Gone Without a Trace

by Mary Torjussen

  I waited two hours in that little alcove by his front door and by then I thought maybe he’d gone out for the evening and I’d have to come back later. But then I heard the ping of the lift and somehow I just knew it would be him. I held my breath as I heard him coming down the corridor, keys jangling. I wondered whether he’d kept the same key ring, just replacing my key with this one.

  As he turned into the alcove where I was standing, he caught sight of me, and you won’t believe this, but he nearly jumped out of his skin. His face was white and his eyes were popping out of his head. I could see him starting to back away, and I leapt over and grabbed his arm.

  ‘Hello, Matt,’ I said.

  52

  I took the keys from him and opened the door. I turned to smile at him and ushered him in ahead of me. I wanted to make sure he got in there, and I knew he knew it.

  ‘After you,’ I said and slammed the door behind us. There was a glass shelf to one side of the door, and I placed his keys there.

  Matt stood there, his face pale and his mouth open. I was so tempted to snap it shut.

  Adrenalin coursed through my veins, making my head spin, and as I glanced around the room, all I could see were stars bouncing off the light coming through the French doors. I leaned against a sofa and clung on to it in case I fell.

  I was in a large living room with functional furniture that looked like it had been rented with the apartment. His jazz photographs were up on the walls; the photographs that belonged in my hallway. His television was on its table, though it looked less impressive here in this huge space than it did in my modern semi. The doors leading off the room were wide open, and I could see a large silver refrigerator in one, a glass shower enclosure in another. Still clutching the sofa, I moved across and saw that the third door led to a bedroom. There was a double bed in there, and a wardrobe with a tan suede jacket hanging up. The last room was small; a storage room, really. In it were piles of plastic boxes, the sort you might buy in B&Q if you were leaving your girlfriend without telling her you were going.

  Nobody else was in the apartment. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was glad of that.

  Matt stood stock still, as though in a trance. I stared at him and he looked away; I could feel his brain whirring, though. I knew he’d be thinking hard.

  I walked over to the French doors that led to the little balcony that I’d seen him on the day before. I flung them open, and bright sunlight poured into the room. I dropped my handbag on the floor, then turned to him.

  ‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘So, thanks for your calls. And all the other messages.’

  He stared at me, then shook his head as though trying to clear it. I saw him swallow before he spoke. ‘What? Sorry, Hannah, you need to leave now.’

  ‘Leave?’ I roared, and he jumped a mile. ‘What do you mean, leave?’

  I took one step towards him and he took five back. He was up against the wall.

  ‘This is my home,’ he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he swallowed again. ‘I don’t want you here.’

  ‘Frankly, Matt,’ I said, ‘I don’t care what you want. I want to know why you walked out on me like that.’ I took another step towards him, and he shut his eyes for a second. ‘Why you walked out taking everything with you.’

  ‘I only took my own things!’ he said.

  ‘Sneaking out like a thief,’ I said. ‘Humiliating me. Making me look a fool in front of people. Have you any idea how you made me feel?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to humiliate you.’

  ‘Then why did you go like that?’ I shouted. ‘Why just go and leave me to come home feeling like I was going mad?’

  ‘Hannah,’ he said quietly, ‘you know why I left. You know it.’

  ‘What?’

  He moved away, towards the window.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I exploded. ‘I’m talking to you and you’re looking out of the window!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and then again, ‘I’m sorry.’ He moved back into the room, and for a second his profile reminded me of Olivia.

  ‘You’re not the only one who left, either, are you?’

  He looked blank.

  ‘Your mother.’

  ‘Leave my mother out of it,’ he said, with the first real sign of spirit he’d shown since I’d got there.

  Instantly I was livid. ‘Leave her out of it? When she was sitting in our house on Christmas Day and didn’t say a word about moving house? What was all that about?’ He said nothing, and that infuriated me more than anything. ‘Well?’

  He sighed. ‘She didn’t want you to know where she was living.’

  ‘Why not?’ I screamed. ‘Why shouldn’t I know where she’s living?’

  ‘Because she wanted me to leave you and she wanted me to have somewhere to go,’ he said, so quietly I had to strain to hear him.

  ‘What a bitch!’

  He flinched.

  ‘Well if you were so keen to leave me, why have you been sending me messages and calling me?’

  He stared at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Texting me and phoning me and coming into the house. Did you think I wouldn’t know you were there?’

  He shook his head. ‘I haven’t—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me!’ I yelled. ‘You’ve been coming into my house, touching my things and sending me stupid messages.’ He looked confused, but I saw right through it and screamed, ‘Are you trying to drive me crazy?’

  He jumped back and his shoulder hit the wall. ‘Hannah, I haven’t done anything,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been home . . . I mean to your house since . . . well, since I left.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t recognise that cologne? Do you think I’m stupid?’

  ‘What? What cologne?’

  ‘Ralph Lauren,’ I said. ‘Polo. The one I bought you for Christmas.’

  He shook his head again. ‘I don’t wear it. I haven’t worn it since I left.’

  ‘Liar!’

  My stomach twisted at the thought that he hadn’t wanted to wear it to remind him of me. I was about to mention the flowers and the warm kettle, but I knew he’d tell me he didn’t know what I was talking about. He’d say I was mad. I didn’t know whether I was. My heart was pounding so hard I thought he’d hear it, and I couldn’t have that. I took a few deep breaths to try to control myself.

  ‘So why did you leave?’ I asked again, and this time I couldn’t help it. There was a pleading note in my voice, and it made me so angry.

  ‘I had to go,’ he said. He spoke gently now, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he still loved me. ‘You know why I had to go.’

  I blinked. ‘I don’t. I don’t know.’

  He looked at me as though he wasn’t sure whether to believe me. Then he drew himself up, his back straight.

  ‘Hannah, I thought you were going to kill me.’

  53

  Seven months earlier

  It was New Year’s Day, and as usual we were having a row. I hated Christmas, and this one was no exception. We’d had plenty to eat and drink, that’s for sure; my clothes were tighter and I had headaches every morning that lasted until mid-afternoon at times. I could tell I was going to have to start cutting back, and that never puts me in a good mood. On top of that, we’d been pretty much housebound for several days because the weather had been so bad, and that didn’t help either.

  That morning we’d got up late, hung-over and fed up. The wind was high around the house and the bins in the alleyway had already blown over twice. I kept telling Matt to put them in the back garden, behind the gate, but he wouldn’t take any notice, saying that if rubbish spilled there, we’d have all sorts of problems with rats and foxes.

  ‘It’s not as if you’re the one cleaning it up anyway,’ he’d said over his shoulder the second time he went out, and my eyes had narrowed, knowing he was spoiling for a fight. We’d spent the previous night with Katie and James, dri
nking in the local pubs, then back to theirs at midnight for champagne and bacon sandwiches. James had been a bit off, too, and by then I was completely fed up.

  ‘He’d rather be in bed watching the fireworks,’ Katie had said, glaring at his back.

  It had been one of those nights when you go out determined to have fun but the fun is beyond you. There were crowds of people, all drunk out of their minds, all pushing and shoving, and I hated it. The more I had to drink, the worse I felt.

  ‘There’s nowhere to sit,’ I complained in the third pub we went to. Katie and James were at the bar, doing their best to get served.

  ‘You sound like my mum,’ said Matt, looking me straight in the eye. ‘She always says that’s why she never goes to pubs nowadays.’

  Instantly I was filled with fury. His mother was over sixty! I was looking good that night, if I said so myself, and I was not going to be compared to her.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ I snapped. ‘Your mum’s an old woman!’

  ‘She’s not that old,’ he said.

  ‘You’d think it, with all the rubbish she talks.’ His mum had spent Christmas Day with us, and I was still trying to recover from the mind-numbing boredom of that day. ‘Honestly, I was going to tell you that I think she needs a check-up.’

  He flushed. ‘What?’

  ‘A check-up,’ I said loudly. ‘There’s something wrong with her. She needs to get checked out. I’ve never spent a more boring day in my life.’ I glared at him. ‘You needn’t think she’s coming next year.’

  He shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t want to.’

  ‘What?’

  He said nothing, just looked into the distance. It always annoyed me when he did that, and he knew it.

  ‘I said what?’

  Then Katie and James were standing behind us.

  ‘It’s busy here tonight,’ said James. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ I said shortly. ‘It’s just noisy. I couldn’t hear what Matt was saying.’

  Matt looked away. ‘I wasn’t saying anything.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, then Katie dragged the conversation around to a funny incident at work, and soon she had us laughing at some poor guy who’d been found in the stationery stockroom with his manager and without his trousers.

  Back at Katie and James’s house we’d played our part, acting as though we were getting on, but I could feel in the air that Matt was after trouble. In the taxi going home, he sat staring out of the window, saying as little as he could get away with. I could see the taxi driver looking at us in the mirror and knew what he was thinking.

  Next year, I thought, next year will be different. Too right his mother wouldn’t be here. We’d go somewhere hot, Jamaica maybe, and have a good time without her.

  I looked at his profile as he stared out of the window, his jaw set and mutinous.

  Or maybe I’d go on my own. Maybe I’d meet someone there. I could come back with an all-over tan, looking like I’d been up all night, every night having fun, and see what he had to say about that!

  I decided not to speak to him when we got into the house. He tried to do the same, but he could never keep up that game and would always ask pathetic questions like ‘Shall I lock up?’ that he should have known the answer to.

  We lay in bed with our backs to each other, neither of us able to relax enough for sleep. Eventually I heard his breathing become slower and felt his body loosen up, and then he started to snore.

  All the old resentments came flooding back as I lay awake that night. I thought about each one in turn, examining it closely as it revealed his unreasonable behaviour. By the time morning came, I was ready for a fight.

  54

  2 January

  The next day was miserable outside, with black clouds overhead threatening rain any time I felt like leaving the house. We’d woken up with headaches that neither of us would admit to, and when it came to breakfast, I realised we’d run out of bread. There was a bit of an argument about who was going to the shop, but in the end Matt went and made such a martyr of himself that I didn’t even want to eat it when he brought it back. Of course that really cheered him up.

  We were both back at work the next day and had to take the Christmas decorations down. God forbid we should risk bad luck by leaving them up past 6 January. It’s always so depressing taking them down that it makes me wonder whether it’s even worth putting them up in the first place. I love the anticipation of Christmas, love buying the tree and dressing it and putting fairy lights all over the house, but everything looks so dark and dingy afterwards that I go into a gloom that’s hard to come out of.

  So that afternoon we weren’t speaking really and we were trying to take the decorations down separately when we actually needed to be working together. I had to ask him for help when I got stuck with a strand of fairy lights that had wrapped itself around my leg while I was up the stepladder, and I could see the sly grin on his face that told me he’d known I’d cave in.

  When it was time to go up to the loft, I was so fed up. His mum had called him just as we were about to take everything up there, and I’d carried box after box upstairs, struggling with the sheer unwieldiness of them. Every time I went past him he mouthed, ‘Leave it, I’ll do it in a minute,’ and after the third trip I whispered, ‘Get off the phone, you’re meant to be helping me!’ I think she must have heard me, because he said, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, Mum,’ and I knew, I just knew he would call her from work so I wouldn’t be able to hear him, and they’d be bitching away like mad, ripping me to shreds.

  Finally we opened the hatch door to the loft and flung it back. There was no electricity up there and I really hated going up first. He knew that but still said, ‘You go up and put the torch on the floor and I’ll pass the boxes up to you.’

  When I turned to him, he did jump a bit, as though he knew he was wrong, but just said, ‘What? They’re heavier than they look!’

  I glared at him and scrambled up the steps, fully aware that I’d put on weight over Christmas and fully aware, too, that he’d be watching my ever-increasing bum heave itself into the loft and that image would cheer him up when he was feeling down. So to stop that happening, I kicked out when I got to the top step and caught him bang on the side of his chin.

  The first blow is always easy. A memory. No warning. That was the trick I’d learned.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he shouted. He stumbled on the steps and I turned just in time to see the box crash to the ground.

  ‘If you’ve broken anything in that box . . .’ I said, suddenly furious at the thought. ‘Pass it to me. Pass it to me!’

  He went back down the ladder, picked up the box and shook it. ‘There’s nothing to break in there,’ he said defiantly. ‘It’s just the lights.’

  I simmered with rage. Just the lights! Just the lights I’d gone out and bought. Just the lights I’d put up when he was working late one night and came home smelling of brandy, having walked from town in the snow without phoning to say he’d be late. You’d think he would have learned something from that.

  When he was up in the loft space with me, I said, ‘Those are my lights. Just be careful with them.’

  ‘They’re mine too,’ he said, and I could tell he was using his reasonable voice. It was a voice that always drove me mad, just as it was designed to do.

  ‘No they are not,’ I said. ‘They’re mine. I bought them.’

  ‘I gave you the money for them, remember?’

  I winced as I remembered him coming into the room later that night and giving me fifty pounds towards decorations.

  ‘Do you really think that was enough? Do you really think your paltry contribution makes any difference?’

  He flushed. ‘I’m happy to give you more, Hannah.’

  ‘Yeah, right. You’re tight, that’s your problem.’ I thought of all the bills I had to pay, and the mortgage, and the food, and the petrol I had to put in to go an
d buy the lights in the first place, and my blood started to boil. ‘You are so selfish, living here for virtually nothing.’

  He flinched. ‘I’m not. I’m happy to give you more money. I give you what you told me to give you.’

  ‘Yes, four years ago!’ I shouted. ‘Haven’t you heard of inflation? Haven’t you heard of the recession? Don’t you realise I’m subsidising you?’

  His face was set. ‘I didn’t know you were. I’m sorry. I’ll sort it out as soon as we get downstairs. You always said it was plenty, but if it’s not, I’ll give you whatever you need.’

  I wouldn’t let it rest. I couldn’t. ‘Always watching your money. Always being careful. Paying off your own property in London while you live with me. How does it feel to live off a woman’s wages? A woman you won’t even marry!’

  I pushed him, hard. His head hit the beam and he screamed. His reaction was so extreme, it made me even more furious. I flashed the torch at the beam and saw a nail sticking out with his blood and hair on. How was I meant to know it was there? He was always looking for sympathy, moaning if I so much as glanced at him. He crouched down low and kept touching his head and complaining.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ he shouted. ‘And marry you? Why the hell would I marry you, you lunatic?’

  ‘What, me?’ I yelled. ‘I’m the lunatic?’ And I kicked him in the small of his back. I kicked him as hard as I could – in fact my foot hurt for days afterwards – but he didn’t complain again. He just lay there and started to cry like a baby.

  I stared down at him, and all I felt was contempt. I climbed out of the loft and down the steps. I moved the stepladder away from the hatch, so that when he had to jump ten feet to get down, he’d really have something to cry about.

  And then I decided to go out, rain or not, and see a film on my own. I needed something to take my mind off that miserable bastard.

  55

  Present day