide to tell the media, there’s no way anyone will be able to find out. The system is in place for a reason.”
He frowns, unconvinced. “But you’ll be there, physically, in person, with people who knew us back then. People who went to school with us. What if someone recognizes you?”
I hadn’t thought of that. I stare at him now, silenced. But, I was so different back then. It was such a long time ago. I looked different. A different person. A different name. I lost my puppy fat at seventeen, right after we left. My once open, soft face lost its plump rosy cheeks and matured. Cheekbones, collarbone, breasts. I grew into myself, boys started noticing me. I’m certain nobody there will recognize me now.
“They won’t, Joe. They’ll remember an awkward sixteen-year-old. I mean, I’d like to think I might have changed slightly over the last fourteen years!”
He studies my face trying to judge whether I’m right, then nods back tentatively. I do look different. I often wonder if he misses the old me. The me from before. But that girl’s gone.
I plow on. “And even if they do recognize me, Joe…so what? We’d be all over the news for, what, like maybe a week, tops. No longer than we were before. And then it just goes away and the world moves on and we go back to our lives. I can handle that, we handled it before. All of us.”
“We did but I don’t know if Mum can do all that again. She’s happy where she is. I don’t think she could just go back to her life if who she was got out.” I think of Mum in her cozy cottage. I think of her coffee mornings with her friends, her Pilates group, the quiet happy life she’s built around herself in her small village. No one there knows. And I remember too how, like me, at the end of every day, she goes home to an empty house. Her friends are all she has. If the truth came out, things would change for her. Could she handle that again?