Cont.
HW:I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. Today is just… a lot. I still can’t believe any of this is happening.
LC:I understand. If I could just have the contact details for your daughter—
HW:You don’t understand.
LC:So explain it to me.
HW:Our daughter is eighteen but she’s still just a child. She doesn’t know anything about any of this and can’t help you, but I’ll give you a number for where she lives now if you insist on it.
LC:Thank you. It would also be useful if I could speak to some of your wife’s friends. Do you have numbers for them too? They might be able to shed some light on how she was feeling.
HW:Haven’t I done that already? I told you, Eden was feeling fine. Happiest she’s been for years.
LC:Sometimes it can be hard to tell those who we are closest to how we are really feeling. You are completely right, we don’t know for sure what has happened to Eden yet, but we do know that she is missing. Is there a friend you can think of that she might have confided in or gone to stay with?
HW:My wife doesn’t have any friends.
LC:Really? She seemed very friendly when I met her. And very sociable at the art gallery last night.
HW:That was her wanting to make friends. This move, this place, it was all meant to be a fresh start for us. We got married when she was still very young, and taking care of our daughter took over her whole life for a long time. She always put Gabriella first.
LC:Were there other parents at your daughter’s school that she was friendly and still in touch with?
HW:Our daughter was homeschooled. Eden didn’t have time for friends and until recently didn’t seem to want any. I can’t explain it any other way. It’s just how she was. Is. She has always been happy in her own company. I often have to travel for work, but Eden spent the last ten years at home with Gabby. That’s just how our lives were.
LC:May I ask what you do for a living?
HW:I’d rather not say.
LC:Can I ask why?
HW:You can ask what you want, but my work isn’t relevant.
LC:It might be.
HW:You think my wife jumped off a cliff because of my job? I’ve had the same job for years, and it paid for the life she wanted.
LC:The name of the company, if you don’t mind?
HW:I do mind, but fine, if it helps find her. I’m the CEO of a pharmaceutical and tech company in London called Thanatos.
28BIRDY
I stop reading the transcript and shut my laptop.
The walls of the pub fold in on me, the floor seems to tilt, and I grab the sticky, wooden table for balance. I close my eyes and the world is dark. Sunday whimpers, somehow knowing that something is wrong. My head fills with a sound I can only describe as storm clouds colliding with each other, and I reach inside my satchel for some pills. I take two to take the edge off, and wash them down with the remains of my virgin mojito. Until recently, I had never even heard of Thanatos. Now I’m reading a transcript of an interview with the man who runs the company.
A company that claims to have predicted the day I will die.
It’s hard to explain why I wanted to be here at the end. I’m sure most people would think it is crazy to start a new job at a time like this, and they might be right. All I know is it felt like Hope Falls was calling me home. I haven’t told anyone that I’m dying, or when; I don’t know if the date Thanatos predicted will really be my last or if it will turn out to be nonsense. But Harrison Woolf must know if he is the CEO of the company. I think he knows more than he is letting on about a lot of things. All of which are somehow linked; my grandmother’s house, Thanatos, Hope Falls, Eden Fox… I’m sure of it.
I open my laptop again and google Harrison Woolf. A few results come up, but I know none of them are the man I’m looking for. I search Harrison Woolf and Thanatos, but again, nothing. No social media. No LinkedIn profile. Not a bean. The guy is a ghost online—a lot like me—which can only mean two things in my experience. Either he values his privacy or he has something to hide. Or both. I close the laptop again and slip it inside my satchel. The internet might not be able to tell me what I want to know, but I bet someone else can.
“I wonder if you might be able to do me a favor?” I say to the pretty barmaid sitting behind the bar. With her long red hair and big green eyes, she reminds me of someone, but I can’t remember who. Maddy was here when I first arrived at The Smuggler’s Inn, and said I could have any room upstairs I wanted given the place is empty. Sunday—who is an excellent judge of character—liked her straight away, and so did I. She’s thirty-something, beautiful, bookish, and has an emotional intelligence that is hard to find in people these days. I can’t help thinking she should be doing more with her life than working in an empty pub.
“Do you mind keeping an eye on my dog if I leave him here for a while?” I ask.
