She dropped yet another burger through the grill of the barbecue into the hot coals, sighed and took a glug of her Campari and orange. It had been Sandra’s idea to have a barbecue – a very nice idea it was too – but she was doing a fantastic job of destroying all the meat she’d bought.
I said that the pork sounded like a fantastic bargain, took a charred burger so that she’d feel better about her grill skills, then wandered off, feeling sad and stupid. Why had I imagined that Mark would join us? All he’d said was that he wanted to organize some team drinks. ‘“Team” meaning us grooms, you eejit,’ I muttered to myself. ‘His slaves. Since when was he part of the team?’
I decided to get very drunk.
Becca, whose mood change I still hadn’t managed to unravel, had obviously had the same idea. She was sitting on the fence, slightly away from the rest of us, smoking roll-up after roll-up and steadily chugging her way through a box of Shiraz. When I took her a burger she shook her head. ‘I’m fine,’ she said curtly, when I asked her if she was okay, and fiddled with her wine box until I went away.
Half an hour later Sandra wobbled off to bed, then returned after less than five minutes. She admitted that Mark and Maria were having another terrible argument and that she’d given Ana Luisa earplugs. ‘I couldn’t take a moment more in the house,’ she said. Her hands trembled as she accepted another Campari and orange from Joe, who was actually being very sweet with her. ‘Maria really is a devil. Trying to make him run all sorts of horses that aren’t ready, just so that she and her dad can spend every weekend in a different champagne tent. The devil! The little devil! My poor Mark! She’s just screaming at him, even though the little one’s in bed!’
She sank into a chair and burst into tears. ‘It’s too much,’ she sobbed, into Joe’s arm. ‘Too much, Joseph. It’s like the past repeating itself.’
I thought it would be inappropriate for someone as new as me to pile in, plus Joe seemed to have it under control, but my heart ached as I watched Sandra cry. She was Mark’s manager, his PA, his press secretary and his accountant, and beyond him she seemed to have nobody. How sad that a family so successful and glamorous from the outside was little more than an empty vessel in reality. In the grooms’ barn there was kindness, warmth, respect and laughter; in the main house, shouting or silence.
I thought about my own family and a pain swelled in my chest that almost knocked the breath out of me. I had let them down so ruinously. And my friends. What sort of a monster was I? I wondered if they would ever forgive me, when they found out the truth. I’m so sorry for what I did, I thought. Mum, Dad, everyone, I’m more sorry than you’ll ever know.
I topped up my glass.
Caroline’s grooms turned up in a taxi, having heard there was free booze down the road, and things quickly went feral. Even Dirk and Woody the dogs, were drunk, thanks to Joe, who’d been slipping them cider. When Tiggy found out she whacked him on the arse with a lead-rope. ‘Stop spanking me, you bully,’ Joe grumbled, rubbing his bottom. ‘Galway, Tiggy’s after attacking me again. Will you come and make my poor little bottom better, darlin’?’
‘I will not.’
‘Ah, Galway, I BEG you.’
‘No!’
‘YES!’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’
More drunk than I had been in weeks, I waddled over to Joe with a horse blanket wrapped round me. He was standing by the barbecue looking sad, wiggling slightly to Haddaway’s ‘What is Love’, which was coming out of Sandra’s portable radio.
‘Right there,’ he whispered, pointing to his buttocks. ‘Help me, my darlin’ beautiful Galway. I’m a victim of terrible abuse.’ Shaking with laughter, I rubbed Joe’s bottom, and Caroline’s head groom said I was done for now. I told him he might just be right: Joe’s bottom was the best I’d ever handled.
‘A bit more, Galway,’ Joe said, smiling like a naughty little angel. ‘Maybe a bit more round towards the front, too …’
‘Joseph!’ Sandra cried. ‘Behave!’ But she was laughing now, too. Everyone was laughing, except Becca, who was still sitting on the fence, slightly away from the group.
‘Becca!’ I giggled. ‘Help!’
She looked at Joe and me, Joe with his arms around my waist, pretending to kiss my neck while moaning a folk song about roses, and shook her head. ‘Actually, I’m off to bed,’ she said. ‘Night, all.’
I karate-chopped my way out of Joe’s arms and went after her but before I had a chance to draw level she turned. ‘Don’t, pet,’ she said. In the light from the lanterns her face seemed taut as a drumskin. ‘I’m tired, I’m pissed off and I need to go to bed. I’ll be right as rain in the morning.’
She looked at me directly for the first time since that morning. There was a question in her eyes that I didn’t understand. ‘Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry,’ I said uselessly. ‘I thought you’d be pleased I’m staying. I don’t understand what’s happened.’
‘You haven’t done anything,’ she said, after a long exhalation of breath. ‘You haven’t done anything at all, Kate. And I should at least be grateful for that.’
She turned to go again but I grabbed her arm. ‘Becca, please tell me what’s up.’
‘Pet,’ Becca said, staring fixedly at the ground, ‘let me go, please, and get back to your party.’
And then she went, and I let her, because I was too confused to do anything else.
By midnight, everyone was in a terrible state. We’d moved to the grooms’ barn, and Sandra had gone to bed. There was no sign of Becca but the dogs had somehow found their way in and were stretched out in front of the Aga, dead drunk. ‘Look what I did.’ Joe giggled, curling up next to Woody, wrapping one of the dog’s limp paws around his middle. ‘Look what I did! God will kill me for my sins.’
Tiggy was dancing with Caroline’s head groom, who was the campest thing I’d ever seen, and the others were playing strip-poker at the table, which I was keen to avoid. Too drunk either to stand up or dance, I lay down on the floor with Joe and the dogs. Dirk opened a sleepy eye, thumped his tail a couple of times, then went back to sleep.
Joe rolled over so he was lying next to me. He sang along to the Cure about how we’d kissed as the sky fell in. Joe never stopped smiling. He never stopped being nice to people, or finding a joke when things were dark. I would go for you, I thought, smiling into those lovely hazel eyes, I really would go for you, if it wasn’t for the fact that I have this great big crush on our boss.
I rolled away from Joe, appalled. STOP THAT, I told my head. Do you not think you’re in enough bloody trouble?
Joe rolled over and spooned me. ‘Kate, he said, nuzzling into my hair. ‘Katie, darling, please can we do a bit of the french kissing? All casual, like? I can’t bear it any longer.’
As if I were watching from a corner, I watched myself roll back over to face him. I felt frightened. And not because I was inches away from Joe’s face. I was frightened because my heart had just admitted that I had a big crush on Mark Waverley.
‘Hi, sex pest,’ I said weakly. ‘It seems we’re lying on the floor.’
‘I don’t care where we lie.’ He smiled. ‘I just have to snog you, Katie. A man can only take so much teasing.’
I can’t have a crush on Mark, my head shouted. Mark of all people. I CAN’T.
And so, without really caring that I was in a room full of drunk people, and that gossip in this world spread with the speed and intensity of a forest fire, and that Joe was the biggest whore in the West, I let him lean in and kiss me. A long, soft kiss on the lips, laden with cider fumes and barbecue relish. I felt Joe’s lips smile and I allowed mine to do the same.
Then someone at the table spotted us and started shouting that Kate and Joe were having full sex by the Aga, and the kitchen door opened and Mark Waverley walked in, and the first thing he saw was Joe and me lying on the floor between his dogs, kissing each other. The colour drained from his cheeks. Time stood still as he looked down at me, and I looked up at
him.
‘Oh, hello, boss,’ Joe said, waving. ‘How’re ye?’
When I stumbled upstairs a few minutes later, my mind a drunken tangle of embarrassment and self-loathing, I saw that a light was still on in Becca’s room. I paused. Becca was disappointed in me, in that sad, sorry way that my folks used to be when I was naughty, and I didn’t have the faintest idea why. All I knew was that I hated it. I wanted things to be as they were. Becca was the only good friend I had access to, these days. I needed her. And, more to the point, I adored her.
I’d heard the front door slam as I’d come up the stairs – Mark leaving – and then the low murmur of scandalized conversation downstairs turning into a roar. ‘I got a snog with Galway!’ I could hear Joe yelling. ‘I bloody knew I’d wear her down in the end! Oh, we’ll be rumping in the feed room before you know it.’
I wanted to cry.
Cursing myself for my stupidity, my selfishness and my disgusting weakness as a human being, I knocked on Becca’s door and pretty much fell in.
‘Hello,’ I said. I knew I looked like a withered old drunk. I didn’t care. I just wanted to apologize for whatever I’d done so we could sort out the mess together.
‘So you got off with Joe,’ Becca said, drawing her duvet up to her chin. It had a summer-flowers print growing delicately over it and was the most un-Becca-like duvet in the universe. ‘I heard the yelling.’
I winced. ‘I hate myself. I really do, Becca, so please don’t feel like you need to hate me too. Really, I’ve got it all covered.’
Becca stared at me, then smiled. It was a sad sort of a smile, but it was a start. ‘I don’t hate you.’ She sighed. ‘It’s impossible to hate you. Besides, you’re my friend.’ She blushed slightly, pulling the duvet up even further. ‘It’s me I hate, pet.’
I sat down on the floor because the room was going a bit lopsided. I intensely disliked being so drunk. Why did it always seem like a good idea?
‘If you hate you and I hate me, maybe that cancels us out,’ I suggested.
‘Interesting logic.’ She pulled herself up in bed. ‘Want to get in?’ She lifted up the duvet. I crept into Becca’s bed, like a naughty dog. She must have showered after walking out of the barbecue: she smelt of synthetic raspberries and clean hair.
‘Please talk to me,’ I said. Tears sprang into my eyes. ‘Please tell me what’s up, Becca. I can’t stand us not talking.’
‘Me neither.’ She picked at some bobbles on her duvet cover, perhaps composing herself. Then: ‘Mark,’ she said simply. ‘I love him.’
I turned to stare at her.
‘No, I don’t love him. It’s limped on long enough now for me to know that it’s just an obsession. But love or obsession regardless, I can’t shake it off.’
‘So you’re not gay?’ I blurted out. Wow. I really hadn’t thought it possible to hate myself any more than I had ten seconds ago. ‘Ah, Jesus,’ I said. ‘What a stupid and rude question. Please don’t feel you need to answer. I’m so sorry, Becca.’
Becca was chuckling. ‘I’m not gay, pet. Although my mam says I do a pretty good impression. She’s a shrink. Reckons that by making myself look like a stereotypical lesbian I’ll successfully defend myself against the possibility of intimacy with a man, or something like that.’
I nodded stupidly. Too cerebral for this time of night.
‘Maria had a bigger-than-usual affair four years ago,’ she said flatly. ‘She left Mark, for a while, left Ana Luisa here, too, which was nice of her. It was someone from the Fédération Équestre Internationale she’d met at Gatcombe. She decided that he was even more useful to her than Mark. Mark caught them in the lorry at Burghley the very next week. He finally had a long-overdue go at her and she left him, just like that, because she won’t have anyone criticize her. Sandra went to pieces and Mark even stopped riding for a few days. I was the only other woman on the yard back then so they moved me into the house to help look after Ana Luisa.’
She paused. ‘I loved that child. She was so fucking sad, Kate. So lost and frightened and confused. Once Mark regained the power of speech he went the other way, wouldn’t stop talking. He was on at me day and night about his feelings, their relationship, even his relationship with his dad. I mean, for fuck’s sake.’
I listened, deeply moved.
‘He was so shocked that Maria had actually gone, and so scared about the effect it would have on the little one. And he wouldn’t admit it but he was sick with fear that she’d take away her horses. He cried, Kate, he cried every day.’
A tear dropped out of Becca’s eye. She rubbed her chapped hands fiercely across her face, but the tears kept welling up and sliding out. ‘And stupid old me, who’d never really been close to a man before, got all confused, and thought it meant something. And my stupid old heart decided that I loved him. And that maybe he felt the same way.’
I threaded my arm round her tattooed shoulders.
‘But obviously, pet, he didn’t. After two weeks of gabbling at me he stopped, because Maria had decided to come home and he was back in his miserable, shit, trapped life again. He hates it, pet, but it keeps him so busy he doesn’t have to think about it. He’s got the horses, the trophy wife, the batty kid and his mam warbling around, pretending everything’s fine.’
Becca was sobbing now. ‘He just took her back as soon as she decided he was too useful for her to lose. As if his happiness didn’t matter.’ Her shoulders shook. ‘I still can’t believe what a fuckin’ idiot I’ve been, pet. I’m so sorry I got the hump this morning. I was just jealous that he wanted to take you to Badminton, and throw you a drinks party when he’s never even made me a cup of tea. I was jealous that he actually managed to say more than one sentence to you. I convinced myself that he liked you. And that you liked him back.’
And with that she curled her head into my shoulder and howled.
I hugged her, rocking backwards and forwards. I hummed a song that my mum used to sing when I’d fallen over and hurt myself until, eventually, she stopped crying.
‘Becca,’ I said, when it was all over. ‘Becca, listen to me. I don’t fancy Mark. And he doesn’t fancy me. I just kissed Joe, remember? There’s nothing between Mark and me. No spark, no nothing. There never has been, and there never will be. Do you believe me?’
Becca’s eyes were all red and blurry. She wanted to believe me. She wanted to believe what I’d said almost as much as I did.
And I knew in that moment that what I’d just said would have to be true. There never had been a thing, and there never would be. And that was that. I relaxed a little. I was a bloody expert at blocking out the Bad Shit, these days. I’d simply add my messy feelings about Mark to the ever-growing Access Denied Department of my head and get on with my job.
‘Thanks, pet,’ Becca said eventually. Her voice was trembling but I could feel that stoic strength building slowly back in her. ‘I do believe you. Thank you, Kate.’
Chapter Nine
Annie
In the week following my unexpected Hackney encounter with Stephen, I noticed that I was somehow sneaking on lipstick when my back was turned, and managing more than once to go and get my hair blowdried into something tumbly and voluminous. It was duplicitous behaviour of which I did not approve. One day Claudine met me for lunch at work. As soon as she saw me, she scowled. ‘I knew it!’ she hissed. ‘You fancy your boss! Annie, you are deluded. Men like Stephen are bad.’
The next day I waited for Stephen to turn up for his massage, ready to compile a list of reasons why she was wrong.
But Stephen did not come that week, or the next. In fact, it was nearly three weeks before I saw him again. Tash told me he was in Hong Kong. ‘Having far too much fun,’ she said, rolling her eyes. I rolled mine too and felt desperate.
I checked my phone constantly in case he sent one of those lovely text messages again, which he did not. I spent an evening eating stinky Comté cheese from the deli on Chatsworth Road, stalking him furtively through newspaper art
icles and Facebook. I began to curse myself. Could I not – just for one week, one day even – form an appropriate crush on an appropriate man?
When I found an interview with him in the Spectator, in which the interviewer himself had quite clearly fallen in love with Stephen, I ate even more cheese and finally admitted to my (sadly indifferent) sitting room that I was smitten with Stephen Flint.
On the seventh evening of Stephen’s absence my phone rang at just gone ten o’clock from a withheld number. I threw myself at the phone like it was the last on earth.
Then I waited. ‘Er, hi?’ I’d never sounded so casual.
‘Annie, you old tinker,’ shouted Kate Brady. ‘How’re ye, darling?’
‘Kate …’ I closed my eyes, full of warmth at the sound of her voice. ‘Kate, I thought I’d never hear from you again. Where’ve you been?’
Kate sniggered. ‘I know, darling, sorry. I was after running off to the countryside.’
‘What? Running off? With who?’
‘With myself, Annie. Myself and a load of horses. I’m having a blast, although I look like a fecking muck heap most of the time.’ And with that she was off, explaining – as if this was the kind of thing people did all the time – that she’d got fed up with Dublin and decided to take a countryside sabbatical.
‘I love it,’ she said. ‘It’s a bloody dream, Annie. The mornings are so beautiful and the weather’s been lovely … I could do this for ever.’
We spoke for a while about her life on the farm. It sounded like a wonderful way to live but – although I couldn’t quite put my finger on why – I couldn’t help thinking there was something she wasn’t telling me. I let her be. A lifetime of being mentally prodded and poked by psychologists and doctors had taught me to back off when people didn’t want to share information.
‘So what’re you up to?’ Kate asked. ‘How’s things?’
‘I’m standing naked in front of the mirror in my bedroom,’ I admitted.
The Day We Disappeared Page 11
