The Day We Disappeared

by Lucy Robinson

  ‘We have to stop having unprotected sex,’ I said. It worried me that I wasn’t looking after myself properly.

  ‘I agree.’ Stephen yawned. ‘How do I know you aren’t infecting me with rotten diseases?’

  I smiled thinly. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Hey … Annie? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Well, just the morning-after-pill thing. I shouldn’t let it happen.’

  Stephen kissed my forehead. ‘And I shouldn’t either. Stop worrying. We made a bad mistake and then we made it again. But that’s that.’

  I relaxed. ‘Thank you. And sorry for ruining this little film scene we’re having here. Look!’

  I scampered over to my little house-key cubbyhole. ‘Look, I’m going to be all casual with my house keys, see?’ I tossed them into the air and they landed on the sofa. ‘Look! There they are, just sitting on the sofa. In full view of the street. That’s how relaxed I am …’

  Stephen started laughing. ‘They’d be in full view of the street if you didn’t have your curtains closed.’

  I looked forlornly at my big pile of keys. How shiny they were, I thought, my jailer’s hoard. Of course I couldn’t just leave them in view of the street. Far too shiny. Far too obvious. ‘I may need a bit more time on the keys front,’ I admitted, putting them back in their cubbyhole. ‘So if you could cope with feeling like you’re in a thriller a little longer, that would be great.’

  Stephen just chuckled. ‘Come back here.’

  I came. ‘Stephen, thank you for being amazing tonight. You charmed the hell out of everyone.’

  ‘I did not! Claudine was looking at me like I was some sub-species of crustacean!’

  He wasn’t wrong. When he’d returned to the table Claudine had grilled him for a good five minutes before Tim had stepped in and told her basically to be quiet. Stephen, being the good-humoured man that he was, had taken it in his stride, but I’d felt like I might die of embarrassment.

  Luckily, Lizzy and Tim didn’t seem to have any problem appreciating Stephen. Lizzy had been reduced to tears of laughter when Stephen told us about his elder brother, Petra’s dad, who apparently used to throw bananas and oranges at Stephen’s head while he slept and spent his summers sitting in a pear tree reciting the lyrics from The King and I.

  By the end of the night Lizzy was declaring quite openly that she thought Stephen was the best man she’d met in years. ‘And to top it off you’re appallingly good-looking!’ She giggled. ‘Well done! I think you’ve even won Claudie over.’

  Claudine declared he had done nothing of the sort, but did at least manage to kiss Stephen’s cheek when we left the restaurant. Tim and Stephen had even had a manly hug, much to my delight.

  ‘He’s so handsome,’ Tim whispered, as Stephen ordered Lizzy and Claudine cabs on the FlintSpark account. ‘And just great. He’s basically the perfect man.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’ I’d blushed.

  Tim looked at me. ‘Yeah,’ he said sadly. ‘I wish I had some of his charm.’ He had gone home looking depressed.

  Poor old Tim. The Mel thing must have hit him hard.

  ‘Claudine will take time, but they basically all think you’re amazing,’ I told Stephen. One of the candles sputtered and his face swayed in and out of the shadows. ‘And they’re right,’ I told him. ‘You are amazing.’

  Stephen pulled me close and kissed me. ‘I’m glad they liked me. I liked them. I have hopes of one day becoming a member of Le Cloob. Or at least a sort of recognized guest.’

  ‘And that’s another thing! You remembered that we’re called Le Cloob! I was so proud!’

  ‘Of course I remembered, silly.’ Stephen ran his fingers along my arm. ‘You talk about those guys all the time.’

  ‘I’m sure I do … I can barely remember anything of the last two weeks. It’s just been like a perfect blurry blur.’

  Stephen kissed me again. ‘Your memory is really quite extraordinary,’ he told me. ‘In a very bad way. I honestly don’t know how you ran your own business before we met.’

  ‘Neither do I. Trust me, I made many, many mistakes.’

  Stephen sat up suddenly. ‘Which reminds me! I have something for you.’

  He got up, walked over to the hallway where his work satchel was hanging and returned with a little maroon booklet. ‘Look what arrived on Tash’s desk this afternoon. You massive goon.’

  ‘WHAT?’ I sat up. ‘No! Where? How?’

  Stephen grinned, handing me my passport. ‘You are hopeless,’ he said, snuggling back around me. ‘Sylvie at the château found it and the courier dropped it off today.’

  ‘God,’ I said, mortified. ‘How could I have been so stupid? I looked everywhere! I spent a fortune getting that emergency travel thing!’

  Stephen kissed my ear. ‘It’s all part of your mad charm,’ he said, nuzzling my neck. We lay there for a long time, the candlelight flickering over our bodies and the dark room behind us. The heat of the day had finally passed and the warmth of my man wrapped around me was blissful.

  Being here now, so completely calm and happy, I couldn’t quite believe I’d felt so hysterical when I’d spotted Stephen and Petra earlier. It seemed like something from a different world.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Stephen asked.

  I smiled sheepishly. ‘You may not want to hear them …’

  ‘Au contraire.’

  ‘I panicked when I saw you with your niece earlier,’ I admitted. ‘I was terrified she was … you know. Silly me. I was just thinking how pathetic it is that I got into a panic. How sad and stupid.’

  ‘Oh, Annie.’

  ‘I know.’ I paused. ‘It frightens me that I can just fly off the handle like that. I don’t want to be one of those paranoid women.’

  ‘Have you been like that in the past?’

  I went quiet. Stephen knew that I was not exactly flush on the ex-boyfriend front but I had yet to tell him that there had been basically no one. ‘I’ve never had the chance to find out,’ I mumbled. ‘There’s, um, never been anyone as amazing as you.’

  ‘Well, keep talking to me,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t suffer all those nasty thoughts on your own. They’re destructive and horrid and they only grow in size if you keep them to yourself.’

  ‘I know.’

  Stephen pulled me closer to him. ‘Annie,’ he whispered. ‘You’re safe with me. If you’re struggling, I want to help you.’

  I stroked Stephen’s hair. ‘Thank you. I’m just a bit … a bit odd when it comes to men.’

  Stephen watched my face but he didn’t probe further. I had yet to tell him about Mum.

  He smiled suddenly. ‘If it helps, I felt the same about Tim. He fancies you, I’m absolutely certain of it.’

  Dear God, love made you vulnerable! I almost laughed. ‘He most definitely does not,’ I told him. ‘If I’m sure of anything, it’s that Tim isn’t interested in me.’

  There was just the thin edge of a frown on the outskirts of Stephen’s brilliant blue-eyed smile. ‘I’m telling you, he fancies you! I’m a bloke. I know what we do.’

  ‘He doesn’t!’ I insisted, less certainly.

  ‘Well, I can only say what I see,’ Stephen said. ‘He’s a good-looking chap and a nice bloke by all accounts, but there’s something a bit … I don’t know … predatory about him. At least around you. You probably think I’m being a dick now.’

  ‘Tim! PREDATORY?’ I laughed like a drain. And then stopped laughing like a drain because even though it wasn’t true it was still a horrible thought.

  ‘I’m not sure I’d win if he turned on the charm,’ Stephen smiled, seeming slightly embarrassed. ‘And I’m rather poor at losing.’

  ‘Oh, Stephen Flint,’ I said. ‘There’s no battle going on between you and Tim. But if there was, you’ve won it already. I’m yours! I’m the spoils of your victory! Annie Mulholland, a paranoid, sniffling mentalist, with cheap candles and stinky joss sticks all over her house!’

  Stephen, satisfied, chucked me
over his shoulder and took me up to bed. ‘I like mentalists,’ he said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kate

  A little while after he had returned home, Mark drove his wheelchair all the way along the drive to the beech coppice where I was sitting under a tree, writing a letter to my family that I wouldn’t be able to send.

  ‘Well, would you look at you?’ I said. ‘Whizzing yourself all the way out here!’

  It was a scorched, dry afternoon in August and Mark glowed in front of me like a fine Renaissance painting: olive-skinned, wavy-haired, humble and yet glorious.

  ‘If you will keep on skulking in the woods like a hobo,’ he grumbled.

  I blushed at his tone: so familiar, so unlike Mark. It had been easier with him in the hospital bed. His immobility had made things safer. I’d been able to get close to him without feeling I needed to worry about what it meant. But here on his farm, the fields ungrazed and empty, the heather blowing up on the moor and nothing else for miles – no nurses, no machines, no fluorescent lighting – the thing between us, whatever it was, made me anxious.

  ‘Sorry, I just don’t like the film crew. They make me feel …’ I trailed off, waving my arms.

  ‘Exposed?’

  I nodded gratefully. ‘That’s the one.’

  Mark smiled. ‘Kate, they’re making a documentary about me. How do you think I feel?’

  ‘Super-exposed?’

  He sighed. ‘And then some. I have no idea why I agreed to the bloody thing.’ A documentary crew had been following Mark for the last couple of weeks as he prepared to take his first steps since the accident. ‘We’ll just blend into the background,’ they’d promised, and, of course, had done nothing of the sort. I seemed to spend half my life dodging them: wearing baseball caps and sunglasses or hiding behind the livery horses Joe had managed to get in for some extra cash. I’d told them straight away that I didn’t want to appear in the thing and would not sign one of their consent forms, and they were all, like, ‘Of course! No problem! We’re totally comfortable with that!’

  I didn’t entirely trust them, though, so I was spending quite a lot of time in hiding.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry if it’s made you uncomfortable,’ Mark said. He was watching me curiously. ‘I had a feeling you were just being helpful when you said you were okay with it. I should have probed further.’

  ‘Ah, no problem. I did some special ops training a few years back so I’m decent enough at staying hidden.’

  Mark chuckled. He did that quite often, these days. ‘Are you being mysterious and odd, Kate Brady?’

  ‘Mysterious and odd,’ I confirmed. ‘It’s our family motto. Nescio et mirum.’

  ‘You are very nescio, and monumentally mirum,’ Mark agreed. ‘Although I’m impressed you know Latin.’

  ‘I’m not just a pretty face, boss.’

  Mark smiled. ‘How are your morning walks, talking of odd? I don’t catch sight of you, these days, what with having to sleep downstairs.’

  ‘Oh, grand, you know. I love stomping around at that time of day.’ I crossed my fingers behind my back.

  He was pleased. ‘I bet it’s lovely before the heat settles in. Sometimes I imagine you out there at the crack of dawn, and think, That’s the first thing I’ll do when I’m walking properly.’

  ‘Well, if you play your cards right I’ll invite you along some time,’ I said, before I had a chance to stop myself.

  Thanks to the combination of a broken left leg and a shattered right hip socket Mark was still a few weeks off walking, which was lucky because I wasn’t actually taking my walks at the moment. Since a police car had arrived last Thursday I’d been having nightmares: long, traumatic dreams followed by hours of broken sleep in my hot little bedroom. It was only when the day arrived in golden streaks under my curtains that I was finally managing to fall into an exhausted slumber.

  I yawned. I was shagged.

  ‘So I’ve decided to teach you to ride,’ Mark announced.

  ‘You have?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And can I ask why?’ I was stalling.

  ‘Don’t you want to ride?’ he asked, puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you being mysterious and odd again?’

  I nodded apologetically. Of course I wanted to learn to ride. But the idea of learning with Mark felt alarmingly intimate.

  ‘You do want to learn, don’t you?’ he persisted.

  I nodded again. I really did.

  ‘But for reasons you’re obviously not going to share, you also don’t want to ride.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, boss.’

  Mark shook his head despairingly. ‘Kate,’ he said, ‘I’m stuck in a wheelchair and I won’t be on a horse’s back for months. Perhaps ever. You can’t even imagine how much I want to jump on and ride through Allercombe Woods, just me and the clump of hoofs on earth. If you won’t learn to ride for you, is there any chance of you learning to ride for me?’

  ‘You’re a total fecker,’ I gasped. ‘That’s blackmail!’

  Mark sniggered.

  ‘SHOULDERS BACK!’ he roared, two hours later. ‘IT’S ME WHO’S FULL OF BROKEN BONES, NOT YOU.’

  ‘I’m comfortable like this,’ I shouted back. I could see from the big mirrors on the wall of the indoor school that I was all hunched over like Quasimodo but for some reason this position felt safer.

  ‘PUT YOUR HEELS DOWN, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!’ Mark yelled. ‘Are you listening to anything I’m saying?’

  I jogged down to where he was sitting and pulled up Marmalade, one of our livery horses, in front of him. ‘Mark,’ I said, ‘aren’t teachers meant to be nice when it’s someone’s first lesson? Aren’t they meant to be encouraging and jolly and that?’

  He was sitting in a shard of sunlight that fell through a hole in the roof. ‘That was never my style.’

  ‘Well, if teaching is going to be your sole source of income until you can ride again, I suggest you think about revising it.’

  He laughed. ‘Fair. How about “You’re doing okay”?’

  ‘No, that sucks too.’

  ‘“You’re on track”?’

  ‘Jesus, Mark. You blackmail me into learning to ride and then you abuse me for two hours when my arse feels like someone’s been at it with the cheese grater, and the nicest thing you can say to me is that I’m on track?’

  He was chuckling. ‘But you look like a hunchback and your reins are too long, your toes are pointing down and you’re riding about as badly as it’s possible to ride. Plus you’re doing it with a face of fury, which makes you look even worse. What am I meant to say?’

  ‘The fury is concentration.’

  ‘Whatever it is, you’re terrifying. But I tell you what, I can go one better than “You’re on track.” Kate, I still think there’s hope for you.’

  I tried and failed to stop myself laughing. ‘You’re a massive shitebag, Mark Waverley. A massive, stinking, fly-infested shitebag.’

  ‘Oh, Galway,’ said Joe – I hadn’t spotted him leaning against a metal beam. ‘You’re quite the charming little article, aren’t you?’ He was smiling but I could hear his mind at work.

  ‘Why are you just sitting there?’ Mark asked. ‘Walk on, please. We’re going to try trotting again.’

  I groaned.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kate, what’s that? Are you suffering executive stress again?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Executive stress. The thing you came here with.’

  ‘Oh, that!’

  ‘Yes, that. You look ever so stressed by this riding business. I’d hate to bring on a relapse.’

  I coloured. ‘No relapse, boss. But my arse …’

  ‘Behave yourself,’ said Mark, with a lightness to his voice that made me want to sing. And made me also want to turn the horse in the direction of the gate and gallop far, far away from there.

  Twelve hours later, I woke with my heart pounding and sweat drenching my sh
eets.

  It was that police car. That bloody police car. They’d only come to hand out a leaflet about outbuildings security, Sandra said. The Gillinghams had been burgled last week. But as I’d seen it cruising slowly down the drive that day last week I’d felt a sense of pure, unfiltered dread that had pinched at me ever since.

  I sat up and drank some water, wondering if I had the energy to change my sheets.

  I would Skype my family in the morning.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Annie

  I stared at the man standing in front of me.

  Yes, it really was him.

  It was Stephen Flint! Right here, at St Pancras! And he had our train tickets in his hand!

  ‘Argh,’ I cried.

  ‘Hello to you, too.’

  I shook myself. ‘Are you really here?’

  Stephen looked round. ‘I think so. I was about to get into the shower when I saw these tickets on top of the loo. I had a feeling you’d need them.’

  ‘Argh,’ I repeated. ‘Hang on.’

  I phoned Lizzy, who had gone off to buy us some new ones when it had become clear that I – not for the first time – had lost our pre-booked tickets. ‘I left them on the loo and Stephen’s brought them so don’t buy new ones,’ I shouted.

  ‘Okay,’ she shouted back. ‘You big freak.’

  I ended the call and smiled. One of those huge, all-consuming smiles I couldn’t stop doing at the moment. ‘I think we may need to look into hiring you a personal assistant,’ Stephen suggested. ‘I mean, the loo? Seriously?’

  I snuggled in and kissed him. ‘Thank you,’ I told him. ‘You’re my knight in shining armour. I must have left them there so that I wouldn’t forget them.’

  ‘Well, that went badly,’ he observed.

  I had been even more scatterbrained of late: I’d left my phone in the fridge, I’d lost my security pass twice, and I’d managed to leave my Annie Kingdom unlocked several times. I doubted anyone at FlintSpark would come in and steal towels but it was poor practice and I’d have died if Stephen found out, especially after what he’d gone through with Jamilla earlier in the year.