The Day We Disappeared (15 page)

I am being very reasonable and
sane
, I replied to Claudine. And then I marched downstairs in my new silk
pyjamas with an old wrap from the north of Argentina that I hadn't quite been
able to resist packing. I could hear pans and chatter and tinny music from the
kitchen but otherwise the place was deserted. It couldn't be much later than
six.

Padding along the uneven stone flags,
past the room with the Roland Penrose collage, I grinned. Stephen and I had hundreds
of things in common. Who cared if he was a multi-millionaire and my boss?

I slid through an old terrace door and
strode along a little avenue of gently moving limes round to the back terrace where
the pool was. He was still there, cutting through the water. A pair of sweet old
slippers sat by the side of the pool with his watch, which curled round as if trying
to remember the shape of his wrist. I wanted to put it on. Slide my feet into the
old slippers. Instead I sat on a marble bench and waited for him to turn and swim
towards me.

‘
BONJOUR!
' he
shouted, doing just that. ‘
Comment ça va, ma jolie?
'

I grinned. I hadn't even bothered
to look in the mirror,
just marched
outside in my old wrap, yet he was calling me his
jolie.
Of course he was.
Weren't all women beautiful when they were in love?

Steady on
, I cautioned myself.
No need for the L word.

‘I'm well,' I called.
‘What a stunning morning!'

‘It's a peach, isn't
it?' He pulled himself out of the pool, water sliding off the strong brown
body I was beginning to know so well. I looked away. It wasn't right. It
wasn't decent.
Forgive me, Father, for I have a serious desire to sin
…

‘Wait for me a second and
I'll show you some more brilliant things. This is my favourite château in the
whole of France!'

I laughed. ‘Oh, to be so familiar
with all the châteaux in France.'

‘Ah, yes. Twat.' He looked
bashful. ‘Let me at least take you inside for a naughty breakfast.'

‘Naughty?'

‘Come with me.' He threw on
a stripy cotton shirt and old cargo shorts, which had been hanging on a tree.
I'd never seen him in shorts. Naturally, he looked perfect.

We walked, talking easily. Before long
Stephen steered me sideways through a door and I found myself in the main kitchen.
It was vast. Many areas were taken over by gleaming metal counter-tops and
uninspiring racks of pans, but the end we'd arrived in was as it might have
been a hundred years ago, with a foot-pump tap and old grooved wooden worktops
dotted with bits of china, half-drunk cups of coffee and trays of croissants ready
for the oven. The kitchen staff smiled but carried on making
chocolatines
and juicing plump golden oranges.

‘Good morning, Mr Flint,'
said the woman who seemed
to be in
charge. ‘I hope you slept well. Can I get you the usual?'

‘Please, Sylvie!' Stephen
said. ‘This is my favourite bit!' he whispered conspiratorially. He
looked like a boy.

‘Shoo,' Sylvie said, pushing
us off to an ancient counter by the window. I took a seat next to some boxes of
lemons and fresh mint leaves drying on a tea-towel. Before I knew it Sylvie had put
two mismatched mugs of hot chocolate in front of us, proper thick, creamy French hot
chocolate, with brioche for dipping. She added some bread and dishes of half-used
jam and butter, and left us to it. ‘
Bon appétit
,' she murmured,
sliding quietly away.

‘Aah.' I sighed, sipping the
velvety chocolate.

‘Try this,' Stephen
whispered reverently, passing me the jam. ‘It's fig, from the orchard.
Incredible.'

It was. Everything was. Especially the
fact that this was Stephen's naughty secret. ‘There's only so much
formality I can take,' he told me, stuffing chocolaty brioche into his
mouth.

Eventually we sat back, full and happy,
and watched the kitchen staff at work. ‘It must make you proud,' I
mused, ‘seeing all these people, beavering away for your massive important
company that everyone wants to please.'

Stephen frowned. ‘I guess so. I
just hope they don't think I'm a rich idiot.'

‘You keep saying that,' I
replied. ‘But I don't think that about you, and I really doubt these
guys do either. To be honest, I find it quite hard to reconcile you with your job.
You seem so …' I trailed off, embarrassed.

‘So what?'

‘Real,' I muttered,
blushing. ‘And normal.' You're a
jam-with-blobs-of-butter-in-it kind of a person, I
thought, but didn't say. And I like that very much.

There was a long pause, during which
Stephen looked at me and I looked at my bread. I ate some of it. ‘I'm
glad you think that,' he said. ‘I'd be really sad if you thought I
was in some stuffy Old Boys' league.'

I continued eating.

‘You're not what you seem
either.' He smiled. ‘You wander round in those clothes being all earthy
and ethical and stuff yet you eat like a bastard and you aren't afraid of a
good drink. You're a disgrace to your nutritional therapist.'

‘I'm not!'

Stephen laughed. ‘Oh, Annie, come
on
!'

I looked at the space where my bread and
butter, my jam, hot chocolate and mountain of brioche had sat, and considered all
the cheese I planned to eat later on. ‘I used to be good,' I grumbled.
‘But I'm lapsed. It's terrible.'

Stephen couldn't stop laughing.
‘But what's the point in life without cheese and wine? And cake? And
bread? Not to mention flat whites?'

‘I can't officially agree
with you. Unofficially, however, I totally agree.'

The kitchen staff were picking up pace.
‘We'd better get on,' Stephen said. ‘But I'm glad we
had that breakfast.'

‘How come you invited me?' I
asked boldly.

‘Because I want you to see who I
really am.'

‘I'd better go and
shower,' I mumbled. ‘I've got my first massage at
eight.'

‘Have a good morning,'
Stephen said. ‘I'll see you later. I'm booked in with you this
evening.'

That morning, I
did three massages, and in the afternoon I went for a walk along the Dordogne.
Stephen and his gang had gone off to some vineyard by St Émilion, Tash with them to
facilitate cars, so it was just me, Sylvie and her team. She gave me a beautiful
little picnic of
saucisson
, bread, garden lettuce and thick, oozy
chèvre
, wrapped in a proper checked cloth, like something from a
children's fairytale.

It was a perfect afternoon. I wandered
into a second-hand bookshop in a long barn by the water and bought an old issue of
Vogue
with Lee Miller on the front.

I watched a couple ahead of me stop
again and again to kiss each other and sat down on a bench by the water, almost
overwhelmed by the rushing excitement inside me.

My hands shook as I prepped the
treatment room I'd been given, ready for Stephen's massage. I'd
heard them arrive back, patently drunk and in high spirits, and had felt so nervous
that I'd not even come out to say hello.

I never talked to Mum. I'd never
believed she was following me round like a gentle, omnipresent shadow. That was part
of the problem: I'd always believed her to be trapped in some terrible violent
Purgatory. But occasionally I had a fleeting sense of her. A waft of something here,
a warm cushion there, and now, just for a minute, I could smell her.
The
lavender
, I thought. Mum had used lavender oil for almost everything.

I closed my eyes, breathing her in. The
room became more peaceful, somehow, and my breathing slowed down. I could do
this.

‘Hello!' Stephen said, bursting in without
warning, radiantly happy and healthy. ‘
Bonsoir
, Annie!
BON-BLOODY-SOIR!
What a stunning evening! I don't want a massage, I
want to get back out into that beautiful countryside. Will you come with
me?'

‘Of course.'

We left the house through the back door,
out of sight of the others. We both avoided the subject of why. After a short walk
along a stone path that gave way to chalk, we entered a rustling section of woodland
and picked our way uphill through the evening chorus, talking about our families. To
my amazement, Stephen had remembered from one of our earliest conversations that I
had a sister called Lizzy who worked in programming and that she was two years older
than me. He was extraordinary! ‘Is she like you?' he asked.

‘No! She's about as similar
to me as a Buddhist monk. Although there's not much Buddhism about Lizzy. And
even less monk.'

‘There must be some similarities.
I bet I could see you in her face.'

The wood was petering out into acre
after glorious acre of vineyard, carving soft green lines out of the undulating
earth.

‘You'd probably recognize
bits of me,' I said doubtfully. ‘She's a knockout, though, in a
proper film-star kind of a way. I'm not saying I'm a minger but
Lizzy's the red-carpet one for sure.'

‘Film stars are not real
women,' he said. ‘Specially that Jolie creature. I must be the only man
on earth who doesn't fancy her. She scares me. It's not just those
enormous lips,
it's everything.
And
she stole Brad off Jen and I'll never forgive her
that.'

I stopped walking and looked at him.
‘Did you actually just say all of that? Are you in fact a woman?'

Stephen tried not to laugh but
couldn't help himself. ‘I'm completely nuts about you,' he
said suddenly. The laughter stopped but his smile didn't. ‘I can't
eat, I can't sleep. I can't do anything except think about you, and the
way you move around a room, the way your hands feel on me, the way you get little
blonde horns escaping from your plait. I can't stop watching that tiny little
snub nose of yours and the way your freckles speckle across it like little
tiddlywinks, and the smell of soap on your skin, and the way the bells jingle on
your skirt when you're working on me, and the fact that you couldn't
give a shit that I'm a rich businessman. I can't stop thinking about the
night I met you, and how you blatantly didn't want me there because you were
tired, and how peaceful and sweet you looked when I found you asleep in Reception,
all curled up on the sofa like a little mouse. I can't stop thinking about the
way you bite your lip when you're thinking, and that delightful little laugh
you have. All those funny earth-mamma clothes you wear, and how graceful and calm
you always are. I'm worried that you and that bloke Tim are in love with each
other, and I'm worried that I'm your boss, and this is all completely
inappropriate, and I don't know what to do. I'm consumed by it, like a
woeful character from Shakespeare wandering around the forest, pounding his chest.
I'm done for, Annabel Mulholland, totally done for. I can't –'

I never remembered how it had happened,
who moved
first. I just knew that
suddenly he stopped speaking because we were kissing each other. I wasn't
shaking with fear like I'd thought I might be, I was firing with chemical
excitement, up on a rolling high. Stephen smelt faintly of cologne and his body was
as firm as metal against mine. He kissed hungrily, deeply, pulling me even closer to
him.

Once again I wasn't sure how it
happened but suddenly my vest top was off, flung somewhere among the vines next to
Stephen's T-shirt, and his bare torso was against mine. Fragmentary blasts of
excitement erupted and flamed. I was no longer in control of my own body.

‘Annie …' he muttered,
kissing my neck. There was a frantic struggle as we both tried to remove the rest of
our clothes, then I was on bare soil and Stephen was on top of me and before I even
knew what was happening, had time to think about things like contraception or the
stones digging into my back or the bee buzzing loudly near my ear, it was happening.
Intense, heady sex that hurt me only fleetingly before the chemicals took over again
and I flew high into the universe.

Stephen held me so tightly afterwards
that I could hardly breathe. I didn't want to breathe anyway. Crushed into his
side I felt a tear of relief, of pride, of all sorts of things, slide out of my
eye.

I wasn't broken. Underneath
everything, all the ache and the fear, there was a woman: a normal, functional
woman, ready, at last, to rejoin the human race.

Stephen kissed the side of my head and
pulled me even tighter, and told me it had been amazing. Then it started again. At
my
instigation.

I'm all over this sex stuff, I
thought proudly.

Shut up, I
thought, embarrassed.

By the time we got back to the château
it was dark and dinner had started. I couldn't speak and my lady parts were in
shock. I held on to Stephen's arm, as if it were a life raft.

‘Er, right then,' Stephen
began, as we hit the stone path again. ‘So, do you come here often?'

I breathed hard, suddenly returning to
the scents of the evening. Seafood, garlic, jasmine. Stephen's body. The
ancient wooden floor creaked as we stopped in the hallway.

‘I don't want to have dinner
with them,' Stephen murmured. He moved away from the stripe of light under the
dining-room door. ‘Can we go to my room? I don't want to let go of
you.'

The high. The transcendent high. The
chemicals, the whizzing neurons, the firing synapses. The pulsating, pumping high.
Why had I spent my adult life running from this? I wondered, as Stephen slid his
hand down my trembling belly.