The Disappeared (6 page)

She
tried to analyse her feelings. Random, unjust and terrifying were the
inadequate words which came to mind. Why, for the last three years of her life,
she had been haunted and occasionally overwhelmed by such deep and unsettling
forces she was scarcely closer to knowing than when they had first made
themselves felt. She had made some modest progress. Only six months before, she
was limping through the days only with the help of handfuls of tranquillizers
and bottles of wine. Dr Allen had helped her break both habits. She was
medicated, but holding herself together: she functioned. And she had proved
that the mask she hid behind was not as flimsy as she feared. In six months it
hadn't slipped. No one who didn't know her history would ever guess.

Her
pocket-sized stone cottage, Melin Bach, had lights at every window, meaning
Ross was in. He'd taken to getting a lift home most evenings from a recently
qualified English lecturer at his sixth-form college who lived further up the
valley. From what she could tell, they passed their journey smoking cigarettes
and listening to indie tracks they'd download and swap with each other. The
teacher was as much of a kid as Ross.

'Do
we have to have
every
light on?' she called up the stairs. Music pounded
from his room: raw guitars and vocals that sounded like a weak mimic of the
Stones. 'What about the planet?'

'It's
already screwed,' Ross shouted back from behind the door.

Great.
She hung up her coat. 'Don't suppose you thought about dinner?'

'Nope'.
The music got louder. Jenny retreated into the living room, slamming the door
behind her.

She
scooped up the plates covered with toast crumbs, dirty cups and glasses, and
kicked aside the discarded trainers in the middle of the flagstone floor as she
carried them into the tiny unmodernized kitchen at the back of the house. Her
ex-husband had laughed when he'd seen it - his had cost £80,000 and been
installed by a team of German craftsmen who had arrived in a Winnebago - which
was precisely why she clung to her ancient Welsh dresser and the erratic coke-
fired range which dated back, neighbours told her, to the early 1940s.

As
usual, there wasn't a scrap of food in the house. Ross had eaten everything
except a jar of dried lentils and a packet of sugarless muesli some
self-improving and misplaced instinct had urged her to buy the previous summer.
She rooted around in the back of the cupboard and found only a can of
evaporated milk and a mouldering jar of curry paste.

Ross
thumped through the door wearing a combat jacket. He stood over six feet tall;
her eyes were on a level with the underside of his chin.

'You
should shop online, get a home delivery. You must be the only person who
doesn't,' Ross said and dropped an empty Pepsi can in the bin.

'Hey
- recycling.'

'Yeah,
right. Like that's going to save us all.' He headed back for the door. 'I'm
going out.'

'Where?'

'Karen's.
Her mum actually feeds her in the evenings.'

'There's
nothing to stop you—'

'Cooking?
You have a panic attack every time I come in here.'

'You
never clean up after yourself.'

'You
wanted to live with a teenager. Reality check.' He shrugged, gave a sarcastic
smile, and left the room.

Jenny
went after him. 'How are you going to get there at this time of night?'

'Walk.'

'It's
freezing.'

'So's
this place.' He crashed through the door into the hall. 'Steve called.'

'What
did he want?'

'Didn't
say.'

Slam.
He was out of the front door and off into the night.

Jenny
let him go. She was feeling too fragile to face another verbal assault. She
understood that pushing her away was part of his growing up, but that didn't
make it any easier to bear.

She
contemplated her options: driving out to find a supermarket or sitting down
hungry to clear her backlog of death reports before an early night. Neither
appealed. She dropped into an armchair and tried to work out how she could
organize her domestic life to keep Ross happy for the remaining eighteen
months before he took off to university. She needed a system to replace the ad
hoc trips to petrol station convenience stores. She needed to make the cottage
more comfortable: it was all wood and stone; Ross preferred his friends'
charmless, carpeted, centrally heated homes. She needed to behave like a proper
mother.

She
had forced herself upstairs to tidy his tip of a bedroom when the doorbell
rang. She peered cautiously around the curtain and felt a flood of relief: it
wasn't Ross returning to berate her, it was Steve.

She
opened the door to find him standing on the doorstep in walking boots and thick
coat, carrying a flashlight. Alfie, his sheepdog, was sniffing around the front
lawn.

'Haven't
seen you in a while,' Jenny said, with an involuntary trace of
reproachfulness.

He
gave an apologetic smile. 'I thought it was about time.'

'You
want to come in?'

'I'm
walking Alfie - he's been cooped up all day. Thought you might want to come
along. It's a beautiful evening.'

They
walked briskly up the steep, narrow lane with its high, enclosing hedges, and
turned right onto the dirt track that led into a thousand acres of forest.
Alfie skirted ahead of them, nose to ground, making forays into the
undergrowth. Jenny stayed close to Steve, their arms brushing together but
neither of them willing to reach for the other's hand. Since they'd met the
previous June they'd spent no more than half a dozen nights together and had
only once discussed their 'relationship'. They had come to no conclusion except
that after ten years in the wilderness Steve was ready to go back and take his
final exams to qualify as an architect. To make ends meet he'd rented his
farmhouse to some weekenders from London and moved into a makeshift one-room
apartment he'd cobbled together in the upper storey of the barn. He'd never
suggested moving in with her and she'd never invited him to, but she couldn't
pretend she hadn't thought about it. Living alone was manageable, but
co-existing with a moody teenage son could be painfully lonely. There had been
times when she'd longed for a man's solid energy to dissolve the tension.

The
frozen mud crunched beneath their feet. A tawny owl hooted and from deep in the
trees another screeched in response.

Steve
said, 'You know what I love about coming out here at night - you never see a
soul. Everyone's stuck in front of the TV not realizing all this is outside
their back door.'

It
was a point of pride that he didn't own a television and never had. Jenny had
once told him that for a dogged anti- materialist he managed to find plenty of
things to get competitive about it. He hadn't got the joke.

'Is
that your idea of happiness, not seeing other human beings?' she said.

'I
like the peace.'

'Being
alone frightens the hell out of most people.'

'They
must be frightened of themselves.'

'Aren't
you ever? I am.'

'No.
Never.'

Another
thing that changed about him: since he'd quit smoking grass he had a keener
edge. He'd give straight answers where once he'd just shrugged or smiled. She
liked the new attitude.

'You
don't mind being in an office full of people all day?'

'I
survive. Most of us have a lot in common.'

'I
thought idealists always fell out with each other.'

'Haven't
yet.'

Despite
her cynicism she liked the idea of Steve and his self-styled 'ecotect'
colleagues spending their days trying to make the world a more beautiful and
harmonious place. Her work had always been one long fight and it showed no sign
of letting up.

'You
don't regret renting out the farm?'

'I
hate it, but it won't last. Give it a year or two and I'll take it all over
again.'

'You
might like a change, or to build something from scratch.'

'Who
knows?'

His
response surprised her. He had always talked about the farm as the one thing
that gave meaning and stability to his life. The woods he worked and the
vegetables he grew were his reality; everything else was a means of allowing
him to remain there immersed in nature. She felt for a moment as if she didn't
know him, yet she'd prompted him: on some level she must have suspected.

'You'd
really consider moving?'

'I'm
open to change.'

'Wow.'

He
glanced at her. 'You were the one who started it for me.'

'Maybe
I was just the excuse you needed?'

He
looked away. 'You never take a compliment.'

They
walked on in silence: Steve retreating into private thoughts and Jenny trying
to fathom them. She wasn't used to him being touchy. He was always easy-going,
taking whatever she said lightly. Her disquiet at his brooding turned to
unease. She realized how badly she wanted them to get on, how much she'd like
to spend the night with him, to push aside the images of the dead and the
missing which were never far from her thoughts.

She
slid her arm beneath his, squeezing it close to her body. She felt for his hand
and threaded her cold fingers between his. They slowly relaxed. They were warm
and softer than she remembered, an architect's hands not an artisan's.

'Sorry
it's been so long,' she said quietly. 'It's not that I haven't been thinking
about you.'

'It's
OK.'

'It's
not ... I get caught up in myself. Work, Ross . . .'

Steve
hesitated, then said, 'Are you still seeing the psychiatrist?'

'Yes.
I'm doing all right.'

'Sure?'

'Why?
Do I seem strange?'

'No
. . . not at all.' There was a trace of uncertainty in his voice.

'Then
what's the matter?' Jenny said. 'You're not yourself.'

'Nothing

She
gripped his hand tighter, determined to get it out of him. 'Tell me.'

'Really
it's nothing . . .' He sighed. 'It's just that my ex, Sarah-Jane, showed up the
other day—'

'Oh.'
Jenny felt a knot of jealousy form in her stomach. She had always thought of
Sarah-Jane as belonging to the distant past. The few times Steve had mentioned
her he had painted her as a monster: artistic, emotional, erratic, and not at
all ashamed of having put him through years of hell before taking off to sleep
her way around the world.

'Mad
as ever . . . said I owed her money. Left screaming when I told her to get
lost, then turned up in the middle of the night wanting to share my bed.'

'Did
you?'

'What
do you think?'

'Sorry.'
She wished she hadn't asked. 'I didn't mean —’

'I
know.' Steve let go of her hand. God, he was tetchy. 'I don't even know why I'm
telling you ... I thought I'd got rid of her. She's like some sort of succubus.
You know what it's like - the one person in the world who can cut you down with
a single word.'

Jenny
had never known him like this, shaken up, absorbed in himself, but she could
understand. She'd met women like

Sarah-Jane:
emotional parasites who passed off their selfishness and violent moods as
creativity. Steve was methodical, a planner and, Jenny had come to realize,
quite delicate in many ways. Her instinct was to take him home, comfort him and
build him up, but at the same time she was frightened of smothering him and
pushing him further away.

She
wanted to say something kind and insightful, but what came out was, 'I guess
the last thing you need is another complicated woman to deal with.' She
realized how needy that sounded even as she said it.

Steve
said, 'It's cold. I should be getting you home.'

He
walked her as far as the gate and headed off without pausing for the customary
moment in which she might have invited him in. She was confused. He had come
calling for her, but at some point during their walk she had come to feel as if
she were imposing on him. She thought she'd learned how to read him, how to
lift him from his occasional melancholy and make him laugh. Nothing had worked
tonight.

Ross
wasn't yet home and the house was cold and still. Standing in the silence, she
could hear its ancient fabric creak and contract, noises that even now, in her
fifth decade of life, her imagination turned to ghosts. A faint tapping in the
hot- water pipes became the lost spirit of the Jane Doe, wandering listlessly,
looking for an earthly soul to tug at and whisper her secrets to.

She
retreated to the smallest, most secure room - her study at the foot of the
stairs - and closed the door securely behind her. She switched on a fan heater,
as much for its reassuring rattle as its feeble heat, and fetched the legal pad
from the bottom drawer of her desk which was to serve as the journal Dr Allen
had asked her to keep. She closed her eyes for a moment, allowing her emotions
to rise as fully into consciousness as she could safely let them, then wrote: