The Day We Disappeared (34 page)

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.

Mark 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.

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 beautifully, 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!'

Becca chuckled. ‘Of course you
are. I'm very proud of you, pet.'

I grinned, stretching out in the grass.
‘OI!' I shouted at Joe, who was nibbling Kate Brady's ear.
‘STOP IT.'

‘Feck off, Galway,' he
hissed. ‘You had your chance.'

‘I'm still having my
moments,' I told her. ‘Stephen broke his restraining order and sent me a
letter a few days ago, at Lizzy's house, and I went into freefall for a few
seconds, but then I pulled myself together and got on with taking it to the police
station. That's massive progress. Before, I'd have locked myself in the
bathroom and cried with fear.'

Becca handed me another Scotch egg.
‘That makes me very happy,' she said. ‘And you've done it so
quickly, too.'

‘Well, that's the great
thing about the brain. It can change fast. Neuroplasticity, that's
called.'

‘Really?' Becca asked,
watching Joe and Kate with mild disgust. ‘Everyone's brain can
change?'

‘Everyone's.' I
grinned. Joe was telling Kate dirty limericks.

‘Well, maybe you could have a
tinker with his over there,' Becca said.

We chinked plastic cups.

‘Anyways, what's the latest
on Stephen?' she asked.

Joe and Kate sat up to listen. Dappled
sunlight danced across their faces, all flushed and excitable from the high of
mutual attraction. For a fraction of a second I
allowed myself to remember feeling like that around
Mark.

Come on
, I reminded myself.
That's not helpful.

‘Well, it's going to the
Crown Court,' I told them. ‘Which is a good sign of how big the case
is.'

‘Great!' Joe said.
‘Let's get the Queen involved. She'll send him down all
right.'

Kate giggled. Becca despaired.

‘It starts next week,' I
said. ‘And of course I'm nervous, but proportionately so. I mean,
Stephen's already been granted bail in spite of the evidence, so he's
shown us how capable his lawyers are. I don't think any of us expect this to
be easy.'

I twiddled a blade of grass on my ankle.
‘But I think for me the important thing is being okay whatever happens.
Stephen may well get away with it, and if that happens I need to be all right. I
can't go into this feeling like my life will be over if he doesn't get
convicted.'

‘That sounds very wise,'
Becca said. ‘Very wise indeed, pet.'

‘Well, Annie, my sweet love,
I'm happy to have him killed for you in the interim,' Kate Brady said.
‘Just say the word, darling.'

‘Oh, stop it, Dublin, you strong
warrior, you,' Joe told her. ‘I've a great big boner
here!'

‘Christ, Joe! Will you shut your
hole?' I shouted. Then: ‘Oh. Sorry.' A mother of a small boy
stared at me with the purest disgust.

‘You see what happens when you try
to get in the path of true love?' Joe said mildly.

Kate gave him a look.
‘There's no true love here,' she
told him. ‘I'll use you for sex and then
I'll be off back to Ranelagh.'

Everyone laughed.

Becca popped a bottle of Prosecco.

‘Thank you,' I said to them
all. ‘Thank you for coming here. It's doing me a lot of good.'

‘To Galway,' Joe said,
raising his plastic cup of sparkling wine. ‘To our little princess, fooling us
all with her strange accent and her flame-red hair. To Galway, for being brave
enough to make herself come back here to Badminton. Not to mention bringing us this
fine Irishwoman, Kate Brady.'

‘To Galway,' laughed Kate,
and we all clinked cups.

‘All right, Joe, you
loser!'

I froze, my glass halfway to my
mouth.

‘Who's your
latest?'

I daren't look around. It was
impossible. They weren't here today!

‘Ana Luisa, you stinking little
devil,' Joe said merrily. ‘I'd ask you to please mind your mouth
in front of my good lady here.'

Oh, God. Oh, holy Jesus in the sky
above. Joe's face was smiling at a spot over my shoulder as he stood up.
‘Nice to see you there, boss …'

Becca winked at me as she stood up too.
‘Hiya, Mark,' she said, ‘and hiya, An–'

‘BECCA!' Suddenly Becca was
surrounded by a fiercely hugging little girl, all skinny legs and shiny brown hair.
‘I MISS YOU!'

Ana Luisa hugged my lovely Geordie
friend with a
ferocity that made her
mist up. ‘I miss you too, ferret,' she said unsteadily, hugging
Mark's daughter right back.

Everything Clare had taught me was
forgotten.

My legs went to such total jelly that I
couldn't actually get up. I scrabbled round on my hands and knees in a panic.
Get the fuck up! I shouted at myself.

We can't fucking move! shouted my
legs.

Eventually I got up and turned to Mark,
who was being introduced to Kate. He smiled politely at me, holding out his hand to
shake mine.

When he saw me properly, his hand
stopped. Everything stopped. Mark stared at me and I stared at him, and all I could
think of was how much I loved him. I'm so proud of you! I wanted to shout.
You're so brave, coming back here! I love you!

Then, as Mark realized who Kate was, he
turned slowly to look at her.

‘Kate,' he said. He was
amazed.

At that moment Kate worked it out too.
‘Oh!' she said, then trailed off.

‘Oh,' Ana Luisa echoed,
recognizing me. ‘Nice hair, Kate. The red never suited you.' I turned to
her, uncertain as to whether to hug her. Ana Luisa gave me a polite hug, then stood
back, her little hands on her little hips. ‘Do you still fancy my dad?'
she asked casually.

I made a strange croaking noise. Ana
Luisa sniggered. ‘Do you still fancy Kate, Dad?'

We both looked helplessly at her. Seven
years old and better able to communicate what was going on than either me, aged
thirty-five, or Mark, aged thirty-seven.

‘Ana
Luisa,' Becca said. ‘You're a little rat. Kate's name is
actually Annie, as I'm pretty sure I've told you on more than one
occasion. Now, listen. I'm going to sit you down here, and if you're
lucky I'll give you a little glass of Prosecco –'

‘No Prosecco,' Mark said
weakly.

‘Okay. I won't give you a
glass of Prosecco but I will give you a pork pie and some strawberries.'