The Day We Disappeared

by Lucy Robinson

  ‘So, Joe’s been working hard with the sponsorship calls,’ I tried.

  Nothing.

  ‘Oh, and your mum actually got a haircut yesterday, so that’s good. She was beginning to look a bit wild there.’

  Mark’s eyes closed.

  ‘The nurse said she thought you were doing really well,’ I said desperately. ‘She said she’d never seen someone with injuries as bad as yours. But look at you, eh? Making all this progress?’

  ‘He told you then,’ said Tony, the physio, marching in with his white trousers and squeaky trainers.

  ‘Told me what?’

  Mark looked cross.

  ‘We got him into a wheelchair today! Wheeled him out of the front door and into the outside world!’

  I stared at him, then turned to Mark. ‘Are you SERIOUS?’

  Tony tutted. ‘Oh, Mark,’ he said. ‘Come on, mate! This is a big day! I’ve also said he can start taking showers, so things are on the up.’

  Still Mark said nothing.

  Tony rolled his eyes at me. ‘I just popped by with your wallet,’ he told Mark, putting it on the bedside table. ‘You left it in physio.’

  Mark failed to thank him and Tony left.

  ‘This is incredible news!’ I cried. ‘You must be thrilled!’

  There was a pause. Then Mark turned his head to me.

  ‘I’m not fucking thrilled, Kate. Sorry if that doesn’t fit in with your vision of my life, but that’s just how it is. I’m far from thrilled. I’ve got pressure sores and my muscles are wasting and I’m sharing my room with a complete mental whose wife keeps sneaking vodka in for him, which just reminds me of Dad, and the whole world is talking about my wife fucking off with Jochim, which apparently everyone knew about other than me. I’m terrified she’ll try to take Ana Luisa away for ever, and I haven’t even the money to hire a lawyer good enough to stop her. And, if all of that wasn’t bad enough, I have to put up with you just marching in here, day in, day out, being all chirpy and – and Irish. I wish you’d all just fuck off, with your good news this and progress that and exciting whatever, because from where I’m standing – except, no, I’m not bloody well standing, I’m lying – there is no good news here.’

  I stared at him, my cheeks burning red.

  ‘Just go,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone.’

  To think he’d dreaded my visits, every day. To think I’d fooled myself into believing he enjoyed my company, when he actually just thought I was an idiot.

  I tried to collect myself so that I could make a controlled exit, but I just found myself staring furiously at the wallet Tony had left on the bedside table, trying to stop tears falling.

  Mark took that wallet to all of his appointments, tucked into his hand under the blanket; I’d thought it was an odd financial thing. Perhaps an unconscious need to keep his money close in case Maria took that too.

  But as my eyes finally focused I realized that Mark was doing nothing of the sort.

  There was no money. The only thing left in his sad, baggy, empty wallet were two photographs in the clear plastic sleeves. One of Ana Luisa at the school fête, dressed as a bowl of sherry trifle, and one of Stumpy, stretching his nose towards the camera as if he wanted to eat it.

  I looked at his two little mementoes and knew that it was time for Mark to start fighting. He couldn’t carry on lying there like a miserable old broken corpse, because he wasn’t. He was a father and a son, not to mention a medical miracle. He’d survived the unsurvivable, just like his horse, and he had everything to live for.

  ‘You left the hospital for the first time in six weeks,’ I said. ‘I know things are dreadful. But, Mark, can’t you see that you’re on the up? Can’t you see that you’re getting there?’

  Mark rolled his eyes angrily.

  ‘You won’t acknowledge how brilliantly you’ve done, Mark? You won’t admit that this is a triumph the size of the Republic of sodding Ireland?’

  ‘Just shut up,’ he said. ‘You’re boring me. I thought you were interesting, Kate, but you’re just like the rest of them.’

  ‘I’m trying to help.’

  ‘No, you’re trying to make yourself feel better,’ Mark said.

  Was I?

  ‘I sat there, completely helpless, while they wheeled me out,’ he muttered. ‘They could have wheeled me into the path of an oncoming lorry and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop them. The accident was nearly six weeks ago, Kate. This is not a giant leap for mankind. Tony was just being over the top. He’s an idiot.’

  I broke. The rage, the despair, the fear, the loneliness, the regret, every crushing feeling I’d had to bite back over the last few weeks, it all exploded.

  ‘An idiot?’ I shouted. ‘A fucking idiot? Are you for real, Mark fucking Waverley? He’s a physio at one of the best fucking spinal units in the country! How dare you?’

  Mark stared at me.

  ‘And what the fuck do you mean, it wasn’t a giant leap for mankind? You should be dead!’ I cried, my voice breaking already. ‘You had blood pouring into your brain, Mark, three of your ribs detached themselves from your ribcage and crushed your lungs, and your thigh bones smashed your hip socket to pieces. Yet you’re mobile again! They’re talking about letting you go home in the next few weeks! What will it take to make you realize what you’ve got? You lived, Mark! You lived! And Stumpy lived!’

  Mark was white-faced with shock and rage. Well, fuck him.

  ‘Fuck you,’ I shouted. ‘Fuck you, Mark! Where’s your gratitude? I’ll stop coming up if you don’t like my company but you can at least show some fucking dignity, and some respect, and speak nicely about the people who are busting their fucking arses to get you home!’

  I stood up, shaking with fury. ‘I’ve not seen Stumpy lying there muttering under his breath. I’ve not seen him shoot down every tiny bit of progress he’s made. He’s fighting really hard and he’s doing it like a gentleman. Are you going to be beaten by your horse? Are you really?’

  And without waiting for an answer, I swept back the curtain and left it open, shouting that he was not a fucking hermit, and I left.

  ‘Have a nice afternoon, love,’ called the nurse, as I steamed past.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kate

  The next day I drove up the M5 for the final time. I needed to apologize, several million times over, and then I needed to offer to walk out of Mark’s life.

  ‘You are a stinker,’ I shouted at myself as I drove. ‘A rotten, stinking, putrid old boil, Kate Brady. You’re a bastard and a tinker and a feck. You screamed at a man suffering major trauma! You suck! I hate you!’

  It was amazing how quickly I’d stopped shouting at Mark and started shouting at myself. I’d been at it for eighteen hours now.

  I didn’t know the hard facts of Mark’s mental health at the moment because, obviously, it was not something he was keen to discuss with me. But I didn’t need to steal his medical notes to know he’d be suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. To have survived being crushed by a half-tonne horse going at thirty miles per hour, being airlifted to hospital, then spending a combined total of thirty-five hours in surgery without suffering major psychological trauma, Mark would have had to be a non-human life form. Especially since his wife had chosen that moment to leave him, taking his child, his horses and his sole source of income.

  ‘The man has nightmares and flashbacks and he’s in pain all the time. He can hardly move and he has to shit into a pot with a nurse there. And look what you went and said to him,’ I continued, as I came off the motorway at Filton. ‘Gah!’

  ‘Hiya, love,’ said the nurse at the station, when I slunk in fifteen minutes later.

  ‘Hi, Jean,’ I said. Until now, I’d not even had the manners to check her name badge. God, I was loathsome.

  ‘He’s in there,’ she told me, as if to say, ‘Batten down the hatches!’

  ‘I hate myself,’ I told her. Jean just smiled.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, slidin
g into Mark’s cubicle. My voice was barely audible.

  Mark’s eyes slid over me, then away again.

  ‘Um, how are you?’ I tried.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘God, Mark,’ I whispered. Tears welled in my eyes before I had a chance to stop them. ‘I can’t believe I said what I said. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself. I am so incredibly sorry.’

  Mark’s eyes came back to me.

  ‘I don’t think you’re undignified or ungrateful. I think you have the kind of courage that people write about in novels, and the kind of patience that only saints should be allowed.’

  Mark closed his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mark. I was suffering from the delusion that you needed to hear that stuff, but I was wrong. You have every right to be sad and angry and frustrated. I think you’re one of the bravest and nicest people I’ve ever met, and you have no idea how much you’ve done for me, letting me stay at your yard. You are my hero. You’ve saved my life. And to think that that’s how I repaid you.’

  I started to cry.

  ‘I’m so bloody ashamed. I won’t come here again. I’ll stay at the yard and look after Stumpy, and when you’re ready to come home I’ll have gone. I’m sorry, Mark Waverley. I’m so sorry. You’re one of the best men I’ve ever met.’

  I turned to leave. ‘Oh, and Maria is an absolute twat,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘She needs a brain transplant, leaving a man like you.’

  I opened the curtain and slipped out.

  ‘Kate.’

  I froze.

  ‘Come back.’

  I didn’t.

  ‘I said, come back, you irritating fool.’

  Slowly, barely able to believe it, I turned. He was smiling. Mark was actually smiling.

  ‘Come back in here, please.’

  I came.

  ‘Shut the curtain.’

  I shut.

  ‘Maria is an absolute twat,’ he repeated slowly. ‘She needs a brain transplant.’ And then he laughed. He laughed! It was the best sound I’d ever heard.

  ‘Thank you, Kate,’ he said, trying not to laugh too hard. His ribs were doing okay but laughing probably wasn’t great. He laughed until his lip started trembling and suddenly tears were falling out of his eyes and into the pillow. I went over to mop them up and ended up dropping my own all over his face.

  After an undignified scramble with a box of tissues, I sat down and Mark turned to look at me. Dear Mother of God, he was lovely.

  ‘I think your methods could do with some tinkering,’ he began, ‘and perhaps the volume could have been turned down a bit but, contrary to what you might think, you said exactly what I needed to hear.’

  ‘But I insulted you. And I said fuck twenty times over. I hate that word.’

  ‘I needed some fuck.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ He was smiling again. ‘It’s not been the best time,’ he said. ‘And I’m still very wobbly. And I’ve never used the word “wobbly” before in my life, and I wish I hadn’t because it makes me feel stupid as well as vulnerable. But you’re right, Kate. I need to be grateful, and dignified, and positive. Because otherwise I’m going to end up with a fixed body and a broken head, and what kind of a life would that be?’

  ‘A shite one?’

  Mark laughed again. ‘A shite one.’

  ‘I don’t want a shite life,’ he went on quietly. ‘It’s been bad enough, with Dad dying and Mum being a liability and us never having any money, then talking myself into marrying a complete monster, suffering the indignity of her constant affairs and the never-ending fear that she’d take my baby away from me. But, for whatever reason, I’ve been given a second chance and you made me see that I have to grab that chance by the balls.’

  ‘The balls,’ I echoed.

  ‘My arm and leg have healed, and I’m able to put a little bit more load through them every day. And the whole pelvis catastrophe is fixing itself, which is why I’m in a wheelchair at last. My ribs are stuck back in place and all of my brain scans have been fine. Basically, I’m going to make it.’

  ‘Because you’re a miracle,’ I reminded him.

  Mark smiled. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Okay, definitely.’ He sighed. ‘I think part of the problem is just being so immobile. Maria told me that I’m a workaholic. That I stay busy from dawn to dusk to stop myself actually dealing with anything. Much as it pains me to admit it, I think she’s right.’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘It’s very easy to do a runner from your own life, you know?’

  ‘It is.’ I smiled sadly. ‘It really is.’

  ‘It’s especially easy to do a runner from your life in my line of work. I just get on a horse at seven a.m. and that’s it until I’m so shattered I go to bed. Busy, busy, busy. Life? What? Problems? Eh? Feelings? Don’t be ridiculous!’

  He paused, thinking. ‘I guess that’s part of why I’ve been so particularly miserable. Being stuck with myself. It’s not much fun.’

  ‘I see what you mean there, boss …’

  ‘I have everything to play for,’ Mark admitted. ‘I had a really good psychotherapy session today because for the first time I actually wanted to feel better, and I managed to write a few sentences in my journal with my right arm, which I wouldn’t have been able to do if the nerve had suffered permanent damage. Plus Kelly’s on nights at the moment,’ he added, ‘and she’s brilliant. So things are pretty good.’

  I smiled, as if to say, ‘How wonderful!’ Rather than ‘Who the hell is Kelly?’

  ‘Kelly’s married to Tony,’ Mark said. ‘Isn’t that funny?’

  ‘HILARIOUS!’ I roared with relief.

  ‘So, thank you,’ Mark repeated. ‘There’s a long way to go with this head of mine, and a very long way to go with this body, but you’ve reminded me that I’m not going to get there sitting in here like a furious hermit.’ He grinned, and I tried not to stare adoringly at him. ‘I might even get you to open the curtains when you leave.’

  ‘Steady on,’ I said. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves there.’

  ‘So how are you, Kate?’ Mark asked.

  ‘I’m … I’m fantastic,’ I said. ‘More fantastic than you could possibly imagine, hearing what you’ve just said.’

  There was a long silence through which we both smiled, and it was not in the faintest bit awkward. ‘Oh, and I took a photo of Stumpy this morning with food all over his nose, look.’

  ‘Oh, Stumpy,’ Mark said, smiling at the photo. ‘Oh, my Stumpy.’

  ‘He said to say, “Please come home soon, Dad.”’

  ‘I want to see my fields again,’ Mark said simply. ‘I want to get back up on my feet and feel fresh air on my face. I want to see Stumpy run round the paddock with my own eyes and I want to get out there and fight for joint custody of my daughter.’ Carefully, I sat down on the side of his bed, even though there was a big sign by it, saying, ‘PLEASE DO NOT SIT ON THIS PATIENT’S BED.’

  ‘Please keep coming, Kate.’ I felt his good hand slide hesitantly towards me. I saw it touch mine, shaking slightly, and I heard Mark’s breathing peak with the effort of making that tiny gesture.

  That enormous gesture.

  I looked at him, even though it felt dangerous to do so.

  ‘Joe is doing a wonderful job, by the sound of things,’ Mark said. ‘And Mum is doing her very best. But you, Kate Brady …’ he moved his hand fully over mine ‘… you’re giving me a reason to live every day.’

  His eyes bulged with tears again, and before I knew what I was doing, I lifted up his good hand and pressed it against my face. We stayed like that for several minutes.

  ‘Oh, not you, too,’ I said eventually. ‘Not you at the crying as well. Joe was after crying yesterday morning. Great bunch of girls, you are.’

  I held his hand against my cheek for a final, precious moment.

  ‘It’s Stumpy I’m doing it for, anyway.’ I grinned. ‘Not you.’r />
  Chapter Sixteen

  Annie

  ‘Aha!’ Lizzy shouted, as I arrived in the restaurant. ‘She’s alive!’ I stopped, confused. I was in Shane’s, a tiny little place round the corner from my house, and I was meant to be meeting Tim for a quick dinner. But with him were Lizzy and Claudine.

  ‘Er – is this Le Cloob?’

  ‘Damn right it’s Le Cloob!’ Lizzy said. ‘You’ve gone and got yourself a boyfriend, Annie, and you’ve already disappeared off the face of the earth. Did you really think we were going to let you and Tim just have a cosy catch-up on your own?’

  I stared at them stupidly. ‘But we’re only allowed to meet in Clapham.’

  Tim and Lizzy turned to Claudine. ‘Well, we were wondering …’ Tim said.

  Claudine stared defiantly back at us all. And then, to everyone’s surprise, she let out a naughty snigger. ‘Oh, my little espadrilles.’ She sighed. ‘You are all very entertaining. Do you really think I refuse to eat anywhere other than French restaurants?’

  ‘Um, yes?’ Lizzy said doubtfully.

  At this Claudine laughed. ‘Ha-ha! I could have kept it up for years!’ She took a slug of wine. ‘You must all think I am some very strange sort of nationalist French peasant. I am a cosmopolitan woman. I like all food and all restaurants. I just fancied playing wiz you all.’ She was delighted with herself. ‘Ha-ha!’

  ‘You,’ Tim said, frowning at Claudine, ‘are a little shit.’

  Tim never told Claudine off. Neither did he ever call anyone a little shit. ‘You are!’ he protested. ‘All those times we’ve travelled down to Clapham to keep you happy!’

  ‘I know! You losers!’ She pronounced it ‘losairs’. I loved Claudine.

  I sat down and took a long, lovely sip of the crisp Greek wine – served, of course, in those trendy little beakers – and smiled. Life felt very good at the moment. It was summer and I was abuzz with wild, zinging feelings that had barely allowed me to sleep since Stephen and I had first kissed nearly three weeks ago. I was crazy with it, glued to my phone like a lovesick teenager when I wasn’t with him, and glued to his side when I was.

  ‘Well, now,’ Claudine said, once we’d all ordered. She sounded more severe. ‘Well, now, my small cheese block. You are obviously going to have to tell everything. And perhaps you can start by explaining why you ’ave not answered your phone in three weeks.’