The Day We Disappeared (13 page)

‘I couldn't believe coffee
tasted that good! When Antipodean coffee finally made it to London I almost wept.
Don't tell my nutritional therapist, though. I don't drink caffeine. Or
alcohol. And I don't eat sugar. Or wheat. Or dairy.'

‘Ha-ha! You are such a funny
little thing, Annabel Mulholland.'

I tried not to let my face split in two.
People like Kate Brady were funny. Not me!

‘I had my first proper coffee in
Sydney,' Stephen was recalling. ‘Artisan flat white is all I'll
drink now.' He grinned. ‘What a pair of twats.'

The coffee arrived and we drifted off,
somehow, into tales of childhood holidays. It turned out that we'd gone to the
same little beach in Wales and had even stayed at the same caravan site. ‘I
used to love those waffles they sold at the little post office,' Stephen was
recalling. ‘Do you remember the ones? Those round things? Oh, God …'

‘
Yes!
I used to bully Dad
into buying them for us!' I was probably a bit red-faced and shouty, but I was
astonished. I'd never met anyone who'd heard of Tresaith before, let
alone run around naked on its beach as a child! And the waffles! The waffles!

‘Oh, the waffles, Annie
Mulholland.' Stephen sipped his coffee, watching me. ‘I couldn't
help noticing that you've mentioned your father a few times, but not your
mother. Is she evil?'

My smile faded. ‘No …' I
felt my heart skip a beat, as it always did when someone asked me about Mum.
‘She died when I was little.'

Stephen's
face fell. ‘Oh, I'm so sorry,' he said. ‘I shouldn't
have asked. I … Oh dear, I'm so very sorry.'

‘It's okay.' I clasped
my hands together for strength. ‘It was my seventh birthday, the day she died.
Very occasionally I can still picture her face. Her real face, I mean, rather than
photos. So at least I have that.'

Stephen looked anguished. ‘Oh,
God, you poor girl.' Without warning, he put his hand on mine. Warmth
fireballed up my arm and I felt confused, then ashamed. I shouldn't be feeling
like that while I was talking about Mum. Although wouldn't Mum have liked him?
Once she'd got over the whole corporate thing?

I looked timidly at Stephen's
face, over which a long shadow seemed to have fallen.

‘I lost my own mum just after
Christmas,' he said, to my surprise. ‘She had Hodgkin's lymphoma.
And I know that however “fine” it is, it isn't. Not
really.'

‘Oh, no,' I said,
appalled.

‘Oh, yes, sadly.'
Stephen's face didn't change but I knew his pain: still blade-sharp and
unhealed.

‘I'm so sorry,' I
whispered. Imagine going through all that agony and having to be a big brave leader
to thousands of people. I'd just crawl into a little hole.

His phone went off – for perhaps the
fourth time since we'd been there – and he snapped. ‘Fuck
off
,' he hissed. ‘Fucking fuck off.'

I flinched. It didn't matter how
justified anger was, I never felt comfortable near it.

‘Sorry,' he said, turning
his phone off.

‘It's, er, fine. Goodness, I
had no idea. No wonder you've been feeling so rotten.'

Prince's
‘Raspberry Beret' came on the radio, and I thought about Dad and his
funny stories of dancing with Mum. She was mad about dancing, he said, danced in the
kitchen, the garden, the fields … ‘She even insisted on dragging me to the
little disco in Bakewell when she was pregnant with you,' he'd smile. He
liked to act like he'd thought she was mad, but his face always betrayed him.
He'd thought she was the most wonderful woman on earth. ‘When that
“Raspberry Beret” song came on, she twirled around like a
teenager,' he had once said. ‘Whirling and swirling with you tucked away
inside her. The locals always loved it. Thought she was absolutely batty.'

On a whim, I shared the memory with
Stephen.

‘She sounds brilliant.' He
paused. ‘Was it cancer that got her too?'

I checked his face. Did he know?
Sometimes people would work out who I was but they'd pretend not to know. I
hated that.

Stephen, as far as I could see,
hadn't the faintest idea.

But I couldn't tell him. I opened
my mouth to speak and nothing came out.

‘It's okay,' he said,
seeing my distress. ‘It's really okay – I shouldn't have asked
you.' He sighed. ‘Bereavement gives you a slight edge, doesn't it?
A slight sense that the world is altered, and that your place in it has changed.
Like you're part of a different race that you never knew about or wanted to
join.'

That was exactly how it felt, although
for me there was also the awful sense of hyper-visibility that I'd fought so
hard. The knowledge that, as soon as I said my name,
people's faces would scrunch up as they tried to
remember where they knew it from. And then the awkwardness – the
awfulness
– when they remembered.

‘Well, Tim seemed like a good
bloke,' Stephen said softly. ‘I'm sure he looks after you. I
certainly hope so.' He fiddled with his coffee glass, rolling it around the
table in front of him.

‘Tim? Yes, he's a good
friend to me.'

‘Are you sure that's all?
You two seemed so … so in tune!'

‘Quite sure.'

‘Oh.' Stephen looked
pleased.

‘Me and Tim … We're just
very good friends. We go back a long way.'

He actually smiled. ‘Well,
that's nice. There's something awful about being single, then bumping
into happy couples on a Saturday morning. You think you're happy pootling
around on your own and then … Oh. Right.
There
's what happy looks
like.'

I felt a bit crazy. ‘But
you're not single,' I said desperately. ‘You've got a
kid!'

Stephen seemed confused. ‘Not the
last time I checked. What do you mean?'

My heart was in my mouth. The talk of
Mum, and now this. Too much. I felt my shutters trying to close but they seemed
jammed: I was still there, still exposed.

‘Oh, the picture on your office
wall,' I muttered. ‘Of the child. And, er, there's one in your
wallet I just noticed at the till …'

Stephen laughed. ‘You
are
stalking me! You're a proper stalker!'

‘Oh, no,
no, I just thought … you know, the pictures, the Paris trip …'

‘I don't have a wife, or
even a girlfriend, and I was actually going to Paris on my own that weekend, to take
photos. No child either, I'm afraid. But I do have a damnably handsome little
nephew, Barnaby.'

‘I really wasn't stalking
you, Stephen. I –'

‘Sure about that?' His eyes
were twinkling.

‘Positive.' My face was
boiling.

‘Oh, Annie, I'm joking!
Please, you look terrified! I'm sure you have far better things to do than
stalk me.'

I couldn't say anything. I just
hated myself. Hated being this mad and complicated.

‘Look, I wanted to ask you,'
Stephen continued – perhaps trying to rescue me, ‘if you might be able to join
my senior management team in the South of France next month. We're having an
Out of Office at a château near St Émilion and the gang are all clamouring for you
to come and do massages. We need something lovely in our midst, Annie. Otherwise
it'll just be wine and cigars and chat about penis-extension cars. Please
come!'

I was dumbstruck.

He leaned back to appraise me, smiling
at me with those extraordinary eyes. ‘I'd love you to come,' he
said simply. ‘Never mind what my team want.
I
want you there. I like
you. You're a breath of fresh air around here.'

‘I … What about my other
clients?' I managed to say.

Stephen merely laughed. ‘Oh, come
on
. Are you really going to argue with me?' He locked his eyes on
mine. ‘Well, Annie?'

‘I have my two best friends'
birthdays,' I mumbled. Tim
and
Claudine had been born on the same day. Le Cloob had a tacit agreement that nobody
went away during this double celebration. But my heart was hammering and I knew I
was going to say yes. Not because I loved France with a passion and the thought of
walking through soft green vineyards on a summer evening filled me with joy. Not
even because I'd be able to eat all of the cheese east of the English Channel.
But because, even though it was beyond ridiculous, patently absurd, completely
inexplicable, I saw in his eyes that Stephen Flint was planning to seduce me. And I
knew that, for whatever reason, I was finally –
finally
– ready to be
seduced.

The first thing I noticed, when
Mark's truck growled into the lorry park at Badminton, was that everyone
looked like members of a secret army. There was a sizeable regiment of attractive
women driving enormous horseboxes with absolute confidence, their hair in messy
buns, all slim arms and sleeveless shirts. Theirs was matched by a regiment of tall,
slim, ruddy men, with names like Harry, Horatio and Hugo. And bringing up the rear
was a great sea of middle-aged women in felt fedoras, upturned collars and pearl
earrings, striding around with cups of coffee and surprisingly obedient dogs.

It wasn't the poshness I found
strange, I decided, as Mark flashed his parking permit at the security stewards.
These had to be some of the hardest-working people on earth; they could be as
wealthy or well schooled as they damned well liked. No, it was just the sense of
having entered a parallel universe.

We'd passed three parked police
cars on the A46 and I was still feeling jumpy. The sight of them had made my heart
stop and my hands were shaking even now. The police are really not here for you, you
fool, I reminded myself, as Mark and Tiggy jumped out of the cab. Stop being so
silly! I stayed for a few minutes,
determined to get my head straight and my body calm. I
breathed slowly, finding comfort in the equine smells drifting through the open
window: horsefeed, hoof oil, fly repellent.

In … and out.

In … and out.

Stumpy whinnied in the lorry behind
me.

I could do this. I'd get out and
help, and over the next few days I'd do everything with a smile on my
face.

Since he'd caught me kissing Joe
on the kitchen floor, Mark had gone back to talking to me only when he had to,
moving through each day with his face set, detached once again from the world around
him. I couldn't pretend I wasn't disappointed but I knew that in the
long run his coldness would make things easier for me. He'd go back to being
Mark Waverley, the closed door, and I'd go back to being Kate Brady, the
cheeky little fecker from Dublin.

I got out in time to see Stumpy towing
Mark down the ramp. The horse was excited. His head was at least eight feet off the
ground, and he pranced around like a colt. ‘Hoohohohohooo!' he shouted,
skittering sideways into Tiggy.

‘Stop it,' she said,
slapping his quarters, then marched up the ramp to calm Harold, who was stamping and
whinnying.

‘Is everything all right?' I
asked Mark. I'd never seen either horse like that.

Mark looked vaguely in my direction.
‘You know what they're like when they arrive at a competition,' he
said.

‘Oh, yes.' I blushed.
‘Yeah. Mad little bastards, horses!'
As Mark tied up Stumpy I caught him smiling, which
lifted my spirits.

Mark went off with Sandra, who'd
driven behind us in her falling-apart Clio, to register at the horse-trials office.
Tiggy and I walked the two horses down Badminton village's little high street
and into the stabling complex, where Stumpy started jogging again.

‘You,' I told him, as he
towed me through a vast old arch into the stableyard, ‘are being very
silly.'

The yard was full of people and horses,
tousle-haired young men with walkie-talkies, signs and noticeboards everywhere.
Yellow-stoned, huge and beautifully historic, the stabling ran off down the side of
the enormous bulk of Badminton House with a rather lovely duck pond thrown in, lest
any of the horses failed to notice that they were living now with the aristocracy.
Mark's two were to be stabled in the ‘under the clock' section,
which was so lovely it made me feel quite emotional. I'd been expecting huge
temporary stable blocks, not something that looked like the set of
Black
Beauty
.

‘Noisy in this section, but lovely
to be in the thick of it,' Tiggy told me.

‘It's beautiful,' I
breathed, shutting Stumpy into his ancient stable with its smart red walls and
cast-iron rails. His name was already on the door. ‘I can't believe
I'm here!'

I took Stumpy's bandages off,
checking his hind leg for warmth or swelling. Three weeks ago he had had a swollen
fetlock and all hell had broken loose: Mark had decided immediately to withdraw him
from Badminton and Maria had screamed that if he did, without giving
the horse a chance to recover, she
would take Stumpy and all of her father's horses away to another rider.
Stumpy, Harold, Madge, Alfie and Kangaroo, Mark's very finest horses, all
probably capable of winning Badminton.

Had I been allowing myself to think
about Mark at all, I'd have been heartbroken for him. Every time I had
dealings with Maria I was struck by the concrete hardness of the woman, her casual
cruelty, her extraordinary lack of respect for the man she'd married. If, as
Becca had intimated, Mark felt stuck with her because he would otherwise be
horseless, his life must seem impossibly bleak.

Stumpy's leg was fine. Phew.

Later on, after a thunderstorm had
hammered across the site like a gun battle, Stumpy and Mark went off to the trot-up
in front of Badminton House. Tiggy explained that it was a rather old-fashioned
demonstration of each horse's soundness and rather entertaining. ‘Go and
watch,' she said. ‘I really don't need you here. Oh, and look out
for Jochim Furst – he's one of Mark's biggest rivals. German. He's
shagging Maria.'

I stopped. ‘He's
what
?'

Tiggy shrugged. ‘He's
shagging Maria,' she repeated, applying a quartermarker to Stumpy's
bottom. ‘Everyone knows.'

‘Including Mark?'

She frowned. ‘Not sure,' she
said. ‘It's not the easiest thing to say to someone, is it? “Your
wife is shagging your rival and everyone knows.”'

The crowd went
wild when Mark and Stumpy appeared through the stable arch. I watched them trot
along the gravel, dumbfounded by what I'd just heard. Didn't anyone
care
? Mark's wife was cheating on him! The mother of his child
was at it with one of his closest professional rivals!

I noticed the tightness in Mark's
jaw as he ran alongside his horse in front of the bowler-hatted officials and knew
how much he would be hating the attention. Caroline Lexington-Morley, who'd
gone before him, had worn a short skirt and heels and had been devoured by the
cameras. She and Mark could not have been more different.

I suddenly felt an overwhelming sympathy
for my quiet, introverted boss. He worked so bloody hard at this, gave it every atom
of energy he had, and there was his wife making a mockery of him while everyone
gossiped behind his back. I wanted to help him, but how? What could I possibly do
for a man who wouldn't let me anywhere near him?

Just be cheerful, I reminded myself.

‘Nice work!' I said, as we
led Stumpy back to the stables.

Mark shot a grateful look in my
direction. ‘Really?'

‘Really, boss. I was impressed. A
fantastic arse you've got there in those trousers.'

It was a risk, but Mark, to my intense
relief, was quite amused. ‘Oh. Thank you.'

‘You're welcome,
Captain!'

Stumpy's hoofs clicked and
clattered over the uneven cobblestones.

‘I hate
all that shit,' Mark admitted. ‘I wish I didn't have to do
it.'

‘I know,' I said
sympathetically. ‘I totally don't blame you.'

‘Really?'

‘Really. Whatever you might think,
Mark, I don't enjoy noise and attention either. In fact, I hate it.
That's why I love working on your farm so much.' I paused.
‘It's the nicest job I've ever had.'

To my amazement, Mark smiled right at
me. It was the first smile he'd sent my way in quite a long time. ‘Thank
you,' he said quietly, and I glowed because I knew he meant it.

There's no one really on your
team, I thought, as Mark handed Stumpy to Tiggy. Your mum loves you, but she's
useless. Your daughter loves you but she's six, and your wife is shagging
someone behind your back. Your grooms are all far too scared of you to be your mates
and you don't have time for proper friends.

No wonder he was so close to Stumpy. He
was lonely. We actually had quite a lot in common, Mark and I.

Mark turned to find me watching him.
‘Want to walk the cross-country course with me?' he offered. As soon as
he asked, his cheeks coloured. ‘Tiggy doesn't need you at the
moment,' he explained quickly. ‘I think she wants you off her
hands.'

Three hours later, as the sun set over
the uneven roof of an old barn at the edge of the lorry field, I was sitting in the
cab of our box having a secret brandy from Sandra's supply.

There were two
reasons why I was drinking alone while everyone else was at dinner. The first was
fear. Mark and Stumpy couldn't possibly make it round that course alive! It
was
monstrous
! Mark had caught me lying down in a big ditch over which was
suspended an enormous tree trunk – a trakehner jump, apparently. I had lain down
first to see how many of me could fit lengthways across it and had stayed there
because I was so shocked and frightened at the thought of Stumpy trying to clear
this abyss that I couldn't get up.

The second reason I was drinking was
that in the last three hours I had become very seriously confused. Mark had really
come alive as we'd walked round in the bright post-thunder sun, chatting quite
animatedly about the history of the course. ‘But of course you know all of
this,' he'd said, as we stood by a giant lake into and out of which he
had to jump. ‘I'm sure you don't need me to tell you.'

‘You're right,'
I'd muttered, dodging a posh bloke in wraparound sunglasses who was driving a
golf buggy at high speed. ‘But it's, er, much more helpful to hear it
from an expert.'

Mark had laughed. A lovely, gravelly,
sweet laugh that had split his face in two and made the polo-shirted girls following
us round the course take unashamed pictures of him. ‘Oh, Kate,'
he'd said, at my beetroot-red cheeks. ‘How much longer are we going to
keep this up?'

Oh, shite.

‘Kate Brady,' Mark said,
still smiling – a gorgeous, bashful smile that completely eclipsed the dazzling
beauty of the Duke of Beaufort's estate, ‘I
know
you're
not a horse
person! There was no pony
called Frog. There was no childhood spent galloping around on ponies. I seriously
doubt that you'd so much as patted a horse before you arrived on my
yard.'

I'd just stared dumbly at a huge
Mitsubishi advert next to where Mark was supposed to jump out of the lake.
‘Um, what was that?' I'd said eventually.

Mark had thrown back his head and
laughed. ‘Kate,' he'd said, walking towards me. My stomach
lurched.
STOP IT
, I hissed at it.
THINK OF BECCA. THINK OF THE BAD
SHIT. AND THEN THINK OF EVERYTHING THAT'S GOOD ABOUT YOUR NEW LIFE,
STOMACH, AND STOP LURCHING.

‘Kate, the first thing you told me
was that you sat on a fifteen-two horse and went for a gallop when you were three.
That was, er, pretty surprising
.
'

I sighed. A couple of weeks after that
awkward lunch I'd thought back to what I'd said and felt a bit sick.
Already I knew it had been laughable. I'd just hoped they'd thought
they'd misheard me.

I looked helplessly at Mark, because I
didn't know what to say, and then I looked away because he was absolutely
gorgeous, grinning straight at me with his hair doing that wavy windblown thing and
his face all burnished by the late sun.

‘And Frog,' he said,
sniggering. ‘Outstanding.'

I found my lips beginning to smile. How
had I ever thought I'd get away with it? I was a joke!

‘You told me you'd got your
A test at Pony Club. Even though only about ten people in the country take it each
year. And really, Kate, every time you opened your mouth
for the first two weeks, you gave yourself away. Pretty
much everything you said was bollocks.' He sat on the grass because he was
laughing so much. ‘And yet you just carried right on!'

‘Oh, God.' I sat down beside
him. I dipped my head away as a photographer pointed a camera at us. I was going to
have to be careful of that.

Mark was laughing so hard I
couldn't help but join in. The harder he laughed, the harder I laughed. It
went on for what seemed like for ever.

‘So why did you keep me on?'
I'd asked eventually. ‘Why did you let me have the job? You told me you
needed the best grooms on the planet.'

‘I gave you the job because I
liked you,' he said simply. He turned to me and, against my better judgement,
I turned to him. ‘Your Irish charm won me over. I was having a horrible fight
with Maria and you just bowled in telling loads of lies. With a nice smile and lots
of steamrollerish good cheer. You were very funny.'