The Day We Disappeared

by Lucy Robinson

  Then her face changed. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I am cross with you, but I should at least pretend otherwise.’

  Lizzy laughed but I was suddenly silenced. Was Claudine right? Had I really gone to ground?

  ‘I think you should start at the beginning,’ Lizzy said, fanning herself with the menu. The windows and door were wide open but it was still boiling. ‘And tell us everything. Except for sex, I could do without that.’

  ‘So could I,’ Tim said firmly, and Lizzy shot him one of her you-are-totally-in-love-with-my-little-sister-and-it-drives-me-mad faces that I always did my best to ignore.

  I told them everything I could think of, apart from the bit about Stephen and I having sex literally all the time. Even I was taking a while to get used to that. ‘I wake up every morning feeling like I’m on speed,’ I finished dazedly. My food had arrived and I’d barely even noticed. ‘I’m smiling, I’m zinging, I say yes to everything and I don’t even get tired. I hardly recognize myself!’

  ‘We hardly recognize you either,’ Claudine remarked helpfully. She stabbed a piece of purple broccoli in a fairly violent manner.

  I told them about Stephen’s fantasy house in Clapton Square, how it looked like God himself had become an interior designer and put together a showroom in Hackney. ‘Literally everything in that house is stunning. And among all the beautiful design he’s still got loads of old books and pictures and stuff. Even his downstairs toilet is a work of art!’

  I didn’t mention the loo picture of a six-year-old Stephen dissecting a frog in his back garden: as yet I’d failed to make him take it down. (He thought it was hilarious and sweet; I thought it was depraved.) But I did say that I’d always thought a person’s house to be a reflection of who they really were. And that this house boded very well for Stephen.

  ‘Isn’t it just wonderful that he lives there, and not in a ten-million-pound house in Kensington? Doesn’t that just show you what a great bloke he is? He is just amazing! Amazing, I tell you!’

  Rein it in, I told myself. This is nauseating! But I couldn’t. I felt like I’d won the lottery. Years and years of loneliness, nothingness, a painful inability to engage with men on almost any level and now this? Even I barely believed it.

  ‘I’m smitten,’ I admitted. ‘Completely in love. It’s hopeless.’

  ‘Love?’ Claudine barked. She put down her cutlery. ‘Did you just say love?’

  I nodded guiltily. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. We’re not being mad and impetuous, we are in love. Madly in love. It happens all the time, so stop looking at me like that! It happened to you, Claudie, you were married within five weeks of meeting Sylvester!’

  Claudine, who could not argue with this, was silenced, although not for long. ‘You are totally out of control,’ she said. ‘My darling, you have been together two and a half weeks! Look at you! You ’ave moved far too fast!’

  ‘Claudie …’

  ‘No! You do not know this man! You are being ridiculous!’

  ‘Oh, Claudie!’ Lizzy began. ‘Don’t be mean. What about love at first sight?’

  She would defend me to the hilt, Lizzy, but she looked rather worried, too. They demanded that Tim expound some wisdom on the possibility of love at first sight and I zoned out, suddenly anxious.

  What if Claudine was right? What if I was just caught up in some mad blaze of hormones? What if the pure, racing joy of the last seventeen days had had more to do with madness than it had with love?

  I’d let no man near me for years. I’d agreed to go on the odd date, often under extreme duress, but the tiny handful of men I hadn’t panic-cancelled at the last minute had – in spite of being mostly very nice – touched deep icy memories that I wanted nothing to do with. Gradually, in the same way that Lizzy and I had stopped trying to do something about Dad’s agoraphobia, Le Cloob had stopped trying to set me up with men.

  My unexpected willingness to place my trust in Stephen – to let myself fall for him – had felt to me like a landmark victory. A miracle! I couldn’t bear it if it wasn’t real. If it was just me being crazy.

  ‘Hey.’ Tim had reached across to tap me on the arm. ‘Are you OK, Pumpkin?’

  I shrugged miserably.

  ‘Right, will you two please be quiet?’ Tim said, and Lizzy and Claudine stopped. They turned to him, then to me. ‘Annie’s doing her best here,’ he said. ‘It would probably help her if you weren’t arguing over whether or not she’s sane. Right under her nose.’

  ‘Oh, darling, sorry,’ Lizzy said. ‘I was defending you! But of course Timmy’s right. Sorry.’

  Claudine poured us all some more wine. ‘I am sorry too,’ she said. ‘But please understand that my intentions are always good.’

  ‘I know.’ Of course I knew. ‘But I wish you’d trust me more, Claudie. I wish you’d allow me the possibility of being genuinely happy, of having made a really good, brave decision, rather than just assuming I’ve gone mad again.’ I knocked back some wine. ‘Trust me, Claudie. Trust me, all of you. I’m constantly on the lookout for cracks in my mental health. Yes, it concerns me that I feel this strongly after such a short time. And, yes, I know it all seems too good to be true. But could you please give me a chance? Look for the best possible explanation, rather than the worst?’

  Claudine paused before answering. I knew what she was thinking. I knew she still held in her memory the fragile nineteen-year-old I’d been when we’d first met at a nutrition seminar in London. I knew how protective she was of that girl; how she’d fight for her with her bare hands, if need be.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay, Annie, my small apple. I am sorry. If you tell me that you think it is good between you and Stephen then I am ’appy.’ She reached over and touched my hand. ‘Really, I am sorry.’

  I squeezed her hand. ‘Well, I’m sorry too. I didn’t know I’d gone all crap at answering the phone. I’ll get a grip, I promise, and I won’t let Le Cloob suffer.’

  ‘Group hug,’ Lizzy said thickly, prompting a very awkward clasping of shoulders around the table. ‘End of group hug,’ she announced. ‘Far too bloody hot. Plus I’ve got BO.’ She flapped at her armpits and Tim chuckled, appalled but amused.

  ‘Talking of relationships,’ I said, keen to deflect the attention from my own, ‘how’s Mel, Tim?’

  A shadow crossed Tim’s face as he filled his wineglass to the brim. ‘Erm,’ he began, then petered out.

  ‘Everything okay, Timmy?’ Lizzy asked. She was very sweet with Tim sometimes. Like he was her puppy.

  Tim cracked his knuckles, as he always did when he was nervous. ‘Er, Mel and I split up.’

  We all gaped at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Quoi?’

  He wriggled uncomfortably. ‘Yeah. We split up. I’d probably rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind. I’m a bit raw. Still processing it.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Of course,’ I interrupted Lizzy. ‘We’re here when you need us.’

  Claudine showed less respect. ‘Who dumped whom?’ she demanded.

  Tim flinched. ‘It was my decision.’

  ‘Vraiment?’ Claudine asked. ‘But why?’

  ‘Let’s leave him alone,’ I said sharply, and Tim gave my knee a grateful bump. God, poor Tim. It had been just two and a half weeks but I knew already that I wouldn’t be able to function if things between Stephen and me went wrong. Even if we went for two hours without at least a text message I felt a terrible hole opening in my heart. I’d die without him. I would literally die.

  ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Tim said. ‘I mean it,’ he added, as Claudine opened her mouth to fire another question his way.

  Lizzy started telling us about one of her boyfriends who was up for an innovation award, whatever that might mean, and I drifted off, dreaming of maybe living in Stephen’s house with him one day. Imagining having a kitchen that size, and beautiful great big folding doors into the garden.

/>   And then I frowned.

  Stephen. Stephen was at a table a few metres away with a girl. A little wispy Hackneyite wearing what looked like a vintage nightdress and bright orange lipstick, her hair in a topknot. She looked like an art student, perhaps, couldn’t have been any older than eighteen. I hadn’t noticed him because he’d had his back to me but now he was turning sideways to talk to the waiter. And it was him. Stephen. It was my man.

  In spite of everything that had passed between us in the last two and a half weeks my heart ground to a halt. Who the hell was the girl?

  Tim, seeing my face, glanced at the table. ‘Oh,’ he said, as Stephen cut off a bit of his steak and put it on the girl’s plate, chatting away comfortably as if they’d known each other all their lives.

  My head tried to rationalize. She was too young, for starters. A child. He couldn’t surely … Not in my little local restaurant either. We were within ten metres of my front door!

  And our beautiful shiny new relationship, the whole explosive energy of the last few weeks! There was no way that wasn’t real! There must be an explanation.

  Perhaps sensing our gaze, Stephen looked over his shoulder and suddenly saw me. And, to my heartfelt relief, I saw not so much as an atom of panic in his face. He just looked delighted. He beckoned me over, explaining to the girl who I was.

  ‘Er, hang on a sec,’ I said vaguely to Le Cloob. I floated over to their table, holding on to an unsuspecting diner’s chair for support.

  ‘What a lovely surprise!’ Stephen said, standing up and kissing me softly on the cheek. The feeling of his face against mine sent me reeling. ‘Annie, this is my niece Petra,’ he said. ‘Petra, this is Annie.’

  Petra smiled limply. ‘Hiya,’ she said.

  Thank God. Thank God.

  I shook my head, as if to dislodge the awful thoughts I’d been having, and smiled at Petra. I could tell straight away that she was a brat. She was sullen and resentful and didn’t say a word in the conversation that followed.

  ‘I finished work before eight for once,’ Stephen beamed, ‘and here we are in the same restaurant! Mad! Splendid! Petra’s just moved to Clapton before starting art school,’ he continued. ‘And her dad, my big brother, has asked me to keep an eye on her. So here I am, reporting for duty.’

  Petra rolled her eyes but I was weak with relief. ‘Of course,’ I gasped. I sounded insane. ‘So are you Barnaby’s big sister, Petra? Stephen carries a picture of him in his wallet. He’s gorgeous!’

  ‘Yeah,’ she muttered, evidently disgusted at having to talk to me. ‘Yeah, he’s my brother.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see you,’ I said, slipping my hand into Stephen’s, out of sight of his niece. He kissed my cheek again, a lingering kiss that smelt of clean skin and verbena, and said he’d come over to say hi to Le Cloob when they’d finished eating. ‘Hello!’ he called in their direction.

  ‘Flannie …’ Lizzy handed me some water as I sat down. ‘Are you okay?’

  I took a sip of water. ‘Um, sorry?’

  ‘Darling, are you okay? Your hands are shaking. You look like you’re going to faint.’

  A pretty waitress refilled our glasses and the sudden smell of wine made me feel sick.

  ‘That’s Stephen!’ I said. ‘And that’s his niece. For a moment I thought …’ My voice wobbled off into nothing. ‘I’m such a freak!’

  Claudine was scowling at Stephen and Petra. ‘How do you know he is her niece?’

  ‘Oi,’ Tim said sternly. He poured me some water out of a carafe. ‘Claudie, he introduced the girl as his niece. We all heard him. I think, if she was his secret lover, she might possibly have objected.’

  Claudine began to argue but he and Lizzy told her to shut up. I tried to breathe myself back down to some sort of equilibrium.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I said, when they’d finished arguing. ‘I wish someone had warned me that love turns you into a paranoid lunatic, ha-ha!’

  Tim and Lizzy exchanged glances, which annoyed me. ‘Pumpkin,’ Tim began. There was a delicate expression on his face. ‘Pumpkin, you looked … er, very anxious back there.’

  ‘As if your life were ’anging in the balance,’ Claudine added unhelpfully.

  ‘Well, if he’d been cheating my life would have been hanging in the balance. Oh, come on, guys. We’ve just been there! I’m okay! I’m just in love!’

  Tim did the face I knew he must use on his patients. Polite, respectful but ever-so-slightly concerned. ‘I accept that,’ he said gently. ‘But just take it easy, okay? Relax into it, Annie. If you’re right for each other there needn’t be anything to worry about.’

  ‘I agree, darling,’ Lizzy said. ‘Maybe you should do some of those meditations you like, keep yourself nice and balanced. I mean, it’s normal to worry a little bit, of course, but you did seem, er, like you were about to die.’

  I pushed my salad round my plate, hoping nobody would notice that I’d hardly eaten. I was fed up with having to defend myself and my relationship, and even more fed up that they were probably right. I mean, Stephen had spent the past seventeen days telling me how madly he was falling in love with me and yet I’d gone into freefall when I’d spotted him having dinner with a teenager. That was not sane behaviour.

  Tim had been hassling me about the fact that I’d stopped seeing my therapist when I’d run out of money. His view was that now I was earning again I could afford it. My view was that I couldn’t stop smiling: why would I want to go back to the gloom of my therapist’s armchair?

  Now I wondered if maybe I should. Tim was seldom wrong about these things: not only did he know me inside out but he had the added benefit of having sorted out his own shit quite spectacularly.

  Tim and I had met at that support group as sixteen-year-olds when we had begun to implode. He had lost his big sister to a brain tumour around six months before and had been harming himself. I had decided on my sixteenth birthday that I was done with being alive. All of my birthdays had been bad since Neil Derrick had been urged by voices in his head to ‘punish’ my mother while we played hide and seek on Woodford Farm, but that one, nine months after I’d started having panic attacks, had been impossible. I’d woken up unable to remember Mum’s face and had had an attack. By lunchtime I’d had four more, and as my fifth had moved in on me, like a rotating saw, I’d agreed with myself that that would be that.

  The on-duty psychiatrist at A&E had prescribed anti-depressants and referred me for psychodynamic therapy. At some point a psychologist had taken charge of me and suggested several other things I should try. The guilt at what I’d done to Dad and Lizzy was so crushing that I’d tried everything on her list, which meant – among other things I didn’t want to do – attending a weekly support group.

  I’d found the group to be pointless and had kept on going only because of my family, and because I liked Tim so much. Perhaps it was because he was so fragile himself, or simply because he was such a beautiful, kind person, even back then, but in Tim Furniss I’d found a man with whom I’d felt safe.

  As the months had passed, however, I’d watched him grow and change; watched him discard the ragged mantle of his past and step into a vital and focused existence of which I could only dream.

  He’d done it. He’d recovered. And I … Well, I’d limped on as best I could.

  Fine, I thought wearily. I’ll go back to therapy if I need to. I’ll read books. I’ll do anything I have to do to keep this relationship going.

  ‘Just give me a chance, guys,’ I said, picking up my fork again. ‘I totally hear what you’re saying, and I accept that I need to calm down. So let me just get on with that in my own time, okay?’

  Tim smiled. ‘Good on you, Pumpkin. And remember, we love you.’

  Stephen and Petra got up to go while we were all arguing over desserts. He shepherded her to our table before leaving, telling Le Cloob he’d come back for a glass of wine once he’d walked Petra home. ‘If that’s okay,’ he added. ‘I don’t want to be That Boyf
riend who just gatecrashes everything.’

  Lizzy giggled. ‘I had one of those. But I can tell you’re not the same. We categorically demand that you return, Stephen. It’s not optional.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Petra!’ I said. It was a relief to be calm again. ‘We’ll have to go for coffee some time – we must be neighbours!’

  ‘We are,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! He told you where I live, then? Just there on Blurton Road?’

  ‘Uncle Stephen has told me all about you.’ She gave me a sickly sort of a grimace. What a charmer!

  Well, I’d work on her, just like I’d work on myself. Maybe if I played my cards right she’d even come to see me as a sort of cool (or most probably not cool) aunt.

  Uncle Stephen, so impossibly handsome in his rolled-up shirtsleeves, caught my eye and winked.

  Two hours later, we were engaging in some casual nudity on the big Inca rug in my front room. It was his first time at my house and, after a brief tour, most of which he’d spent removing my clothes, we’d had a bit of a marathon in front of the fireplace, which I’d filled with candles. We were both sleepy and a bit drunk but every now and then one of us roused ourselves out of our stupor long enough to kiss part of the other. An elbow here, a rib there. The candlelight made long shadows across Stephen’s lovely tanned skin and I thought once again that he looked like a mythological god.

  ‘This is like a film,’ I said timidly. ‘Midsummer sex in candlelight. Feeling this good.’

  Stephen rolled sideways so that he could see my face. ‘But, Annie, you have three large locks on your front door, and you keep your keys in a secret cubbyhole, which makes me feel like we’re in a thriller. And let’s not forget that you did run off to vomit while I was bestowing tender kisses on your neck.’

  The morning-after pill had caught up with me; the second in a fortnight. I hated taking it; hated what it meant; hated what it did to me. But that was the problem with love. It stripped you of sense.