The Disappearance of Emily Marr

by Louise Candlish

  ‘I’m in the bathroom,’ she yelled.

  She heard his footsteps on the stairs, the unhurried deliberation of them, and then, to her alarm, she saw the door handle pressing down.

  His face appeared, his shoulders followed. Then he was in the room and the door was closing behind him.

  ‘What are you doing, Steve?’ she shouted. ‘Get out, will you!’

  ‘You said you were in the bathroom. Did you want me for something?’ The innocent tone didn’t deceive her for a second.

  ‘No, of course I didn’t! I meant I’m in here so don’t come in!’

  But he was already lowering himself on to the towel she’d left folded on the closed toilet lid, and he was looking frankly at her. He was not tall and his face – admittedly well arranged and boyish but ruined at the best of times by a compulsive moistening of the mouth – was startlingly close to hers.

  She’d been in the water long enough for the bubbles to have all subsided, leaving her completely exposed. All she could do – and had done the instant his face peered in – was to cover her upper body with her arms and bring her knees closer to her chest, feet drawn tightly together. She couldn’t tell what was visible to someone sitting at his angle, but it was too much whatever it was.

  ‘Why are you sitting? Can you pass me that towel, please – and then get out!’

  ‘What towel?’

  ‘The one you’re sitting on, Steve.’

  He refused to meet her eye, his making a deliberate scanning of her body parts, gaze coming to rest on her forearms shielding her breasts. ‘Sorry, can’t reach it. You’ll have to get it yourself.’

  This would of course mean kneeling or half-standing, losing the protection of one arm as she tried to tear out the towel from under him, and, worst of all, having to make certain physical contact with him. She envisaged a naked tug-of-war that would be far more titillating to him than her remaining motionless in half a bath of dirty water.

  Though the water was cooling, her face was searing hot, her pulse pounding. She was frightened. ‘What do you want, Steve?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing, it’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘What are you talking about? I don’t want anything.’

  His lips parted. ‘I know you need fifty quid, I heard you asking Elaine. How about I give you it?’ To her bewilderment, he fished notes from his back pocket and placed them on the windowsill behind his head.

  ‘Why would you want to give me fifty pounds?’

  But she was beginning to understand the answer.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ he said, with the temerity to look insulted. ‘Seriously, you don’t have to do anything. Just lie back, put your arms by your sides, or behind your head, better still, and let me have a proper look. A nice, long look. Then the money’s yours. Fifty.’

  ‘Make it fifty million and you’ve got a deal.’ Her snarled retort belied her shame and horror; but she was determined not to cry.

  ‘Come on, it’s not much to ask, is it? Just a little favour. You must know it’s driving me fucking crazy living with you.’

  ‘You are living with my mother, not me.’ The distinction was lame, her implicit departure from this house of fun too distant for anyone but her to have considered it with any seriousness; and even if she was leaving tomorrow, it could not protect her here and now from the continued prodding of his obscene gaze, as if he could use it to prise loose her arms from around her own body.

  ‘She doesn’t need to know anything about it,’ he said; ‘don’t worry about her.’

  Tabby felt nauseous with revulsion. Her hatred for him was giddying. ‘I’m worrying about myself.’

  Tongue and teeth appeared in another lascivious smile. ‘Oh, you have nothing to worry about, believe me.’

  As he leaned a fraction towards her, her fear began to escalate. They were alone in the house and she doubted neighbours would be in at this time to hear her scream. Was it possible that he might use physical force? Was she in actual bodily danger here, at risk of rape? He had not actually touched her and yet, if he did, in a way she’d know what to do, she’d fight back with her fists. But this staring, this invasion without touching, it was menacing, all the danger held in reserve.

  ‘Get out!’ she yelled, violently. ‘Get out or I’ll go to the police!’

  ‘Take it easy. Just being friendly…’ But at last he shifted his weight to his feet and rose reluctantly, repocketing the cash. Though still grinning, the expression in his eyes was unpleasant and she shrank from it, causing the water to move around her and his eyes to notice the additional inches of bare skin revealed. ‘And don’t waste your time going to Elaine because I’ll tell her it was you after me.’

  ‘She wouldn’t believe that.’

  ‘You think?’

  But she might.

  She’d used the lock on the bathroom door after that, even when Steve was out of town for work. She’d begun staying at friends’ whenever she could, with those whose parents were away or who were kind enough not to mind, and, when they allowed it, her father and Susie.

  Drinking the wine now and surveying the evening festival of Saint-Martin before her, she wondered if it had always been going to happen, her sneaking into Emmie’s house that night in May. Wasn’t it just the latest in an established behavioural pattern of her begging for shelter, putting the onus on someone else, forcing that person to make the choice between condemnation and pity, rejection and acceptance? When had she lost the ability to decide for herself? Had she ever possessed it in the first place? From what Paul had told her, she had not, at least not for as long as she’d been under his protection. And, in the end, he had chosen rejection.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Emmie’s voice asked. She had returned to the table with her cigarettes, was looking expectantly at Tabby.

  ‘Sorry, I was just thinking. Look, the wine’s here…’ Tabby pushed Emmie’s glass towards her and raised her own. ‘Cheers! Santé!’

  ‘Santé.’

  It was peculiar seeing Emmie, this dressed-up, made-up Emmie, across the table from her, drinking and smoking – she held her lit cigarette self-consciously, like a schoolgirl – casting bold little looks left and right as if they’d only just arrived in Saint-Martin and were people-watching for the first time. A part of Tabby welcomed the transformation – finally they’d be having some fun – but this was countered by a stronger instinct of protestation. She might not fully understand solemn, secretive, strait-laced Emmie, but she liked her. All things considered, she’d been a very good influence on Tabby.

  ‘So what were you thinking about?’ Emmie said. ‘You looked angry.’ It was not like her to ask a personal question like this, a Tabby sort of question.

  ‘Nothing. I don’t know, I just wish that British guy would stop staring at me. It’s making me squirm.’

  Emmie frowned. ‘British?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard them ordering before, they’re definitely English.’

  She directed Emmie’s attention to the table to her right and, still unsettled by thoughts of Steve, was careful to avoid any eye contact of her own with the men. Immediately, Emmie whipped back her head and lowered it with a dramatic flourish Tabby put down to the first effects of alcohol and nicotine.

  ‘What is it?’

  Emmie was already grinding out her cigarette. ‘They’re not looking at you. They’re looking at me.’

  ‘They are?’ This made little sense, since Emmie had not been here to witness the scrutiny – of one man, not both – but there was nothing competitive in the way she made the claim, nothing arrogant or vain. She seemed, in fact, agitated.

  ‘It’s not a big deal, but when you were gone —’ Tabby began.

  ‘They were waiting for me to come back,’ Emmie finished, voice rising.

  ‘Well, OK. I hate it when people ogle like that. In fact I was thinking how it reminded —’

  Again Emmie interrupted: ‘So do I, obviously!’ To emphasise this she scraped her seat to
her right to put her back square to the two men. Even in the circumstances, Tabby was a little embarrassed.

  ‘Let’s just ignore them,’ she said, not sure why this was starting to sound like an argument (and what had Emmie meant by that insistent ‘obviously’?). She noticed the waiter arrive with their neighbours’ bill. ‘They’re leaving now, anyway, so let’s forget it.’

  ‘I think I’m going to head back as well,’ Emmie said, far from mollified.

  ‘What? We’ve only just got here. You’ve hardly started your drink.’

  ‘I know, but I need to leave. I have no choice.’

  ‘No choice? Why?’ When Emmie did not answer, Tabby softened her tone. ‘Come on, at least finish the bottle with me? It’s such a gorgeous evening, we can’t spend it shut away in that dark house.’

  ‘Fine.’ Emmie picked up her drink again. The men left, their table claimed at once by new customers, a French couple, harmless by anyone’s standards, but it was no fun any more. Emmie remained jittery, Tabby subdued, and their conversation was disjointed at best, the joviality of half an hour ago quite gone. When Emmie said again that she wanted to go home, Tabby’s heart was no longer in her dissuasions. ‘OK, whatever you want. I’ll stay on my own for a bit. I might wander around, have a look in some of the shops.’

  Emmie departed so quickly that it was only after she’d gone that it crossed Tabby’s mind that she might have recognised one of the men and decided to catch up with him. How else to explain her insistence on cutting the drink so short, especially when she’d made such an effort to dress for coming out? But she could clearly track Emmie hurrying across the quay and stalking up rue de Sully towards their lane. The two men were nowhere to be seen, there’d been no connection. She’d probably imagined the harassment in the first place, mistaking a perfectly normal passing attraction for intimidation. She felt completely responsible for the abrupt termination of this first proper attempt at a social outing. So much for a well-earned night out, the first of many! Perhaps the reason for her having adopted Emmie’s hermit lifestyle had been more than financial need; perhaps she wasn’t ready for the wider world, still so absorbed in her thoughts of the past, not only of Paul, but of her father as well, even Steve. No wonder Emmie couldn’t bear to stay; she probably sensed she was about to hear another sob story. ‘Nobody loves me…’ again and again. She bored herself.

  She counted out the correct euros for their bill and left the bar. It was still light and she didn’t feel like going home yet. Most of the shops were still open, tourists browsing after early dinners or before late ones, and she decided to join them, picking through the baskets of seaside bric-à-brac, the smallest piece of which equated to a week’s food budget. Still, the drinks had not cost as much as she’d allowed for, perhaps she could treat herself to a trinket to cheer herself up, a souvenir of her time in this —

  ‘Tabitha, is this really you?’

  Startled, she felt a hand on the small of her back, a male voice in her ear: Grégoire. She opened her mouth to reply but was unable to say anything intelligible in greeting. Having convinced herself that she’d barely recognise him if she saw him again (and that he certainly would not know her), she now acknowledged the delusion of this. He was familiarly attractive, taller than she remembered, masculine and confident, and her thrilled physical response surely repeated the original one, the one in the bar near the Gare Montparnasse that she could not wholly remember thanks to the alcohol she’d consumed, only that they’d been drawn to one another with unambiguous speed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, unnecessarily, for he was guiding her through the open doorway of the shop and into its lantern-lit interior, by which she gathered he must have his wife nearby and required this little reunion to take place out of her sight. It was not such an extraordinary coincidence, she realised. He was a part-time local on the island, this was a Saturday evening in summer, every bar and restaurant table in the capital village taken. He must have been sitting at one of them, perhaps across the water, and seen her at hers, waited for a chance to come and confront her.

  For there was no question that he was less than overjoyed to see her. Coming to a halt next to a trestle table displaying tall jars of polished shells and pebbles, he cuffed his fingers around her two wrists as if placing her under arrest.

  ‘What?’ Tabby asked him, gently extracting first one arm and then the second from his grip, if only to stop herself from liking it so much.

  ‘You are still here?’ He looked comically disconcerted, almost wounded, as if it were she who had apprehended him and hustled him into a shop.

  ‘That would seem to be obvious,’ she said, with a non-committal smile.

  ‘But why did you stay? I thought you would go back to Paris?’

  ‘I had no reason to go back. I hated Paris. I don’t know why I was there in the first place. I’ve found work here and I like it. It’s a special place.’ She realised the truth of this only as she spoke it, and with the realisation came renewed appreciation for Emmie. Abortive night out or not, this was still the most content, the most secure she’d been since before she left England. ‘But don’t worry, it’s not like we’re in the same village. You’re in Les Portes, I’m here. I won’t come near you.’

  She wondered what he’d say if she told him she’d cleaned his house, she’d made the same bed they’d lain in together, but it seemed a fair guess that he would be suspicious of her motives. It was the sort of thing a stalker would do, he might say. The next step would be to befriend his wife and materialise as a dinner-party guest. It struck her, as he eyed her coolly, that he was going to threaten her, to demand she leave the island, which she very strongly did not want to do, and so when he next spoke his words were a great surprise:

  ‘Perhaps I want you to come near me.’

  ‘Oh?’ And predictably, pathetically, the words caused the same pleasure as a declaration of love – he wanted her and that was cause enough for her to want him back. A sudden craving for physical touch raised her body temperature like the first grip of fever. What had she been thinking, a drink with Emmie, all the strains and oddities that would entail (and, indeed, had)? That wasn’t what Tabby had needed. ‘You have a wife, Grégoire,’ she said, reminding herself as well as him. ‘I know it didn’t bother me then, but it bothers me now.’

  His flicked glance towards the door confirmed to her that his wife, perhaps his whole family, was indeed here in Saint-Martin this evening. ‘Nous allons séparer,’ he murmured, inexplicably choosing this moment to switch to French. Tabby wondered if he preferred to lie in his mother tongue.

  ‘Vraiment?’ She raised her eyebrows to underline the sarcasm before looking away from him, reaching for a conch shell, varnished and silvery, turning it in her fingers.

  Perhaps sensing a drifting of her attention, Grégoire returned to English. ‘Yes. When the summer is over, when we are back in Paris, Noémie and I will be living lives on our own.’

  ‘Right, sure. That’s very likely. I believe you.’ She returned the shell. To buy the whole glass jar of them would cost five hundred euros, she estimated.

  ‘When can we be together?’ he pressed. ‘Next weekend? Saturday?’

  ‘Don’t be crazy,’ Tabby said. It was breathtaking that he could make this approach when his wife was in the vicinity, audacious to demand she suggest a venue, as if her assent were a given and it were simply a matter of agreeing logistics. But the truth was that her protests were merely an anticipated part of the dance. Womanisers did not attempt to seduce every woman in their path, it was not a numbers game they played, it was one of calculated targets: they sensed the ones most vulnerable to their charms, they identified them by a single gesture or a look, just as schoolyard bullies selected their victims. They knew how powerful intensity could be, how successful persistence.

  And so, when he said to her, as gravely, as urgently as a detective with the life of a kidnap victim at stake, a siren wailing outside, ‘You have an apartment here in S
aint-Martin? A room?’, she was nodding, she was agreeing, yes, she would meet him next weekend, of course she would. But not because she was his victim, at least not only for that: she would have a use for him, too. When they went to bed together she would close her eyes and dream that she was with Paul – or she would keep them open and educate herself in the reality that she could never again be with Paul. It would only be once, but it would work the cure that their first encounter had not.

  ‘I do have a place,’ she began, but the thought of Emmie arriving home after work and finding Grégoire there brought her to her senses. ‘I share a house, but it’s not possible for me to have guests.’

  ‘A hotel, then. I will find us somewhere. Give me your phone number.’

  ‘No.’ She was rallying again, battling herself in this exchange as much as him. ‘Give me your number.’