How Not to Disappear

by Clare Furniss

  I wipe my eyes on the sleeve of my top.

  ‘I need to go out,’ I say to him. ‘I need to clear my head.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Stay with Gloria, to make sure she’s safe till I get back. Will you do that for me?’

  He hesitates and I lose patience.

  ‘Come on, Reuben. It’s all I’m asking of you. Just this one thing.’

  ‘Okay.’ he says. ‘Course I’ll look after her for you.’

  I pick up my jacket and purse and car keys and close the door of the room behind me as quietly as I can.

  The last sunlight has long gone and the air is cool now. The town is loud with Friday-night noise, shouting and laughing and the beat of music coming from a club somewhere down the road from the hotel. I feel distant from it all, not part of the world around me. I don’t know where I’m going. All I know is that I have to get away from here, away from Reuben and Gloria and away from everything. I need quiet and peace and space.

  I get in the car, which smells pretty rank, and I drive it out of the car park and I keep on driving in the direction that I think is more or less the way we came into the town and then I keep on driving, into the darkness, out on to the moors.

  I don’t know where I’m going, I just want to be far away from the world. I don’t look at road signs. The grey-shadowed moors roll around me like a stormy sea. I don’t put any music on; I just drive in the silence. There are few cars on the road and I’m glad of it. I want to be the only person alive.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been driving for. All I know is that it’s very late.

  Eventually I pull over and switch off the engine.

  I’m alone in the middle of the moors. It is completely quiet except for the wind. It is dark and beautiful. Above, the sky is black and cloudless and the stars are bright. I open the door of the car and stare up at them, hugging myself in the cold. There is the North Star, fixed and unmoving. I think of Gloria and of Dad.

  ‘There’s so many of them,’ I’d said to Dad, that time when we were on holiday. ‘Why can’t we see them when we’re at home? Where do they go?’

  He laughed. ‘They’re always there,’ he said. ‘You have to be somewhere really dark to see them.’

  I stare at them now, as I did then, astonished by the beauty of them, the pure, white, fierce light that has travelled so far through the dark to get to me.

  The wind is rushing through the heather around me and I walk into it a little way, not too far because I can’t see my feet in the thick darkness, but enough. I’m struck by the fact that running to the moors in the middle of the night seems rather melodramatic, not a very me thing to do at all, but it doesn’t feel melodramatic. It feels right. I feel calmer here, freer, able to think more clearly, able to anchor myself in the moment, able to slow the frenzy of everything going on in my head and examine it more closely.

  I’m shivering now, so I get back into the car. I sit and think for a while, about Gloria and everything that has happened to her, about how scared she must have been then and how scared she must be now. I think of Reuben and how certain he always seemed and how lost he is. I think about Mum, and Carl, and how concerned and kind he sounded on the phone, and Alice and Ollie singing Beetels songs and eating nutrishus food and I miss them all so forcefully, and unexpectedly, that if I had a phone signal I’d call them just to hear their voices. Although that might not go down all that well, given that it’s about two a.m.

  As it is, I clamber into the back and find Gloria’s heavy ancient fur coat there. I’m grateful for it, despite the slightly musty smell, and I lie down, pulling it over me. Usually I’d be worrying about everything from axe-murderers to wolves to drunk drivers crashing into me. But I don’t feel worried at all. I feel calm and peaceful as my eyes close and heavy dark sleep wraps itself round me.

  I dream scattered, fragments of dreams – there are feet coming downstairs, feet in black shoes, and then inexplicably I’m on a beach and the sea is coming in fast and I am running to get away from it, scrambling on rocks. I turn round to look at the sea and realize I’m completely cut off, surrounded by water and on a rock. Further out are Ollie and Alice, and I try to call to them to tell them they’ll be okay, that help will come, but my voice won’t work and when eventually the girl turns round to me she is not Alice but a girl I don’t know . . .

  I wake in grey light, chilly despite Gloria’s coat. My eyes feel gritty – I left my contact lenses in all night, I realize – and my limbs are achy and stiff. I lie for a while longer, watching the dawn gradually lighten the sky. I stretch my neck from side to side, trying to ease out the crick that has come from a night of sleeping in a car. Eventually I lever myself carefully up to a sitting position, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping Gloria’s coat tightly round me. There’s something hard and heavy in the coat, and I reach into the pocket to see what it is, but it’s empty. Confused, I press the outline of the thing through the fur of the coat. It’s round or oval, and not in the pocket, but right at the bottom of the coat. Sure enough, when I reach into the pocket a second time I can feel a hole and I realize that whatever it is has slipped though the hole into the lining of the coat.

  I poke my fingers down through the hole and feel around. Eventually they close round something cold: metal, and a chain. I pull it out carefully and look at it. It’s Gloria’s silver locket, engraved with a flower pattern. Gently I press the clasp and the two sides of the locket spring open. Inside are two black-and-white photos. On the left is Gloria looking very young, looking into the camera, not smiling, beautiful, half challenging. The right half contains a picture of a baby: Gloria’s baby. I look at it for a long time before finally starting the engine and heading back to the hotel.

  As I drive, my thoughts crystallize in my mind. I feel sad and a bit scared, but I also feel calm because I know now. I know what I need to say to Reuben and I know what I need to do.

  After I’ve driven for a while I come to a small town. I park the car and walk along the high street to a café that’s brightly painted with a smell of breakfast wafting from it.

  Inside it’s warm and cosy, all primrose-coloured paint and pine, and pretty prints on the wall that are for sale. I feel grey and crumpled after my night of strange dreams curled up in the back seat of the car. I order a tea and a bacon sandwich and sit down at the table. When I check my phone there are a couple of bars of reception and I see that I’ve got a message. I panic, thinking it might be the hotel to say something has happened to Gloria. A little bit of me hopes it will be Reuben, to check that I’m okay.

  The message is from Ollie. I listen to his clear, high voice, thinking how grown-up he sounds, how he changes every day without me noticing and how it has been nearly two weeks since I last saw him and how desperate I am to see him now.

  He says: ‘Hi, Hattie, it’s Ollie here. I expect you’re still asleep but I woke up really early and I wanted to call you because I had a really weird dream that you were in and I wanted to check that you were okay because you weren’t okay in the dream and it made me worried about you. Alice said I was silly; it was only a dream and dreams are just your brain getting rid of all the stuff it doesn’t need and she said it was probably just because we had cheese toasties for tea because it was Carl’s Hips, Bums ’n’ Tums night and Mum did tea. But Mum said I should phone because you might reply to me and she’s worried about you too. Anyway, Hattie, I love you and so does Alice. We all do and you have to come home soon. Me and Alice want pancakes and no one else can do them. Carl made us have fruit salad for breakfast today even though it’s Saturday. Alice told him she was going to call Childline and Carl told her she was ungrateful and had no idea how lucky she was and there was a big row and Alice buried his favourite trainers in the garden. I hope the old lady is okay. She was in my dream too. Love you more than the whole entire world, Hattie. Bye.’

  ‘You all right, love?’

  The woman from behind the counter, w
ho is pretty with grey-streaked hair swept back into a loose knot and green glass earrings, puts down a steaming cup of tea and a bacon sandwich in front of me, then hesitates and sits down in the other chair at my table and leans over to me.

  ‘You look upset. Anything I can do?’

  I wipe my eyes and shake my head.

  ‘Not bad news?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘A boy then, is it?’

  ‘No. Well, yes and no.’

  She nods.

  ‘Shame,’ she says. ‘Lovely girl like you.’

  ‘It’s just . . . I’m missing my family. Just feeling a bit homesick.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘London.’

  She grimaces. ‘Not my cup of tea, love. But of course, wherever your loved ones are, that’s where home is, isn’t it?’

  I nod.

  ‘You sure you’re okay? You look awfully pale.’

  ‘I didn’t get much sleep,’ I say.

  ‘Worrying about this boy of yours?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘Well, you take your time, love. I’ll bring you over another pot of tea on the house.’

  Once I’ve eaten the sandwich and drunk the tea I feel better. I scan the newspaper that someone’s left on the table, which is all about a heatwave – why is the weather always news? – and then I look out of the window and watch the Saturday-morning activity around me: men in waxed jackets walking beefy yellow Labradors, families pushing buggies, toddlers waddling along in wellies, an old lady with a shopping trolley, people stopping to talk to each other and catch up on the gossip. What would it be like to live somewhere like this? I try to imagine me and Reuben with jobs and a mortgage, saving up for holidays and a trampoline in the garden. I almost smile it’s so ridiculous. We’d last about five minutes. It’s not what he wants. I know that. It’s not what I want either. Not now. Maybe not ever. But what do I want?

  So much of my thinking about the pregnancy has been centred around Reuben. I couldn’t go ahead with it because of Reuben. Reuben couldn’t be a dad so therefore I couldn’t have the baby. I’d have an abortion without anyone knowing and then things could carry on just the same as they always had been with Reuben.

  But it’s not about Reuben. This is my decision. I have to make it. That is my responsibility and it is also my right. Gloria was right. I can’t know I’m making the right choice, but it is my choice. I wish I didn’t have to make it, but I’m glad I can. It’s a choice Gloria and all those girls like her never had.

  I take the locket out of my pocket and look at it again. Gloria’s young, beautiful face, the baby’s wide eyes. It all seems so unbearably sad. So unfair. She didn’t have a choice. Not about any of it. I think of Edie too, of what she suffered handing her baby over. The cruelty of it, the powerlessness those girls must have felt. It was so kind of her to send this locket to Gloria, to care for her and her baby enough to know that it was an important thing to do. And, whatever Gloria’s conflicting emotions are, Edie was right. It was important. That much is clear from the fact that Gloria has kept the locket all this time. I wonder again when he died, how Gloria knows. Does she really know or does she just feel that she knows: an instinctive feeling? I want to ask her about it, but I can’t. Not now. It isn’t fair. If she wants to tell me, she will. It is not a story, a mystery for me to solve. It is her life.

  I have to get back to Whitby, to make sure she’s all right. I need to be there for her. I’ll let her tell me what she needs to. And then I’ll take her home.

  I feel strangely calm as I get back to the car, calmer than I have done since I found out I was pregnant. I know I will make the right decision for myself. I’m not scared any more. As I reach the car I look round one last time at the moors spreading all around me into the distance, to where they meet the sky and I tip my head back to the sun and think of Gloria spinning on the Common, the joy of being alive. I feel it inside me. It is a wonderful, miraculous thing to be alive.

  When I get back to the car I look at myself in the mirror. I look pretty awful, tired and wrung out and hair more prone to frizz than ever before. But I don’t care. I rummage around under my seat and sure enough a lipstick that fell out of my bag a few days ago is lurking there, along with a few stray sweets, a random conker and one of Alice’s socks. Bit of lippy. Bit of mascara. Could be better. Could be a lot better. Could also be worse. I’ll have a hot shower when I get back, wrap myself in a lovely fluffy, white hotel towel and it will all be okay. Everything will be okay.

  I start the engine and put on the radio. As I drive out through the moors I think again how beautiful they are and how lucky I am to be alive, and I look around at the sky and I can see storms on the horizon, dark clouds and bands of rain darkening the sky and then blue sky and sunshine; it is all there and all so big and I think of how the stars are always there even when we can’t see them, and again I feel tiny, a tiny speck on the surface of a spinning rock, but instead of feeling scared by it and overwhelmed by it I feel glad; I feel miraculous and impossibly lucky to be alive and to be here, now. And, as I think this, I realize that the song on the radio is ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and I laugh to myself about Alice’s fury about the Beetels and I turn it up loud and I put my foot down because the road is empty and I speed my way through the moors—

  A rabbit runs out into the road just in front of me as I’m taking a corner – a little baby rabbit—

  I think of Fiver and Ollie—

  I try to veer out of the way but I’m too late and the car is out of control and there’s a stone wall right in front of me and I can’t turn the steering wheel fast enough—

  I hear myself scream and the wall is in front of the windscreen and there’s a SMASH—

  and as it goes dark I think

  ReubenOllieAliceMumGloriaCarlKat

  and I think

  I can’t die yet because—

  In the dark there are voices.

  Mostly the voices say things that don’t make a whole lot of sense about blood pressure and other stuff I don’t understand.

  I want to ask them for a drink because I’m unbelievably thirsty.

  I want to ask them if I’m dead but then if I was dead I wouldn’t be thirsty. Or would I? Who knows? Well, no one, obviously . . .

  Sometimes I can’t hear what the voices are saying. Sometimes I think I know the voices but they drift in and out and sometimes they aren’t real voices at all but people in my dreams.

  Alice is there. She says, ‘You’ve got to wake up, Hattie. I’ve brought you Jaffa Cakes.’

  Ollie reads his favourite bit of Watership Down.

  Reuben is crying. He says, ‘I’m really sorry. I’ve got to go.’

  Kat says, ‘Jeeeezus, I turn my back for FIVE MINUTES and this is what happens. Just as well I’m coming back home. You need keeping an eye on.’

  Mum says, ‘Don’t worry, we’re waiting for you, Hattie. Don’t worry about anything.’

  Carl says, ‘I know I’m not your dad, Hats, but if anything happened to you I don’t know what I’d do.’

  Gloria doesn’t say anything. I know she’s there because she smells of perfume and smoke. I wish she would speak. If I’m going to die I want her to tell me why we came, why she brought me here. I want to know what the answer is.

  I open my eyes slowly. I feel tired in the way that you do when you’ve slept too long: heavy and headachy. The room seems very bright.

  ‘Hattie?’ It’s Mum. ‘Oh my God, Carl, she’s waking up. Hattie, it’s me, Mum.’

  ‘I know,’ I croak. ‘I can see that. Can I have a drink?’

  ‘Of course, sweetheart. Oh thank God. Call the nurse, Carl, tell her Hattie’s awake.’

  Carl stands up, tears trickling down his cheeks. ‘Thank God,’ he says, bending down to kiss me on the forehead. ‘Welcome back, Hats.’ Then he hurries off.

  I try and piece together everything that happened.

  ‘I was driving . . .’ I say.
<
br />   ‘You crashed. That was four days ago.’

  ‘Gloria?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Mum says. ‘One of the people at the hotel was very helpful, put us in touch with a friend of hers who rents out holiday cottages. We’ve all been staying together. Kat too. She’d been calling your mobile so Carl let her know what had happened and she came straight away.’

  ‘Reuben?’ I croak.

  Mum’s face closes up. ‘He had to go, I’m afraid. He had a flight booked.’

  ‘Mum,’ I say, and I try carefully to think of the words, a way of saying it that won’t make her disappointed or angry. ‘I’m . . . I was pregnant.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she says, and her voice is a bit wobbly. ‘I know. When they called us to say you’d had an accident, Carl told me. Don’t be angry with him. He had to.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I wish you’d told me.’

  ‘Am I still?’

  The moment before she answers seems to stretch and warp and I feel light-headed. I can feel my heartbeat, and I can’t work out whether I’m scared of her saying I am or scared of her saying I’m not.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You’re still pregnant.’

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ I say and Mum scrambles for a container, eventually tipping bottles of water, Mars bars and a banana out of a carrier bag and holding it in front of me just in time.

  When I stop being sick she hands me a bottle of water and kisses the top of my head while I gulp at it. Then she disappears off to dispose of the bag and find a nurse, and I lie back on the pillow, weak. Too weak to think. I only have enough energy to feel.

  And I feel relieved. I don’t want to. But in that instant, inescapably, it is how I feel. My only just conscious brain is relieved that I am alive.

  Relieved that Mum knows.

  Relieved that Reuben is gone. Heartbroken, but relieved. Devastated even. But still relieved. I was right: I do know him. And the fact that he’s left me now means that I’m not just waiting for him to do it later.

  And, most of all, I find that I’m relieved that I am still pregnant.