Gone Without a Trace

by Mary Torjussen

  Which number would he choose?

  He was on the second floor by now. And then I thought of his extension number. I typed in ‘7872’ and the screen changed.

  Yes!

  The door to the building burst open and Sam came running out. I switched the phone off and put it back in the glove compartment with the packet of tissues on top of it. Looking straight at him, I closed the glove compartment and smiled as he ran towards me.

  ‘I was looking for a tissue in the glove compartment,’ I said when he got into the car. ‘How come you’ve got another phone in there?’

  I wasn’t about to tell him I’d guessed its pass code.

  ‘What?’ He reached over, flicked open the compartment door and looked inside. ‘Oh, that. It’s an old one. I dropped it one day last summer and it just stopped working. I put it there when I bought a new one and keep forgetting to get rid of it.’ He leaned over again and picked it up, putting it in his pocket. ‘I’ll chuck it away when I get home.’

  We sat in silence as he drove me to the garage. He was a good driver, concentrating fully on the road ahead. I watched him, this man I’d known for years – since he was a boy, really, fresh from university. I’d never known him to lie before; I’d thought his face was transparent. Now he drove calmly, without a flicker of deceit on his face, though he must have known, just as I did, that the phone was working and the battery was full.

  20

  I arrived home that night vowing to actually do some work the next day. I’d had a few emails later on in the afternoon reminding me of reports that were due at the end of the week; I’d never had to be reminded before, and blushed as I realised I’d handed a couple of things in late over the last month or so. I thought I’d spend the evening making a list of all the things I had to do over the next few days and try to break the tasks down into their smallest parts so that I’d have a chance of at least doing something. In the hallway I put down my bag and pulled out the notes I’d made, ready to go through them again in the kitchen. Then I stopped.

  The hair at the back of my neck prickled.

  Something’s different.

  I called out, ‘Hello!’ and crept forward, pushing open the living room door. I put my head around the door – nothing had changed. There was nowhere anyone could be hiding in there; the sofas were bang up against the walls, and it was impossible for anyone to hide under the coffee table. I pulled the door gently to and tiptoed towards the kitchen.

  The kitchen door was open, just as I’d left it that morning. A quick glance around showed me that nobody was there. The late-evening sun streamed through the French doors and flooded the room, dust motes floating in its rays. I walked further into the room, past the island, and looked out into the garden.

  Sheila was sitting at her patio table, making up hanging baskets.

  I opened the back door and called over to her. ‘Sheila, have you been out here long?’

  ‘Yes, for a couple of hours. It’s a gorgeous evening, isn’t it?’

  ‘Did you hear anything?’

  She stood up, her face pink from the sun.

  ‘Hear anything? What do you mean?’

  ‘Here. In my house. Did you hear anything this afternoon? Or just now?’

  ‘I heard you call hello,’ she said. ‘Sorry, were you talking to me then?’

  ‘No, it’s OK. I just thought I heard something.’

  ‘Maybe it’s Matt. Is he around? I haven’t seen his car for a while.’

  I swallowed. ‘He’s away at the moment. Work.’

  I could see she was revving up to ask me where he’d gone and when he’d be back and what he was doing, so I thanked her and went back into the kitchen.

  On the step, I stopped still.

  The kettle was next to the fridge, hidden from view when I’d entered the kitchen from the hall. Now that I was coming in from the garden, I could see a thin wisp of steam trailing from its spout.

  Slowly I reached out and touched the kettle.

  It was warm.

  ‘Matt?’ I shouted. ‘Matt, is that you?’ I raced through the hallway and upstairs. ‘Are you there?’

  I burst into every room, shouting his name. I looked everywhere, in ridiculous places, under the bed, in the wardrobes, thinking maybe, just maybe, he was playing a trick on me.

  When I’d searched all the rooms, I sat on the bed, my heart pounding. He must be here. He must be! I stood up more calmly and went to each room again. Nothing had changed from that morning. My toothpaste lay on the basin where I’d left it. The quilt was still pulled back to air the bed. Yesterday’s shoes were strewn on the floor, and a pound coin that had fallen from my purse the night before sat on the bedside table.

  I sat down again, trembling. Then everything came at once: his disappearance, my fruitless searches, having to live on my own. Tears rained down my face. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand, and black streaks of mascara smeared across my cheeks. Soon I was sobbing loudly.

  All I wanted was for him to have come home as usual, to have put the kettle on before having a quick shower, to be sitting there drinking tea at the kitchen table, ready and waiting for me to get back from work.

  Then common sense took hold and I thought about the weather: how warm it had been today, how Sheila had looked sunburned from sitting in the garden. The sun had come through the French doors, burning through the glass. The kettle had been caught in its rays. Of course Matt hadn’t been here. The sun had warmed the kettle, that was all. I’d check again tomorrow; I knew the same thing would happen then.

  I scrubbed my face in the bathroom and went downstairs. The beam of sunlight had moved slightly and the room was cooler now. I touched the kettle again and thought what an idiot I’d been. It was just slightly lukewarm. The kind of temperature you’d expect if a metal object sat in a sunny kitchen all afternoon.

  Of course Matt hadn’t been here. Why would he come in and boil the kettle then go again? It didn’t make any sense at all.

  And then I stopped. The wall behind the kettle was chequered in dark green and white tiles. I frowned and touched a green tile.

  It was wet with condensation.

  21

  The next morning I woke to more texts from Katie:

  Have you told your mum yet?

  Does anyone else know?

  The last one read, Is it OK if I tell James?

  I scowled at that and switched my phone off. I did love Katie, but she was really getting on my nerves lately. I hated the thought of her gossiping about this with James, and I just knew she would have already told her mum. I could imagine it now, her mum’s eyes full of sympathetic tears as Katie told her in low, confidential tones all about my private life. I’d get back to her soon enough, but in the meantime I needed to think about Matt coming to the house the day before.

  I lay in bed for another half-hour, risking making myself late, then jumped up to get ready. I still had the image in my mind of how I’d looked the other day, and knew I couldn’t let that happen again. The problem was that although I hadn’t been sick again, I felt nauseous and exhausted and weird.

  I managed to work that day, though I still hadn’t written out a to-do list and worried there was something I’d forgotten. I asked Sam to sit with me after work for an hour to help me with something I needed for a meeting in the morning. He agreed, but I knew he was busy too, and he’d have to take work home to catch up. I just didn’t think I could do it on my own, and I hated myself for that. I needed to regain control. My manager, George, had asked me in the corridor whether everything was all right, but I was able to reassure him I was fine.

  ‘Make sure you take a good holiday this summer,’ he said. ‘Take that young man of yours somewhere hot – it’ll make a new woman of you.’

  I smiled so hard my face ached. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  That night, Katie came round. I’d had a feeling she’d turn up, though she hadn’t called first to see whether I’d be in. From my living room
window I saw her pull into the driveway and sit there for a few minutes, staring into space. My phone beeped then, and I grabbed it, hoping it was Matt. It was a message from my dad:

  I miss you too. See you later. xx

  I closed my eyes. I knew what that meant. Sure enough, within a couple of seconds the phone vibrated in my hand.

  That was meant for your mother. Ignore it.

  My stomach clenched tight as a knot. He’s at it again. The first time I’d realised was when I was thirteen. School had closed at lunchtime at the end of the autumn term, and Katie and I had caught the bus into Liverpool to buy Christmas presents. The city centre was packed and we were looking at the clothes in the window of Topshop when I saw my father walking down a narrow street just off the main road. He was talking to a woman and smiling. I remember registering how different he looked.

  I told Katie to stay there, that I’d be back in a minute, and I followed him up the street, making sure I kept behind a family so that if he turned around he wouldn’t notice me. I saw the woman was linking arms with him. I frowned. Had she hurt herself? Why was she holding on to him?

  And then they stopped at a shop window and he looked down at her and she reached up and kissed his mouth. I saw a wedding ring on her finger as she put her hand on his shoulder.

  Suddenly everything made sense. I went back to Katie, who’d hardly noticed I’d gone, and listened as she pointed out all the things she liked in the shop window. I tried to join in but I was worried I’d start to cry. I couldn’t have told her. I never could talk to her about my family. How would she ever understand?

  Now all those feelings came rushing back and for a wild moment I felt like calling my dad to tell him what I thought of him, but I knew what the outcome of that would be. I threw the phone on to the sofa and went out to Katie’s car. She jumped when she saw me and climbed out, passing me a Tupperware box from the back seat.

  ‘Sorry, I was daydreaming. My mum’s made you a cake. She hopes you’re OK.’

  I stiffened. ‘Thanks. You shouldn’t have worried her.’

  ‘Oh, she wasn’t worried,’ she said blithely. ‘She loves a crisis.’ She leaned over to hug me. ‘Fancy eating some dinner with me?’

  I flinched from her touch. Since Matt had left, I felt like I’d lost a layer of skin, and any human contact made me feel sore and edgy. She squeezed me tighter, ignoring my resistance, and I breathed in a familiar smell. She was wearing Chanel Chance.

  Suddenly she let me go and reached into the back seat for a couple of pizza boxes. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was sick to the back teeth of pizza. She passed them to me and I balanced them on top of the Tupperware so that she could get the bottles of sparkling water from the footwell.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ve hardly eaten anything today.’

  She said nothing, and when I looked at her closely, I saw that under her make-up her face was pale and her eyes were pink and swollen.

  ‘Everything OK, Katie?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s just work,’ she said. ‘I hate that place. I can’t wait to leave.’

  It seemed only a month or two ago that she’d sat here bragging about her job, how much they loved her, how much more money she’d be making soon. I knew she was very ambitious; I’d seen it even when she was young. I used to think that if people could get somewhere just on willpower, she’d be right at the top. Knowing that had always been the impetus I’d needed to work even harder. It seemed as though she’d reached a point where she was wondering whether it was all worth it; I knew she’d find it was in the end. I knew that once I found Matt I’d be back on track again at work. The thought of promotion didn’t fill me with the same excitement as the thought of finding Matt, but for Katie, in a stable relationship with James, her job was everything.

  Katie was the kind of girl who always played down how hard she was working. For tests in school she’d deny on her mother’s life that she’d studied at home and would end up with an A grade. I couldn’t say the same, either that I’d not studied or swear on my mum’s life. I worked every moment I could, scared to fail, terrified that people would see my true worth. She’d get her results, the same as mine, and say, ‘I’m so lucky; I didn’t do a minute’s work on that!’ And we’d both know she had, that she’d sat up in her room working and working while telling me that she couldn’t be bothered, that she’d been watching television or reading Cosmo. We also both knew I’d never confront her.

  She was loyal, though, the fiercest friend I could have wished for, the one who always had my back. Whenever we had a few drinks and were reminiscing about the old days, we’d talk about Mr Harper, our teacher when we were ten, who’d taken against me for no reason. Whatever I did, it was wrong. I knew it, he knew it, the whole class knew it. One day I was at his desk and he was telling me off for something or other when Katie asked him if she could be excused. He told her to wait; he was busy. He should have known she wasn’t well – her face was pale and her eyes were bulging – but he made her stand there until he’d managed to make me cry. That was always his goal; we never knew why. That day, after I was finally reduced to tears, he looked up at Katie and said, ‘What?’ as though it wasn’t his job to help us. She opened her mouth to reply and was sick in his pencil case. Ever afterwards she insisted it was his punishment for bullying me.

  Now she came into the hall and was about to follow me into the kitchen when I remembered the notes I’d left on the island. That morning I’d shuffled them around and spread them out in a kind of grid system. I found this method the easiest to work with at the moment. I knew I couldn’t let Katie see it, though. She’d think I was mad. Or pathetic. I didn’t know which would be worse.

  ‘Come in here,’ I said, ushering her into the living room. ‘Sit down.’

  I put the pizza and cake on the coffee table and lit the lamps.

  ‘How are you?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, OK,’ I replied. ‘Hold on, I’ll just get plates.’ I flicked the television on and passed her the remote control, then went into the kitchen and snatched up the notes, pushing them into the empty bread bin.

  I was just in time. As I busied myself with glasses and plates, Katie brought the pizza into the kitchen. ‘Let’s eat in here,’ she said. She opened cupboards and drawers. I didn’t ask what she was looking for, but guessed it was some sign of Matt.

  ‘You won’t find anything,’ I said sharply.

  She closed a drawer. ‘What?’

  ‘Any sign of Matt. There’s nothing left of his here, you know. I’ve checked everywhere.’

  She looked a little embarrassed. ‘I know. It’s strange, isn’t it? It’s just as it was years ago. Before he moved in.’

  I could feel my mouth tightening. I slammed a glass of Perrier in front of her. ‘Of course it is,’ I said. ‘He’s moved out.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. It just seems weird, that’s all.’

  I nodded, but in a way it didn’t seem odd any more. The whole thing seemed like a dream. His living there, I mean. Like a dream, or like he’d died. It was as though it belonged in another place, another realm. Because there was no sign of him, it was as though he hadn’t existed, as though I’d made him up.

  Yet at night, when I lay in bed, I still automatically left space for him. Before I met him, I used to stretch out diagonally, taking up the whole space. From the moment Matt moved in, it was as though he and I were made to be in that bed together. Our bodies would entwine, his arm would lie across my shoulder, his face would be buried in my neck. Of course over time we moved apart a little, especially if we’d had an argument, when I’d tell him to sleep on the sofa, but when I woke in the night now, I’d think he was in bed behind me. I could almost feel his breath on my neck, the flutter of his lashes against my skin.

  I shook myself. That time was gone. When I found him again, things would be different. I wouldn’t let him just sidle back into my bed as though nothing had changed. No way.

  Katie and I sat at the island and a
te the pizza, though I don’t think either of us really wanted to. I wanted a deep, hot bath with something mindless on the radio to distract me. My brain ached with the effort of thinking. I’d wake in the night, covered in sweat, my heart banging, convinced that he was back, that he was angry with me. Or it would occur to me that I should phone his gym or our dentist, and I’d pad downstairs in the chilly night to make a note, to remind myself of something I’d probably never forget.

  ‘So,’ she said when she’d finished eating. ‘Have you decided?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I can’t believe your bad luck,’ she said. ‘Getting pregnant just as he left.’ She thought for a minute. ‘Do you think that’s why he left? Do you think he guessed you were pregnant and couldn’t deal with it?’

  I turned to stare at her. ‘Do you really think he’d do that?’

  She shrugged. ‘Some men would.’

  ‘But Matt? Really?’ My stomach dropped at the thought. ‘You think he guessed I was pregnant? I wasn’t actually sick until after he’d left.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ she said gloomily. ‘I’m not a good judge of character.’

  Me neither, I thought. He’s the last person I would have thought would walk out like that.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘when do you think the baby was conceived?’

  I was startled. ‘What?’

  ‘I was just wondering,’ she said. ‘How far gone are you now?’

  ‘A few weeks,’ I said. I thought about that last time and worked it out. ‘Seven or eight weeks.’

  ‘So you were still sleeping together right up until he left?’

  ‘Of course we were!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She had the grace to look discomfited. ‘I was just thinking aloud. I suppose I was assuming that your relationship had gone downhill and that’s why he left.’

  ‘No. Everything was fine. We were getting on really well. You didn’t notice anything odd about him, did you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot since he left, and I don’t think there was any sign that he’d do something like that.’ She looked down thoughtfully, then noticed a chip in her nail varnish. She scowled. ‘I’d better go home and get this sorted.’