When you told us about Stephen I was already aware of him and I’m afraid I already had reason to believe that he was bad news. I suspected then and I know now that he is everything people hope CEOs are not, Annie – ruthless, dishonest, manipulative … It would not surprise me if he was a psychopath. Many men in his position are; I read a book about them recently. I have watched you grow more and more dependent on him; I have watched you push everyone else away and sink gradually back into your old fears and paranoias. And I cannot help but think that this is his fault, not yours. I am quite sure you have convinced yourself that you’re just mentally unstable, but my feeling is that he has made you feel that way.
I do not want you to worry that he is unsafe, because I am sure he is not, although I do think it is better not to confront him while you are out there alone without any support. My advice is to slip away, come home, let me explain everything and then we can decide together how you should proceed. I am here for you.
Again I am so sorry. I have battled with myself for weeks about how much of this I should tell you, but I needed evidence, Annie. Now I have it.
Come home. Love, Claudine
I put my phone down and found myself holding one of my toes. I stared at it, as if it belonged to someone else.
I picked up my phone and read Claudine’s message again, opening the screenshot of Stephen’s supposed dating profile. There he was, an arm around me. All but my plait had been cropped out.
It was impossible that this could be true. Claudine must be trying to ruin my trip, the little cow. What was wrong with her?
I read her message a third time, and felt a deep, lurching movement in my stomach, as if a door marked ‘horror’ had opened just a crack.
There was a helicopter flying near our hotel. A hum from the temperature control. A little drip from the shower that Stephen hadn’t fully turned off.
And the sound of his breathing. Big, handsome, lovely Stephen. Asleep in bed, metres from me.
Chapter Twenty-six
Annie
I sat on the wide, flat toilet seat. I thought distractedly about American toilets. How low and flat they were. How much more comfortable.
I didn’t think much about Stephen. Something happened when I tried to. A sort of ripping, a fierce tearing that felt like death.
Another text message arrived in my hand, with a little self-important buzz. Have you read my email? It was Claudine.
Stephen is a total bastard and you need to come home, she texted two seconds later. Please read my email. I do not say this often enough, but I love you, my little friend.
I wondered who I should call. I couldn’t call Claudine. I couldn’t hear her voice, heavy and laden with facts that would destroy me.
Lizzy. Lizzy would know what to do.
I stared at Stephen’s washbag as my phone tried to connect us. ‘Flannie?’ she mumbled. Her voice sounded like pillows.
‘Has Claudie called you?’
More pillow. ‘No. What’s wrong? Is she okay?’
I took a long, shaky breath. ‘She’s fine. She emailed me and told me Stephen is cheating on me. He’s internet dating. She forwarded me an email of him asking her out, and a screenshot of his profile. He asked her out this afternoon, while I was having my nails done. In orange.’
I stared hard at that washbag.
‘What?’ Lizzy asked. ‘I … What?’
I had a feeling that tears were coming; and with them would come the end. I pressed my eyes hard on my forearm and took a long, shuddering breath.
‘Stephen wouldn’t do that, would he? And what do you mean Claudie found him on a dating site?’
‘I don’t know what she’s up to. But there’s a screengrab of his profile. He’s called himself “LeaderOfPeople”. That was his joke. He used to say to me, “I am the Leader of the People.” Sometimes he’d call himself God. Lizzy, I really can’t do this. I’ll die.’
I heard Lizzy pull herself up in bed. ‘Darling,’ she said softly. ‘Darling baby girl, I am so sorry. Come home. Get on the first available plane.’
I pressed my wrist harder into my eyes. ‘No. I think Claudie’s just stirring.’
A pause.
‘Really?’
‘Really. Look how weird she’s been! She’s been terrible, Lizzy! She’s disliked him from square one! From the moment I mentioned him!’
I could imagine my big sister: eye mask pushed up on to her forehead like Carrie Bradshaw; soft cotton pyjamas from the White Company. My beautiful, perfect, damaged sister.
‘Annie,’ she said eventually. ‘I think you should probably come home anyway. Just while you figure it out. Maybe Claudie is stirring, but it’s probably best if you find out when you’re –’
‘Pumpkin?’
Stephen was in the bathroom. All six foot two of him, naked, blinking, confused.
‘Pumpkin? What’s going on? Are you okay?’
‘Airport,’ I could hear a voice in my ear saying. I ended the call.
‘What’s going on?’ Stephen yawned.
I looked up at him. The air between us seemed thick, heavy with my confusion and fear. ‘Claudine emailed me saying that you were internet dating,’ I said.
Not so much as a muscle moved in Stephen’s face. There was no flash of guilt, no tiny shred of worry. He just looked at me. And then he smiled. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Has she gone mad?’
I smiled back, a tired little glow of hope in my stomach. ‘Possibly.’
‘I mean, for starters, Claudine is internet dating? I thought she was married! To … What was his name … Sylvester?’
‘Yes. She is. I think she just doesn’t like you. Which says a lot more about her than it does about you. What a horrible, horrible thing to make up. I don’t know what her agenda is.’ My eyes bulged suddenly with tears. ‘It’s not true, is it? Stephen?’
Stephen slid his hands around my face. ‘No. It is not true. It could never be true and it will never be true. Annie, I love you. You’re my One.’ He pulled me into his chest. His heart was beating faster than usual.
‘She sent me a screengrab of the profile. And of the messages between this person and her. It was you.’
Stephen stroked my hair. ‘It wasn’t me, Pumpkin,’ he said sadly. ‘Of course it wasn’t me. It might be some psycho using my photo … Or it might just be Claudine. But it certainly wasn’t me. Show me.’
I slid my hand into my pocket to get my phone. My hand was shaking. It was shaking very hard. Stephen half carried me back into the suite, turned a lamp on and sat me gently on a large cream sofa. Below us Broadway hummed and growled.
Stephen’s arm clamped me firmly in place so that I couldn’t leave his side and for a split second – a tiny, tiny slice of time – I felt another, deeper, fear that went way beyond the possibility of losing my beautiful relationship. It was the fear of a little girl crouched in a field with prairie grass tickling her chin; a little girl waiting for something very bad to happen.
I loaded Claudine’s email photos, looking blankly at the suite full of our things; small deposits of us all over the polished wood floor and the elegant furniture. The hotel suddenly seemed a disgusting extravagance.
‘Here.’ I passed the phone to Stephen. His expression was first astonished, then amused, then astonished again. And then angry. Viscerally angry. The arm around my shoulder became a vice.
‘I need to call them,’ Stephen said quietly. ‘I need to call this website and find out who the fuck is doing this to me, and how they let it happen. And then we need to call your …’ he paused, and I felt the anger radiate crazily out of him ‘… your friend to ask her what the fuck she’s doing. How dare she just email you like this, without any facts?’
I sat still as a mouse, my heart pounding. I thought, I want to believe you more than I have ever wanted anything.
Stephen read the whole thing again. ‘Fuck’s sake. I do not need this. Not on top of everything else. How dare they? How dare she?’
‘Bu
t, Stephen, she said –’
‘I couldn’t give a fuck what she said,’ he yelled, grabbing my phone. He threw it across the room and I yelped, terrified. ‘How dare she? And how dare you, Annie? After all the shit and paranoia you’ve thrown at me, how dare you do it again, here, now? After all I’ve done for you?’
I cowered. I had to get out. I had to get out.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.
‘I’ve been good about your fucking friends,’ Stephen shouted. His eyes were ice-cold, furious. ‘I’ve never once told you what I really think, which is that you should tell them to fucking fuck off, because they make you feel shit and anxious, but, my God, Annie, I wish I had. Look what she’s done! That bitch! And look how easily you’ve believed her!’
He stared at me and I felt fissures crack open all around me, like an ice sculpture finally beginning to melt. My chest was ballooning with panic.
‘I can’t be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t trust me,’ Stephen said. His voice was quiet now, as still as glass.
‘Don’t,’ I began. ‘Don’t say that. I do trust you, I just don’t know how to explain what Claudie –’
‘FUCK CLAUDIE!’ Stephen yelled. ‘FUCK HER!’
He stood up, towering over me, and I heard myself crying hysterically, begging, pleading.
And then something was switched off.
‘Oh, God,’ he said suddenly, crouching in front of me. ‘Oh, God, I’m doing exactly what she wants. Oh, God, Annie, I’m so sorry. Forgive me, my beautiful girl. I’ve played right into her hands.’ He leaned forward and held me to him.
I couldn’t feel the warmth of his body. I couldn’t feel anything other than my screaming nervous system. Stephen pulled back to look at me, and it was only then that it really hit me.
I don’t know you, I thought. I’ve never known you.
‘Come to bed,’ he whispered into my hair. ‘Come to bed, sweetheart. We’ll sort it in the morning. Please, Annie, come to bed. I will never shout at you again. I promise.’
And so we climbed into the gigantic bed and I held him until he fell asleep and I fell into a terrible, sick trance.
When I woke up, Stephen was in the walk-in shower, singing a song I didn’t know. Behind the luxurious blackout curtains bled razor-thin strips of daylight. 06:00, said the clock by the bed.
New York, new year.
I lay still for a few moments, feeling each different part of my body, as if it might have disappeared.
And then I reached over and picked up Stephen’s phone and opened his emails. I ignored his BlackBerry messages: it was the personal mails I was after. I scanned through his inbox; nothing. I scanned down the list of his email folders; nothing. Stephen was still singing.
I clicked on his sent items.
‘Here we go,’ I said to myself in a strange voice. ‘Here they are.’ Because there they were. Responses to messages from the dating site, saying, ‘Sarah_Smiles has sent you a message’; ‘BrixtonGirl30’; ‘HaleyTheSailorGirl’. Messages to girls called Roisin, Becky, Kerri.
I clicked on a recent reply he’d sent to Arty_Girly. What a curious moniker for a girl in her thirties. Only she wasn’t. Arty_Girly looked like she couldn’t be much older than twenty. Her picture appeared automatically in every email response, a pouty, silly, self-conscious girl, barely out of her teens, all vintage and net and samey hairstyle. All Hackney.
I looked at Arty_Girly with a dreadful coldness and heard the shower stop. I thought, This girl is very familiar. And then I thought, Oh, it’s Petra. Petra is not Stephen’s brother’s daughter. Petra is a girl from the internet whom he’s fucking.
Stephen’s replies to Arty_Girly via the dating website became personal emails with a girl called Petra Navarro in mid-June. Around the time we were newly ‘in love’. I picked one from mid-July.
My psycho ex Annie is still stalking me. For your safety I think we should carry on meeting away from Hackney, just for now, although if you bump into her I think it’d be best that you continue to pretend you’re my niece. You saw what she was like at that restaurant! I think about you all the time. I came again and again last night, thinking about what we did in Berlin. You are so fucking hot, Petra, I’m crazy about you. Let’s meet up on Thursday night. Your humble sex slave, Stephen xxxxxxxx
‘Good morning, Pumpkin,’ Stephen said, walking into the room. He was naked, apart from a fluffy white towel round his neck. His phone was warm beside my thigh. ‘Did you sleep okay?’ He came over and kissed me long and lovingly on the mouth.
I made a little sound.
Stephen sat in front of me on the bed. ‘Sure?’
I nodded. I needed to think, fast, yet I couldn’t think at all.
That was, until his phone, nestling close to my thigh, started ringing. Stephen looked round, then down, and then at me. ‘Is that my phone?’ he asked softly.
I nodded, and saw something tiny change in his eyes.
Stephen reached under the duvet and took it, staring at me with a dangerous curiosity. ‘You were snooping on me? Checking Claudine’s bullshit story out?’
I shook my head. My vision had tunnelled.
‘I emailed the dating website,’ he said coldly. ‘And they’ve written back to me already saying that I do appear to have had my identity stolen. The card linked to this account apparently belongs to someone else, but they can’t tell me who. They’re looking into it. In fact, they’ve passed it on to the police.’
He didn’t break eye contact with me. ‘If you pass me my BlackBerry I’ll show you the email they sent me half an hour ago.’
Help. Help me. I have to get out.
‘This has been the worst twenty-four hours of my life,’ Stephen said. ‘But finding out that you don’t trust me is the worst part of it.’
I was frozen.
‘Don’t do this to me,’ Stephen said. ‘Please don’t let some bitch do this to us, Annie. I love you.’
A vein bulged above his eye.
‘But Claudine showed me your profile. It was –’
‘Will you fucking shut up about Claudine?’ he yelled, right into my face.
I gasped and flattened myself against the pillow.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I’m incredibly stressed. I can’t believe this is happening. You know I’m not like that.’
I cowered, terrified.
Before I knew how to respond Stephen had my wrist in a vice-like grip and had yanked me out of bed. ‘Listen to me!’ he hissed. ‘Stop acting like I’m some kind of murderer, Annie! Some kind of psycho! I am not the man who killed your mother! I’m your boyfriend! Your lover! Your best friend! STOP FUCKING WELL DOUBTING ME!’
I tried to back away but he followed me, until my back was against the wall. His face had changed yet again. There was a deadly calm in his eyes.
‘Listen to me, Annie, and listen carefully.’
A tiny snatch of air made it into my lungs.
‘I came and plucked you out of a shit life that had you trapped,’ he murmured, his face right next to mine. I could smell his toothpaste and his clean, cold skin. ‘I gave you a job and I gave it to you at a fantastic salary. I gave you everything you wanted. I took you to France. I took you on holidays and breaks. I’ve brought you to New York. I have picked you up and dusted you down every single time you’ve fucked up, Annie – I’ve helped you find the things you’ve lost, I’ve replaced your phone every time you’ve managed to abandon it somewhere, I’ve protected you from your psycho friend Tim, who lies awake at night dreaming about fucking you.’
I began to cry.
‘And I’ve tolerated all of that panic and crying you’re so fond of because …’ he took a long, slow breath ‘… because I love you. You owe me, Annie. You need me. You cannot function without me.’
Small ragged snatches of air. I concentrated on each tiny breath as it gasped into my lungs. Just another. And another. And another.
‘Your life doesn’t work without me, and yo
u know it.’
He ran his lip along my jawline. ‘So stop fucking around,’ he whispered. ‘Stop listening to the people who have been making your life a misery. Your sister, who’s too busy with her boyfriends to be there for you. Claudine, who seems actually to hate you and want you to be alone. And Tim, who’s so obsessed with you he took to stalking you in your own home and you didn’t even notice. Stop fucking around listening to them, and listen to me. Because I make you happy, and they don’t.’
He pulled back so I could see his eyes. They were deadly.
My wrist throbbed where Stephen had it jammed into the wall.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, tears running down my cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s Claudie, she did this to me. Of course I trust you. I love you so much.’
Stephen let go of my wrist and took me into his arms. ‘Thank God,’ he said. He pulled me even tighter, stroking my hair. ‘I thought I’d lost you to the dark side then.’
‘It’s okay,’ I whispered. Stephen held me so tightly I could hardly breathe. ‘I just let Claudine mess with my head.’
Stephen held me there, while I fought for my breath, murmuring into my ear about how much he loved me. Then breakfast arrived, and we ate a perfect plate of eggs and chicory and truffled bacon, and Stephen went for his morning number two, like he did every day after breakfast, and I pulled on my jeans, took my passport, my coat and my scruffy handbag – so out of place in a hotel like this – and left the room. I took the lift down to the lobby and then I ran faster than I’d ever run in my life, out into the freezing, steaming street, exploding into a taxi and telling it to take me to Newark, because I knew Stephen would look for me at JFK, and if there was one thing I was utterly, fantastically certain of, it was that I did not want him to find me.
As we turned left to start picking our way across east Manhattan I saw Stephen running out of the hotel, looking left and right. Even from there, I could see the fury in his face. It was the kind of fury I had seen in my dreams since I was seven.
The Day We Disappeared Page 27