When You Disappeared

by John Marrs

  I had drifted towards the city to gather myself, and three and a half months of self-medication in a fresh environment brought me closer to who I’d been when I first embarked on my adventure.

  And my old self appreciated a challenge. So a free rein to build a business from scraps was too interesting an opportunity to reject. It would also help my ever-active mind to remain focused with constructive ideas. I hadn’t felt such purpose since I’d walked along Rue du Jean as flames from a burning hotel nipped at my heels.

  I held court at twice-weekly travel workshops in which I’d advise guests of off-the-beaten-track destinations, where to find work without a green card and how to stretch their dollars. I liaised with hostels cross-country to set up discounts for mutual recommendations. And having briefly once been the guest of a homeless shelter myself in London, I encouraged our patrons to spare a few hours to serve lunches in a downtown soup kitchen.

  But away from my distractions, sleep still proved elusive. So when I wasn’t inducing a nocturnal cannabis coma, I was leading guests out on bar and club crawls around the Mission District. Darren Glasper was a decade my junior, and I found it physically challenging to keep up with the partying of those even younger than him. The only way to gain stamina for those interminably energetic nights was to up my cocaine intake. And when crippling hangovers ate too far into the following morning or my nostrils felt too numb to snort any more, I introduced powdered amphetamines into my daily routine via my gums, to remain conscious and functioning. It seemed a sensible solution to the internal chaos of burning my candle at both ends.

  It was much more rewarding to be Darren’s caricature than it was to be Simon Nicholson. I threw myself into the role with such gusto that I often struggled to distinguish where he ended and I began.

  3 July

  My lips tingled as gusts of cold salty wind and water splashed against my face and ruffled my hair.

  As the ferry made its wavering return from Alcatraz towards its dock at Pier 33, I couldn’t stop thinking about the five-by-eight-foot cells I’d just visited. Although it had been decommissioned as a prison back in 1963 and transformed into a major tourist attraction, it was still a haunting presence.

  I sympathised with the thirty-six former inmates who’d attempted to escape its claustrophobia. Many had chosen death within the bay’s currents over spending the rest of their lives locked behind bars. I knew the anxiety of being trapped better than most, but so had my old friend Dougie, albeit for very different reasons.

  More than twenty-five years had passed, but I’d never forgotten Dougie’s kiss or spoken of it with anyone else, not even Catherine. As we got older, his disguise had occasionally become transparent and I knew he’d retained feelings for me that went beyond friendship. It was small things, like his lingering glances when I spoke, or when he’d focus his attention on me at the pub instead of trying to woo girls like Roger and Steven did.

  Yet his attention neither bothered me nor made me uncomfortable. Quite the opposite, in fact. I felt privileged to have two people in my life who helped to make up for my fractured family.

  However, I worried for Dougie. Whether it was with a girl or a boy, I hoped he’d eventually find the happiness I had. I didn’t want to see him pained, or be the one to inflict it upon him. But our opposing natures meant it was inevitable.

  ‘I’m getting married,’ I blurted out on our way to meet Catherine and Paula at a disco in town. ‘I asked her last week.’

  Dougie stared at me momentarily, then formed an instant, forced smile. ‘That’s brilliant!’ he shouted, leaning over to embrace me. ‘I’m really pleased for you both. She’s a smashing girl.’

  ‘I’d like you to be my best man,’ I replied, aware I might be adding insult to injury.

  ‘It’d be an honour, thank you. I’ll get the drinks in to celebrate.’ He sprinted to the bar, where mirrored tiles reflected him biting hard on his bottom lip. Then, quick as lightning, he flashed the same grin to the barmaid as he had to me.

  Within three months, Dougie had proposed to Beth, a schoolteacher he met later that night, and the two became husband and wife a year after Catherine and I married.

  Suddenly, the ferry’s engines began to labour and churn the bay’s water before docking.

  As I navigated the wooden gangway back towards Fisherman’s Wharf, I wondered what had become of Beth. I hoped she’d found happiness with a man who truly loved her, and hadn’t been ruined by the man Dougie became.

  11 November

  Chemicals ricocheted around my artery walls as I wrung every last morsel of pleasure from my hedonistic lifestyle. But when I randomly caught sight of my reflection in the glass panel of a bookshop door, I did a double take, repulsed by a face and body that resembled mine, but which were more haunted and dishevelled than I remembered.

  Now I finally accepted there’d been a correlation between Paula’s death more than eighteen months earlier and my hollowed cheeks and the dark crescents that circled my dimmed eyes. The gums above my top teeth were red raw, and my left cheek had developed a tiny, visible twitch that only pulsated when my engine was running low on stimulants.

  I looked so much more than my thirty-six years, and double Darren’s twenty-seven. I had lost myself in the place where I’d gone to find me. The identity I’d assumed was consuming me. Yet that wasn’t enough to shame or coax me into re-evaluating my lifestyle choices. Instead, I walked away vowing to repair myself by eating more fruit and vegetables.

  Besides, I had more pressing matters on my mind. In less than a year, since my arrival in San Francisco, I’d snorted and drunk my way through the remainder of the French publisher’s money, and was stealing from Mike the hostel owner to boost my reserves. There were plenty of rooms for me to check guests in and out of without including their names in the register. They remained anonymous to all but me and I’d pocket the cash.

  Grateful contributions from a drug dealer I’d permitted to ply her trade with discretion around the building also helped to swell my coffers. Only she and I knew that the broken dispenser in the ladies’ toilets contained more than a hundred plastic tampon applicators packing half a gram of cocaine each.

  Darren took gratification in being the centre of attention. He was boisterous; he was unpredictable; he inspired others to push themselves to explore; he was an expert purveyor of anecdotes, even if most of them were lies. He was the protagonist to my reactionary. And, most importantly, Darren was impervious to Simon’s darkness.

  But what eventually demolished my prison of fakery was a man I’d never met, who’d come to find me.

  2 December

  Once a month, I led excursions down the Californian coast in a modified Greyhound bus that Mike had bought at an auction on a whim. For fifty dollars a time, hostellers climbed on-board the ‘Purple Turtle’ for a sightseeing tour through Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Diego, eventually stopping over the Mexican border, in Tijuana.

  Mike had removed most of the bus’s seats and replaced them with mattresses, creating a portable hostel where guests could explore, sleep, and feel part of a mini-community on wheels.

  With my bag packed, my only requirement was a hearty breakfast before I set off on my next guided tour.

  ‘Is anyone sitting there, mate?’ a British voice asked as I attacked a mountain of pancakes in the hostel’s busy dining area.

  ‘Help yourself,’ I replied, and looked up to find a shaggy-haired man in his late twenties I hadn’t checked in myself. His smile reminded me of someone. ‘Have you just arrived?’

  He was ravenous as he tucked into his scrambled eggs and hash browns. ‘Yeah, about an hour ago. I’m bloody knackered. I landed in New York four weeks ago and have zigzagged my way across ever since.’

  ‘That’s good going. Why such a whistle-stop tour?’

  ‘I’m trying to find someone. You might be able to help, actually. Have you ever come across a bloke who calls himself Darren Glasper?’

  A chil
l ran through me.

  ‘Darren Glasper?’ I repeated, making sure the amphetamines I’d just washed down with a pot of coffee weren’t making me hallucinate.

  ‘Yeah. It’s not his real name. He’s been pretending to be my brother.’

  Suddenly I recognised him from the family photographs that had been pinned to the wall around Darren’s bed at the Routard in France. My first response was to want to throw my plate to one side and bolt, but his lack of hostility meant he didn’t know I was his man.

  ‘No, the name doesn’t ring any bells,’ I lied. ‘Why’s he been doing that?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve come to find out.’

  Richard Glasper introduced himself and explained how French police had informed his family of Darren’s untimely death from a weak heart five months after Bradley and I discovered his body. We’d confirmed to them his nationality, but Bradley was ignorant of his surname and I’d kept it quiet to buy myself time.

  An impression of Darren’s teeth was sent across the English Channel, and only after his family reported him missing were both sets of dental records cross-checked and matched.

  But it was already too late to bring his body home. A clerical error meant Darren had been logged as a vagrant, and cremated as such. His family was presented with a plastic tub of ashes and nothing else.

  ‘It broke my mam’s heart,’ Richard continued. ‘Months later we started getting these weird cheques from some French book publisher, and then the police told us my brother’s name had been flagged up in New York for overstaying his American visa. The address he gave of where he was staying was a youth hostel. The manager checked his photocopied records, and someone using Darren’s passport had been staying there.’

  I nodded along as he spoke, but inside I was furious with myself for not having the foresight to cover my tracks. What the hell had I been thinking in donating the book royalties to his family? I might as well have left them a trail of breadcrumbs to follow, right to my front door. Not for a second had I ever considered my deception would come back to haunt me like this – I’d been too busy congratulating myself on my philanthropy.

  I moved my hands under the table so Richard wouldn’t notice them shake.

  ‘My mam was convinced there’d been a mistake and Darren was alive,’ he continued. ‘But the police investigated and were adamant he wasn’t. She didn’t believe them. We contacted the Youth Hostel Association, and city by city found out this fella had been travelling and using my brother’s name for the best part of three years. And the manager of the Seattle hostel reckons he speaks to Darren regularly here. They have some kind of recommendation deal between them.’

  I cleared my dry throat. ‘What are you going to say if you find him?’

  ‘It’s not what I’m going to say, it’s what I’m going to do,’ replied Richard, his eyes narrowing. ‘That bastard destroyed me mam. She went to her grave with a broken heart believing her youngest didn’t want anything to do with us. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll put an end to this.’

  ‘Well, the best of luck,’ I replied as I rose. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I have an excursion to organise.’

  ‘No worries mate, nice to meet you. If you hear anything, you’ll let me know, yeah? I’m in room 401.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I left my half-eaten breakfast where it lay, and forced myself not to run to reach my bedroom. I crammed my meagre belongings into my rucksack and headed to the ladies bathroom, and then to Richard’s room to ensure he would never bother me again.

  3 December

  As the Purple Turtle trundled down the Pacific Coast Highway, I knew that living vicariously through a person who no longer existed had left me exposed. I’d thought I had created a new life for myself by erasing my identity. But it wasn’t my life to build upon; it had belonged to somebody else.

  And there was another person’s life I’d changed too. As we’d made our first stop in Santa Cruz, I’d phoned the San Francisco Police Department and informed them of a British man who was working his way around the country’s hostels dealing drugs. His name was Richard Glasper and they’d find him in room 401 of the Haight-Ashbury Hostel with a dozen cocaine-filled tampon applicators hidden in his suitcase pockets.

  It was in Richard’s best interests for it to happen this way. I wasn’t alarmed by his threats of what he’d do to the person posing as his brother. I was afraid of what I might do to him if he confronted me. And it would certainly have happened if I’d stayed.

  I had sucked so much marrow out of America that there was no bone left to feast on. The halfway mark of our trip was almost complete, and I knew I couldn’t show my face in San Francisco again without being unmasked.

  Tijuana, Mexico

  4 December

  I had no qualms about leaving my party of hostellers to fend for themselves without a driver or navigator once we reached Tijuana. If I’d taught them anything in my workshops, it was that the most successful travellers were the most resourceful ones.

  With my dollars converted to pesos, my rucksack strapped to my back and my passengers distracted in a tequila bar, I slipped away to Highway 1D in search of the Baja coast.

  Within minutes, I’d resuscitated Simon Nicholson and he was sharing the back of a pickup truck with a dozen wooden crates of watermelons.

  Northampton, today

  4.15 p.m.

  He wasn’t stupid. He’d presumed, if not expected, her to have found love at some point. In fact, it would’ve been peculiar if she hadn’t.

  But now his replacement had an identity and it didn’t sit comfortably with him. To hear her talk of this ‘Tom’ with such fondness; for him to have slipped so easily into his shoes, his house and his bed . . . He couldn’t help but resent the man. He’d stopped loving her long before he left, so he was surprised by how it made him feel. Almost jealous, he conceded. His temples began to throb.

  He knew he had no right to judge what she did with her life or who with. But allowing a stranger to play father to his children irritated him.

  ‘Would you have preferred it if I’d stayed alone forever?’ she asked suddenly, as his expression betrayed his thoughts.

  ‘No, no,’ he stuttered, ‘of course not.’

  The aching in his head grew more impatient and demanded attention. But her unrelenting stare that analysed his every gesture meant he couldn’t check his watch to see how late he was in taking his tablets, not without her asking why.

  She’d taken discreet pleasure in watching him recoil as she’d spoken of Tom. Even adulterous, gutless murderers can feel envy when hearing how replaceable they are, she’d learned, and she smiled to herself.

  However, she remained alert to the potential danger of the man in front of her, even if she was no longer as scared as she had been. Though she did feel a slight sense of relief when he admitted how Paula’s death had eventually plagued his conscience. Maybe there was a smattering of hope for him yet. She understood why he’d used drugs to deal with his conscience; she’d used alcohol to cope with his loss.

  ‘Are you and – I forget his name – still together?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Tom and I are not. Although we’re still good friends,’ she replied, proud of that rare feat.

  ‘What did you mean when you said I destroyed it all?’

  She glared at him. ‘Things began to break down between Tom and me when I discovered you were still alive.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CATHERINE

  Northampton, twenty-one years earlier

  16 February

  My eyes darted back and forth, examining every red brick and lick of mortar of Fabien’s shopfront.

  Even when Margaret and I signed the contracts, it still took a while to sink in that the boutique now belonged to me. Somewhere along the line, I’d become the owner of a shop I was once too frightened to step inside.

  ‘Well done, girl,’ came Margaret’s voice from behind me. ‘You have no idea how proud I am of you.’
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  I did, actually, because I was so chuffed with myself that I couldn’t stop grinning. But I wasn’t daft. It was all very well taking over a business with a proven track record, but it was going to take gumption and elbow grease to keep it a success.

  I continued making a range of my own clothes, either at home or in the back room of the shop while my old supermarket co-worker Selena worked front of house, dealing with the day-to-day running and charming the clientele.

  Emily started showing an interest in my work like I’d done with my mum’s. But even when she got under my feet or slowed me down, I refused to follow the example I’d been set. She wasn’t even eight, but I was already teaching her to sew on buttons and chalk up hemlines. And I’d encourage her to help me pore through fashion magazines looking for inspiration and to keep up with current trends.

  While Robbie found a new interest in computer games and Tom taught James new songs on his guitar, I cherished the time Emily and I spent together. But at the same time, I pitied Simon for what he’d lost.

  1 August

  Silence didn’t come to the cottage very often, but when it did, I welcomed it like an old friend.

  Tom enjoyed taking the kids out on his own every now and again, and it gave me a few rare hours without the TV blaring or the sound of a football banging against the garage door. So while the rabble was at the park, I fulfilled a long-delayed promise to myself to clear Simon’s clothes from our wardrobe.

  I’d thought about it several times over the past few months with Tom now in our lives. But it always seemed such a daunting prospect, like throwing another part of him away. And even if he were to miraculously reappear on our doorstep, I didn’t think it would be for a change of shirt.

  So I closed my eyes and opened the wardrobe door. Then, one by one, I carefully removed Simon’s things from the wooden hangers, folded them up neatly and placed them into plastic bags I’d earmarked for the charity shop.