Gone Without a Trace

by Mary Torjussen

  ‘Baby?’ said my mum. She looked as though she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘You’re having a baby, Hannah?’

  Panic raced through me. If Katie had been there in front of me, I don’t know what I would have done. I knew I shouldn’t have told her I was pregnant! I looked from my mum to my dad. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I’m not.’

  There was a silence so heavy I wanted to scream. I had to carry on talking. That was how it always was. The silence made me talk until I incriminated myself. I put my hands in my lap and clenched them, my fingernails digging into my palms.

  ‘I thought I was,’ I stuttered. ‘When he left. I kept being sick and I panicked, thinking I was pregnant. But I’m not. I’m not.’

  My dad carried on eating, not looking at me, not looking at my mum.

  ‘She must have misunderstood,’ I said in desperation. ‘You know what she’s like. You know she’s a bit daft.’ I tried to laugh. ‘You always used to say it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Because if you were,’ he said slowly, ‘if you were pregnant, then we’d have a problem on our hands, wouldn’t we?’

  Across the table, my mum was wringing her hands. She was the only person I’d ever seen actually do that. Her neck was scarlet and her eyes were rimmed with pink.

  I could see the fear on her face, and I said, louder this time, ‘I’m not pregnant, Dad. Look at me.’ I stood up and flattened my shirt against my belly. ‘Do I look pregnant to you?’

  My mother started to say, ‘Well, no, pet—’ but she was quelled by a glare from my father.

  ‘I remember last time,’ he said when he’d finished his meal. He pushed his chair away from the table, and my mum and I both flinched. ‘The last time you disgraced us.’

  I started to shake. I knew he hadn’t forgotten that. He hadn’t mentioned it in all these years. He hadn’t had to. It was always there between us.

  He lifted his glass, drank some wine. I saw the grip he had on his glass, saw the way his knuckles were white and his eyes were calm, as they always were just before it happened. His gaze held mine and his voice was soft, a warning in itself. ‘You lost the baby then, didn’t you?’

  That was one way of putting it.

  Even though my mum and I were expecting it, as usual his fury came as a shock. He slammed his glass on to the table and we both lurched forward. He shouted, ‘I will not go through that again!’

  For a second we were frozen in a hideous tableau, then Mum and I both leapt up, desperate to defuse the situation. She grabbed a cloth from the counter and started to mop up the spilled wine. She didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare utter platitudes, for fear of making things worse. All that was plain on her face; I’d seen it before so many times. I cleared our plates from the table and started to load the dishwasher, but she put her hand on my arm and jerked her head towards my car outside.

  I didn’t need to be told twice; I was desperate to leave. When I spoke, they both had their backs to me, my mum bent over the dishwasher, my dad sitting rigid at the table. ‘Thank you for the delicious meal, Mum. I have to go now, I have work to do.’ Work was the one thing my dad understood. ‘Dad, Matt and I have split up. He moved out when I was at work and I came home to tell you both. Mum knows the details; she can tell you all about it.’ I started to gabble. ‘Don’t worry about a baby, though. I promised you last time I wouldn’t do that unless I was married. Katie’s mum must have misunderstood, that’s all.’

  I grabbed my bag and was at the door before either of them could stop me.

  ‘See you soon, pet,’ said my mum, her face pale and strained as she kissed me goodbye.

  ‘Don’t let your mother down now, will you?’ said my dad.

  I knew exactly what he meant by that.

  38

  As soon as I got home from my parents’ house, I went straight to bed, though it wasn’t even eight o’clock. I was still shaken by my dad’s reaction and too scared to think about what was happening between him and my mum now. I knew it wouldn’t be good. He wouldn’t believe she’d known nothing about what was going on.

  One of the skills I’d gained as a child was to be hypersensitive to atmosphere. Once, when I was at university and out at a pub with my friend Sarah, I’d grabbed her arm and pulled her outside just before a fight broke out. She’d asked me how I knew – there’d been no shouting or arguing – and I could never explain. Well, I could, but I didn’t.

  And then one night just after I met Matt, I was in Liverpool with him, at the Everyman bar, and there was a couple having a violent argument. I knew it was staged. Everyone was frightened or trying to calm them down, and I’d said to Matt, ‘Don’t worry, they’re putting on an act.’ Within minutes the manager appeared and threw the pair out, saying they were students on a drama course who were acting out a piece they’d been set. Matt couldn’t understand how I’d known; he’d been completely taken in.

  I couldn’t tell him that I knew what it was like to be scared. I knew when violence was real; I knew only too well the goosebumps that would pop up as soon as the threat was there, the clamminess of the skin, the way your heart rate would accelerate. Those students, they did a good job, but they didn’t fool me for a second.

  I left the landing light on and undressed in the darkness of my room. I brushed my teeth and climbed into the cold bed and lay on my side facing the window, just as I always did when Matt was there. But for once, I wasn’t thinking of Matt. All I could think about was what my dad had said tonight.

  For most parents, a child in the family is a source of joy. I knew that for my mother it would be, certainly, but for my dad it didn’t work like that. In his world, he was an important man. He had his own business and employed a few hundred people, but it was more than that. In his mind, what his family did, how they looked and what they said all reflected on him. So when I was doing well at work, it was as though his own star was in the ascendant. It wasn’t as if he gave me any more time – he rarely answered his phone if I called, and his texts were sporadic – but the aura surrounding him would be good. It was important to him that I did well; he took it as a sign that he himself was doing well. But when I was doing badly, that was a different thing.

  His biggest fear was that either my mother or I would do something to cast him in a bad light. The two of us should have been collaborators, given that we both saw the nuances that would lead to our downfall. It was only today that I felt we were in unison, that we were both aware, both terrified, and for the first time I knew I would have pushed myself forward to protect her. She’d always done that for me, and my cheeks burned at how readily I’d called her weak.

  I shuddered to think of how her night would be now, of the questions and the insults she’d have to bear. Now that Katie’s mum had told him I was pregnant, he would blame my mum, just as he blamed her all those years ago, when I was in my teens.

  That time was different. My boyfriend then hung around. He wanted to marry me, even though we were both so young. But my dad, well, he was having none of it. I was in that clinic before you could say ‘consent’, and within a breathtakingly short time his problem had disappeared.

  Nobody had referred to it since. We hadn’t had to.

  I shouldn’t have gone there today. I was weak and had wanted my mother’s comfort, but the price was too high.

  Furious, though I hardly knew with whom, I sent Katie a text:

  Please tell your mother to stop telling people I am pregnant.

  I got an immediate reply:

  Sorry, she must have overheard me talking to James. I’ll tell her to keep it quiet. Hope it hasn’t caused a problem. xxx

  She hadn’t a clue. She really hadn’t a clue.

  I tried to keep my head down at work, but it was difficult what with everything that was going on. I felt I’d lost a bit of ground with Katie, and while she still texted every day to ask how I was and whether I had any news, I knew she just wanted me to say I was making an appointment with the doctor to arrange a termination and th
en going to look for another man.

  Until Matt left, I never needed Sam’s help at work. Sometimes we’d bounce ideas off each other, but usually we worked independently. Lately, though, he’d come over to chat and I’d have to ask him to check my work for me. I found it hard to think straight and he discovered errors that I would never have made before. I’d sit there, hot and tight with embarrassment, while he dismissed my apologies, saying anyone could make a mistake, but he’d look concerned and I’d avoid meeting his eyes.

  I’d bought the security program for my laptop the night James told me about it, and I’d been close to tears trying to set it up. I think I was just too stressed to follow the instructions. Katie came round the next evening and tested it for me while I sat outside with my iPad; I could see everything that was going on in the living room, though the picture quality wasn’t great. I’d put my laptop on the edge of the sofa, facing the living room door, and from my garden chair I watched her as she went into the room and sat down. She was laughing as she did so, and waving at me, though of course she couldn’t see me at all. It worked on my phone, too, but the screen was too small to see much. I’d have to remember to take my iPad everywhere I went. My head ached at the thought of how awkward that would be. I couldn’t use it if I went for a run, so that would have to stop.

  So the camera was great but the consequence was that I was paranoid that I’d miss something happening at home. I couldn’t have my iPad on in the office, obviously, so I worked with a split screen, half showing the work I was doing and half showing the interior of the house. Luckily the back of my monitor faced my office door, so nobody coming into the room could see what I was doing. I knew I was supposed to get alerts if there was any sound or movement, but I just didn’t trust the program. It wasn’t expensive enough for me to think it was really reliable. The only way I’d be convinced that nobody was there was if I could see the evidence in front of me.

  I started to make more mistakes because I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t concentrate on figures or emails or reports. I’d always been proud of my ability to focus, to shut out the world while I worked out a solution to a problem, but suddenly that had disappeared. Every time I started to do something, my eyes would flick back to the screen, to check just once more that nothing had changed. It was exhausting. I felt like I was constantly on high alert, and could feel my heart racing whenever there was the slightest noise.

  I’d had the choice with the program of either recording once there was a sound or movement, or continuously monitoring the room. I knew I’d have to monitor it all the time; I needed to catch him and I needed to be able to see the room myself to know when he was there. I couldn’t rely on the device recording him if he made a noise. What if he didn’t? What if he crept in and it wasn’t picked up?

  And of course I couldn’t watch the screen while I was travelling to and from work, which meant that if Matt came to the house just after I’d left, I’d miss seeing him. I kept pulling over when I was driving to check my iPad to see whether he was there. I knew it was mad. I knew it was too much. If he came to the house, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I knew that by the time I’d turned round and driven home, he’d be long gone, yet I still couldn’t resist it. But the stress of watching the screen all the time and worrying and worrying about what I’d missed, even if I went to the loo, was becoming too much. If I was away for ten minutes, I wouldn’t know whether something had happened in that time. If I rewound it and watched it for those ten minutes, something might have happened in real time that I would have missed. There seemed no way out of it.

  That morning I received an email reminder about a meeting with my manager later in the day. My skin crawled with shame. I would never have had to be reminded before. The fact that he felt he had to do that said so much about the way I’d been working. The problem was that I could read something and understand it, but then my eyes would be drawn to my living room on the split screen and instantly I’d forget. This email was one I’d find hard to forget, though. George had said that Alex Hughes would be at the meeting. Alex Hughes, the partner who’d thought so highly of me in Oxford just a few months ago.

  My mind flashed back to the conversation we’d had, when he and Oliver Sutton had said how well I’d done and that there were hopes of my becoming a director soon, and my stomach tightened as I thought about what I’d lost.

  Just then Sam appeared at the doorway to my office. I beckoned him in and told him to shut the door.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  ‘Alex Hughes is going to be at the meeting with George.’ I started to cry. ‘He’s going to be furious with me!’

  Sam came over and put his arm around me just as Linda, George’s secretary, knocked and came into the room. She paused for a second, her expression calm and considered, taking everything in. It must have looked like a lovers’ tiff, with my red eyes and his conciliatory arm around my shoulder. I moved away from him, but it was too late. She turned politely and pretended to look for a pen on my desk.

  ‘Alex Hughes will be popping in to your meeting at twelve, Hannah,’ she said, pointedly ignoring Sam. ‘Make sure you’re on time, won’t you?’

  I nodded, smarting. ‘Don’t worry.’

  She gave a brisk nod and left the room.

  39

  When I reached the meeting room on the top floor, both men were there. Alex Hughes stood up as I entered the room.

  ‘Hello again, Hannah,’ he said, but his voice wasn’t as warm as it had been when I’d talked to him in Oxford. He stood behind the table, and it was clear he wasn’t going to shake my hand. ‘How are you?’

  I didn’t know what to say. Did he want the truth?

  I sat down cautiously. ‘Fine, thanks. How are you?’

  ‘Never better,’ he said, then he looked down at the papers in front of him and his voice became grave. ‘Or at least I was, until I saw this.’

  I tried desperately to decipher his notes, but they were upside down and in shadow. I glanced at George, who was studiously avoiding my eyes. It was clear there’d be no support from him today.

  Alex passed me a sheet of paper. I tried to read what was on it, but the words started to swim before my eyes. I blinked hard and looked up at him.

  ‘This is a list of the company accounts you were responsible for that had filing deadlines in the last quarter,’ he said. ‘Three out of eight were not submitted to Companies House on time.’

  Panicking, I started to say that I hadn’t had enough time and that I was overworked, but he interrupted me. ‘All your colleagues have completed theirs. Six months ago you would have finished these with a month to spare.’

  I flushed, knowing he was right.

  He took off his glasses and looked at me. ‘You know, Hannah, that really is the most fundamental part of our service. All three companies will now receive a penalty, which, if we want to keep their business, we will have to pay. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t already decided to go elsewhere. You know that. It was the first thing you learned when you started here, I imagine.’

  George nodded furiously, desperate to distance himself from me. ‘Indeed it was, Alex.’

  Alex Hughes looked at him sharply. ‘I take on board what you said about not feeling you had to supervise Hannah, and of course, you’ve had a holiday recently, but we will have to meet later to discuss your role in this. From now on I want you to monitor deadlines for all your staff. Is that clear?’

  George nodded, his face puce.

  ‘Which ones were late?’ I asked.

  ‘Let’s see.’ He glanced down at the list. ‘The Johnstown Company – they still haven’t received anything. They will be going elsewhere, I fear.’

  ‘I finished that on the day you went on holiday!’ I said. ‘I remember emailing it to Lucy to proofread and send on to them the next day. I told her to copy you in. She had plenty of time to do it.’

  ‘I spoke to her today,’ he
said. ‘She said she didn’t receive it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And this one, to Powell’s,’ he said, ‘was incomplete when you emailed it to them.’

  ‘I have never submitted an incomplete document!’

  ‘They say it only went up to page eight.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That has to be wrong. I finished it, and anyway, I wouldn’t have sent something off half done. I’m always careful.’

  ‘It said “Version 1” in the footer,’ said George. ‘How many versions were there?’

  My head started to buzz. I was sure I’d sent Lucy the final version.

  George sounded cold and distant. I knew that he’d checked the final copy – Version 4 – but would have to take ultimate responsibility for the early version being sent out. ‘You were always careful,’ he said, ‘which is why I felt I could trust you. But lately, Hannah, things . . . well, they seem to have got on top of you, and your work has suffered.’

  ‘It’s not just your work that’s suffered, from what I’ve heard,’ said Alex, and his voice held a thread of steel. ‘I understand you’ve been acting in an unprofessional manner. You’ve already had a verbal warning, but you’ve made no effort to redeem yourself. You’re late to work, you leave early. You’ve been crying in the office. Only today you were seen with your arms around a colleague.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I appreciate you’ve had a bad time. I’ve heard the rumours that you and your partner have broken up.’

  My head shot up. How had he heard that?

  ‘But there is a basic level that we expect you to reach. We’re a business, Hannah. Our work has to be performed to the highest standard.’

  Stung, I said, ‘I gave those documents to Lucy to send off. Powell’s was complete and checked and Johnstown’s was emailed to her with plenty of time to proofread it.’ I reached over for his list. ‘Which is the other?’ I scanned it quickly. ‘NRS? That was definitely sent to Lucy on time.’