When You Disappeared Read online

  ‘God, Paula, what’s happened to him?’ I asked, my voice trembling.

  She couldn’t give me an answer, so she did what she always did when I needed a best friend, and told me what I wanted to hear. ‘They’ll find him, Catherine, I promise,’ she whispered, and hugged me again.

  I was trapped in a horrible nightmare that happened to other people, not to me. Not to my family and not to my husband.

  SIMON

  Northampton, twenty-five years earlier

  4 June, 5.30 a.m.

  I rolled onto my side and glanced at the pearly white face of the alarm clock on the bedside table. Half past five, it read. It had been fifteen months since I’d last managed to sleep any later than that.

  Our backs were connected by barely an inch of flesh but I still felt the delicate rise and fall of her spine as she slept. I pushed myself away from her. I watched as a fragile sliver of creamy orange light gently illuminated the bedroom through a curtain crack.

  I pulled the cotton sheet from my chest and gazed at the sun as it rose over the cornfields, enshrouding the bleakness of our cottage with a golden blanket. I dressed in clothes thrown over a chair and opened the wardrobe, careful to ensure the creak of its hinges didn’t wake her.

  I fumbled for the watch that had spent most of its life hidden in a green box on a dusty shelf, and fastened it to my wrist. It pinched, but I’d become familiar with discomfort. I left the box where it was.

  I moved carefully across the floorboards and closed the door with little more than a whisper. I paused outside the bedroom door that always remained closed. I turned the handle and began to open it before stopping myself. I couldn’t do it. It would do me no favours to go back to that day.

  The staircase groaned under my footsteps and startled the slumbering dog. Oscar’s amber eyes opened wide and he struggled to coordinate his sleepy limbs as he lolloped towards me.

  ‘Not today, boy,’ I told him, offering an apologetic smile. His head tilted to one side, confused then disappointed at being deprived of his daily walk. He let out a deflated sigh and returned to his bed in a huff, burying his head under his tartan blanket.

  I unlocked the front door and gently closed it behind me. I chose the quiet of the lawn over the crunch of the gravel pathway, opened the rusty metal gate and began to walk. There was no final stroke of a child’s hair, no delicate kiss planted on my wife’s forehead or a last glance at the home we’d built together. There was only one direction for me to go. Their world was still in sleep but I had woken up.

  And by the time they roused, there would be one less tortured soul amongst them hanging on by his fingertips.

  6.10 a.m.

  The house behind me had already faded into my past by the time I reached the dirt-track lane that would carry me into Harpole Woods.

  My thoughts were blank but my legs were preprogrammed to take me to where I needed to be. They led me beyond the perimeter of the horse chestnut trees, through the stubbly bracken that tried to tear the legs of my jeans and into the woodland’s belly, to where the faded blue rope had lain for years as a marker on the ground’s sunken basin. There had been a pond there once, and the rope had been tied to a tree for the local children to swing over it. But the water had long since evaporated, leaving the rope without a use.

  I picked it up from the ground and repeated the familiar process of tugging it until it was taut. The elements hadn’t eroded its strength and I wished I had remained that tough.

  Then I sat on a long felled oak trunk and looked above, earmarking the strongest branch in the canopy.

  7.15 a.m.

  I couldn’t remember when I’d last been engulfed in such beautiful silence.

  Almost two hours had passed since I’d removed myself from the chaos of my life. No children clattered around my feet. No radio blared pop songs from the kitchen windowsill. There was no constant spin of the washing machine drum on another endless cycle. Nothing to distract me from my thoughts – just the gentle hum of motorway traffic in the distance.

  I knew it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d remained in that house another week, month or for the next fifty years. After all the punches and kicks I’d taken and inflicted, I could not return.

  I picked at clumps of moss flourishing on the trunk’s damp bark and recalled the day it all became too much for me to bear. I’d been standing motionless in the bathroom as the echo of her grief escaped from behind our closed bedroom door. Her sobbing had become louder and sharper until it pierced my skin and barrelled its way through my veins and up into my head. It felt ready to burst, so I clamped my sweating palms over my ears as if to stop it. But all I heard was the rapid beat of my own wretched heart – a hollow, despicable ticking inside a soulless carcass.

  Then it hit me with a force so sudden that I collapsed to the bathroom floor. There is a way out of all of this. I could rid myself of my torment if I accepted my life had run its course and committed suicide.

  Immediately, the throbbing in my head had begun to ease.

  If I’d forgiven her or she’d forgiven me or if we’d made a Faustian pact to forget everything and everyone that had come between us, it wouldn’t have mattered. It was simply too late; we were irreparable. Stones had been cast and glasshouses lay in shards all around us. Inside I was dead; it was time for my exterior to follow suit.

  I’d let out a long breath I wasn’t aware I was holding and left the bathroom. A decision of such magnitude would be perceived as drastic to most, but to the desperate, it was obvious. It would mean I could finally gain control of my life, even if it was only to end it. And now that I understood the sole purpose for living was the planning of my death, I felt my burden rise from my shoulders.

  Like her, I had mourned, but silently and for different reasons. I’d wept for what she had done to us all; I’d wept for the future we should have enjoyed together and for the past she had worked so hard to destroy. We had wept together and apart for so long, grieving for contradictory losses. Now she would weep alone.

  Over the following months, I wore my supportive husband, stable parent and loyal friend masks convincingly. But, underneath, I remained preoccupied with being the master of my own demise. Searching for the right time, the right place and the right means to my end became an obsession. I mulled over options, from an exhaust fume–filled garage to acquiring a shotgun licence, from leaping off a motorway bridge to tying breeze blocks around my ankles and throwing myself into the Blisworth canal.

  But for the sake of the children, first I had to tend to her, as she needed to regain the tools to resume her journey before the wind was knocked out of her sails again. So I took control of the day-to-day nurturing and support of our family until her physical and mental health gradually improved. And as she began to blossom, my decay continued.

  There would never be a good time for her to discover her husband had taken his own life. But I knew even at her lowest point, she was stronger than me. Eventually she would rise from my ashes to raise our children to the best of her ability. What she would tell them of my death would be for her to decide. I had loved them dearly, but they weren’t wise enough to see who their father really was or to identify his flaws. I hoped she might keep it that way.

  Meanwhile I’d settled on a method, and a location I knew like the back of my hand. A place where one of my darkest secrets lay buried – the woods near to our home.

  My plan was simple. I would climb a tree, loop the four metres of rope over the branch and affix a noose around my neck. Then I’d let myself drop and pray the severing of my spinal cord would accelerate the speed of the inevitable. I hoped my life wouldn’t slowly drain away from its stranglehold instead.

  It was what I had to do. What I had planned to do. What I had been to the woods many times to do.

  Only, when it came to the crunch, the end result was always the same. I couldn’t do it. Five attempts over two weeks had finished with me facing the canopy of trees with the rope in my hand but unable to take that
final, fatal step. And, after a time, I’d return home to her as broken as when I’d left.

  Now, here I was again.

  It wasn’t the act of killing myself I feared, because there was little in the world left to scare or scar me. Nor was it guilt at leaving my children without a father, because I’d already disconnected myself from them without anyone noticing.

  What terrified me was the fear of not knowing what lay beyond my life. My best hope was the perpetual nothingness of purgatory. The worst was a continuation of how I was living now, only with flames scorching my heels. I wanted death to remove me from my misery and not replace it with something equally as ghastly.

  But how could I be sure it would? There was no guidebook or wise old sage to confirm I wouldn’t be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. So my only escape route was a risk I had become too afraid to take. But was it the only escape route?

  ‘What if you just walked away?’ The voice came so suddenly and so unexpectedly, I thought it belonged to somebody else. I looked around, but the woods remained empty.

  ‘Your death doesn’t necessarily have to be as a result of a physical act,’ the voice continued, almost singsong-like. ‘What if you just erased the last thirty-three years and simply disappeared?’

  I nodded slowly.

  ‘You can never be part of the lives of anyone you know again. You’ll have to force yourself not to worry about them or contact them. She’ll assume you’ve had an accident but can’t be found, and then eventually she’ll come to terms with her loss and move on. It’ll be better for all of you in the long run.’

  While I couldn’t kill myself, I could do all of that. I wondered why I hadn’t considered it earlier. But when you’re sinking in the depths of depression and think you’ve found an escape route, you stop searching for an alternative.

  ‘What’s stopping you from going right now? You’ve wasted enough time already.’

  Yes, you’re right, I thought. I had already whispered goodbye to every significant person in my life, blowing all but one into the air like dandelion seed heads. So before alarm bells rang, I took a deep breath, released my clenched fists and picked myself up from the tree trunk with a renewed sense of hope.

  I placed the rope back in its rightful place and left the woods as a man who no longer existed.

  1.15 p.m.

  It’s remarkable how much ground you can cover by walking without purpose. With no direction in mind or inner compass to guide me one way or the other, I resolved just to keep moving.

  I followed the bright globe in the sky, across fields, pastures and sprawling housing estates, through tiny hamlets and over dual carriageway bridges. I passed a sign that read YOU ARE NOW LEAVING NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, THANK YOU FOR VISITING, and smiled. That’s just what I’d been for all my years – a visitor.

  Suffused with optimism, I recognised I’d always been too self-involved to absorb the world around me, or to appreciate its entirety. I’d never taken pleasure from simple delights like picking raspberries from roadside bushes, eating apples from orchards or drinking fresh water from brooks.

  But modern life wasn’t like the Mark Twain novels I’d read as a boy. Pollution had embittered the taste of the raspberries, the apples were sour and water doesn’t really taste like water unless it’s mixed with fluoride and flows from a tap.

  None of that bothered me. My new life was just beginning and I was here to learn, to understand and to enjoy. By retreating I could advance. I had nowhere and everywhere to go. I would start afresh as the man I wanted to be, and not the man she had made me.

  4.00 p.m.

  The sun began to weigh heavy on my shoulders and my forehead was sore to the touch, so I untied my shirt from around my waist and used it to cover my head. A road sign ahead revealed I was a mile and a half from the Happy Acres holiday park we’d once driven past on our way to somewhere else to play happy family.

  Ramshackle and surrounded by barbed-wire fencing, on the surface its name appeared ironic. She’d said then that it reminded her of a documentary we’d watched on Auschwitz. But the families staying in its shabby holiday homes obviously didn’t share her view.

  I entered through the open gates, held together by brown, flaked paint scraps and rust. Thirty or so static caravans were positioned in a large arc. Others had been thrown around like afterthoughts into more remote locations amongst overgrown hedgerows. Children filled the air with squeals; mums and dads played cricket with them; and grandparents sat listening to crackly medium-wave stations on portable transistor radios. I envied the simplicity of their happiness.

  A small café kiosk caught my eye, bordered by sun-faded plastic tables and chairs. Checking my pockets for change, I grinned when I found a crumpled twenty-pound note that must have survived the washday. Already the new Simon was proving luckier than the last. I ordered a cola from an uninterested girl behind the counter, who rolled her eyes as my change cleared out her cash register.

  I remained in my plastic chair well into the evening as a spectator, studying the holidaymakers like it was my first visit to earth. I’d forgotten what family life could be like – the way we were before she disembodied me.

  I stopped myself. I would not think about her and the repercussions of her actions. I was no longer a bit-part player in her pantomime.

  8.35 p.m.

  The smell of barbecues and scented candles wafted through the caravan park as night approached. I presumed I’d been invisible to everyone’s radar until a bare-chested, middle-aged man ambled towards my seat at the café. He explained his wife had spotted me throughout the afternoon sitting alone, and invited me to join his family for some grilled food.

  I gratefully obliged and filled my stomach with charred hotdogs until my belt buckle pinched my belly. I listened more than I spoke. And when they asked questions about my origins and my length of stay, I lied. I explained I’d been inspired by a celebrity sportsman who’d recently completed a sponsored charity walk from John o’ Groats to Land’s End. Now I was doing the same, for the homeless.

  I quickly learned how easy it was to be dishonest, especially to people who were willing to accept you at face value. No wonder my wife and my mother had found it so easy.

  My hosts were impressed, and when they offered me a ten-pound note for my chosen charity, I neither felt guilty nor the need to explain how my charity began and ended at home.

  Thanking them, I made my excuses and headed towards a cluster of caravans on the perimeter of the field. It wasn’t hard to fathom which lay empty, and after a quick flip of a metal latch on a rear window, I discreetly climbed inside one.

  The air was stale, the pillow was lumpy and stained with the sweat of strangers, and the starched woollen blanket scratched my chest. But I’d found myself a bed for the night. I wiped dirt from the inside of the window, looked out at my new surroundings, and smiled at the gifts a life without complication was bringing me.

  Both my body and my mind were shattered. My calf muscles and heels throbbed, my forehead was singed and my lower back ached. But I paid scant attention to temporary pain.

  Instead, I slept as soundly as a newborn baby that night. I had no dreams, no plans and most importantly, no regrets.

  Northampton, today

  8.25 a.m.

  Catherine sat in the dining room with her laptop computer resting on the mahogany table. She moved it slightly to look at the photograph of New York’s Fifth Avenue printed on the placemat underneath and smiled. She hoped they’d find the time to return there before the year was out.

  According to the date on the message, James’s most recent email had been sent in the early hours of that morning. It had been a month since her eldest son had last flown home to visit, but travelling around the world was part and parcel of his life now, and she’d grown accustomed to it. Despite the demands of his career, he regularly kept her up to speed on his antics. And when he couldn’t find time to jot down a few lines, even just to say hello or that he’d write more late
r, she’d log on to his website or Facebook profile to read his updates. Robbie had tried to demonstrate how easy it was to Skype and FaceTime, but she’d only just mastered how to record the soaps on the TV. One thing at a time, she’d told him.

  The act of picking up a fountain pen and writing a letter was something she missed. She was disappointed that most people found it too time-consuming or old-fashioned to put pen to paper instead of finger to keyboard. But it had been years since she’d last sat down and written anything herself, apart from her signature on business contracts.

  Emily had only just left the house and would be back in the evening to collect her for dinner. That gave her ample time to reply to James and order those biographies she’d been meaning to buy from Amazon. But before she could begin any of that, a knock at the door interrupted her. She removed her reading glasses, closed the lid of her laptop and went to answer it.

  ‘Have you forgotten your purse again, darling?’ she shouted as she pushed down the handle. But when the door opened, Emily wasn’t standing there. It was an older gentleman.

  She smiled. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were my daughter.’

  The man smiled back, removed his fedora and slicked back some of the stray grey hairs the brim had loosened.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  He didn’t reply but held her gaze and waited, patiently. She noted the quality of his three-piece tailored suit and his Mediterranean tan, and she was quite sure from just a cursory glance that his pale-blue tie was pure silk.

  Although his continued silence was a little awkward, she didn’t feel threatened. He was attractive, well groomed, and something about him felt familiar. Maybe she’d met him in Europe on a buying trip, but then how would he have known where to find her? No, that’s just silly, she thought.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ she asked, politely.