The Day We Disappeared (25 page)

‘You haven't. I do a good
line in paranoia without any need of help.'

I felt Stephen smile into my hair.
‘Do you want me to put him off for you? Buy you a bit of time?'

I pulled back to see his face.
‘Would you mind?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Then yes, please. Stephen, I
–' I took a deep breath. ‘I'm going to call my therapist. Get an
appointment.'

Stephen hugged me. ‘Good girl.
We'll get through this. I'm taking the liberty of giving you the day
off, so you can get your head straight. And I'm giving myself the liberty of a
morning off to look after you.'

I filled Stephen's beautiful
cast-iron bath while he called Tim and told him I had food poisoning and
wasn't going anywhere today. I jumped when I heard my own phone ring, and
panicked when I saw it was from a withheld number. I let it ring out, and felt sick
when a message came through.

But it was Kate. Rambling on happily
about her life on the farm, telling me I was a funny old fool and that she
missed me, she'd be sure to visit
London soon. I smiled. Good. If anything was going to help glue Le Cloob together,
it would be our Irish friend.

Stephen let me laze around in the bath
for a while before he climbed in, too, ignoring his phone, which buzzed imperiously
and without pause. ‘How did he take it?' I asked.

‘He'll survive.' He
tugged at one of my soapy toes. Hot steam gave him wet, starfish eyelashes, which I
wanted to kiss. ‘Unless he's a complete psycho, in which case
he'll come and find us and kill us.'

I let Stephen massage my feet. I felt
strangely detached from the world, as if there were a fog around me. The only things
I could see clearly were Stephen and me.

‘At least you and I are
fine,' I said. ‘Everything else feels a bit sub-standard but you and I
feel good. Oh, and Dad. He's doing brilliantly. And Kate, when she bothers to
call. So I guess everything is okay, really, apart from Le Cloob. And, er, the state
of my head.'

Stephen rubbed his thumb right into the
ball of my foot. ‘You do seem to feel crappy when you've seen Le Cloob,
these days.'

‘I know.'

‘It's difficult,' he
acknowledged. ‘When you have this wonderful friendship and suddenly it's
causing you loads of pain and shit. And you're thinking, Hang on. This is
meant to be my safe place. My good place.'

‘Yes! That's exactly how it
feels!'

‘I had a friendship like
that,' Stephen said. ‘Philip. Me and him went back years. But he just
got … I dunno, messy. There was always a
thing
or an
issue.
Every time I came away from the pub when
we met up, I just thought, That was shit. Really difficult. And it shouldn't
be.'

‘So what did you do? I don't
think I've heard you talk about him. Although with the state of my brain at
the moment anything's possible …'

Stephen smiled, too polite to agree with
me but knowing full well it was true. ‘Walked away. It was harsh, but it was
right. I don't get much free time and what I do have needs to be spent with
people who leave me feeling really good. Quite a simple rule, but it
works.'

I closed my eyes, taking in long
draughts of fragrant steam. I wasn't going to be walking away from Le Cloob
any time soon. But something needed to change. Quite urgently, really, if we were to
move on.

And then, as I pondered my dilemma, I
did something really, really terrible.

I did an enormous, noisy, underwater
fart.

I froze. No. No? Yes? Had that
happened?

I opened a crack of an eye, to see
Stephen staring at me in absolute amazement. I closed my crack of eye.
‘No,' I whispered.

‘Er,
yes
,' Stephen
bellowed. ‘Yes, you just did that. IN MY BATH!'

‘No.'

Stephen started to shake.
‘Yes.' He was laughing. ‘Yes, you did. And I FELT it. Oh, God!
URGH!'

‘No no no …' But I'd
gone already. I laughed and laughed and laughed, and Stephen did too, and we laughed
until we couldn't breathe. Tears ran down my face and my chest ached.
‘No,' I cried, from time to time.

When we finally
recovered, I took Stephen's foot and started a massage by way of apology.
‘No farting,' he grumbled. ‘This bath has had as much as it can
take.'

‘I'm always happy when
I'm with you,' I said. ‘I love every minute we have together. And
these days I find every minute I spend with Le Cloob difficult. I'm going to
have to take some time off. Tim, I don't want to see Tim for a while.
Claudine, ditto. And Lizzy needs a good talking-to, because I'm not going to
stop seeing her.'

Stephen was watching me. ‘Well, if
that's what you want,' he said. ‘I'm certainly not going to
tell you to stop seeing your friends.'

‘You don't need to,' I
said sadly. ‘They've made their own bed.' Already I felt calmer.
Less shit. Less strife. Had I not had enough in my life?

My phone, sitting on the chair next to
Stephen's, came to life. Stephen hauled himself out of the bath to take a
look. ‘It's Tim,' he said.

‘Oh.' I didn't like
that. ‘Leave it.'

Stephen got back into the bath with me
and I concentrated on soothing the sudden jumpiness in my stomach. ‘It's
all cool,' Stephen said. ‘Stop worrying!'

My phone started ringing again.

‘Tim again,' Stephen said. I
swallowed.

The third time Tim called, I was feeling
sick. ‘Can you get rid of him?' I asked. ‘I don't like it. I
mean, you told him I have food poisoning.'

I watched Stephen's long, strong
body pad across the floor, bubbles and water sliding off him.

‘Hi, mate,' Stephen said
politely, hitching a towel round
his
waist. ‘Yeah, she's still in a bad way, I'm afraid, poor thing
…'

He wandered off down the hallway and I
realized I was holding on to the side of the bath, my knuckles white like china.
It's fine
, I told myself.
It's all totally fine.
Tim's probably just worried about me.

‘Hmm,' Stephen said, when he
reappeared a few minutes later. ‘He said he was calling because he was really
early for work and could pop over to check up on you, if you wanted.'

I stared at Stephen, who smiled
reassuringly. ‘He thinks you've got food poisoning, remember?'

‘I know! But you told him you were
looking after me! Why is he trying to come over anyway?'

Stephen held out a big towel for me.
‘I told him very specifically not to come, Pumpkin,' he said. ‘So
you can relax.'

Stephen took me to the bakery on the
corner of the square, where he bought me some banana cake and a strong flat white.
I'd expected him to hold forth on what an obsessive weirdo Tim was but, to my
surprise, he did a great job at calming me down. ‘Maybe we were both
wrong,' he reasoned, running his tongue along his upper lip to catch the tiny
bubbles of
crema
. ‘Maybe we've both read too much into
it.'

‘Maybe,' I said doubtfully.
‘Perhaps we've both been too hasty.'

I didn't believe myself, though.
So it seemed the least surprising thing imaginable when I glanced out of the window,
down which rain poured thickly, like syrup, and saw Tim coming towards us from Mare
Street.

‘Shit!' I whispered. ‘Stephen,
he's here …' The words stuck in my throat.

Stephen peered out. ‘Oh, come
on
,' he said irritably. ‘Leave her alone, you idiot.'
He touched my arm. ‘It's fine. I'll go and tell him to bugger
off.'

For a split second, I thought about
stopping him – I didn't want to cause a scene, after all – but it suddenly
mattered to me more than anything else in the world that Tim Furniss did not come
into this shop. So I nodded. Stephen got up and slid out of the bakery, just as Tim
turned off into Clapton Square.

I crouched, my chest a tin hollow,
waiting for something to happen. For Tim to go back towards Mare Street, or for
Stephen to reappear. But nothing happened.

I counted ten breaths.

Still nothing happened. The rain
continued to smudge down the windows and a toddler came and stared at my banana
cake.

Nothing happened.

When I couldn't bear it any
longer, I went outside.

They were standing in front of
Stephen's house, arguing. Before I had time to decide what to do, Tim was
storming down the street towards me. He saw me straight away. ‘Annie,'
he shouted. ‘Annie, listen …'

In dreams where I was being chased by a
man I could never run: my feet just pedalled uselessly in the air and sound secreted
itself in a corner of my throat. In reality, I was able to run faster than I'd
ever run in my life. I sprinted off past the library and the crummy estate agent,
Tim's voice lost in the acceleration of a 38 bus. I ran round the corner of
Lower Clapton Road, past the
bric-a-brac
shop and into a greasy spoon full of construction workers.

By the time Stephen found me I was
stalled outside the pawn shop on the corner, staring blankly at the forlorn rows of
gold-plated ‘18' and ‘21' pendants; discarded celebrations
of birthdays passed. The rain had stopped but the pavement was still drenched. Buses
rumbled past. I felt hopeless.

‘Oh, Pumpkin,' he said,
putting his arms round me.

I leaned into him. I was tired. I wanted
to take a sleeping pill.

‘Annie, what happened?'

I hugged him hard, hoping he'd
stop asking questions.

‘Annie?'

‘Overreaction,' I said into
his coat. ‘A big one. Sorry. I'll call my therapist when we get home.
Maybe my doctor. I won't let this get the better of me, Stephen. I
promise.'

Stephen kissed my forehead. ‘Come
on,' he said, taking my hand and leading me away.

‘What did Tim say?'

Stephen sighed. ‘He just kept
saying he had to see you, it couldn't wait. I said, “Mate, she
doesn't want to see you. Or anyone else.” So he called me all sorts of
things. He was a bit unhinged. But, Annie, I don't think he'd come to
kill you. I shouldn't have joked about that – I feel guilty now.'

‘Did he chase me?' I asked,
as Stephen led me back down towards the square.

‘No. He just watched you run off.
He looked sad and then left, although not before he'd called me a
wanker.'

A few minutes
later he tucked me into an armchair and gave me a brandy. ‘Perhaps you need
some anti-anxiety medication or something,' he said tentatively. I'd
started crying again. ‘You seem very tense, Pumpkin …'

‘Maybe.' I put my hands over
my face. ‘Maybe I do. Stephen, please don't leave me. Promise me, you
won't leave me?'

‘So you're shagging the boss,
Galway?' Joe asked, as we cleaned the tack one evening.

A cheek-piece fell out of my hand and
into the water bucket.

‘Oh dear.' Joe sniggered.
‘Galway's flustered. How could you do it to me, princess? How could
you?'

I fished out the cheek-piece.
‘I'm not shagging the boss. Nor do I plan to …' I trailed off.
‘Dammit, Joe, stop embarrassing me!'

‘Galway,' he said, ‘I
happen to think you and the boss'd make a lovely couple. You pretend to be a
Dublin ball-breaker but you don't fool me, darlin'.'

‘What?'

‘You're as soft as he
is.'

‘Feck off,' I growled.
‘And, for the record, I'm not blushing.'

‘Ah, Galway, but you are
so.'

‘Am
not
.'

‘Oh, Galway.'

‘What's he on about,
pet?' Becca was standing in the doorway. I almost gasped.

‘Bloody hell,' I said,
staring at her. ‘You look lovely, Becca!'

Becca had been
growing her hair for the last few months, although whenever she visited us it was
pulled back in an unforgiving ponytail. But tonight it lay against her shoulders,
dyed a new chestnut brown and all styled like she'd just left the salon. She
was in jeans, not jodhpurs, and – I gaped – a tight-fitting jumper! Whatever next?
She'd be wearing make-up and perfume at this rate! I sort of hoped she
wouldn't. ‘Stop looking at me like that,' she grumbled.
‘Caroline's grooms have signed me up for some dating thing and they
bought me a blow-dry this afternoon. It's my first one ever and I feel like a
huge old twat.'

I got up to hug her but couldn't
quite bring myself to do so. ‘You look too nice and clean,' I explained,
squeezing her hand. ‘I'm so pleased you're dating! Any good ones
yet?'

‘Jesus, no. All madder than a box
of frogs. But it's been quite fun.'

We smiled at each other, acknowledging
silently how far she'd come.

‘You do look nice, Becca,'
Joe said, standing up. ‘In fact, you look so nice I might ask if you fancy a
few jars later.'

Becca looked at him in utter horror.
‘Joe, pet,' she said clearly. ‘I'm dating because I'd
like to meet a nice man. Not an Irish whore.'

Joe just sniggered.

‘Go and get the wine from the
fridge,' I told her. ‘I'll make sure he doesn't follow
you.'

Joe whistled as Becca went off, all
shiny, bouncy hair, in the twilight. ‘You're pathetic,' I told
him. ‘She gets a
Hollywood
blow-dry and suddenly you're sniffing around her ankles like a randy
dog.'

Joe batted his eyelashes at me.
‘What's that, Galway? A Hollywood blowjob?'

He ducked as I threw a bar of saddle
soap at his head. ‘Galway, behave! This is the answer! You can seduce the boss
– because, dear Christ, girl, he's cryin' out for you to seize the day,
there – and I'll have some cosy nights in with Becca, and then we can all open
our presents together round the tree at Christmas and have some babies and great
craic. Wouldn't that be the best, Galway?'

Becca arrived back with the wine.
‘Becca, I'm afraid Joe's talking about having babies with
you,' I reported. ‘And he said that Mark's crying out for me to
seduce him,' I wanted to add. Was he? Was he really? Had he said something to
Joe? Little flutters of excitement and panic broke out inside me.

‘You can fuck right off,
pet,' Becca was telling Joe. ‘I'd sooner mate with a goat. Right,
let's get this thing open …'

Mark's documentary was on at nine
o'clock and in her excitement Sandra had invited almost everyone she had ever
met. She'd been preparing food for days, even though we barely had enough to
feed the four of us. ‘Pork pies,' she'd been muttering this
morning. ‘Pork pies – I want everyone to have a pork pie …'

Becca found a perch on a chest with
clean stable rugs piled on it. ‘How's Mark?' she asked.

‘Walking without his stick
now!' I beamed. ‘Not for long, but it's big progress. He's
been so brave, Becca, you can see how much it hurts him.'

Becca was
delighted.

‘Galway fancies the living
daylights out of him,' Joe said. ‘And he fancies her right back. Holy
Mother of God, you should've seen them over the last few weeks, Becca –
it's been enough to break a man's heart.'

He guffawed into the profound silence
that followed. ‘Right, I'm off to get showered so I can seduce you
later, Becca. Galway's got one more bridle to do – make sure she doesn't
skive.'

‘Go away, Joe,' Becca said.
She was giving me some serious raised eyebrow.

‘Joe's talking
nonsense,' I told her, when he'd sloped off. ‘Mark does not fancy
me. And I don't fancy him. So you can stop looking at me like that.'

‘I see,' she said, her eyes
twinkling.

‘Stop it! There's nothing!
Nothing at all! Ever!'

Becca poured me some wine. I heard
jingling – she was actually wearing bangles. ‘Kate, pet, you needn't
worry about me. I got over it as soon as I left, like I knew I would. I was just
stuck, my love. Stuck in a rut here, convincing myself that Mark was the answer to
all my problems.'

I concentrated on cleaning
Stumpy's bit.

‘Oh, pet, look at me.'

Grudgingly, I put it down and met her
eye. ‘Kate,' she said softly, ‘when I arrived here, I'd just
had to terminate a pregnancy because I found out that my fiancé was shagging someone
else. I was broken, my love, crushed like a rabbit in the road.'

‘Oh, no, Becca …'

‘I was very happy to get caught up
with Mark and his
problems. I thought
he'd fix me. But he didn't, pet.
I
fixed me. Time fixed me,
just like it's fixed you. I'm not interested in Mark Waverley, my little
love, but I think you are, and I think you have been since you arrived
here.'

I let my eyes drift up to the row of
faded rosettes that Mark had won as a boy, pinned to the wall by his proud mother
all those years ago. I thought of his face, so precious, so kind and brave, the way
he pushed me every day to improve, the trust he'd invested in me by handing me
his beloved Stumpy. And I thought about the way I still looked out of my bedroom
window and saw him cuddling the horse over his stable door, giving him Polos and
talking to him. Hopelessly in love with his furry friend.

Becca was right. I was mad about
him.

‘I don't fancy him,' I
insisted. ‘I don't fancy him at all.'

Becca stared at me long and hard.
‘Okay. I guess it'll just be me and Joe at Christmas then. Me, Joe and
some hot loving.'

Then: ‘Eew,' she
muttered.

The documentary started well enough.
Lots of stuff about Mark's glittering career, the way he'd come out of
nowhere with no money and a tragic past. They had photos and a couple of old video
clips of ten-year-old Mark that did funny twisty things to my stomach.

But they didn't waste much time
with that. The accident came soon after, documented with terrible precision by the
cameraman on his tower above the jump. Mark and Stumpy flying through the air, like
discarded toys, then all
of the
officials and paramedics sprinting towards the awful pile of misshapen horse and
rider.

And me, running at full tilt towards
them, my screams a thin line of panic drawn high and jagged above the stunned
silence of the crowd.

They showed my run in slow motion. My
face, screwed up in sheer agony, right there in the centre of the screen.

The world went silent as I stared at
myself.

Oh, God, I thought.
Oh, God, no
…

I felt Becca's hand touch my
shoulder. ‘Pet?' she whispered. ‘Pet, are you Okay?'

I got up to leave but realized I'd
draw more attention to myself, so I sank back into my chair. Blood pounded in my
ears. I had to go. I had to leave
right now.
Tonight. As soon as the
documentary had finished. I had to put as much distance as I possibly could between
me and the farm.

In the ad break, Becca marched me out to
the kitchen. ‘Right,' she said. ‘Enough. Tell me everything, Kate,
and do not give me any more shit about a burnout.'

So I did. I'd be gone by the time
anyone came for me, anyway.

She tried to make me stay. Tried to
reassure me that there was no reason why anyone would connect me to Mark. ‘You
were just a horrified onlooker, pet,' she said gently. ‘Listen to me.
Did you not notice the shots of other people doing exactly the same thing?
Screaming? Running? Crying? Why would anyone know you work for Mark?'

She held my shoulders firmly, as if I
might otherwise evaporate. I was shaking like a whippet.

‘Pet, you
have to calm down. I can see the problem, but running off into the night isn't
going to solve anything.'

I whimpered.

‘Come and watch the rest,'
she said. ‘And afterwards we'll decide what to do. You can come and bunk
at mine for the night if you want.'

She peered at me. ‘Breathe,
pet,' she said quietly. ‘Breathe in and out, please.'

Mark was watching me as we came back for
the next section. He raised a tiny fraction of an eyebrow.
Are you
okay?

I ducked my head. It was too painful to
look at him, knowing that by the morning I'd be gone.

The film rumbled on and I barely saw a
thing. Towards the end they showed him standing up for the first time, his legs
wobbling and his face white with exertion. Everyone in the sitting room had tears in
their eyes, but I was frozen.

Suddenly the screen had my attention
again. ‘Mark has been teaching his one remaining groom, Kate, to ride,'
said the voice-over. The camera was all on Mark's face with me an unfocused
blur in the background. ‘It's okay,' Becca whispered, squeezing my
hand. ‘You're not even a tiny bit recognizable, pet.'

I looked up wildly at the window, as if
expecting there to be faces staring in at me.

Back on screen Mark was breaking into a
big, proud smile as I executed my first ever flying change. ‘Good girl,'
he shouted. ‘I owe Kate a lot,' he told the camera, in an unexpected
moment of candour. ‘She visited me every day when I was in
hospital.'

‘Why do
you think she visited you every day?' the director asked off-camera. They
didn't miss a trick, those guys.

‘I have no idea,' Mark said.
‘I wouldn't have done if I were her. But she did. Her visits were the
high point of my day. She brought me videos of Stumpy and cracked lots of bad jokes.
She pulled me up when I was wallowing in self-pity.'

The director left a pregnant pause.
‘It sounds like she's gone above and beyond the call of duty,' he
commented.

Mark's eyes followed me round the
school. ‘She did. If she hadn't, I'm not sure I'd be walking
today. She gave me hope and made me fight … She was a force to be reckoned
with.'

The director left a loaded pause – and,
to my amazement, Mark took the bait. ‘She shouted at me more than once. Told
me to stop wallowing and be grateful I was still alive. It was quite full on but it
was exactly what I needed.' In the background, I swore loudly as I bungled my
second flying change. ‘But it wasn't just that. There's something
about Kate. A determination to find good in the bad. She always has a joke, or a
ridiculous comment to hand. She's always smiling. She's unlike anyone
I've ever met.'

‘She's very special to you,
then,' the director asked. His excitement was almost palpable.

Mark turned away. ‘More inside
leg,' he shouted at me. He ignored the question.

Back in the sitting room Mark was
staring fixedly at the screen. I felt as if I might throw up.

When it was over, everyone clapped and
then went silent so that Mark could make a speech. Being Mark, he didn't
make a speech. ‘Stop it,'
he told them. He grabbed a handful of peanuts and stared at the floor, his cheeks
singeing red.

I slipped out of Sandra's sitting
room and left the house, closing the door quietly behind me. Dirk and Woody were
asleep in the porch; they thumped their tails lazily on the floor as I stepped over
them and escaped to the stable block, checking all around me for trouble. ‘It
would be at least four hours until anyone could arrive,' I reminded myself.
‘Minimum. Probably even longer.' But there was a trail now. A trail to
Kate Brady of Hythe Farm in Somerset.

It was windy and snippy outside; little
spots of rain buried themselves in my hair as I ran over to Stumpy's
stable.