Gone Without a Trace

by Mary Torjussen

  So if it wasn’t Matt, who was it? And why would they want to hurt me?

  30

  Later that afternoon, Sam and I looked online for anything resembling that phone number, and searched our company emails too, just in case it was someone I knew from work. Nothing came up. I gave him the other numbers with a muttered ‘You might want to look for these too.’ He looked at me sharply, but I didn’t say anything else.

  ‘I know you’ve already done this,’ he said when we were at our wits’ end, ‘but I’ll call the numbers from my phone and see what happens.’

  I read out the first number to him and he dialled it. It rang out several times, then cut off.

  ‘Have you tried calling from the office phone?’

  We tried it again, and this time it didn’t ring at all.

  ‘He’s just switched it off!’ I said. ‘He must be at work.’

  ‘Or driving.’

  ‘Or in a meeting.’

  ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘we have no idea who it is who’s calling you anyway, or where they are. Do you think it’s worth going to the police?’

  I shook my head. ‘And say what? It’s not as though whoever it is has committed a crime.’

  ‘Stalking?’

  I could see George approaching my room. ‘Quick,’ I whispered, and we started to talk about a meeting we were preparing for, so that when he came in, we looked a picture of innocence.

  He gave us a strange look and said, ‘Hannah, can I have a word?’

  Sam hurried out of the room.

  ‘How are you getting along with the Johnstown Company’s accounts? I believe their deadline’s coming up soon.’

  I tried to keep my face neutral and calm, but inwardly my heart was racing. I’d forgotten all about it. ‘Everything’s fine. I’ve almost finished.’

  ‘Make sure they get them on time, won’t you? Send me a copy too. I’m off early now to go to the airport; I’ve got a week off, as you know.’

  I nodded and wished him a good holiday. I’d forgotten he was going away; usually before he left, I’d go into his office to chat about his plans and he’d let me know if there was anything extra he needed me to do while he was away. That hadn’t happened this time, and I wondered who he’d trusted in my place. Understandably, he looked a lot less happy with me nowadays, and I knew I’d have to work hard to make things all right again.

  After he left, I went out to Lucy’s desk. ‘Lucy, can you set aside time tomorrow to proofread the annual return for the Johnstown Company? Send it off before the end of the day, will you? George needs a copy too. It’s due at the end of next week, but I don’t want it to go at the last minute.’

  She nodded. ‘Will do.’

  ‘Let me know if there’s anything you don’t understand.’

  She gave me a look as though it was highly unlikely that would happen, and carried on with her work.

  I transferred all my calls through to her, switched off my mobile and got down to work. For a time I was fully absorbed; every detail was meticulously checked and I knew I’d done a good job. I sent the accounts through to Lucy, reminding her to send a copy to George; I knew that reminder would irritate her.

  It was 8 p.m. by the time I finished, and for the first time in ages I felt happy. I’d been so involved in my work that I hadn’t thought of Matt for a second, and I think I started to realise then that I was going to be all right.

  I was back on track.

  On my way home, I decided to treat myself to something nice for dinner. I’d been living off takeaways and snacks since Matt left; I couldn’t face cooking our usual meals and sitting down on my own to eat them. I considered various restaurants, rejecting anywhere that he and I had been to together. I didn’t want those memories that night.

  Sam had told me about a new Thai place that had opened up recently in Liverpool. He’d gone there at the weekend with a group of friends and the food had been great. I don’t really like eating out alone, and when I got there and saw it was crowded with couples, I panicked and asked the waiter whether I could order a meal to take away instead.

  He brought me a glass of sparkling water, and I sat in the restaurant’s foyer, choosing my food. I’d go home and watch television, I thought. I wouldn’t look at the notes in the kitchen, I wouldn’t go online to search for Matt. I’d eat this lovely dinner and I wouldn’t give him another thought. I gave the waiter my order and sat reading the local newspaper, trying to switch off.

  The meal arrived, and as I stood to pay, a woman came out of the ladies’ room and walked over to a table at the back of the restaurant. She sat down, said something and laughed. I smiled. It was Helen, a woman who worked for my dad. I’d had a job at his company one summer when I was on holiday from university, and she’d been my boss. She was only a few years older than me, so in her twenties then, and I’d really liked her. She’d helped me an awful lot and had given me a great reference when I applied for jobs after graduation.

  I said to the waiter, ‘Just a moment, I’ve seen someone I know,’ and took a step into the restaurant. A pillar blocked part of my view of Helen’s table. I was just about to wave to attract her attention when I saw who she was with.

  I stood stock still. My dad was sitting opposite her. He was holding her hand, and as I stood there, she leaned over and touched his face. They kissed.

  My head started to buzz and for a second I thought I was going to faint. I turned back to the waiter. ‘Sorry, I made a mistake,’ I said. I had to force myself not to look over towards them, and I felt so exposed, knowing they could glance over and see me at any moment. My fingers shook as I opened my purse. I took out some money and didn’t wait for the change. I picked up the bag of food, though I didn’t want it now, and hurried from the restaurant.

  I ran to my car, my heart thumping in my chest. I didn’t know what he would have done if he’d seen me. Bluffed it out, probably. Maybe even invited me to join them. I shuddered at the thought of that, trying to eat while he looked at me, trying to gaslight me into thinking I hadn’t seen what I had seen. He would never forget, I knew that. His weakness would become mine, just as it always did.

  I drove away from the restaurant and turned down the first side street I saw. I guessed he wouldn’t have parked on the main road, not if he was somewhere he shouldn’t be. Eventually I saw his car and drew up several yards behind it. I needed to be sure of this. I’d had my suspicions for years, though not of Helen. I’d never have thought her capable of that. I closed my eyes for a second as I realised just how long she’d worked for him. It was twelve years since I first met her. Had something been going on the whole time?

  It was half an hour before they came out of the restaurant. They must have driven there separately, because they stopped at another car next to his. For five minutes they stood on the pavement, chatting, then she put her arms around his neck and he put his around her waist and they kissed. It was a lovely warm night and her arms were bare, his jacket off.

  And I don’t know why, but I pulled out my phone and took shot after shot of them as they stood there, betraying my mother with every kiss.

  I was on my way home when the next message came through. I was stuck in traffic for the Kingsway Tunnel, on the inside lane on the curve towards the river. I switched on the radio in time to hear that there had been an incident in the tunnel and it was just starting to clear. There was no alternative route; two solid lanes of traffic were heading towards the tunnel entrance. Everyone looked fed up.

  My phone beeped just as the traffic report ended. The message was from yet another number I didn’t recognise. It said:

  I can see you.

  My heart pounded. I dropped the phone on the passenger seat and quickly looked around me. There must have been hundreds of cars queuing, two lanes of traffic going towards Wallasey and two in the other direction, and the road was stationary.

  All I could see were lorries and cars, none of which I recognised. I sat up high in my seat and tried to look around
the lorry in front of me, but it was too wide. I stared in my rear-view mirror, but there was a family in the car behind me and beyond that I couldn’t see. In the neighbouring lane there was a bus. I stared at each passenger in turn until a couple of them looked at me as if I was mad.

  I felt frantic with nerves. Where the hell was he? I glanced in my wing mirror for motorcyclists, then opened the door and jumped out. I looked up and down the approach road but didn’t see any cars I recognised. My heart sank. He’d probably changed his car, just as he’d changed his number. How was I meant to find him if he was in a different vehicle? Then there was a blast from a horn that made me jump, and a woman shouted something through her window. With a start I realised the traffic ahead had started to move, and I leapt back into my car and moved along, my eyes all over the place. I don’t know how I didn’t crash.

  I flashed my tag in payment and drove up the slip road towards Wallasey, my nerves jangling. I looked behind me constantly, trying to find a car I recognised.

  At home, I opened the front door and stopped dead in the middle of the hallway.

  What’s that?

  I could smell Polo. Ralph Lauren. It was the cologne I’d bought Matt for Christmas last year.

  31

  I moved slowly to the front door and stood there with my back against it. The smell was less noticeable here. I kicked off my shoes and silently, in bare feet, took a couple of steps forward on to the woollen rug that lay in the centre of the polished oak floor. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was still there, the cool, citrusy scent of Matt’s cologne.

  It took me a second to galvanise myself.

  ‘Matt?’ I shrieked. ‘Matt, are you there?’

  I raced into the kitchen, took a swift glance around. I half expected to see him drinking tea and playing some stupid game on his phone.

  ‘Matt! Matt!’

  With the energy of a bloodhound I ran into the living room and looked wildly around. He wasn’t there; the room looked exactly as I’d left it that morning. I ran upstairs, flinging open doors and shouting his name, throwing myself to the floor to look under beds, opening wardrobes to see whether he was hiding behind my clothes. He was nowhere in sight.

  I stood on the landing, gasping for breath. My head was spinning. I knew he’d been there. I knew it.

  As I took a deep breath, I realised the smell was fainter upstairs. I went back into my bedroom. I couldn’t smell it there. The bathroom; nothing there, either. When I checked the spare room and the other bathroom, there was no smell at all.

  I went back downstairs, desperate to find out where he had been. The living room looked untouched, but there was a faint smell of spice in the air that I knew hadn’t been there that morning. In the kitchen, the smell was stronger, and I knew, I just knew he’d stood where I was standing, surveying the room. I looked around wildly. What had he been doing in here?

  And then I realised.

  Before I’d left for work that morning, I’d tidied my notes into a pile and put them next to the fridge, just in case Katie called round unexpectedly. The last thing I’d wanted was for her to look through them. Now they were spread out neatly in the grid pattern I favoured myself, lined up with an inch of space between each of them. You could have drawn a line along them and it would have been dead straight. Normally I like that kind of precision.

  When Matt had looked at those notes, he’d understood how much he meant to me. He must have seen my lists, how I’d crossed off the gym, hotels, his office, car hire companies. He would have seen how thorough I’d been, checking his mum’s address, his barber’s, and the garage he took his car to for its service. And he must have seen those numbers written down with their text messages next to them. He’d know they’d be driving me crazy.

  Was he the one behind all this? How did he feel when he stood here and saw my notes, my distress? Did he feel guilty? Glad?

  For a moment I considered it might not be him, then I shook my head. I could smell him here now. If I’d wondered before, now I knew.

  And then I thought of something I’d heard, though I didn’t remember where. Whenever a criminal commits a crime, something is left at the scene and something is taken away. It’s true of any crime, apparently. And this was a crime, a crime against my privacy.

  Now I knew that what they were usually referring to were specks of DNA that would be found on tiny flecks of skin or maybe one drop of blood or sweat. But that saying was true here, too. He’d left behind the smell, the lingering citrusy smell, that reminded me of him freshly dressed and ready for the day.

  What had he taken with him?

  I looked around the room. I knew he’d been in here, knew he’d moved the notes. I counted them; they were all there. I couldn’t see anything out of place. I went into the living room and up to my bedroom, but nothing was missing. Because I couldn’t smell the cologne upstairs, I assumed he hadn’t been up there, so just had a quick look around and came back downstairs.

  As soon as I returned to the kitchen, I knew what he’d done.

  The note saying Satisfied? had gone from the fridge door. The envelope had gone too. Only the question mark magnet remained.

  Suddenly I was dizzy and felt as though I was going to faint. I grabbed hold of a chair and slowly sat down. The note had been my only piece of evidence. The only thing that told me I wasn’t going mad.

  Someone had taken it.

  32

  I hardly slept at all that night; I had too much on my mind. I left all the downstairs lights in the house on, just as a warning in case someone tried to get in. I took my notes up to bed for safe keeping and put my phone under my pillow. I knew someone had been in my house. Should I phone the police? I closed my eyes and thought of how that conversation would go. They’d think I was crazy to call them just because I’d lost a piece of paper.

  And there was nobody I could talk to. Katie had thought I was crazy to think the flowers had been changed, and from then on she hadn’t believed anything I said. If I told her I’d stuck a piece of paper on my fridge and now it was gone, she’d laugh at me. Sam thought I was losing it, and besides, I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t telling Lucy things about me. Were they seeing each other? How had I not noticed that until now? What about Grace? He still talked about her; he was clearly still living with her. Was he seeing Lucy at the same time? I wanted to trust him, I really did, but that phone call they were both on at the same time . . . was that coincidence?

  And then I thought of that spare phone in the glove compartment. Why had he said it wasn’t working when it clearly was?

  For a second I wondered whether he had sent me any of those texts, and my stomach lurched at the thought. Surely he hadn’t! Why would he?

  I needed someone to talk to, but who?

  I couldn’t call my mum. She’d worry too much, and besides, she’d want me to come home for a while, and that was never going to happen, particularly not now. I had to plan my visits home and my escape afterwards; if I spent more than an hour there, I’d start to feel anxious. It was always just a matter of time before something was said or assumed. Once I’d left home the summer I was eighteen, I rarely returned, and only ever when I had good news. A promotion always went down well, a pay rise too. News of a head-hunter who’d called me could be enough to turn the tide of a conversation.

  I rarely took Matt home with me, though my mum really liked him and would have liked to have seen more of him. After Matt had been there an hour or so, though, my dad would remember we weren’t married, that Matt was living in my house, and then it would be time to go, to hurry Matt out to the car with a manufactured excuse to him, to my parents and to myself. He knew nothing important of my life before I left home; once I met his mum and saw how she doted on him, I knew I could never tell him. He was the same as Katie; people brought up in happy families find it so hard to understand what it’s like to live in a home where you have to think twice before speaking, to move quickly to avoid trouble, to avert your eyes so that you
don’t take on the responsibility of others.

  And how could I talk to my mum without telling her about my dad’s infidelity? My head felt like it was gripped in a vice at the thought of telling her that. I think it was the only thing that kept her there, the thought that deep down he loved her and that they’d married for life.

  The next day was Saturday, and I decided to tackle my neighbours. Ray was outside in the front garden, simultaneously weeding and checking up on what was happening in the street. He took his Neighbourhood Watch role very seriously. He was in his early sixties, a retired sales manager, and I tried never to be in a room with him on my own. Sheila was indoors, from the sound of the roar of the vacuum cleaner.

  They’d been my neighbours since I first bought the house, years ago. They were so eager to meet me when I moved in that I was suspicious at first, wondering whether they were one swinger short of a party, and even the absence of pampas grass in their front garden did nothing to reassure me. When Matt moved in, he used to say he was unnerved by the way Sheila kept her lipstick and perfume by the front door, so that when you knocked, you could see her shadow move as she got herself ready for visitors. He used to ask me to go with him when he had to go round. I have to admit I made fun of him for it until I spent an hour of my life alone with Ray when Matt had accidentally gone to work with my car keys and I was locked out of the house. He sat too close, right up next to me on the sofa, and I could feel the heat from his thighs against mine. I’d moved until I was at the edge of the sofa, and each time he moved too. I swore I would never go through that again, and despite them telling me numerous times that they’d keep a spare key for me, I just knew that one night I’d wake up to find Ray in my house, investigating a fictitious burglary, particularly if he knew Matt wasn’t there.

  In other ways they were ideal neighbours, as they took Neighbourhood Watch to a totally new level. Everything Matt and I knew about the people in our street was discovered via Sheila and Ray. We just tried to make sure they told us outdoors, so we could escape if we needed to. I was glad that our houses joined at the hall wall; God knows what they would have told people if they’d heard what was going on in the bedroom.