The Day We Disappeared

by Lucy Robinson

  It may be that you’ve moved permanently to Thailand, but if you’re back in the country and willing to join us (or even if you’re not willing to join us) I’d strongly advise you to take out a restraining order against Stephen. He has harassed and stalked all of us relentlessly, and while none of us thinks he is likely to cause us serious harm, we want to know we can live safely in London.

  We will understand if you decide you can’t go through with a prosecution case. We, too, are deeply shaken by our experiences but we feel equally strongly that Stephen cannot be allowed to go on and do this to any more vulnerable women. Because make no mistake – it’s vulnerable women he’s going for.

  Here are my contact details, should you wish to talk further about this letter.

  I wish you the very best, whatever your decision.

  Ros

  I closed my eyes, taking in great gulps of cold Somerset air. ‘That’s awful,’ Becca said, in the ensuing silence. ‘The bit about him targeting only vulnerable women.’

  I looked at her absently. A thought was beginning to grow in my mind. It moved slowly, like a Polaroid print developing.

  ‘I was vulnerable,’ I said. ‘Badly so. He did well to find someone as vulnerable as me.’

  The distant sound of giggling Pony Club girls was carried over on a gust of wind. I remembered myself on the day I’d met Stephen. Tired, helpless, carried along by a tide I hadn’t the energy to fight. I remembered how kind he’d been, how he’d seemed to switch on a light and see into my soul. That stuff he’d told me about feeling stuck himself, the story about the man who’d hugged himself happy.

  I remembered the little glow I’d felt on my way home that night. The sense of not being quite alone in the world.

  And then I closed my eyes again. The Polaroid developed and suddenly I knew. I knew exactly what Stephen had done.

  ‘I’ll join them,’ I said slowly. ‘I’ll fight him.’

  Lizzy stared at me. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘I’ll fight him with everything I’ve got. Which isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing at all.’ Becca rubbed her hand up and down my back. ‘Brilliant, pet,’ she muttered. ‘Brilliant.’

  Claudine was smiling at me. ‘You have just made a wonderful decision,’ she said. Her voice sounded like thick blankets. ‘This is very brave, and very wonderful,’ she added, and I saw she was crying.

  Tim just squeezed my hand very hard.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ Lizzy said. ‘I thought we’d have to fight you all the way to the airport.’

  ‘So did I, at the beginning of the letter,’ I admitted. ‘But what she said at the end. About Stephen going for vulnerable women.’

  Lizzy nodded, puzzled.

  ‘He found me,’ I said. ‘He knew who I was.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Becca asked.

  ‘People often remember my name because Mum’s murder was in the papers for months, right up until Neil Derrick was locked up. “The babe in the wood”, I was. And Stephen must have been, what, thirteen or fourteen when it happened? He’d definitely have been aware.’

  Everyone was listening intently.

  ‘I think he probably did Google for massage therapists near to FlintSpark when his previous one fell through –’ I broke off. ‘I wonder if she’s one of the six. I wonder if Jamilla is one of the six.’

  Probably.

  ‘He found someone called Annabel Mulholland offering massage on Wednesday afternoons right by his building.’

  Lizzy’s face had begun to crumple. ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘But then I reckon he thought, Hang on, I know that name.’

  Becca, too, had begun to realize what was coming.

  ‘I think he Googled my name and was reminded pretty damn quickly why I sounded familiar. Bingo!’ I closed my eyes. ‘I was a perfect project. You’d struggle to come across a woman more vulnerable than one whose mother was raped and murdered while they played hide and seek together.’

  I gazed up at the moor. ‘Stephen was ready for me. That very first night, he was ready. He had all the right questions, all the right thoughts. He was lovely. So understanding. I felt like he was some sort of angel.’

  Lizzy’s eyes had filled with tears of rage and disgust.

  ‘I walked out of my crappy life and into his arms, just like he’d planned. It was perfect!’

  Tim put his arm round Lizzy. I watched my sister cry and felt the anger crackling at my temples. It had been a long, long time since I’d experienced anger, but I rather liked it. With it came a brilliant clarity.

  ‘I’ll fight with those girls,’ I repeated. ‘And, furthermore, I have evidence.’ Excitement began to race through me, matching the anger, as I reached into my bag and closed my hands around my old front-door keys. ‘I know exactly how Stephen found out about my suicide attempt! I’ve been holding on to the evidence for months without even knowing it.’

  ‘Evidence,’ Claudine hissed gleefully. ‘And fighting! NOW YOU ARE TALKING!’

  ‘Now I’m talking,’ I agreed.

  I held up my shiny keys. ‘Look at these,’ I said. ‘My Hackney front-door keys. Do you notice anything?’

  They looked at the keys, confused. ‘Well, there’s the fact that you probably shouldn’t still have them,’ Claudine said, ‘given that you do not live there now.’

  ‘I know, I know. I meant to send them back to Mr Pegler but I didn’t. Which is lucky. Come on, what do you notice?’

  ‘They’re shiny?’ Lizzy said doubtfully.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Exactly what? Pet, you’ve lost us,’ Becca said.

  ‘I lived in that house for years,’ I said. Years and years. My keys were ancient – all tarnished and worn. But somehow I ended up with a new set. Stephen’s clever, you see, but not clever enough. He must have had a set of keys cut for my house, so he could let himself in and snoop around. Probably while I was massaging his employees. He gave me the wrong set. He kept the old ones. And I never realized!’

  ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Becca murmured. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive. Look how new these keys are – I certainly didn’t have them cut. There was stuff he knew about me really early on. Like, he was always suspicious of me and Tim – a quick look through my photo albums would’ve been all he’d need to start down that road. And it was really early on that he started making me worry about the state of my mental health. I think he went into my house before we even got together.’

  We all stared at my shiny bunch of keys. ‘Psychopaths are predators,’ I said bitterly. ‘The more they know about their prey, the better they can control them.’

  ‘So you think your old keys will still be in his house?’ Lizzy asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said.

  I looked at my beloved friends. ‘Will you help me? Will you help me do this? I’m angry now but it won’t last. I’m sure I’ll try to wimp out a thousand times. Will you be there?’

  ‘Right as rain we will,’ Claudine shouted, and I hugged her. ‘Right as rain,’ repeated my friend, in her heavy French accent.

  Becca piled on. ‘I’ll come down to that London shithole any time you need me,’ she said thickly. ‘You can always rely on me, pet.’

  Lizzy and Tim piled on too.

  ‘Er, sorry,’ Tim said politely to Becca. ‘I hope I’m not squashing you.’

  ‘We’re going to get him,’ Lizzy said.

  ‘Oh, my little button box, so we will,’ Claudine said. We stayed there for some time, an awkward ball of human beings on the drive next to Becca’s car, until I heard Mark’s voice.

  ‘Kate?’ he asked. ‘Kate? What’s going on? Are you okay?’

  Mark waved to his Pony Club pupils as they rumbled down the driveway with their horse trailer. I watched him struggling to comprehend what I’d just told him. Dirk and Woody, who had followed us out to the fields, were fast losing interest and had started fighting over a fallen branch in the beech coppice.

  M
ark looked shattered.

  My bear, I thought miserably. How the world has let you down. How brave you’ve been, pushing on through all the shit life has thrown at you, trying relentlessly to find your way. And now you’ve found a hopeful path I’ve gone and exploded a bomb on it.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered. ‘So, so sorry, Mark. But I promise nothing about you and me was made up. That bit was real.’

  In the distance, my friends talked among themselves and pretended not to watch us.

  ‘If it helps, I tried not to fall for you,’ I said. ‘When I arrived here I’d decided never to go near another man as long as I lived.’

  Mark’s face didn’t move.

  ‘But then you opened up and I saw who you really were. And your farm, Mark, the horses, the air, Exmoor, the whole bloody lot. I couldn’t help myself. I felt happy whenever I was anywhere near you. Why couldn’t you have carried on being a wanker?’

  Perhaps the faintest hint of a smile crossed Mark’s face but it was gone before I had time to catch it. He leaned on the fence rail, picking at a loose thread on his jodhpurs. Mark still wore jodhpurs every day, even though he was far from getting on a horse. Just like me with my long skirts and tie-dye, I thought sadly. Little uniforms that keep us apart from the world.

  ‘I wanted to tell you the truth. In fact, I’d decided to tell you today. But then the letter …’ I trailed off. Mark still wasn’t saying anything.

  My eyes stung with tears. I couldn’t stand it.

  ‘Is there any hope for us?’ I whispered. ‘Any at all?’

  I looked at him but he didn’t look at me.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, after a long pause. He slumped on the fence, as if admitting defeat. ‘It’s just … too much for me. I’m still coming to terms with all the Maria stuff and I … I just don’t think I can do this too.’

  ‘But we could go on a date, start again … I don’t have to go back to London. I can help with the prosecution case from down here. I could go and rent somewhere nearby and we could get to know each other properly …’

  ‘No, Kate, I – Annie.’ He sighed. ‘See? I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘I know you’re hurt, I know you’re confused and very probably angry, but can’t we at least try to …’

  ‘No,’ he said. There was a dreadful finality in his voice. ‘I’m only getting to know myself at the moment and I can’t do this. Not now.’

  He turned to me. ‘Listen. I’m not angry at all. I’m horrified by what you’ve been through and I understand entirely why you had to lie.’ For a beautiful second he reached out and touched my hand. ‘My poor, poor girl,’ he said unevenly. He cleared this throat. ‘But the truth is, you and I were simple, and now we’re a big awkward mess, and I can’t climb another mountain.’

  ‘But I love you,’ I said, as tears began to fall. ‘I fell in love with you.’

  ‘And I fell in love with you,’ he said. He took my face in his hands and I ached at the sadness in those dark eyes.

  ‘I wish I could be stronger for us,’ he said softly. ‘But I can’t. Please respect that. Please go and be stronger than me, Annie. You have to go and fight that monster.’

  Tears fell silently down my face as the sun slipped out from behind a cloud and bathed us once more in brilliant autumn sun. ‘This is your chance,’ Mark said. ‘Take it. Go and live your life and enjoy it. Be free. Get out of London, spend some time with your dad. Buy a horse. But forget me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Dirk came and dropped his stick at Mark’s feet. ‘You have to,’ Mark said, ignoring the dog. ‘I’m not ready. Even before you told me all of this, I knew I wasn’t ready. I guess … I guess Stephen made the decision for me.’

  ‘No! He can’t ruin us! He can’t!’

  Mark ran his thumb down my cheek. ‘He didn’t,’ he whispered. ‘My life ruined us. My circumstances.’

  Before I realized what was going to happen, he leaned in and kissed me.

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Goodbye.’

  And with that he walked back along the drive and out of my life.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Six months later

  ‘Dublin, my princess.’ Joe was sniggering. ‘Come here to me, Dublin, you gorgeous thing. Let’s have our first kiss right here on this nice little grassy knoll. It’ll be beautiful. There’s only so much a man can take, darling.’

  Kate Brady and Joe were flirting. They were flirting heavily. How had I not seen that one coming?

  Kate Brady and Joe Keenan. Jesus Christ. ‘Your man Joe’s gorgeous,’ Kate had said to me in the beer tent earlier. She was unusually pink-cheeked.

  I’d looked at her and said, ‘Oh, no …’

  ‘Don’t go there, pet. Not worth the pubic lice,’ Becca had advised, and I’d laughed, remembering her saying the same to me all those months ago.

  Kate had thought about it for a while, then said, ‘Thanks, but I’ll risk it all the same. I could eat that one for breakfast.’

  Of course you could, I thought gratefully. You could eat anyone for breakfast. You’ll never know how much I owe you, Kate Brady.

  I’d told her, of course. I’d told her everything about those months when I’d stolen her accent, her hair and – best of all – the very essence of who she was, so I could run off to Exmoor, and she’d loved it. Laughed and cried and told me I was a right old freak-show. To my amazement, she’d remembered the whole thing in such detail that she’d written to me in April stating her intention to take me to Badminton in May. ‘I’ve had a check and your man Mark isn’t competing, as you’ll probably already know,’ she’d said, ‘so you’re not at risk of seeing him. I’m just thinking it’ll be good for you. Put some old demons to rest, Annie.’

  ‘Er, okay,’ I’d said. ‘Okay, Brady, you’re on.’

  So here we were at Badminton: one Annie Mulholland and one Kate Brady, picnicking near the cross-country course, and here, too, were Becca Phillips and Joe Keenan. The latter was already lying too close to Kate on a rug in the shimmering heat of the spring heatwave, whispering filthy nothings into her ear, while Becca and I ate Scotch eggs, pieces of mango and thick splodges of Brie on oat cakes. We watched the whole terrible spectacle unfold and exchanged despairing glances, while in the distance competitors thundered round the cross-country course and the crowds oohed and aahed.

  I wiggled my toes happily in the grass. It was lovely to see Joe and Becca after all this time. It was especially lovely to introduce them to Kate, having spent so long pretending to be her. And, above everything, it was wonderful to be there, back at Badminton Horse Trials, knowing that Stumpy and Mark had survived.

  ‘I don’t want any information about Mark,’ I shouted, as soon as Joe and I had hugged. ‘But I would like to know that he and Stumpy are okay.’

  ‘They’re grand,’ Joe said diplomatically. ‘Fighting fit. No worries there, Galway, so you can stop the shouting and looking like the mad article.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Ah, Galway!’ He slapped his leg. ‘You’re plankin’ it over there! Except you’re not Galway, are you, you little shyster? You’re Bakewell!’

  ‘I’m not “plankin’” it! I’m FINE. And please carry on calling me Galway. I like it.’

  Joe smiled understandingly. ‘Fine, fine. Well, Stumpy and his old man are both in great shape.’

  I’d had to turn away so he wouldn’t see the relief and sadness in my face.

  I had had no contact with Mark since that day on his farm six months ago, and nor would I. Slowly but surely I would stop loving him, although I did despair over how long it was taking. Every day I woke up and scanned hopefully through my body but it was still there. Everywhere. The profound physical ache for a man I could never have. The giddy memory of his warm body sleeping next to mine, still as strong and sweet as it had been six months ago. When would it end?

  Patience, I’d told myself. If you can move on from all the Bad Shit – like you’ve done so beautifull
y, Annie – you’re sure to move on from Mark at some point.

  But the same question kept coming up: what if I wasn’t meant to move on from Mark?

  ‘So how’s your head?’ Becca asked. ‘You seem pretty sane, pet.’

  I laughed. ‘Getting there.’

  ‘Go on. Tell us about this therapy.’

  ‘Actually, it’s not therapy. I kind of gave up on therapy. I wanted a solution, you know. I was fed up with wallowing around in the problem.’

  ‘Interesting! Tell me more!’

  When I’d gone back to London and moved in with Lizzy – and Lizzy had banned me from putting extra locks on her door, and we’d got all of my old stuff out of storage, and Claudine had insisted on burning most of it, and we’d all had quite a lot of wine and then I’d had a long cry about how much I loved Mark, and how I would never get over it – I’d sat down and spent several hours looking at potential solutions for my years-old problem with post-traumatic stress.

  Eventually I’d stopped Googling ‘trauma’ and ‘post-traumatic stress’ and ‘therapy’ because every website that came up was full of depressing words. Everyone seemed to want to help me manage my broken life, rather than telling me how to change it.

  I decided instead to enter search terms like ‘How to be happy’, ‘How to take control of my own life’, ‘How to get a life I love’.

  I didn’t have to trawl through too many websites before I began to find the sort of thing I was looking for. Words like ‘reprogramming’ and ‘tools’ and ‘solutions’ started coming up, and I began to smile.

  ‘I’m sick of therapy,’ I said on the phone, to a woman called Clare. ‘I’ve done years of it. I’ve explored the whole thing too many times now. I just want to leave it all behind and be happy. I know I can be, I just need the tools.’

  I could hear Clare smile down the phone. ‘It sounds like you’re more than ready for a change,’ she said. ‘Which means I can help.’

  I tried to explain it to Becca, but didn’t do very well. ‘I’m just learning to use different bits of my brain,’ I said. ‘It’s hard to explain. But, holy Jesus, Becca, it isn’t half working. Honestly, I go into those sessions with the lawyers and they’re like, whoa! Annie’s on fire!’