The Day We Disappeared

by Lucy Robinson

  ‘Please, Sylvie!’ Stephen said. ‘This is my favourite bit!’ he whispered conspiratorially. He looked like a boy.

  ‘Shoo,’ Sylvie said, pushing us off to an ancient counter by the window. I took a seat next to some boxes of lemons and fresh mint leaves drying on a tea-towel. Before I knew it Sylvie had put two mismatched mugs of hot chocolate in front of us, proper thick, creamy French hot chocolate, with brioche for dipping. She added some bread and dishes of half-used jam and butter, and left us to it. ‘Bon appétit,’ she murmured, sliding quietly away.

  ‘Aah.’ I sighed, sipping the velvety chocolate.

  ‘Try this,’ Stephen whispered reverently, passing me the jam. ‘It’s fig, from the orchard. Incredible.’

  It was. Everything was. Especially the fact that this was Stephen’s naughty secret. ‘There’s only so much formality I can take,’ he told me, stuffing chocolaty brioche into his mouth.

  Eventually we sat back, full and happy, and watched the kitchen staff at work. ‘It must make you proud,’ I mused, ‘seeing all these people, beavering away for your massive important company that everyone wants to please.’

  Stephen frowned. ‘I guess so. I just hope they don’t think I’m a rich idiot.’

  ‘You keep saying that,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t think that about you, and I really doubt these guys do either. To be honest, I find it quite hard to reconcile you with your job. You seem so …’ I trailed off, embarrassed.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Real,’ I muttered, blushing. ‘And normal.’ You’re a jam-with-blobs-of-butter-in-it kind of a person, I thought, but didn’t say. And I like that very much.

  There was a long pause, during which Stephen looked at me and I looked at my bread. I ate some of it. ‘I’m glad you think that,’ he said. ‘I’d be really sad if you thought I was in some stuffy Old Boys’ league.’

  I continued eating.

  ‘You’re not what you seem either.’ He smiled. ‘You wander round in those clothes being all earthy and ethical and stuff yet you eat like a bastard and you aren’t afraid of a good drink. You’re a disgrace to your nutritional therapist.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  Stephen laughed. ‘Oh, Annie, come on!’

  I looked at the space where my bread and butter, my jam, hot chocolate and mountain of brioche had sat, and considered all the cheese I planned to eat later on. ‘I used to be good,’ I grumbled. ‘But I’m lapsed. It’s terrible.’

  Stephen couldn’t stop laughing. ‘But what’s the point in life without cheese and wine? And cake? And bread? Not to mention flat whites?’

  ‘I can’t officially agree with you. Unofficially, however, I totally agree.’

  The kitchen staff were picking up pace. ‘We’d better get on,’ Stephen said. ‘But I’m glad we had that breakfast.’

  ‘How come you invited me?’ I asked boldly.

  ‘Because I want you to see who I really am.’

  ‘I’d better go and shower,’ I mumbled. ‘I’ve got my first massage at eight.’

  ‘Have a good morning,’ Stephen said. ‘I’ll see you later. I’m booked in with you this evening.’

  That morning, I did three massages, and in the afternoon I went for a walk along the Dordogne. Stephen and his gang had gone off to some vineyard by St Émilion, Tash with them to facilitate cars, so it was just me, Sylvie and her team. She gave me a beautiful little picnic of saucisson, bread, garden lettuce and thick, oozy chèvre, wrapped in a proper checked cloth, like something from a children’s fairytale.

  It was a perfect afternoon. I wandered into a second-hand bookshop in a long barn by the water and bought an old issue of Vogue with Lee Miller on the front.

  I watched a couple ahead of me stop again and again to kiss each other and sat down on a bench by the water, almost overwhelmed by the rushing excitement inside me.

  My hands shook as I prepped the treatment room I’d been given, ready for Stephen’s massage. I’d heard them arrive back, patently drunk and in high spirits, and had felt so nervous that I’d not even come out to say hello.

  I never talked to Mum. I’d never believed she was following me round like a gentle, omnipresent shadow. That was part of the problem: I’d always believed her to be trapped in some terrible violent Purgatory. But occasionally I had a fleeting sense of her. A waft of something here, a warm cushion there, and now, just for a minute, I could smell her. The lavender, I thought. Mum had used lavender oil for almost everything.

  I closed my eyes, breathing her in. The room became more peaceful, somehow, and my breathing slowed down. I could do this.

  ‘Hello!’ Stephen said, bursting in without warning, radiantly happy and healthy. ‘Bonsoir, Annie! BON-BLOODY-SOIR! What a stunning evening! I don’t want a massage, I want to get back out into that beautiful countryside. Will you come with me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  We left the house through the back door, out of sight of the others. We both avoided the subject of why. After a short walk along a stone path that gave way to chalk, we entered a rustling section of woodland and picked our way uphill through the evening chorus, talking about our families. To my amazement, Stephen had remembered from one of our earliest conversations that I had a sister called Lizzy who worked in programming and that she was two years older than me. He was extraordinary! ‘Is she like you?’ he asked.

  ‘No! She’s about as similar to me as a Buddhist monk. Although there’s not much Buddhism about Lizzy. And even less monk.’

  ‘There must be some similarities. I bet I could see you in her face.’

  The wood was petering out into acre after glorious acre of vineyard, carving soft green lines out of the undulating earth.

  ‘You’d probably recognize bits of me,’ I said doubtfully. ‘She’s a knockout, though, in a proper film-star kind of a way. I’m not saying I’m a minger but Lizzy’s the red-carpet one for sure.’

  ‘Film stars are not real women,’ he said. ‘Specially that Jolie creature. I must be the only man on earth who doesn’t fancy her. She scares me. It’s not just those enormous lips, it’s everything. And she stole Brad off Jen and I’ll never forgive her that.’

  I stopped walking and looked at him. ‘Did you actually just say all of that? Are you in fact a woman?’

  Stephen tried not to laugh but couldn’t help himself. ‘I’m completely nuts about you,’ he said suddenly. The laughter stopped but his smile didn’t. ‘I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I can’t do anything except think about you, and the way you move around a room, the way your hands feel on me, the way you get little blonde horns escaping from your plait. I can’t stop watching that tiny little snub nose of yours and the way your freckles speckle across it like little tiddlywinks, and the smell of soap on your skin, and the way the bells jingle on your skirt when you’re working on me, and the fact that you couldn’t give a shit that I’m a rich businessman. I can’t stop thinking about the night I met you, and how you blatantly didn’t want me there because you were tired, and how peaceful and sweet you looked when I found you asleep in Reception, all curled up on the sofa like a little mouse. I can’t stop thinking about the way you bite your lip when you’re thinking, and that delightful little laugh you have. All those funny earth-mamma clothes you wear, and how graceful and calm you always are. I’m worried that you and that bloke Tim are in love with each other, and I’m worried that I’m your boss, and this is all completely inappropriate, and I don’t know what to do. I’m consumed by it, like a woeful character from Shakespeare wandering around the forest, pounding his chest. I’m done for, Annabel Mulholland, totally done for. I can’t –’

  I never remembered how it had happened, who moved first. I just knew that suddenly he stopped speaking because we were kissing each other. I wasn’t shaking with fear like I’d thought I might be, I was firing with chemical excitement, up on a rolling high. Stephen smelt faintly of cologne and his body was as firm as metal against mine. He kissed hungrily, deeply, pulling me even closer t
o him.

  Once again I wasn’t sure how it happened but suddenly my vest top was off, flung somewhere among the vines next to Stephen’s T-shirt, and his bare torso was against mine. Fragmentary blasts of excitement erupted and flamed. I was no longer in control of my own body.

  ‘Annie …’ he muttered, kissing my neck. There was a frantic struggle as we both tried to remove the rest of our clothes, then I was on bare soil and Stephen was on top of me and before I even knew what was happening, had time to think about things like contraception or the stones digging into my back or the bee buzzing loudly near my ear, it was happening. Intense, heady sex that hurt me only fleetingly before the chemicals took over again and I flew high into the universe.

  Stephen held me so tightly afterwards that I could hardly breathe. I didn’t want to breathe anyway. Crushed into his side I felt a tear of relief, of pride, of all sorts of things, slide out of my eye.

  I wasn’t broken. Underneath everything, all the ache and the fear, there was a woman: a normal, functional woman, ready, at last, to rejoin the human race.

  Stephen kissed the side of my head and pulled me even tighter, and told me it had been amazing. Then it started again. At my instigation.

  I’m all over this sex stuff, I thought proudly.

  Shut up, I thought, embarrassed.

  By the time we got back to the château it was dark and dinner had started. I couldn’t speak and my lady parts were in shock. I held on to Stephen’s arm, as if it were a life raft.

  ‘Er, right then,’ Stephen began, as we hit the stone path again. ‘So, do you come here often?’

  I breathed hard, suddenly returning to the scents of the evening. Seafood, garlic, jasmine. Stephen’s body. The ancient wooden floor creaked as we stopped in the hallway.

  ‘I don’t want to have dinner with them,’ Stephen murmured. He moved away from the stripe of light under the dining-room door. ‘Can we go to my room? I don’t want to let go of you.’

  The high. The transcendent high. The chemicals, the whizzing neurons, the firing synapses. The pulsating, pumping high. Why had I spent my adult life running from this? I wondered, as Stephen slid his hand down my trembling belly.

  Hours later, when the sun has gone and the fields are still and grey, a policeman finds her curled up in a tight ball in the shadow of the wall. He takes her home, where there is a row of white cars with blue lights.

  A policewoman leads her to the couch where she sits her down and explains to her that her mother is not alive any more, but Annie already knows. From a room upstairs come terrible noises; noises that sound like jungle animals more than they do Daddy. But Annie knows it’s Daddy because from time to time she can hear him cry, ‘Georgie, Georgie, my girl, my Georgie, no.’

  Lizzy has cried herself to sleep. She is a defeated ball in the corner of the armchair.

  The policewoman seems to wait for Annie to cry, but she is silent as a mouse. When the policewoman asks if she understands what she’s told her, Annie just nods.

  She stares at the fireplace where there’s a misshapen wicker basket that Mummy once bought in an Abroad Country. It’s surrounded by a collection of shoes from last night, when they all played ‘throw the shoe into the lumpy basket’. Over there on the wooden table is a mug that still holds the remains of the cinnamon tea Mummy was drinking last night. And over the chair a big silk scarf that they bought in that thing called a flea market that was full of smelly clothes.

  Annie sits perfectly still with her hands folded in her lap and just shakes her head when Mrs Wilson from the village arrives and asks her if she wants a sandwich.

  ‘Or maybe a tissue, sweetheart?’ The policewoman tries again. ‘Some lemonade? A nice glass of milk?’

  I didn’t reply because, already, I’d gone. I’d disappeared from my own life, just like Mum had from hers – only I wasn’t put in a box and buried. I had to stay.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kate

  Three days into Badminton Horse Trials I stood in the crowd overlooking a cross-country jump called the Vicarage Vee, which Mark had told me was one of the most famous on the course. The air was hot and humid and the vast crowds that had been pouring in over the last two days had swelled yet again. Fear pulsed in my temples as I imagined Mark and Stumpy galloping around that impossible course. Please, I prayed feverishly to my occasional God, please, God, I beg you, keep them safe. I’ll do anything – I’ll even go out for sherry with Maria, if you want me to. I could become a proper Catholic, or work at a shelter or donate a kidney. Just don’t let any harm come to them.

  Away from my daily routine in Somerset, I was finding it far harder to maintain the growing sense of calm I’d felt over the last few weeks. Intrusive flashbacks from my past – the whole bloody mess of it – had kept me awake the last two nights as I’d tried to sleep on my narrow bunk with Mark only metres away. And, try as I might, I couldn’t control the strong physical sensations I felt when I was around him. When he’d done his dressage test yesterday, then removed his top hat at the end to bow at the judges, his hair had blown loose in the crisp morning air. I felt like I’d been hit in the face. ‘You’re beautiful,’ I’d whispered, and then felt sick in case anyone – including me – had heard.

  I’d tried to run off and have a drink with Tiggy last night but Mark had cornered me and said, all nice and relaxed, ‘Why don’t we take our favourite horse for a walk along the lanes?’ And I’d found myself in a beautiful sunset once again with a horse I adored and a man I –

  A man I nothing.

  ‘Let’s let Stumpy graze for a bit,’ Mark had said, when we reached a large field with the double gates left open. ‘I don’t like him being in a stable all the time.’

  Stumpy had been very happy to oblige. We’d sat on an old stone wall while he had mown down the corner of some unsuspecting farmer’s land. I laughed every time I looked at my big grey friend; Tiggy had taken his plaits out after the dressage and his mane looked as if it had been given a tight perm.

  ‘There’s a lot of indignity in being a horse,’ I observed, watching him. ‘Perms, people doing baby talk at you – not to mention all that ridiculous dressage stuff.’

  ‘What do you mean, “all that ridiculous dressage stuff”? Stumpy loves it!’

  I laughed. ‘He can’t! It’s ridiculous! No horse would enjoy that!’

  ‘Stumpy would disagree. You don’t do dressage that well if you hate it.’

  I loved the ease with which Mark chatted when he was away from home. He was like a different man here in this honey-stoned village; a man unafraid to smile and laugh and show the world who he was.

  ‘You seem so different out of the yard,’ I said.

  Mark looked at me, and I felt little prickling sensations all the way down my back.

  ‘So much happier,’ I added, rather wishing I hadn’t piped up in the first place. ‘You really love these competitions, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’ He sighed.

  Silence.

  ‘I live for the competitions, although they’re exhausting. But, really, I –’ He broke off, and I looked away. Strange things happened when I spent too long looking at him.

  ‘Really you what?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Ah, fuck it,’ he said. ‘Fuck it, Kate. The truth is, I just love being away from Maria.’ He breathed out in a big whoosh. ‘And it’s such a relief to say so, even though it’s an awful thing to admit.’

  I hadn’t expected that.

  ‘As soon as I drive that lorry out of the yard I feel …’ He searched around for the right word. ‘Free.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And for the record …’ he sighed ‘… I dislike myself enormously for saying that. Quite apart from the fact that it’s so disrespectful to talk about Maria behind her back, I couldn’t bear it if Ana Luisa thought I liked being away from her. I don’t. I love her. I love her so much it hurts at times.’ His eyes welled suddenly.


  ‘But you’re right. I do love being away at competitions. It’s like stepping into a different world where I … hold some value as a human being.’ Mark concentrated hard on his hand, which was clutching Stumpy’s lead-rope with a white-knuckled ferocity.

  ‘You do hold value as a human being,’ I said, because I couldn’t not.

  Mark didn’t react. He just stared at his hands. ‘That’s not what it feels like in my house,’ he said eventually. ‘In my house I’m a low-value human.’

  Leave her, I thought sadly. You’re too special for this. Mark deserved someone who loved him. Respected him. I wanted to shout, ‘Look what you’ve achieved, for crying out loud! And after having your childhood ripped away from you by your dad. You’re a miracle, Mark, you deserve better!’

  But then I looked at dear, lovely, sweet Stumpy, chomping away so happily at the grass, his tail flicking lazily at flies, and I thought of Ana Luisa, sitting up on the saddle in front of her daddy last week, shrieking excitedly, her father’s arm tightly round her middle, and I knew it wasn’t that simple. Mark had everything to lose if he threw Maria out.

  So I just said, ‘I understand.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll work it out,’ Mark said tiredly. ‘Relationships are hard, right?’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ I told him. ‘I’m the last person you’d want to ask about relationships.’

  ‘I see. Well, I’m sure Maria and I’ll sort it out,’ he said, and neither of us believed him.

  We had talked until the golden fields around us began to turn grey, and by the time we got up to leave I felt crazy. When Mark smiled at me, and said, ‘Thanks, Kate. That was really nice,’ I swear my legs wobbled like something from a historical romance.

  ‘Daddy!’ shouted a small voice, in the mêlée of grooms and riders in the stable block.

  Before we even saw her, I felt Mark stiffen. ‘Ana Luisa?’

  Maria and Ana Luisa were meant to be in Portugal for ten days, at the luxury villa of one of Maria’s relatives. It was unusual for Maria to be away during such a major event, Becca had said, but evidently the offer had been too good. ‘She never turns down the finer things, pet,’ Becca had said disparagingly. ‘Nasty old skank.’