When You Disappeared

by John Marrs

  ‘No, Dougie, let me go,’ I shouted, but my cries were muffled by the bedspread.

  From behind, I felt him push up my skirt and yank down my underwear, then he pulled down his trousers before forcing himself into me. The searing, agonising pain felt as though he were tearing me in two. I shook, squirmed and fought, but eventually his brute strength pummelled me into submission.

  His hot, foul, beery breath scorched the back of my neck. I wrenched my head to the side and tried to yell again but the pain made me retch, and I covered my cheek and the sheets with sick. Every part of me throbbed at the same time, struggling to eject the parasite.

  Suddenly, amongst the music and voices echoing around the house, I heard footsteps running up the stairs. I begged God to guide whoever it was into the bedroom and end my hell.

  Dougie was oblivious to the person outside the door. Then the footsteps stopped as quickly as they’d started. My scream came out as a muffled moan as his hand drove my head ever deeper into the mattress. I begged for the bedroom door to open but my guardian angel paused, and walked away.

  I let out my last cry and then, to my eternal shame, I gave up my struggle. Everything fell quiet and all I heard was his shallow breath and the sound of his belt buckle shaking before he climaxed.

  Even when he finished, he continued to lie on me, his whole wretched body suffocating me. But I was no longer in pain. I’d been swallowed by numbness. My senses shut down until his weight lifted off me.

  Then he pulled his trousers up and left without saying another word.

  I lay there for I don’t know how long, immobilised and still partially undressed, trying to make sense of what had happened. It didn’t make sense, but I needed it to.

  I realised Dougie had punished me for taking Simon away from him. Somehow I’d been responsible for my husband having a mind of his own and making his own choices. I’d become the one Dougie blamed for everything that went wrong in his life, and he’d needed to force me to understand how helpless he felt by making me feel the same as him.

  A voice shouted my name from the garden and it brought me back to reality. I stood up, took clean underwear from the chest of drawers and headed for the en-suite bathroom. I wiped myself and saw blood on the toilet paper. I flushed it away and then fell to my knees. I was sick in the toilet until there was nothing left to bring up. I was empty in every sense of the word.

  I raised my head and glanced at myself in the mirror. I’d never noticed how unforgiving it was until then. I wiped my eyes and mouth and forced myself not to cry. I held my hands together so tightly to stop my arms from shaking that I thought my fingers might break.

  Then, after a time, slowly and awkwardly, I re-joined the party. I looked around nervously, but Dougie must have left. I was relieved when I couldn’t find Simon either. I had no idea how to tell him what had just happened.

  So I carried on, as best I could, like nothing was out of the ordinary. I smiled, I laughed and I topped up people’s glasses. But the life and soul of the party was dying inside.

  You have just been raped. You have just been raped. You have just been raped. A voice inside me kept repeating the words like it desperately wanted me to understand what had just happened. But I couldn’t process it, not now, not yet.

  When the numbers finally dwindled in the early hours of the morning, and Simon, I presumed, was asleep in one of the kids’ empty bedrooms, I remained wide awake. I washed dishes, scooped rubbish into black bin bags and cleaned the house until everything was spotless.

  Except for me.

  Northampton, today

  7.40 p.m.

  The world beyond her front doorstep could have exploded into a tumbling mass of fire and brimstone but it still wouldn’t have been enough to break the eye contact between them.

  He knew that for twenty-five years he had got things very, very wrong. And that was by no means the end of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CATHERINE

  Northampton, twenty-eight years earlier

  18 March

  I pretended I was asleep when I heard Simon get up and leave the bedroom, then quietly close the front door.

  I knew he’d been having difficulties sleeping and guessed he’d probably gone to put in a few more hours in the office in the garage. He’d done that a lot lately, and secretly I was glad. What Dougie had done to me wasn’t my fault, but it didn’t stop me feeling like I was the most disgusting human being on the planet.

  I’d never been more in control of my emotions than I’d been during these past few days after his attack. I was afraid that if I stopped running even for a minute, I’d grind to a halt and fall to the floor in a thousand shattered pieces. If I kept moving, I wouldn’t have time to think. I occupied every waking moment of my day with multiple trips to the supermarket to buy groceries we didn’t need, playing pirate games with children who’d rather have been with their friends, digging the garden until there was no soil left unturned.

  But being in bed alone – or with Simon – scared me. It gave me time to think. I considered telling him everything, but in the end I decided I’d have been the only one it would help. Trusting those closest to him was such a huge part of his make-up that I knew the truth about his best pal would destroy him. I’d have been in even smaller pieces seeing him so unhappy.

  He might also urge me to report the attack, but I’d been drunk, so who’s to say I hadn’t willingly consented then had an attack of conscience? There were no witnesses and I’d taken so many baths to wash him out of me, there was no physical evidence anything had ever happened. It was absolutely my word against his.

  Even if there’d been enough proof for the police to charge him, a court case would have meant everyone knowing about that night. I’d have been forced to relive it to a room full of strangers judging me, and his barrister ripping me to shreds. I wasn’t strong enough to be humiliated like that.

  But most important to me was my marriage. I was terrified that Simon would never look at me in the same way again: that he’d think of me as damaged goods. If he’d have grasped even a small measure of how dirty I felt, I couldn’t have borne seeing my pain reflected in him. When all things were considered, our family had too much to lose.

  Instead I bottled up my tears, and when no one was around, I’d slip inside the garage, shut the door and uncork that bottle until they spilled across the floor. And when it was empty, I’d pull myself together and go back to pretending I wasn’t on the brink of a breakdown.

  22 March

  The thought of ever seeing Dougie’s face again petrified me and, in a small village, our paths were bound to cross eventually.

  When I was outside, I stopped at each street corner and looked around in fear of coming face to face with him. And home alone, I’d lock the doors and keep the curtains closed. Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t have dared to return to the house of a woman he’d raped. But someone who could so degrade and violate another person – and someone who was supposed to be their friend – wasn’t in their right mind anyway.

  I never brought his name up again, but strangely, neither did Simon. He just disappeared from our conversations. Simon didn’t go to the pub with him again. He never asked why Dougie hadn’t been round for dinner, and never invited him over to watch a football match on TV. It was like he’d suddenly ceased to exist to Simon, too. The kids were the only ones who seemed to miss him.

  ‘Is Uncle D coming for tea tonight?’ Robbie asked us over breakfast.

  ‘No,’ Simon replied quickly, without raising his head.

  I can’t explain how relieved I was to hear that two-letter word, but I couldn’t ask why. So it was only when we were invited to Steven and Baishali’s house for drinks to celebrate Simon and him winning a large county council commission that the murky waters cleared.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Baishali asked when I joined her in the kitchen. The truth was that I was as anxious as hell and clearly I was showing it. I’d avoided Paula of late bec
ause she’d have seen straight through me and demanded I take action – or worse, started the ball rolling without my permission. But Baishali didn’t like confrontation, so I’d picked her and Steven as my first social engagement since the attack to try and navigate my life back to normality.

  ‘Yes, everything’s fine,’ I replied, and gave her a fixed grin.

  ‘It’s a shame about Dougie, isn’t it?’

  I swallowed hard. ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s gone back to Scotland, hasn’t he? He popped a note through our letterbox saying goodbye. Seems very sudden, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, trying to disguise my relief.

  ‘Simon must be disappointed.’

  I had no idea what my husband was thinking anymore. I asked myself why he hadn’t told me his best friend of twenty years had suddenly moved away. I was growing increasingly uneasy over how our lines of communication were becoming disconnected. But if it was true, that the animal had crawled back to Scotland, maybe I could start to try and live again.

  At a time when every part of me craved normality, Simon and I were drifting apart in separate lifeboats.

  Sex and intimacy were the furthest things from my mind, but when we got home from Steven and Baishali’s, I was crying out to feel like a normal woman again. I desperately hoped that by making love to Simon, I could push that night from my mind.

  Physically I was still sore, but I forced myself to make him want me because I didn’t want to equate sex with pain and violence for the rest of my life. Even during the act, which is exactly what it was, I knew we were both only going through the motions. And if I felt it, I’m sure he did too.

  But it was the start I needed to repair what someone else had almost ruined.

  14 May

  I hadn’t guessed I was pregnant, even when I missed my period.

  I presumed that while I’d been focused on blanking things out, I’d simply neglected my body by skipping meals and sleeping badly. I chalked it up as an off-kilter cycle and my body’s delayed reaction to trauma.

  But when the second month rolled by with no sign of its arrival, I nervously made a doctor’s appointment. Three days after my test, Dr Willows rang with the results. I slumped onto the stool by the telephone, the wind knocked out of my sails. I was pregnant and I had no idea what to do.

  I was already stretched to breaking point. I was a mum to three children under the age of five, I was married to a workaholic husband and I was trying to hide the mental scars Dougie had left me with. The thought of having to cope with another little one mortified me. It would be another distraction that stopped Simon and I from repairing our relationship. I’d accepted that our sex life had shifted from passionate to sporadic and unfulfilling, but at least we’d made a little effort to be intimate. And while neither of us had climaxed and so it was unlikely, biologically it didn’t mean I couldn’t fall pregnant.

  I seriously considered an abortion. I imagined organising it while Simon was at work and the kids were at school. And by the time they’d all pour through the door at teatime, none of them would be any the wiser.

  But I’d know. I loved motherhood and I had no right to stop a second heart beating inside me because mine was broken. Poor timing was an excuse, not a reason, and a pretty weak one at that. So I forced myself to come to terms with it. I had gotten through tougher times.

  I didn’t know what the future would bring for Simon and I. But I knew there was a future for the baby inside me.

  SIMON

  Northampton, twenty-eight years earlier

  18 March

  ‘Why? Why?’ I bellowed while my fists took on lives of their own, raining blow after blow upon Dougie’s face and body.

  Four days had passed since I’d heard my best friend and my wife together, and I’d barely been able to look at her. She’d been uncommonly quiet and withdrawn – ravaged, I hoped, by guilt for what they had been doing behind my back.

  I made a backlog of office work my excuse for spending time away from both her and the scene of their crime. But concentration was impossible and I’d sit at my desk, haunted by the noises they’d made behind our bedroom door. And although she’d desecrated my faith in her, my physical fury was directed towards Dougie.

  I was unsure if I was more enraged by his devious, cowardly betrayal of our friendship or at my own naivety for never having doubted his loyalty. Catherine aside, I’d been closer to him than any of my friends. But he’d made a mockery of all I’d presumed, and try as I might to contain it, my anger refused to simmer until I’d made him feel as weak and vulnerable as I was.

  I waited until the early hours of the morning when she was asleep before I walked to his rented house. Both the upstairs and downstairs curtains sealed off the inside from unwanted prying eyes, so I ventured to the rear and peered through his kitchen window.

  The light was on and an unconscious Dougie was sitting inside on a plastic patio chair, his head tilted backwards, surrounded by empty beer cans lying like fallen soldiers. While my life was imploding, he’d been celebrating. My rage peaked.

  He only became aware of my presence when I slipped my arm around his neck and jolted him backwards to the floor. Startled, his blurred eyes opened wide but the alcohol in his system made any attempt to reclaim gravity futile. I straddled him and rapidly recast the structure of his face into a tapestry of blood, hair and mucus. My knees pinned his helpless, flailing arms to the ground, but even bruising my knuckles as I broke his nose and jaw was not enough to curb my ferocity.

  ‘Why her?’ I spat. ‘Why my wife?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he choked. ‘Stop, please stop—’ But I didn’t allow him to continue: another blow thrust his front teeth to the back of his throat like pins in a bowling alley.

  I dragged him to his feet by his stained shirt collar and held him against the wall. His head hit a clock and it fell, spraying glass across the lino.

  ‘I don’t know why,’ he gasped, his breath reeking of booze and blood. ‘I didn’t plan to—’

  ‘Shut up!’ I snarled. ‘You’ve destroyed us, Dougie. You and me, her and me, all of us. Everything . . .’

  My voice had weakened, then faded into nothing. Hearing myself verbalise what he had done to me suddenly made the sheer enormity of it all too real. I let him drop to the floor and he curled up into a sobbing, bloody ball. I gawped at him like he was a strange, injured creature in the last throes of life. I questioned how I could have been so foolish as to have loved something that worthless.

  I needed to get out of his house and stop breathing the same polluted air as him. I headed towards the back door, his wheezing growing quieter with every footstep.

  I could have left him there to remain in his stink, but deep inside me, I knew it wouldn’t have been enough. I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him.

  His swelling, blackened eyes were already reduced to slits, so he was only aware of my shadow when it hovered over him. Even when he watched me take the bread knife from the sink, he didn’t try to protect himself.

  I slowly pulled back my arm and plunged the blade into his stomach once, twice, then a third time. It took surprisingly little effort. His face remained expressionless but the physical trauma forced his body bolt upright. There he remained conscious, but still.

  I stood back to share his final moments. His last few shallow breaths merged with the sound of gases escaping through his wounds. He didn’t try to clutch at them or fight for his life. He simply waited five long minutes before life drained from his carcass and his neck lapsed limply to one side.

  We both knew what I had done was right.

  I reacted to the events of the night with clarity.

  Beth’s family had removed almost every stick of furniture from her house when she sold it, so he had little to furnish his new hovel with. I searched each room for something suitable to put his body into. But all he possessed were empty takeaway containers, beer cans and free newspapers. It was a pathetic legacy.
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  I wiped his blood from the floor with newspapers and dirty towels. Then I bundled his body into the boot of his car. I drove through the village, passing our house, before I turned off the headlights and navigated by memory the lane by the woods.

  I grabbed the spade and torch I’d taken from Dougie’s garage and headed deep into the copse. The ground was frosty and hardened, so it took sweat and determination to dig. But after an hour, his makeshift grave lay ready for him. My arms, weakened and jarred by fury and determination, made dragging his bulky frame to the hole arduous, but I persisted until I’d rolled him into the earth.

  I threw the stained towels and papers in, and without giving him a second glance, I shifted the soil back into the hole, trampled the ground to an even level and scattered fallen leaves to disguise my movements. I used an old blue rope that lay on the ground near the dried-up pond to mark his grave.

  I left his car in a notorious area of town with the keys in the ignition, then caught two nightbuses home. I made my way to the bridge where I’d take the kids pretend-fishing, and washed his filth from my hands in the water below. And with my adrenaline spent, my physical pain began to manifest itself as sharp bolts of lightning. They ran from my knuckles up into my shoulders and made my chest tight. The letters I’d type to Roger and Steven on behalf of Dougie, explaining his sudden move home, could wait until morning.

  With my fists locked tight, I could barely extend a hand to brush the tracks of my tears from my cheeks and chin.

  27 April

  I longed to hear Catherine confess and beg for my forgiveness. Because only then might she understand how far from my old self I’d shifted since I’d heard her and Dougie together.

  She had asphyxiated the ‘me’ she thought she knew. Now she only lived with an impression of Simon Nicholson: a man so anaesthetised and glacial, the fluids inside him ran cold. I would never be the same man again.