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‘Hang on … my reception is going,’ I lie. ‘Just, er, call me if he calls! Bye!’
I hang up and then look in trepidation at the screen, as though the woman I was talking to might leap out of my phone. How crazy am I acting, on a scale of one to Amy Dunne in Gone Girl? Probably still only a three or a four, right? People do crazy things for love all the time.
‘What’s your plan then,’ asks Ted, ‘with this case?’
‘I’m not sure. He’s bound to call though, right? How can this guy not have realised he has the wrong bag by now? It has my mobile number written on the tag.’
‘Remind me why you are so intent on meeting this man?’ Ted says, drumming the steering wheel with his fingers. ‘What was the book that makes him so irresistible?’
‘I don’t need your mockery, thank you very much.’
‘I’m not mocking you. Maybe I could help search the bag for clues.’
‘I don’t know. I should probably just wait for him to call.’ I turn to see if Ted looks serious. ‘What qualifies you to help anyway?’
He pauses for a moment, stroking his beard with one hand, as though genuinely contemplating his skill set.
‘Hmm, I have a Boy Scout badge for Signs, Signals and Codes?’
‘Well, in that case …’
The car turns out of a lane boxed in by low granite walls, and we emerge again on the coast. The island is small, so nowhere is much further than a fifteen-minute drive, but the place is a maze of lanes I am glad that I don’t need to navigate myself. Ted pulls into a gravel car park overlooking the sea and drives right to the edge of the cliff. It is a very different scene to the bay where we have just been: instead of low by the shore, we are now high above the sea, grey-blue water stretching to the horizon in every direction. On either side of the car park, narrow footpaths follow the undulating shape of the land’s edge, the slope covered by a blanket of green and brown. Down below, waves turn white where the rock meets the sea – a wild swell pulsing against the dark granite edge of the island. I think of pirates trying to land here centuries ago, how impossible it would have been to get ashore.
Ted and I both get out of the car and I stretch my arms above my head, exhilarated by the blustery clifftop breeze.
‘This place isn’t in my album.’
‘No, but you wanted me to look in the bag, and it’s a good place to stop.’
‘I didn’t know Jersey had all these cliffs,’ I say, snapping a photo of the scene.
‘The island slopes down like a block of cheese. The north is like this, the south is flat, beaches.’
‘So, I’m on top of the cheese right now?’
He smiles. ‘You are.’
‘I’M ON TOP OF THE CHEEEEESE!’ I shout at the sea.
He laughs, and then screws up his face as though he thinks I am silly. I can’t help smiling at his reaction, and then I keep smiling from gratitude that he’s shown me this beautiful view. The air here feels so unlike London, like I’m breathing new air that no one has ever breathed before. Ted’s gaze meets mine, and I notice his eyes are calm, like a boat with a deep, even keel.
‘Are you always like this?’ he asks.
‘What am I like?’ I ask, curious as to what he might say.
‘Joyful,’ he says, and it is the last word I expected.
‘Not always,’ I say, trying to cover the surprise in my reaction. ‘Alright then, Boy Scout, let’s see if you deserved that badge of yours.’
His eyes smile then, and the moment passes, but the word ‘joyful’ reverberates in my head like the name of a long-forgotten friend.
As we walk around to the boot of the car, Ted says, ‘You do realise this suitcase is the McGuffin in your story?’
‘What’s a McGuffin?’
‘Not a Hitchcock fan then?’ Ted shakes his head, takes his cap off and flings it into the boot. As he runs his hands through his thick hair, I’m struck again by how much younger he is than I first assumed. He is certainly not making the best of himself. I wonder how his wife handles kissing that beard. There’s just so much of it, it would be like kissing someone through a hedge. Why am I imagining other people’s kissing predicaments? Inappropriate, Laura.
‘A McGuffin is an object or event that motivates a character in the story, but is ultimately unimportant or irrelevant, like the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend, the ring in The Lord of the Rings, Rosebud in Citizen Kane.’
