What She Left: Enhanced Edition Read online

  It was definitely, to use the modern parlance, ‘a moment’. Seeing that geographer finger his initials in the condensation and feeling the quick, unfamiliar, arresting joy of a new idea. It had been a few days earlier that Alice, as one account euphemistically put it, ‘went in the water’. It had been, a coroner was later to conclude, between midnight and 2 a.m. on 5 February 2012. But it had been eight years earlier, the autumn of 2004, when she’d first come here. Of course to the world at large – and indeed me initially – she was just another fresher then, one of thousands I’ve seen over the decades. I recall spotting her a few times early in that term: tallish, long hair, striking.

  Much has inevitably recently been made of our ‘connection’, but regardless of that she was perfect for my purposes on so many levels. Not just because of how she died, more because of when she lived. The way we communicate has changed more in the past twenty-five years – in one lifetime – than it did in the previous thousand. The Internet has rewritten the rule book. Her generation has seen that change, has been that change.

  Naturally, I had no idea where it would lead, but I wasn’t allowing for the law of unintended consequences. As far as I was concerned, it was going to be a straightforward, hopefully illuminating piece of work, admittedly one that would require sensitivity. It wasn’t so much a case of attempting to prove a thesis; I merely sought to map a life. Hers. Yes, because of our ‘association’, but more because she was like the rest of us: complicated, fascinating, unique, human.

  ‘Isn’t it all a bit lowbrow?’ one or two of my colleagues enquired.

  But bugger them. For once I went with my heart. I wanted to see how much of that dear, beautiful girl was left behind, what remained. After all, it wasn’t until relatively recently – it’s worth reminding ourselves that in evolutionary terms, almost everything is relatively recently – that unless you were a nobleman or a royal, your life and death would pass unrecorded. Beyond your immediate family and perhaps a small peer group, unnoticed. You’d be remembered briefly by those surviving you, but beyond that, nothing.

  It wasn’t exactly ‘research’ I embarked upon, not in the traditional sense. That’s too grandiose a description and alludes to a more methodical approach than I was able – or inclined – to apply. ‘Obsession’ was a word others were quick to use and perhaps there was some verisimilitude in that. To ape the Scout movement’s motto, I’ve done my best.

  My ‘findings’ are all in my book. Some light editing has been necessary to avoid ambiguity, but I’m confident that what’s left is representative, if not entirely comprehensive. I hope it does her some sort of justice and, more critically, that it brings justice. Because that is my sincere wish: that the contents are treated as evidence.

  Twenty-five, she was – poor, precious little thing – when she went in the water.

  Perverse, how the world often only takes an interest in you after you’re gone, but t’was ever thus.

  Ironic that it’s resulted in me becoming a minor celebrity. All my work on ethnolinguistics and the Sami languages passed without notice, other than among a small circle of academics. I was suddenly in demand. Sky News sent cars to my house at ungodly hours to whisk me to studios where young blonde women dabbed make-up on my cheeks so the cameras would ‘love me’. Their questions frequently referred to a ‘journey’: hers, mine, theirs, everyone seems to be on one these days. Anthropologist. They all clung to that word. It was as if it gave them authority, authenticity. We’ve got an anthropologist: a real, live one, here in the studio. Soon it wasn’t even solely my area of expertise I was in demand to pontificate about; I found myself called upon to discuss all manner of current affairs. Afghanistan. Abortion. The new iPhone. Even once, on Channel 5, our obsession with daytime TV – an irony that was clearly missed on the producer.

  In the face of this new-found currency, my paymasters were conflicted: I brought kudos to their establishment, but the Alice affair was a mixed blessing, with reporters descending on the faculty, as they have my home.

  Nowadays that’s how I’m introduced. The Alice Salmon anthropologist. The man who unearthed the truth about the River Dane girl. Once, heaven help us, the boffin-turned-sleuth. Alice and I have become a corollary of each other. A footnote in each other’s stories. Although we always would have been that anyway.

  An early proof of the book is on my desk: Alice’s face peering out at me from the cover. Should you choose to read it, by the time you turn the final page you’ll know the truth about Alice Salmon. I’m wary of deeming every word strictly true because those whose lives she touched are inherently subjective: layered with love or, as I was to discover, in some instances, hate.

  On the whole, people have been remarkably helpful, even when I explained their contributions could end up in the public domain. I was clear from day one: there was to be no sanitization. It was going to be the lot, however shaming or shocking; an approach, incidentally, I steadfastly extended to myself.

  Given the territory I was in, it was inevitable that I would meet some opposition, but I couldn’t have predicted the reaction from some quarters: that sabotage attempts would be made on my work, that my reputation would be systematically tarnished, my wife targeted. They called me sacrilegious, branded me a pervert, accused me of trying to dig up the dead. But we Homo sapiens have a duty to do that. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t know about Tutankhamun or Machu Picchu. Without that probing sense of curiosity, without constantly looking over our shoulder, we wouldn’t know about the cave paintings at Lascaux, wouldn’t be able to stand there and stare at those magnificent running Palaeolithic bulls, marvel at the sheer damn wonder of them coming alive in front of us, now and 17,000 years ago. I hope I still have time to see them again one last time. I’m looking forward to the next chapter in my life, even if it will be a short one.

  I’m wary of slipping into lecturer mode, but what we call ‘communication’ today – speech – actually originated about 100,000 years ago. Non-verbal means evolving into verbal ones. Writing was a seismic step: it gave us the ability to record, to remember. It speeded the spread of knowledge. It was both evolution and it quickened evolution. It’s what sets humans apart, defining how we live and who we are. Alice was a brilliant communicator. I was determined to let her speak for herself. As one of my former colleagues put it with uncharacteristic sagacity: Let her be her own story.

  I like to think, as well, that I’m a better man than before all this began. I’m definitely less pompous, although perhaps assuming one is so marks the height of pomposity.

  When I run my finger across the cover of the book, I resist my natural inclination to conclude that it, like any book, is inadequate – pages, ink cast into shapes, the white fading to yellow, the paper crumbling and disintegrating. A lifespan of its own. I remind myself of its power, its potential. That justice will follow. It must.

  I remind myself as well that human beings I’ve never met – who I can’t ever visualize – will cradle this paltry offering in the palm of their hands (I’m no technophobe, but am of the generation that envisages it as a tangible, corporeal object rather than an electronic one). That I’ll be heard, that I’ll speak to strangers, and my words will connect, like sinewy tissue between us. Perhaps it’s absolution I’m seeking. Atonement. Forgiveness. Of course there’s one person in this whole sorry saga who I’ll never, ever forgive.

  Possibly there was a little truth in those comments, after all. About why I chose the girl I did, why I wanted, needed, to put her back together again. To make her live. Because that’s what we all crave, isn’t it? To feel we’re important, that we’re desired, that we’ve been noticed. That we’ve made a difference. That we’re missed. That each of us is remembered. To feel, as my colleagues in her old department might say, blessed on this earth.

  But more than that. More than that and less than that.

  Simply, that each of us is loved.

  Alice Salmon, RIP.

  What She Left by Professor Jeremy Cooke is pu
blished next month by Prion Press, priced £9.99. Anthropology à la Mode readers can get a discount if they order a copy via the number on p. 76.

  Alice Salmon’s ‘Favourite quotations’ Facebook profile,

  3 November 2011

  ‘Grammar is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.’

  Anon.

  ‘Be the heroine of your life, not the victim.’

  Nora Ephron

  ‘The truth hurts for a little while, but lies hurt forever.’

  Anon.

  ‘We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.’

  Robert Wilensky

  ‘Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.’

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Notes made by Luke Addison on his laptop,

  8 February 2012

  You never knew I was going to propose, did you? Well, add it to the list of things I never told you. The night you confronted me about Prague – the night you said we had to take a break from each other – I had a ring in my pocket. Been planning it for weeks. Was going to tell you the next morning to pack an overnight bag; we’d walk to the station, go to Gatwick, then Rome. It was all booked.

  ‘Luke, I’m going to ask you a question and I need you to answer honestly,’ you’d said before I had a chance. ‘Can you promise me you’ll do that?’

  ‘Course,’ I’d replied. I was picturing your face: how you’d look when I explained you didn’t need to go to work on Monday, how I’d cleared it with your boss, it was all sorted. It was delicious: knowing that the eighteen months we’d been together was only the beginning. Yes, we might have been a bit young – no one ties the knot until at least their late twenties these days – but why wait? You weren’t the only one who could be impulsive.

  ‘That rugby weekend you went on in Prague – did you sleep with someone?’

  The air went out of the room. I sat down on the end of your bed and felt the jeweller’s box in my pocket, a rigid square weight. I couldn’t lie, not to you. ‘Al, it was nothing.’

  ‘Who was she?’ you asked, a flat, resigned tone to your voice.

  It had been seven weeks after we’d met. I’d known exactly how long it was because I’d decided if it was less than two months I’d keep quiet, if it was more then I’d confess. ‘It doesn’t matter who she was.’

  ‘It matters to me,’ you bit back. ‘Believe me, right now it matters to both of us.’

  ‘It was a girl on a hen weekend. I was drunk.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Another new tone to your voice: hard, unyielding.

  ‘I was scared you’d dump me.’ I fingered the ring in my pocket. Thought: Should I just do it? Never mind waiting until we’re in the restaurant in the Campo de’ Fiori – I’d picked it because it was famous for its prosciutto and that was your favourite; the table was booked; I’d even tipped off the maître d’. Just do it. Prove how much I loved you, prove that what happened seven weeks after we met was no more than a girl whose name I could barely remember on a weekend I could barely remember. But you started crying and when I reached out you batted away my hands and slumped down on the side of your bed so we were at right angles. Flashes of Prague had come back to me: the Irish bar, her and her friends on the table next to us, a cobbled street in the half-light – it was nearly four in the morning – turning left towards my hotel and her with me, that girl from Dartford or was it Dartmouth? Jen – no, not Jen, Gill. It had all felt so far away from my real life. ‘It meant nothing,’ I repeated, twisting round and taking your hand. I watched you crying, the miniature Christmas tree flashing on the chest of drawers over your shoulder. More of the Prague trip had come back to me: the smell of wet cobbles, the rohlík signs in bakers’ windows, how it had felt like the end of an era. I knew you were the one, Al, even seven weeks after meeting you I did, but I knew as well that you’d mean an end to the me I’d got used to: the lads’ trips abroad, the 4 a.m. finishes to drinking sessions, the random encounters in bars, and I wasn’t sorry; I’d miss that, but I had you now and that would be better. Already then I loved you, Alice, but it was as if I had to say goodbye to the old me first, send that person out with a bang. One last, huge blowout.

  ‘I think you should go now,’ you said.

  I visualized our plane taking off for Rome and the two empty seats, yours a window because you loved the view.

  ‘You don’t get to have your cake and eat it, Luke. Life’s not like that.’

  ‘Fucking Adam,’ I said. ‘The gobshite.’

  ‘Secrets rarely stay secret.’ You wiped your eyes. You’d loved the last eighteen months, you said. But we were in our mid-twenties now and relationships were too important to risk getting wrong. ‘We need to work out how we feel about each other.’

  ‘I know how I feel,’ I said. ‘I love you.’ I wasn’t going to let this happen, not again, not with you. I’d wondered again about pulling out the ring. Saying: Look? But it was all wrong; I’d made it all wrong. Plus your mind was made up.

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ you said. ‘Right now, I don’t know whether I love you. Or I do, but I don’t know if I love you enough.’

  ‘I’m the same person I always was,’ I said.

  ‘No, no you’re not.’ You were close to losing your temper; I’d only ever seen that once before, when you’d seen that man on a bus slapping a little boy.

  ‘I’ve never claimed to be an angel.’

  ‘Don’t you dare try to make this my fault, Luke.’

  ‘It was only seven weeks after we’d met, for God’s sake! We weren’t even referring to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend by that stage.’

  ‘Go, please, just go. I can’t be with you for a while.’

  ‘We’re not splitting up, are we? We’re not.’

  ‘I want us to take a break. No texting, no emailing, no nothing.’

  In other circumstances, I’d have picked you up on that – laughed, said, ‘ “No nothing”, that’s a double negative, that means I can’, but tears were streaming down your face. It was only a fortnight to Christmas.

  ‘No contact for two months,’ you said.

  It seemed an odd, arbitrary too-long length of time, but it struck me as better than the alternative – nothing but weekends like Prague for the rest of my life.

  ‘Now get out of my flat.’

  You used to be scathing about people with complicated love lives. It’s very simple, you said, you either love someone or you don’t. But I turned you into one of those people. That was my gift to you and now you’re dead. You’ve been dead for three days and it’s impossible, Al. Sleeping. Getting up, eating, showering, shaving, sitting on a Tube, answering the phone. It’s meaningless. You told me you once had a spell feeling like that when you were a teenager and I never understood, but now I do. Finally, finally, now it’s too late, I get a little sense of what it might have been like for you, what it might have been like to have been you, Alice Louise Salmon, the girl I met on Friday 7 May 2010 (see, I do remember our anniversary) in Covent Garden. You’d come and stood next to me – my animal magnetism, I later joked. You got served before me and I’d said, ‘There’s a woman with bar presence,’ and quick as a flash you’d replied, ‘There’s a man who looks as if he’s trying to jump the queue!’

  I couldn’t live with you alive and us apart, and now I can’t live with you dead and us apart.

  I was never one for writing stuff down, but you said if no one ever did, how would we share and learn and get better, so here I am writing what I’m feeling, like you used to – like you said could make all the difference.

  You want me to be honest, Al? OK, well, here’s honest. I got in a fight – two fights. You never knew about the second one because it was last Sunday, the day after you died, but you knew all about the first one because it was with you.

  Email sent by Elizabeth Salmon,


  3 March 2012

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]