The Man Who Forgot His Wife (31 page)

Feeling inspired by this flash of insight, I created a new document, a private one this time, and wrote the title at the top: ‘The life story of Madeleine R. Vaughan’. And then I deleted that and put in her maiden name. In no particular order, I began to recall everything I knew about her story. Her family background, her interests and, with all the objectivity I could muster, details of boyfriends before me. I took care to write as much as I could about her work. The struggle of being a professional photographer, and how she had to reinvent her work completely when the digital revolution came along. I described some of the brilliant photomontage creations that she developed once the childcare had become less exhausting. I recalled the excitement she had felt when buyers began to be interested, and the indignant fury she had sometimes expressed when she suspected me of regarding her job as less important than my own.

I attempted to chronicle our own entire relationship from her point of view. Memories I was unaware I had recovered poured out of me: of the day we had squatted our home, and how we had spent a frightened first night failing to sleep downstairs, expecting at any moment to be physically dragged out by security guards. I wrote about her pregnancy and the birth of Jamie – how she had confessed to feeling frightened before it all began and the tearful explosion of joy as she held the bruised and waxy newborn in her arms. I wrote about the time she was called up at home by a telephone salesman and she pretended to be really, really stupid. ‘Yer wha?’ she just kept grunting to every question, no matter how many times he repeated it. I pictured her being stopped by a chugger in the King’s Road, pretending to be deaf as she used rather unconvincing sign language to ask if he signed too.

My fingers were still eagerly pecking away at the keyboard two hours later. Fellow teachers, cleaners and daylight had long since drifted off; now it was just me, lit by the glow of the computer screen in the darkening classroom. Even if I did not agree with
what
I understood to be her analysis of my own faults and mistakes, I recorded them in this document. I was determined to see our two lives from her point of view. Finally, I brought the story right up to date. My first draft of Maddy’s pocket biography ended with her splitting up with Ralph and then grieving for her father-in-law. I had felt almost as moved writing about Madeleine’s response to my dad’s death as I had felt myself at the time.

In just a couple of hours of trying to see the world through her eyes, I felt as if I had discovered an extra hemisphere in my brain. I didn’t pretend that now I completely understood Maddy’s psyche, but at least I had found a way in.

We used to have these stupid arguments about nothing, which had driven me mad with their self-defeating illogicality. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I would finally ask, having failed to ignore Maddy’s meaningful sighs.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she would lie.

‘Well, it clearly
does
matter,’ I would say, with the emotional sensitivity of Mr Spock. ‘If there’s something wrong, just tell me what it is.’

‘I shouldn’t have to tell you. You should just know.’

And I would feel exasperated and aggrieved that not only was she angry but she was also immensely disappointed in me for not being a circus psychic with magical telepathic powers. But now I think I understood what she had meant. ‘I shouldn’t have to tell you. You should just know.’ It was Maddy-speak for, ‘Did you ever once stop to look at the world from my point of view?’

She had seemed so quiet after the funeral, pensive and distracted. Obviously she was upset about my dad, and splitting up with Ralph must have been distressing, but there was something else going on in her mind: she had not heard the offers of egg-and-cress sandwiches, she had not heard the elderly relations informing her that her children had grown. At one point I had
caught
her on her own in the kitchen and had asked her if she was all right.

‘I just don’t know what I think any more,’ had been her enigmatic reply.

‘Don’t know what you think about what?’

‘About anything,’ and I thought for a moment she might be about to put her head on my shoulder.

‘I don’t know what I think about bloody anchovies,’ boomed Gary, striding into the kitchen carrying a can of lager. ‘Sometimes I love them; sometimes I hate them.’

‘Maybe you should have married an anchovy, Gary?’ said Maddy, and I laughed, but she was already wandering back out to the reception. I didn’t get another chance to talk to her after that; there were just a few words about practical arrangements as she left. I gave the kids some money for their school ski trip and told her that I could walk the dog at the weekend if that was helpful. I had wanted to be her counsellor and confidant, but instead I was watching her car drive away while I was forced to listen to an old man in a beret explain that he had been stationed with my dad at Northolt.

‘Ah yes,’ I said, ‘my dad often spoke of you fondly.’

‘Did he?’ said the old man, seeming pleasantly surprised. ‘Oh – that’s nice to know.’

Sitting in the empty classroom on my own, I felt a deepening worry on Maddy’s behalf. Maybe I possessed an intuition that was unique to me: instinctive empathy with her acquired through two decades of marriage; perhaps it had remained hardwired within me. I glanced at the time in the corner of my computer screen and realized it was now too late to go round there and just check that she was all right. I should have rung her over the weekend, I thought; I should have gone round to see her. I could go past in the street and just see if any lights were on? No, it was a ridiculous idea. I was making something out of nothing; I was just flattering myself that she needed me to talk to – she was probably completely
fine.
And then I shut down my computer, packed my things away and hurried out of the door.

‘Working late again, eh, Mr Vaughan?’ chuckled John and Kofi on security, before scrolling through the CCTV locations on their monitor, hoping to find a female teacher putting her clothes back on.

Even before I was close, I could see that lights were on all over our house, which struck me as quite unlike Maddy. Even the outside porch light was still glowing like a beacon. I watched the place from the street for a while, but couldn’t see her moving about inside. I could have telephoned first, but didn’t want to give her the chance not to pick up my call. Finally I climbed up the steps and hesitantly reached for the button, as if pressing it gently would make it buzz slightly less loudly. I didn’t quite understand why, but I was relieved to see some movement from the other side of the glass. She checked the peep-hole and then opened the door. But to my disappointment, it hadn’t been Maddy on the other side but her mother, looking fretful and anxious.

‘No, it’s not her!’ Jean called back into the house. ‘It’s Vaughan!’ She urgently beckoned me in. ‘I was going to ring you, dear – I was going to ring you if we didn’t hear from her this evening. It’s been two days – we’ve been worried sick …’

‘What? What is it? Where’s my wife?’

‘She’s disappeared, Vaughan. She’s completely vanished.’

Chapter 21

MY FIRST THOUGHT
was that Madeleine had experienced exactly the same sort of neurological breakdown that had befallen me. That at this very moment she was wandering the streets, not knowing who she was or where she belonged. This was not such a fantastical notion: one of the early theories put to me by Dr Lewington was that I had contracted viral encephalitis – perhaps Maddy could have literally caught this amnesia virus off her ex-husband?

I remembered my own bewilderment and confusion as the strangeness of myself crept upon me and hoped that nothing so severe had befallen Maddy. She might be in a hospital somewhere labelled ‘
UNKNOWN WHITE FEMALE
’; she could still be trying to talk to hurrying passers-by unwilling to unplug their headphones to listen to her pleas for help.

Then I wondered, if she had been struck with retrograde amnesia, would this manifest itself in exactly the same way? Would she now fall passionately in love with me all over again? Would she be just like when we were nineteen? Isn’t that every middle-aged couple’s fantasy – to feel that white-hot passion burning as fiercely as when they first fused together? In
recent
years it had seemed impossible to keep the last few embers of that bonfire alive. The only time you stare into each other’s eyes when you’ve been married for twenty years is to check whether your partner’s looking guilty.

Though it remained possible that Madeleine had experienced a psychogenic fugue, the more I heard about the manner of her disappearance, the less likely it felt. If Maddy’s brain had suddenly wiped all memories, it was a very convenient moment at which to do so. On the Saturday morning both children had left for the school’s skiing trip. It occurred to me that this would have been the first time in twenty years that she’d had her home entirely to herself. At least it would have been, had her mother not insisted that they stay for the week to keep her company. Maddy’s mysterious disappearance had occurred at the end of a period of enormous stress: she’d had her ex-husband disappear and then resurface wanting to turn back the clock; she’d got involved with another man and then broken it off; she’d taken her children to their grandfather’s funeral.

Enduring all that and then having her mother in her house completely focusing on her twenty-four hours a day might be more than any sane person could be expected to endure. ‘But I can’t comprehend why Madeleine would just disappear like that. I can’t comprehend it. Can you comprehend it, Ron? You see, Ron can’t comprehend it either – it’s completely incomprehendible—’

‘Incomprehensible …’

‘It is! Completely incomprehendible! Isn’t it, Ron?’

‘It’s “incompre
hensible
”.’

‘Completely. Shall I phone the police? I think I should phone the police. Ron, will you phone the police? It’s nine, nine, nine, dear. Three nines.’

‘Hold on – let’s not phone the police just yet,’ I counselled.

‘It’s all right, I’d forgotten the number anyway,’ said Ron, with a twinkling smile towards me.

‘It’s nine, nine, nine, Ron. It used to say it in the middle of the dial, but it’s all buttons now. I don’t know why they have to keep changing things …’

Ron had clearly come to the same conclusion as me: that his daughter’s sudden disappearance might not be so mysterious after all.

‘The thing is, Jean,’ I said, pausing to find exactly the right words, ‘perhaps Maddy just needed a bit of space?’

‘Space? She’s got lots of space. You had the loft converted, didn’t you? And had the cellar dry-lined. Did you know that, Ron? Why couldn’t you ever do anything like that to our house?’

‘Well, we never had a cellar.’

‘No, I mean headspace – from all the pressures she’s been under recently. You know, some time on her own.’

Maddy had only been away for thirty-six hours, and although it was understandable that Jean might have expected an explanation before her daughter simply took off, the required conversation with her mother might well have used up most of that time. I assured her that Madeleine would call soon, but was forced to concede that it was ‘Not Normal’. For Jean, ‘Not Normal’ was a catch-all condemnation that included women’s football, nose piercings and Asian presenters reading ‘our news’.

Privately I remained worried. To leave her parents alone in the house without so much as an explanation was unlike the Maddy I thought I remembered. She was always so ultra-considerate, always thinking of the feelings of others. Whenever an air hostess did the safety talk before take-off, Maddy always felt really sorry for her being ignored by everyone. So there would be forty rows of seasoned travellers blithely reading their magazines, and one supportive-looking mum on the aisle seat, visibly concentrating and nodding and pointedly looking round when she indicated the emergency exits. Her sweetness contrasted sharply with her husband’s grumpiness: he was convinced it was really rude when the passenger in front reclined their seat.

These memories prompted a thought. I knew where she kept the family passports. If she had really wanted to get away, to flee abroad for a few days, that would be an obvious clue. I slipped upstairs to the bedroom, where a large Victorian bureau stood beneath the window. I slid open the little drawer for essential documents. There was our marriage certificate (I was surprised we hadn’t had to give that back). There were her childhood swimming medals and the dog’s vaccination record. There was the stub of an old parking ticket, which had obviously had enormous sentimental value. But my hunch had been correct. Maddy had stolen herself away; the person who had always put herself second had emerged from her cocoon of commitments and responsibilities and just flown.

I stood looking around our old bedroom, imagining her hastily packing a bag while her parents were out walking the dog. I wished I could have seen it as an exciting, spontaneous declaration of independence. But she had left no note, there had been no text message; it smacked of a moment of crisis, a woman at the end of her tether. And then I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to imagine where she might possibly be.

Putting myself back into Maddy’s mindset, this is the sequence of events that I finally projected on to her.

It was unseasonably hot for April and I pictured her skipping nimbly over some rocks to where the water was deep enough to dive in. She would have stopped for a moment and just inhaled the sense of space, the arc of emptiness that was her favourite beach in the world. In the distance a few sheep populated the grey-green hills that surrounded the bay, but no cars came along the coast road. It was so tranquil here: there was only what Maddy called ‘good noise’ – waves and wind and seagulls.

I saw Maddy positioning her bag and towel by a crevice in the rocks, and then she prepared to dive in. The water would be cold, but Maddy always said that she never regretted a swim. Then an
unhesitant
leap and a splash. The grace and beauty of her dive would probably have been slightly undermined by her coming to the surface and swearing loudly about the iciness of the Atlantic Ocean in springtime. But Maddy was a strong swimmer and I saw her doing a powerful front crawl across the bay. This beach had lifeguards in summer, but she would have checked the tides and stayed close to the shore, and maybe she had spotted a local, collecting wood at the far end of the beach, who might be keeping one eye on the mad swimmer.