The Day We Disappeared (2 page)

Becca frowned. ‘But your CV, pet,
I don't understand …'

‘I didn't bother sending
one. I just sent an email in response to the ad online, and said I loved horses and
was willing to work hard and … I didn't know! It said it was a trainee
job!'

‘Right. But surely …'

‘But surely nothing. I needed to
get out of Dublin and there was a job in Somerset for an entry-level trainee.
Boom.'

Becca thought for a bit. ‘So
you've never looked after horses? Like, never?'

I leaned down and opened my zipper case.
Inside were a few pairs of Topshop jeans and a nice merino wool cardigan. Alongside
sat a pair of brown suede ankle boots and a skirt. Plus a not immodest collection of
facial skincare products. ‘Do you think,' I asked, ‘that if
I'd looked after horses, I'd have packed like this?'

Becca peered inside.
‘Ah.'

I put my head into my hands and Becca
sucked in her breath, pondering my situation. I wondered if they'd even let me
stay the night, and with that thought, I started to cry again.

‘Ah, don't go crying,'
she said absently. ‘All's not lost, like.'

‘All is seriously lost,' I
wept. ‘And on top of everything else I've gone and messed you all
around.'

Becca patted my arm. There was a tattoo
of a little mouse on her hand. ‘It's fine,' she soothed. ‘We
can just advertise for someone new, it's no big deal. Mark'll probably
shout at
his mam for a bit, she'll
say she's sorry, we'll all have a good laugh about it and you can find
another job. A better one!'

‘There is no better job!' I
muttered. ‘
This
was the one. I need this job more than I can tell you
…'

Becca carried on patting my arm while I
cried, watching me with a fascination that I'd otherwise have found funny.
‘Pet,' she asked eventually. ‘Have you got yourself into a spot of
bother?'

A spot of bother. I almost smiled.

‘Well, I know all about
those,' she said kindly. ‘And if you need to keep the job then
I'll help you blag it. But you'll have to tell me what we're
working with here.'

I felt so hopeless at that moment that I
almost considered telling her the whole story. ‘Well,' I began, after a
sniffy pause. Best to stick with the headlines for now. ‘I had a bit of a
breakdown.'

Becca looked cheerful.
‘Didn't we all?'

‘I was after working for Google in
Dublin but I'd to leave because I was suffering severe stress.'

Becca, rather to my surprise, started
sniggering. ‘Have you escaped the nuthouse?' she asked. ‘Are there
a load of psychiatric folk on your trail?'

‘Erm, I hope not. I didn't
go mad, just hit a wall quite badly. Executive stress, you know.'

Becca slapped her leg. ‘Ha-HA!
Executive stress! Whatever next?'

I smiled thinly. ‘The job was
fine, it was me that was the problem. I mean, they did everything they could to
support me … But I'm just a fruitloop. Burned myself out, let everything get
to me. You know.'

Becca nodded
sympathetically but I could tell she was trying not to laugh.

I took a deep breath. ‘I came here
because I wanted – literally – some fresh air. I wanted to be somewhere I
wouldn't have any cause to think about Dublin and the Bad Shit for a long
time.'

Becca couldn't keep it up any
longer. First she snorted, then she gave up and roared with laughter. ‘Pet,
you need a lobotomy! I can't believe you! You left your job suffering stress
and you came to a
horse
yard to recover? Where you'd have to do
manual labour twelve hours a day? What were you thinking?'

‘Um …'

‘Could you not have gone and
worked in a kebab van or something, my little love? Oh, God, this is
priceless.'

In spite of everything, of how exhausted
and frightened I was, I smiled. Becca rolled across my bed with an imaginary rifle
and took a stealth position at my window, lining someone up in her sights. With her
cropped hair and dark eyes she was pretty authentic, I thought.

‘Boom,' she whispered, into
an imaginary mouthpiece. ‘Both hostiles are down. This area is clear, I repeat
this area is clear. All mental-health professionals chasing Kate Brady have been
deleted.' She rolled back, removing an SAS helmet. ‘You're going
to be okay, pet. It was a tough call there, but I've got it under
control.'

I was giggling, which was pretty rare,
these days. ‘It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?'

‘It does indeed, pet, but
you've brightened up my day. A fugitive in our midst!'

We both laughed, and I felt very
grateful that this
complete stranger was
giving up her evening to listen to the Bad Shit. Or at least an approximation of
it.

‘My body is fine,' I
insisted. ‘It was my head that broke. I don't mind the hard work, Becca.
I just need time out.'

Becca watched me, her brain ticking
over. ‘Okay, pet, let's talk about what we're going to do.'
The smile had gone, although there was still warmth in her face. ‘I can help
you keep your job, if you want, but I need to know you're serious about it. If
you've just run off to hang out on a pretty farm and play with the nice
horsies, you've come to the wrong place.'

I shook my head. ‘No way. I want a
routine, I want physical work and I want to live somewhere that couldn't be
more different from, well, from Dublin. I'm not here for the nice horsy
games.'

Becca rested her chin on her fingertips,
studying me. She had a sweet little snub nose, just like my mum's. ‘This
is one of the hardest jobs there is, Kate. Grooms only survive because they want it
so badly. They never get enough sleep, they work in the snow and driving rain,
they're never allowed to be ill or tired, and they don't really have
control of their own lives. The horses always come first. Your family, for starters
– you're not going to get time off to go over to Ireland any time soon. Are
you okay with that?'

I took a deep breath. ‘My family
aren't expecting to see me for a very long time,' I said truthfully.
‘They're not happy about it but – well, they'll
survive.'

I smiled, because the guilt was
overwhelming and I didn't know what else to do.

‘Okay. Well, on top of that,
Mark's an arsehole and
Tiggy –
she's the Head Girl – she's only okay if you play her game. Oh, and
Joe's a nice lad but he's also a dirty sex pest.'

‘Grand.'

She smiled wryly. ‘This is not an
easy job. Are you sure you want it?'

‘Absolutely,' I said.

Becca nodded, apparently satisfied.
‘We'll forget we ever had this conversation, then. You're going to
work your little peaches off and you'll have forgotten about Dublin and your
“executive stress” in five minutes. Deal?'

‘Deal. But what about all the
stuff I'm meant to know about horses?'

‘Once you've learned to
shovel shit, love, we'll teach you the rest. Auntie Becca'll sort you
out.'

‘But if Mark Waverley's as
bad as you say, you'll lose your job.'

‘Very noble of you. But where are
you going to go if I don't help you out, like?'

A good question. The world yawned
emptily around me; the world that was no longer my friend. ‘I'd sort
something out.'

Becca grinned. ‘Kate, love,
it'll be okay. By the time Mark even bothers to ask your name you'll
know enough to blag it.'

I breathed out slowly. This might just
be the answer. ‘Why are you doing this for me?' I asked her.

To my surprise, Becca blushed.
‘Never you mind,' she muttered. ‘Never you mind about that, pet.
Anyways, do we have a deal?'

I held out my hand, soft, plump and
white, and took
Becca's, rough, red
and dirty. ‘We have a deal,' I said softly. ‘And whatever reason
you have for helping me, Becca, thank you.'

‘There's a lot to
learn,' Becca said, still pink-cheeked. ‘But we'll get
there.' She pulled out a packet of tobacco and some Rizlas, rolling a fag with
mesmerizing dexterity. I suddenly loved this crop-haired, nose-ringed Geordie woman.
I wanted to grab her grubby fleece and hug her all night. I was so completely lost
and alone, so totally disconnected from the entire universe, that my boundaries were
shot. I'd have hugged a chicken, if it was nice to me.

‘Get yourself settled, then come
downstairs to meet the others. Later we'll do a tutorial.'

I forced my best smile. It was like a
migraine. ‘Grand! Thanks! I'll be down in a sec!'

‘Cool. Later.'

‘Oh! Becca?'

‘Yeah?'

‘What time do we start in the
morning?'

‘Seven.' She sounded casual,
as if this were a reasonable time of day to be awake. Let alone working in the mud
and cold.

I sank back on my very mediocre bed.

‘Are you going to kill yourself,
pet?'

‘I am.'

‘Right you are. I'll leave
you to it.' She left, humming along to the trance music coming out of her
bedroom.

I slid the bolt across my door and went
over to shut my curtains. I glanced out beyond the floodlit horse yard to the silky
blackness of the fields, feeling vaguely hopeful
again. I'd just have to take it one day at a time
and trust I was up to it. Because, really, it was that or return to my old life,
which was an impossibility. Quite apart from the Dante-proportioned inferno
I'd fled, I felt a horrible certainty that my family and friends would never
forgive what I'd done.

No,
this
was my life now. It
was 17 March and spring would officially begin in three days. Spring would inch
slowly forward into summer, never back into winter, and if I knew what was good for
me, I'd tag along.

As I turned away my eye was caught by a
sudden movement at the edge of the blackness and my heart stopped. Muscles weakened
by fear, I turned back to see what it was.

A big grey dog trotted in from the
fields and across the yard towards Mark Waverley's house. A bright floodlight
snapped on. Downstairs a door banged and laughter from the kitchen floated up the
thirty-three stairs that lay between me and the world. ‘Happy St
Patrick's Day!' someone shouted.

I pulled the curtains closed and
breathed.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

The four of us were in that French
restaurant up the side of Clapham Common tube. None of us could remember its
name.

We referred to it as Le Cloob –
French(ish) for the Club – which was what the restaurant had become for us. It was
absurd that we had to meet so far away from our homes: I lived in Lower Clapton, Tim
lived in Bethnal Green, Claudine lived in Chiswick and Lizzy lived in Chelsea. But
Claudine insisted that we met there, and people didn't argue with
Claudine.

She was the fiercest and most terrifying
woman any of us had known, yet she was also one of the funniest and most loyal. She
loved us all ferociously and made us laugh until we cried, and as long as we kept on
the right side of her the friendship worked. Certainly for me this beautiful little
Rottweiler was a source of strength that my life otherwise lacked entirely. If I was
to avoid drifting vaguely off the side of the earth and into space, I needed firm
tethering and Claudine had stepped into that role ten years ago with neither
consultation nor appointment. I had been, and remained, grateful. Tim and Lizzy
couldn't carry on managing me for ever.

A couple of years ago Claudine had said
she could only
live in ‘this
dreadful country' if she got to eat bona-fide confit duck or steak tartare
when she dined out, so we'd agreed to meet only in French restaurants. It kept
Claudine quiet and provided a wonderful excuse for me to eat bread and cheese and
all the things I wasn't allowed. (‘But I'm gluten-free and
dairy-free!' I'd wail, shoving my baguette into a giant baked
Camembert.)

After trying almost every French
restaurant London had to offer, Claudine had announced, without sharing any reasons,
that this was her favourite. So here we were once a month: Le Cloob.

The only problem: ‘I
'
ate
Clapham,' Claudine said, giving her chair a little
kick as if it were Clapham. ‘I must find another restaurant. My soul dies
every time I come to this
'ole
.' Claudine spoke with a heavy
French accent, in spite of being fully bilingual, because she didn't see the
point in trying to sound English.

‘Claudie, darling, do
behave,' Lizzy said. She was beautiful tonight in orange lipstick and one of
those padded skirts that trendy people were partial to. ‘We only come here
because of
you
, my little Froggie. Although I do rather hate Clapham
myself.'

Tim was not the sort of person to hate
anything or anyone, so he just smiled tolerantly. As did I, because I avoided
discord at all costs. ‘Happy St Patrick's Day!' I offered, raising
my glass.

The waiter came to take our dessert
orders and, as usual, spoke only in French. A few years ago, Claudine had gone on
strike as our translator – ‘You are an embarrassment to your country,'
she'd muttered darkly, so Tim had done a year of French evening classes to
rescue us.
That was the sort of man Tim
Furniss was. Unimpeachably brilliant.

As usual I dithered agonizingly and Tim
stepped in. ‘I ordered you a crème brûlée. Apricot. Is that okay?' he
asked, after the waiter had gone. ‘What with you not eating sugar?'
There was a little too much cheek in his smile.

‘Ah, well. It's a
one-off.'

He grinned.

‘Sssh, Tim. And crème brûlée is
perfect, thank you.'

Tim, like Claudine, was excellent at
hoicking me out of paralysed indecision, only he, poor man, had been doing it since
we were teenagers. Aged sixteen, I'd walked into that awful support group and
found Tim lurking by the door, looking as depressed as I felt. Within days, we had
become inseparable. He was my rock, Tim Furniss, my anchor. Tonight he'd
brought me an article he'd read in some clever periodical about how many
therapists and mental-health professionals – not just complementary therapists like
me, but proper psychotherapists, psychologists and even psychiatrists, like him –
were basically mad themselves. And how that was okay because we were all human
beings, struggling through the boggy wilderness of life. It had made me feel so much
better.

Sometimes I could feel quite sad about
the fact that my mental health was so sketchy. I was thirty-two; it wasn't
right. What kind of thirty-two-year-old was so scared of making decisions that her
friend had to choose her dessert? What kind of thirty-two-year-old spent so much
time worrying about things that she never actually did anything? Not to mention
having been essentially boyfriendless her whole life. And having had sex only once.
Well, one and a half times. But
half-sexings were a minor detail in that mess, really.

More wine was poured. St Patrick's
Day was toasted several times and everyone became increasingly drunk. Dessert
arrived and Claudine, with a ferocious look in her eye, started grilling Lizzy about
her multiple lovers.

‘I'm thirty-four,
darling.' Lizzy shrugged. ‘Two boyfriends at the same time is a simple
matter of expediency.'

I watched my big sister curiously,
wondering if this was how she really felt.

‘But these are real relationships,
you 'arlot!' Claudine cried. A few years ago Claudine had fallen in love
with (and promptly married) one of her osteopathic clients, a hairy man from Melton
Mowbray called Sylvester. Once or twice a month Sylvester gave people ‘gong
showers' for a tenner a pop but otherwise he sat around playing computer games
and farting. Rather surprisingly, given the kind of formidable woman Claudine was,
she adored this farter. She was unswervingly committed to the marriage and very
severe with anyone who didn't take their own relationship seriously.

‘Lizzy, my dirty little cabbage,
these men think they are your boyfriend! They spend ze weekend wiz you! I am betting
they do all that smiley pillow talking on a Saturday morning!
Merde
, you
are the very worst!'

‘You're right.' Lizzy
giggled, digging into her
tarte au citron
. ‘They both adore me! I do
one weekend with Freddy and the next with Tom. They think I'm looking after
Dad when it's their weekend off. Ha-ha!'

‘Disgusting,' Claudine
grumbled. ‘Depraved.'

‘Oh, Lizzy.' I sighed.
‘Leave Dad out of it.'

‘Oh,
Annie
.' Lizzy sighed back. ‘Bugger off. I haven't
said he's dying of cancer or anything, just that he's lonely and needs
company. Which is true so don't go all pious on me.'

It was true. Lizzy and I frequently
travelled to Bakewell to keep Dad company, separately so he'd receive more
visits. We'd eat cake and listen to music, look at old photos and make plans
for a redecoration of the house that would never happen. When I returned home on the
train to St Pancras my heart would ache. He was so humble in his solitude, so
uncomplaining.

‘Do you think you might one day
make one of these men your full-time boyfriend?' Tim asked.

Lizzy thought about it. ‘Honestly?
No. They're terribly precious, in their different ways, but I don't want
either of them to father my children.'

‘Then shouldn't you let them
go?' Tim asked mildly.

‘Listen to Tim,' Claudine
hissed. ‘You must set them free. You are being prostitute of the highest
order.'

I didn't think Lizzy was being a
prostitute of any order but I did worry about her technicolour love life. Quite
apart from the fact that she was still repeating the same dysfunctional patterns
she'd started as a teenager, I couldn't help worrying that one of her
boyfriends would one day discover he was being cuckolded and kill her or something.
A little scene played out in my head where I went round to her flat and found a
raging ex-boyfriend leaving with a bloody hammer, and I had to organize a funeral
while my organs collapsed with misery.

‘Look,
I
don't
think you're a filthy whore,' I began. ‘But I do think it's
a bit unhealthy, Lizzy Lou …'

‘Butt
out.' She grinned. ‘You don't get to go around psychologizing me
with a love life like yours!'

Claudine, who had no loyalty to anyone,
agreed.

I blushed painfully. My outstandingly
disordered relationship history was a textbook case for any psychologist, although I
failed to agree that Lizzy's was any better. Mum had died when I was seven and
Lizzy was nine, and since then we'd exhibited all the classics – fear of
abandonment, terror of intimacy and a sturdy collection of unhelpful emotional
defences and coping mechanisms. My pattern was to spend my time avoiding men,
fantasizing safely about the ones I couldn't have, while Lizzy's was to
have wild, often painful flings with hundreds while never really letting anyone get
close to her.

It was annoying. I'd been seeing a
shrink on and off for years. I had self-awareness coming out of my pores yet I
didn't seem able to change. I longed for a Saturday cuddle with a nice
boyfriend, all morning breath and semi-tumescent willies, but the reality of
attempting anything like that left me in a white panic. Instead I
‘enjoyed' pampering Friday nights behind my triple-locked front door,
‘revelling' in the luxury of my homemade avocado facemasks and
Buddhist-lite meditations, while a secret part of me stung bitterly as I imagined
other people meeting their future partners in trendy bars that I was too scared to
go into.

All the while Lizzy, with her glossy
mane of wavy golden hair and her milky-skinned beauty, blazed through a trail of men
who wouldn't give up and often died trying.

‘Your love life, Annie.'
Lizzy smiled. ‘What was it Kate Brady said last time she was over?'

‘That my
love life is just fine,' I mumbled.

‘No, darling. Kate said – and
forgive me for quoting this directly, but it's rather special – she said your
love life was like something from a provincial radio's Sunday-night phone-in.
I thought that was outstanding.'

I blushed even harder. Kate Brady was a
little bugger. We'd met a few years ago during one of my (many) backpacking
trips to Asia and I had formed an enormous girl crush on her from the get-go. She
was the sunniest, most carefree woman I'd ever met, with a mane of deep red
hair, big green eyes and that beguiling Irish accent. Everyone loved Kate Brady,
with her relentless cheerfulness and point-blank refusal to wallow in what she
called the Bad Shit. Were it not for the fact that she lived in Dublin we'd
have made her a full-time member of Le Cloob. As it was, she was the only civilian
who was granted entry to our monthly meetings whenever she visited London.

‘I'm joking, little
one,' Lizzy said, touching my shoulder.

‘I know.' I swallowed.
‘But you're still right. You
and
Kate. It's not
great.'

Lizzy tucked my hair behind my ear.
‘You're doing fine,' she said gently. ‘Just fine.'

I nodded.

‘And anyway,' she turned to
Tim, perhaps to take the spotlight off me, ‘even if Annie's not getting
any, we can at least be grateful that Tim is, eh, Timmy?' She cackled with
deep Chaucerian filthiness as all eyes turned on him.

‘Thanks,' Tim said, in his
lovely soft Derbyshire accent. ‘I assume you've been online stalking
me?'

‘Yes! Tell us
everything!'

‘It's
early days,' he said. ‘We've been on maybe half a dozen
dates.'

Lizzy crowed and Claudine muttered
choice French words. ‘She's called Mel,' he said.

I picked at a bobble on my jumper.

‘She's twenty-nine,'
he continued, ‘and she does yoga with my sister-in-law, Miranda. Miranda
thought I'd like her.' Lizzy leaned in, waiting for his verdict.
‘And I do.'

‘Get in!' Lizzy shouted.
‘Tim's back in the saddle!' When Lizzy got drunk she forgot to
speak like a dandy.

Tim stared at Lizzy, perhaps in disgust,
then smiled. ‘I like her a lot, actually. But, as I said, it's early
days.'

‘
Fantastique
, my little
koala,' Claudine muttered. ‘I 'ope that
you
show your
relationship the respect it deserves.' She scowled at Lizzy, who took no
notice whatsoever.

Meanwhile I was having strong words with
myself, because – as it always did when Tim met a girl – my heart had sunk ever so
slightly at this news.

Tim and I were not meant to be:
we'd tried it once, many years ago, and it had been horrible. A hot fumbly
month ‘together', beginning with the one and a half sexings and
concluding in three months without contact, which was unheard of for us. When we did
finally meet up and agree that it was not something we would ever try again, the
relief was thundering.

But there was always a little astringent
pain when he started going out with someone. A scratching sadness that it
wasn't me; that we had never quite managed to solve the problem of our
incompatibility. Tim would make a brilliant boyfriend, if only we fancied each
other. I'd be safe with him.