The Day She Disappeared Read online

  It felt like a long time ago now, that hot morning he’d been wheeled in on his back, following the strip lighting down corridors and in and out of lifts—and cautiously Victor interpreted that feeling positively. He had in the interval adjusted to what he could and could not do, and thought that he could do more, not less, as time passed. He could, for example, raise both arms, he could hold a pen, he could say thank you quite clearly. Whatever it had been was in retreat—for the moment. It seemed safest, though, not to express that to anyone, either. Because the truth was, Victor was not at all sure that he was among friends here, on the sunny ward. He wasn’t at all sure that whatever it had been hadn’t followed him here.

  It was distinctly quieter today. All the same, thought Victor, on balance, he would not wish to spend more than one hospital Sunday morning. There were other Sundays he wanted to experience.

  It was important to adjust to circumstances, to the most pressing circumstance of all, that his own death was closer than it had ever been. Closer even than in the last surge of his landing craft as he brought it up on the beach with the din and crackle of artillery in his ears, aged nineteen years and one month, the crash and thump of bombardment, sand flying. Then Victor had experienced it as a fierce chemical sensation he could still remember seventy years on; then he had been able to turn to Corporal Tunstall (Joseph, known as Joe, born and bred in Kent among hop fields) next to him leaning against the metal bulwark with his lips pressed to the barrel of his rifle and see the bottomless black-eyed look that mirrored his own. Then they had been brothers all fighting the same fire, the same blistering devil. Now Victor was on his own. That was the thing they didn’t really dwell on when talking of old age, wasn’t it—it wasn’t all to do with infirmity, joints and eyesight, it was the aloneness, he wouldn’t call it loneliness, the being alone you should guard against. On his own and the fierce black gaze was dulled, blurred. He was alone and hearing it walk behind him on soft feet, hearing the flame crackle in corners, and so he needed to be circumspect. Victor eyed the newspaper—and then she walked into his line of sight. Lisa. Nurse Lisa.

  As though she could read his mind, she leaned in one quick movement and picked up the newspaper. It was a broadsheet.

  “I’ll put it back,” she said softly, holding it out to him. “When you’ve had a look. Poor Mr. Saunders is in for respite, hasn’t been able to read a newspaper in eight or nine years, but it makes Mrs. Saunders feel better to bring him one.” With an effort he raised both arms to hold it, trembling, in front of him and Lisa gave a little gasp. “Victor,” she said, “well done.” But she moved discreetly to hold the thing with him, and when he turned his head, the newsprint blurring maddeningly, she understood that as well and reached for his spectacles.

  HOME NEWS. BOY’S BODY FOUND. A small paragraph, but suddenly the newspaper felt heavy, or Victor felt weak, and he lay back on the pillow, helpless. He closed his eyes.

  In the dark he saw a man’s arms streaked in blood as he walked up the lane to Victor, from the shadow into the light. He tried to think: when? The newsprint blurred again. IN THE WATER AT LEAST A WEEK. DROWNED. Another moment and the walking man would raise his head in the dappled sun and Victor would see his face. He waited, he waited, he heard the nurse murmur, anxious out there in the light somewhere, and he thought, he knows I saw him. He knows where I am.

  * * *

  Upstairs she could hear Steve and Janine, talking over their full English breakfast. The fry-up was their Sunday ritual, and the oasis of peace in the bar that was a by-product was as much a luxury for Nat as for them, if she was truthful. Especially on a day like this with the doors open front and back and the sun, still low in the morning sky, shining right through from the garden to the lane as Nat swept out. The pumps gleaming, bar top polished and clean towels laid out on it.

  When she’d started, aged, what, fifteen and collecting glasses and washing up, strictly-behind-the-bar work, the smell in the pub first thing had been very different. The first job had been to empty and wipe out the ashtrays, so it was dregs and fag ash mixed. Duster in hand Nat paused, trying to remember when Beth had turned up. A year ago? Two? She calculated.

  Two and a bit, not long after Nat’s return from London, really. Turning up in the doorway one autumn morning as unlike today as could be, soaked to the skin in a tight crop top and with a shiny bag festooned with glitterballs and furry pom-poms over one shoulder, that turned out to contain everything she owned. She hadn’t said much about where she came from beyond a few careless mentions of backpacking, a stint in a bar in Ibiza, some guy who’d disappeared overnight and turned out to have had a wife. Nothing about home, not then and not much more later. Nothing about a father long gone, a mother who’d kicked her out.

  Janine, of course, with her sharp eye for what the punters liked, had seen it in her straightaway, seen past the hair plastered down with rain and the streaked mascara to the party girl not so dormant beneath, and had practically offered her a job before she’d set her belongings down in the doorway. And then, looking down at Beth’s wet feet and the underwear spilling out of the top of the bag, a place to stay—to seal the deal, quickly followed by Janine’s usual “Strictly temporary, all right? While you sort yourself out.”

  Before Beth had set her bag down Janine had inquired, unashamed, about relationships—“No husbands coming out the woodwork, I hope?”—and Beth had just laughed.

  “Did have a relationship,” she said, mocking, of herself as much as anything, once Janine was out of earshot. “Ibiza. Not a lad, older bloke. Near on a year, Christ knows why. ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ he kept saying. Meaning the opposite, giving me a look like, just change your hair, just wear the right thing, say the right thing.” Her jaw set.

  “Not you, it’s me?” Nat hadn’t understood.

  Beth had smoothed her top, carefully, lovingly. “He didn’t want it. Sex. Couldn’t get it up was the truth. But you know what? What he wanted was to see my face, trying to get it right, turn him on. Wanted to see me squirm. So now—I just like to have my fun. I don’t want to hold on to anyone, if you get what I mean. Don’t ask for something I can’t give you, and I won’t do it to you.”

  She’d leaned back against the wall in the kitchen, staring off somewhere for a minute, then she’d clicked back to the here and now and smiled. Leaned forward and put her arms around Nat and gave her a bone-cracking hug. “That’s blokes, though. You don’t want to take sex too serious. I’m holding on to you, mate, don’t you worry.”

  Don’t take sex too serious: easier said than done. Nat had turned that over in her mind afterward, and again when she’d seen Beth the morning after some bloke now and again since; a little ruffled, needing to reset, moving on. Is it what she wants? How can she make sure?

  What with pub shifts it had been hard for them to go out together, her and Beth, but they’d managed it a few times. They’d been to see a movie with Ryan Gosling in it, a big box of popcorn each and wine and Beth saying as they left, Yeah, well, he’s all right, I suppose. Take him or leave him, and them laughing so hard Nat fell off the pavement and Beth had to yank her back out of the way of a passing car.

  That was before. Before Nat found out she was pregnant. Jim looking at her expressionless when she came in after that night at the movies, she had forgotten about that. It occurred to her for the first time, remembering, that it was possible Jim hadn’t been all that happy about her being friends with Beth.

  And then. Did he think her leaving him had something to do with Beth? Men did think that, didn’t they? Though Beth had never said anything bad about Jim. She’d only sighed, once or twice.

  There was a sound from upstairs and Nat tipped her head, listening for what was going on. She could hear Steve’s voice, deep and steady and reasonable, Janine’s sharper, though she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She went into the kitchen to fill the bowls with peanuts and chips and little cubes of cheese: only on a Sunday, a treat for the punters. Janine’s idea of gen
erosity, a Sunday tradition to keep them here while the roast cooked, though Nat couldn’t imagine anyone doing roast dinner on a day like this. She thought of Beth’s mother on the phone and found herself giving an involuntary shiver, despite the heat, at the memory, little bitch. Nat should have known: Beth wouldn’t have wandered into the Bird in Hand in the rain if she’d had a home to go to, would she? Even Patty out on the Spanish costa represented home, of a sort.

  She’d tried, Patty had. To make a home, to be a mum. Laying the table, putting up curtains. And she was all heart, was Patty, her face crumpling if she saw anyone hurt or unhappy, anyone or anything, dogs, cats, birds. Nat—and Nat’s dad too, soggy-faced, hungover, repentant. It was watching Patty at the breakfast table hovering around him, not sure if he was going to hit her or cry on her shoulder, Patty ready to fly back to him and say, There, there, you never meant it—that had taught Nat to keep quiet. Because by the time she was five Nat had been able to see—or hear, Patty crying behind her bedroom door, a sad, ugly sound—that there was only so much a heart like Patty’s could take, and Nat had better stay in her room and look after herself.

  It had taken a while—it had taken maybe till May this year—for Nat to see that she wasn’t as unlike Patty as she thought. She’d always hated to see Jim unhappy.

  The fallout from the fry-up was all over the kitchen counter. Frying pan, grill pan, toast crumbs, open bottle of ketchup. Janine had been taking the tray up in another new dressing gown when Nat arrived and had said, careless, “Just leave it,” but Nat knew what that meant. She was wiping down the surfaces when she heard Janine at the top of the stairs, talking back into the bedroom over her shoulder. “I don’t know why you’re so bothered,” sharply, “it’s not like she’d been making the effort anymore.” To Steve.

  From the sharp clop of Janine’s footsteps on the stairs Nat could tell the day wasn’t off to a good start and she tugged off her apron to get out of her way but not quite fast enough, and Janine brushed impatiently past her in the door. Even the sound she made surveying the kitchen at Nat’s back was dissatisfied, but Nat didn’t have time to wonder because as she came through to the bar there was Mrs. Hawkins, Maureen as Beth used to call her, sardonic in cod Irish accent, and Mo to her friends. Of whom there were few.

  In a grubby peach tracksuit that looked like it had been lifted from a younger woman Mo Hawkins was tapping on the counter, not with a coin as had been known among impatient punters (Nat had never smacked one of them for doing it, but her day would come) but her mobile. She was turning it on end and back again, and something about the picture stopped Nat in her tracks.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Hawkins, we don’t open for another twenty minutes,” she said, but the hair was rising on the back of her neck already. She wasn’t here for a drink. Tightfisted and teetotal: Beth had had a theory about that, and Nat could almost hear her say it. Ol’ frickin vulture. Likes to keep her wits about her in case a bit of roadkill turns up.

  The mobile tipped again, screen at the bottom this time, and Nat stared, down to the bar top then up to the old woman’s face. “Yes,” said Mrs. Hawkins. “Reckernize it, do you?” Nat reached out a hand for it and Mo snatched it back.

  “What’s all this?” Janine’s voice was sharp from the kitchen doorway behind her.

  Nat saw a sullen look come into Mo Hawkins’s face. “I found it, didn’t I,” she said, sullen replaced with self-righteous. “Cleaning up her mess. Just trying to be helpful.”

  “You mean you thought about flogging it then even you worked out that could get you in trouble?” Janine was steely. Nat’s hand was still held out.

  The old woman didn’t look so certain, suddenly. “I don’t know why she would’ve left it behind,” she said, and she pushed the phone at Nat abruptly. “It was in a cupboard, plugged in. She could’ve just forgot it—but then—”

  Janine laughed scornfully. “Leave her phone behind? Beth? I remember when she got it, you’d have thought it was her firstborn she was that proud.” Folding her arms across her. “And who charges their phone in a cupboard?”

  “She’d have been back for it before now,” said Nat, but she wasn’t sure they heard her, she spoke so quietly. The messages, though. Beth had sent messages.

  One to her: Sorry babe no signal really up here see you soon.

  Had that sounded like Beth? No—but Beth was too big to squeeze into a text message.

  The phone had been in a cupboard all along.

  She tried to make it work. To make it make sense. Beth, hiding somewhere, sneaking back into that ground-floor flat, opening a cupboard and swooping for her phone, laughing as she pressed send. As a laugh? No. She’d have had to have lost her marbles to be playing this kind of silly beggars. She had friends here, she had lovers. She had a hospital appointment.

  And with that realization, for a plunging black second Nat knew—knew—that something had happened to Beth. Something bad.

  “We’re going to the police,” she said. Out loud.

  Mo Hawkins’s mouth fell open and Janine leaned in, triumphant, and snatched the mobile from her. “I’ll have that, thanks,” she said and was on the stairs by the time Mo had moved, fast for an old biddy, to the flap in the counter to get after her. Nat blocked her.

  “No,” she said. “It isn’t yours, Mo, is it?” From upstairs she heard Janine’s voice, Steve’s raised in surprised answer. “Is it?”

  Mo Hawkins eyed her, venomous. “I’m owed rent. And what’s she mean, anyway, get me into trouble? She left it behind, didn’t she? Not like she left no forwarding address.” Hunching her shoulders. “And it’s Mrs. Hawkins to you, missy.”

  Inside Nat something snapped. “Something’s happened to her,” she said, grabbing the woman’s peach velour sleeve. “Don’t you understand, you … you…”

  Mo Hawkins’s eyes were sharp and brown and beady, gleeful for the fight. “You what? Calling me names, is it?” she said, tugging her sleeve out of Nat’s grasp. With a huge effort Nat slowed, stopped herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, hearing her voice uneven with the strain of not shouting into the woman’s face. “Mrs. Hawkins, look, I’m sorry. I’m just worried about my friend. Was there anyone … was she seeing anyone we might not know about? Who might have come over to the flat? Was she seen leaving with anyone?”

  Mo Hawkins’s mouth pursing. “Neighbors?” Nat persisted. “Anyone who might know where she’s gone?” Pleading now, and all the time the stony-faced cow staring back at her like she was enjoying it. “Because it’s not normal, is it? Leaving all your stuff behind?” Beth’s stuff, all those outfits, the shoes. “Someone must know something.”

  Mo snorted. “Normal you want, is it?” Pronouncing the word with relish. Nat faced her down until eventually she shrugged. “Your guess as good as mine,” she said. “Special friends—get yourselves in trouble, you girls, with yer special friends—she had ’em, all right, but she was careful not to let no one see ’em. Hear ’em’s a different matter.” Nat swallowed, but Mo was still going, the bit between her teeth. “Din’t she say where she was off? You said her mum’s.”

  “You don’t understand.” Through gritted teeth. “That message—I don’t think it was … that was…” That wasn’t her. Nat stared at Mo Hawkins’s wizened old face, but her gut churned with the implications. Someone. Someone with her phone, winding them up. Lying to them. And where was Beth? What had happened to Beth?

  It was like coming up against a wall. If she’d gone off without her phone, if she’d lost it, she’d have gotten a new one. She would have been in touch. She would have called, and at the thought of that, of Beth’s actual voice, rough and sweet, a big sigh and saying You missed me, then, Nat put a hand to her mouth. Then dropped it. “I spoke to her mum and she hasn’t been there, so that was a … well maybe a misunderstanding.”

  “She always was a little liar,” said the old woman, almost wistful, and Nat seized the moment.

  “I’m worried about her,” she said
quickly, and she saw Mo’s eyes narrow, suspicious. “I think someone’s been using the phone. I think someone wants us to think she’s just gone off.”

  “She coulda, coulda bin coming back an’…,” but Mo ground to a halt and slowly Nat shook her head.

  “So as to get out of paying rent, or what?” Incredulous. “No.” She tipped her head back to listen. “Janine?” she called. They were still talking up there. Then stepping back from the bar and catching sight of Mo Hawkins as she turned to look up the stairs, seeing the old woman’s face sagging into lines and pouches: afraid.

  “Janine?” Then the voices stopped overhead and the two of them were on the stairs, coming down, Janine first with the mobile in her hand and frowning and Steve behind her, patient as ever. He wore a clean shirt and his jeans were ironed, Janine the domestic goddess these days, thought Nat, distracted.

  “I think we should take it to the police,” she said.

  Janine looked back at Steve, anxious; he set a hand on her shoulder, tentatively. “I think she could be right, babe,” he said, clearing his throat.

  Janine thrust it out at Nat. “It’s been wiped,” she said. “More or less. Messages and that.”

  “I could’ve told you that,” piped up Mo Hawkins, and they all turned to look at her. She shrugged. “Come off it,” she said, “anyone woulda looked, wouldn’t they? Girl like that.” Back to plain nasty—but there was still a trace of fear, the beady eyes darting.

  They all looked at Nat now, expectant. “Even if it’s been wiped,” she said, taking the phone, “the police’ll have ways of finding stuff, won’t they?”

  Standing at the foot of the stairs where the landline sat, pride of place and barely used, these days, as she waited to be put through Nat could hear the murmur of voices. Janine trying to get rid of Mo Hawkins, who was dead set on sticking around, a free place at the bar, at the center of things, and not even the need to buy a drink. Should feel sorry for the old cow, lonely, maybe, but Nat had no room for pity. Find her. Find her.