Jennifer is older now than she was on her official photo, but she still has the freckles, and the wild curls. She just has a few lines and creases added in, as well as a suntan – which makes perfect sense when someone lives in Hawaii. We are both silent for a moment, and I realise she must be carrying out the same assessment of my face on her screen. I smile, and ask if she can hear me.
‘Hi! Yes! I can hear you … just a word of warning, if you suddenly hear the sound of screaming, I’m not torturing anyone in a dungeon, OK? My daughter has an ear infection – at least I’m told it’s an ear infection, she’s behaving like it’s something fatal. I’ve only just got her down to sleep, and it’s not guaranteed she’ll stay that way. On the plus side, it meant I was still awake when your email landed.’
‘That’s OK,’ I say, ‘I completely understand. Kids live in the moment – which is usually joyful, but if they have a sore throat or a stomach ache or their ears hurt, they only live in that moment, don’t they? How old is she?’
‘Mary is almost three, and yeah – there haven’t been many good moments for the last couple of days … Anyway, Jess, it’s good to speak to you. How can I help? You said you were looking for Joe?’
The way she says my name, and the fact that she’s agreed to talk to me in the middle of the night, tells me that she definitely knows who I am. That like so many of the people I’ve encountered on this journey, she is aware of my past, of Gracie, of the way things ended with Joe. Or at least the way he thinks they ended.
It is, I realise, yet another tribute to him that none of these people – his mother, Ada, Jennifer, Geraldine – seem to present any hostility towards me. It could have been different. He could, quite rightly, have portrayed me as the woman who shut him out of his life – who turned her back on him. Yet, very clearly, he never did.
That realisation gives me a sudden whoosh of warmth, an emotion so strong that it affects me physically, with a red bloom in my cheeks and a small flurry of butterflies unfurling their wings in my chest. He doesn’t see me as the bad guy in any of this, and I need to remember that. Maybe one day I can stop seeing myself as the bad guy too.
I briefly explain what we’ve been up to, and she is fascinated by our mission. She asks lots of questions, and gets me to explain it step by step, the way every scrap of information and every apparent dead end led us here, to a mid-priced hotel in the heart of New York, talking to a stranger in Hawaii while my cousin scarfs down his nineteenth cappuccino of the hour.
‘Wow,’ she says when I’ve eventually satisfied her curiosity, ‘that’s quite an adventure you guys have had!’
She is, I remind myself, a writer. She’s bound to be nosy – I’m sure it’s part of the job description.
‘OK,’ she continues, after I see her briefly glance behind her, presumably checking with one ear to make sure Mary is still asleep, ‘I think the coast is clear … I hate to let you down, Jess, but I don’t have the happy ending you might have hoped for. I’m so sorry. We lost touch a while ago … I don’t know why. I mean, I was busy with my career. Clara was busy with her studies – she managed to get a place at college too. Molecular physics. Joe was working hard. So, yeah, we were all busy, but … I still don’t really know why. He just kind of floated away, you know?’
My initial reaction is one of bitter disappointment – but I remind myself that we’ve been here before. We’ve had lots of people remember Joe fondly, but not know where he is. He has become a near-legendary figure in so many lives – he came, he helped, he left once his job was done.
I think, in a way, Joe has also been half-living, like myself. Never fully engaging with the people around him, always holding something back. Never getting too close – because if you get too close, you have too much to lose.
‘That’s all right,’ I say, seeing the regret on her face. ‘Life does get busy – especially when you have kids. And from what I’ve heard, Joe was a hard man to keep hold of anyway.’
‘He was,’ she admits. ‘That’s a good description. We saw each other less and less, and our phone calls went further and further in between, and meetings we planned got cancelled … but I also know it wasn’t always us doing the cancelling. It was almost as though he was ready to move on – as though he wanted to break free? Which sounds a lot more unpleasant than I mean it to. He just … he was restless. Physically and emotionally – he could never stay in one spot.
‘Maybe, if we hadn’t been so focused on our own lives, we could have tried harder – but it is what it is. The last time I was in touch with him was when we found out that Clara was pregnant. He was thrilled for us – genuinely thrilled. But I could also tell, somehow, that we wouldn’t hear much from him again – I just had this instinct that he felt like it was time to let us go. That we were going to be fine without him.’
‘That sounds about right,’ I reply, smiling sadly. Poor Joe. Always on the move, always searching. ‘Can you tell me where he was when you last spoke? Anything at all that could help us?’
‘Not much. He was in New York, for sure. He’d worked for my parents for a while – they run an apple farm – and I know he enjoyed that. They overpaid him, let him stay for free, they were so grateful for what he’d done for me … and, obviously, he was a good worker.
‘Then he travelled a little, and ended up working at a bar near Times Square. Madigans, or Hanigans, something like that. I know he was saving – Joe could always live on next to nothing, couldn’t he? Like, I’d buy a new sweater for the amount he’d need to live on for a month …’
She has laughter in her voice as she says it, but she’s right – he’d grown up with so little, and the habit stuck. When we moved into the flat, it didn’t faze him at all that we had no cash to speak of. He always worked, he always saved, he always had a plan to try and make things better for us.
‘Anyway. He was saying he had some idea about trying to find a place of his own – somewhere that needed work, because he could do that himself. So he was living in a crummy room in a building next door to this Madigans or Hanigans, and working every hour God sends. I can’t remember the name of the bar, but I think I might have the address of his apartment somewhere, if that helps? I think we sent him a Happy Hanukkah card there once in honour of Ada. I’ll still have his mobile number around as well, possibly?’
‘That would help, thank you. Can you send me the details when you track them down?’
The prospect of having a working phone number for Joe is a strange one – equal parts tantalising and terrifying. Ada didn’t have one – she refuses to speak to anyone on a mobile apparently, out of sheer contrariness – but now it seems possible that Jennifer might. ‘Sure,’ she replies quickly. ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer more. Last time we spoke, he seemed happy, if that’s any consolation? Or at least he seemed OK.’
I nod, and tell her it is a consolation, and ask her again when that would have been. She figures out the timeline in her head, and comes to the conclusion that it was probably about three and a half years ago.