The Day We Disappeared (36 page)

Christmas Eve. I'd never been in
London on Christmas Eve. It was barmy!

I fought my way through the
festival-strength crowds at St Pancras, searching for the Chesterfield train,
wondering how anyone was going to fit their luggage on to anything departing from
there. People were literally moving house, from what I could tell. Huge yellow
Selfridges bags, stripy John Lewis bags, H&M and Topshop, occasional Fortnum
& Mason and even a decent smattering of Primark bags, all bulging and torn. Long
rolls of wrapping paper, Christmas antlers, fat boxes of baubles,
panettones
, champagne, flowers. I looked down at my trusty Burmese bag
– containing almost nothing – and smiled.

Right. Platform five. I braced myself
and headed off into the fray. As people and suitcases swarmed past me, I thought
about all of the many journeys I'd taken to Dad's over the years. The
times I'd walked up this exact same escalator, hoping that something might
have changed, that he might have turned a corner. And then arriving back a few days
later, happy to have seen him but painfully aware of how much smaller his life had
got since I'd seen him last.

I love you, Daddy, I thought. You brave
and wonderful man. I love you with all my heart.

And then there he was. My daddy,
arriving in London
for the first time in
nearly thirty years, his lovely girlfriend holding his hand and her teenage son
stomping along, thumping things into his iPhone. Dad saw me almost straight
away.

‘ANNIE!' he cried.
‘MERRY CHRISTMAS!'

And I ran forward to hug him, with tears
in my eyes. ‘Welcome to London, Daddy. Better late than never.'

‘So where's your French
friend?' Dad asked later. He was sitting on Lizzy's gigantic sofa, the
scale of which he found utterly hilarious, and was drunk on the champagne that a
beaming Lizzy was pouring continuously into his glass.

‘Have my share,' she kept
saying. ‘And remember my share was always quite big, Dad.'

‘Claudie's in Antigua on a
“luxury Christmas holiday”,' I said, tucking my slippers under
Mark's legs. He slid an arm around me, kissing the side of my forehead.
‘She met a guy about three months ago and it's been, er, shall we say,
intense? Although in a good way.'

Lizzy grinned. ‘She'd have
killed us if we'd pulled a stunt like this three months into a
relationship!'

Dad looked at her, and then at me.
‘Well, forgive me, girls, but you've pulled some major stunts quite
early in your own relationships, haven't you?' He looked pointedly at
Lizzy's pregnant belly, and at the ring on my finger. ‘You haven't
really waited around.'

‘Old birds,' Lizzy told him.
‘We didn't have time on our side, Dad.'

Dad's eyes twinkled. ‘Well,
I waited nearly thirty years for Linda,' he said, ‘so I firmly believe
there's nothing like
a good
old-fashioned dose of caution.' Mark chuckled and got to his feet to top up
everyone's glass. I smiled at the sight of my bear in a proper shirt.
He'd be getting a hairstyle at this rate. (He would not.)

‘I'm just glad Linda was so
patient.' Lizzy grinned. ‘Anyone else would have given up months
before.'

Linda, who was without doubt the nicest
person I'd ever met, squeezed Dad's hand. ‘I knew I'd crack
him in the end,' she said kindly. ‘He just needed careful
handling.' And without caring what any of us thought, Dad leaned in and kissed
her firmly on the mouth.

‘Snuggums,' I distinctly
heard him say.

Mark squeezed my bottom, which was one
of his favourite things.

‘And your friends from the
stables,' Dad said, ‘Mark's old grooms, how are they? You are
still in touch, aren't you? They sounded so nice!'

‘They are,' I assured him.
‘They come to visit us at the new farm as often as they can. But they're
…' I trailed off. ‘Oh, God, Mark, what will we
do
? I hardly
dare think about it, in case it gives me a stroke.'

Becca had called me a few days ago and
had spent half an hour saying strange things. When I'd eventually asked her
what was wrong, she'd taken a deep breath and said: ‘Pet, there's
no easy way to say this, but I've been having it off with Joe. I'm sorry
if this sends you into cardiac arrest.'

I had not actually been able to say a
word.

Becca had continued. ‘It kind of
crept up on us, pet, and we've not been apart for longer than about five
minutes in the last three months.'
Three months?
Joe's affairs
rarely lasted three days!

Becca's
voice had suddenly got deeper, and I imagined her blushing a deep, silky red.
‘We both think it has legs,' she'd said. ‘I'm
appalled, pet, but actually very happy.'

Mark, next to me, was laughing. Deep
rumbles of amusement and disbelief. ‘It's one of the more terrible
things I've ever heard,' he admitted, ‘but I like it.'

‘Oh, me too! Can you imagine if
they actually make it? Oh, God!'

I leaned round and kissed him, because I
was too madly in love not to, just as Tim, who'd been stroking Lizzy's
pregnant belly, nuzzled into her neck and kissed her hair. I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU, I
saw him mouth into the side of her hair.

Rob the teenager got up.
‘I'm leaving,' he said. ‘I can't take any
more.'

Everyone begged his forgiveness and we
all rearranged ourselves so we weren't anywhere near the person we wanted to
kiss. Poor Rob: it had been disgusting so far. If I were him I'd have set fire
to the flat.

‘I think we should make a
toast,' Mark said.

‘I agree!' I said, casting a
sideways glance at Dad. Would he want to drink to Mum? With Linda here?

He would not.

‘I think we should toast all of us
who are in this room,' Dad said firmly. I hadn't heard him so confident
or direct in years. ‘Because we're all starting over. We're
starting new memories now, together as a new family, and I think we're bloody
fantastic. Here's to us.'

‘To us,' we all said,
getting up to clink glasses.

In spite of Rob I somehow found myself
next to my man again, and as he slid his hand down my jeans and
scrunched my bum once more, and Lizzy said, ‘Oh,
fuck it, the baby won't mind a little bit more champagne,' and Tim said,
‘Oh, yes, he will,' and Dad blew a kiss at Linda, and Rob stormed off
muttering that we were all disgusting, I thought,
I'm here.
Here in
my life.

And this is where I'm going to
stay.

1. Did you find yourself empathizing more
   with Annie or Kate throughout the book, and if so in what ways?
   
2. Did you realize Annie and Kate were the
   same person? Looking back, what signs could you have picked up on while reading
   the book?
   
3. When we first meet Kate, she's moved
   to Somerset to escape ‘the incessant noise of [her] old life'. Do
   you think it's possible to change your life with a change of scenery
   alone?
   
4. Annie, Lizzy and their father are all
   shown to cope in different ways with the death of Annie's mother. What are
   the similarities and differences in how they grieve? Throughout the book how do
   we see them transition from victims to survivors?
   
5. When Annie meets Stephen it all seems too
   good to be true – do you think that Annie was too quick to trust him? Were there
   clues in his behavior she could have spotted earlier on?
   
6. Annie struggles to
   balance her old friendships with a new relationship – what mistakes did she
   make? Were the members of Le Cloob responsible too?
   
7. Both Annie and Kate become romantically
   involved with their bosses. In what other ways do we see repeating patterns of
   behaviour throughout the novel?
   
8. Was Mark wrong to react how he did when he
   discovered Kate was really Annie? How important is a name to your identity? What
   makes someone themselves?
   
9. Why do you think Stephen is so obsessed
   with Annie, despite having ‘relationships' with Ros, Petra and Nancy
   at the same time?
   
10. Towards the end of the novel, we learn
    that Claudine has signed up for a dating website while in an unhappy marriage.
    Do you condone her behaviour? Is it ever acceptable to cheat on a partner?