The Disappearance of Emily Marr

by Louise Candlish

  ‘You must not call me.’

  ‘I’ll text. I’ll text you in the week where I’ll be next Saturday. I’ll be working, but you might be able to come for a short time.’

  Grégoire took a flyer from the pile at the counter and scribbled his number. Then he leaned forward and kissed her on her jaw by her ear, a manoeuvre that necessitated a nuzzle, an intimacy that made her feel more alive than she had at any time in the last few weeks.

  ‘I must go now,’ he said, and she remembered how he had repeated the command ‘you must go’ that morning in early May. She told herself in her weakness that this change in the pronoun represented progress, a swing in her favour.

  She waited a self-conscious five minutes before exiting. Outside, she saw him across the water from the bar she and Emmie had chosen, at one of the outside tables of the popular seafood restaurants. There was, of course, la femme Noémie, as well as two sons, the ones she’d seen in the family photographs at the house. Dishes of seafood rose from the centre of the table on a stacked stand. Grégoire could clearly be seen slicing an implement around the edges of an oyster, putting the shell to his lips.

  She was far too stimulated to go home and so took a table at the bar nearest to his restaurant and ordered a glass of wine, watching for a while. Inevitably, her interest came to rest on Noémie, who was as lean-limbed and well preserved for her age as Tabby had known to expect. Her hair was silver-blond and sharply cut, her complexion smooth; there were expensive glints at her ears and wrists. She wore a linen dress the colour of biscuit. Did she have any notion that her husband liked to proposition young women under her nose? Tabby had heard of the famous French tolerance for adultery, but was it actually true? Did every middle-aged woman accept it as inevitable or was it only those married to men of a certain wealth and status? As for the man himself, how odd it must be, how complicated, to run two women in parallel.

  Or not complicated at all, if Grégoire was anything to go by. He’d finished the oysters now and was poking at something on one of his sons’ plates. Somehow, perversely, his utter lack of agitation, his ease with his own treachery, made him more attractive, not less. Simple as it would have been to stride over to his table and announce herself, she was going to have to borrow Emmie’s phone if she intended to contact him again. Good, she thought, she’d be sober tomorrow and she might feel differently, less reckless; she might remember that she was a very different girl now from the one who’d once absconded from Paris to an Atlantic island with an ageing adulterer, a man who could have murdered her.

  The thought of Emmie’s comments made her smile.

  Returning home, she was relieved to find her housemate already in bed, her door closed, light out. As she tiptoed across the landing to the bathroom, it struck her that she was extremely drunk. Allowing herself to remember that unpleasantness with Steve had caused her to drink more than she’d intended – most of the bottle she’d begun with Emmie and more afterwards as she’d spied on Grégoire – and she was woefully out of practice. She was due at work the next morning for Sunday changeover duties on a cottage in La Flotte, one of those old village houses that was deeper than it was wide, with acres of tiles to be mopped and no fewer than five beds to be made, all of which was going to be twice as laborious with a hangover. She decided to take painkillers with a pint of water, a cure that had served her well in more decadent times. She had no painkillers, that was the problem, and knowing the pharmacy and supérette to have been closed since eight, she hoped Emmie had stocks somewhere.

  In the bathroom there was no cabinet, only a shelf above the basin where she and Emmie kept their toothbrushes, and a lidded basket on the floor in which Emmie stored her toiletries. Opening this, she found shampoo and conditioner and deodorant, tampons and plasters and Savlon, a cream for insect bites, a supermarket sunscreen, but not a single blister pack of aspirin or paracetamol. Noticing a make-up bag, she thought again of the bold kohl Emmie had worn that evening, smudged around her eyes like charcoal, the lipstick of ripe watermelon pink, and could not resist unzipping the pouch to examine its contents. The brands were cheap English ones, the items mostly new.

  Digging deeper, her fingers struck more hard plastic, this time producing an encouraging rattle, and she pulled into the light a half-full bottle of prescription medication. The label had been printed by the East London NHS Trust and was dated over a year ago. The name of the medication was Quetiapine, which Tabby had never heard of and had no idea how to pronounce but was clearly something stronger than aspirin. It occurred to her it might be medication for depression, prescribed to counteract the low feelings Emmie had been experiencing since her parents’ deaths or those nameless crimes and accusations that had precipitated her ‘exile’. Emmie had shared no further details since their conversation in Grégoire’s bathroom and Tabby had been true to her word and not enquired again. However, she still believed entirely in the theory that it took one to know one. Their situations might not be precisely the same but each had at its heart the withdrawal of love, she was certain, and nothing could break a person like that.

  I could have done with some of these myself not so long ago, she thought, rubbing her thumb across the label. It had been torn where the patient’s name had been printed, but she could make out the capital ‘E’ of Emmie. She returned the bottle to the make-up bag, the bag to the basket, and replaced the lid.

  Making her way downstairs to check the kitchen drawers, where at last she unearthed paracetamol, she experienced a sensation of intense gratitude towards her housemate. She would never forget that Emmie had thrown her a lifeline when no one else had even noticed her in the water, Grégoire included. She was, Tabby surprised herself to realise, the nearest thing she had to a friend.

  Chapter 10

  Emily

  Soon – too soon – after the encounter with the Laings in the street, I came home from work one evening to find a note through the door from Sarah: Emily, do you ever do babysitting? I’m really stuck for tomorrow night so if you’re interested, phone me on the number below or pop round.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind my asking,’ Sarah said on the phone, all sweetness. ‘It’s just I know you do parties at the café and so have experience with kids. I thought you might be interested in earning some extra cash. You said you were looking for work?’

  Unsure whether a transactional relationship between us would improve or worsen matters, I followed my instinct and agreed. ‘Sure, of course. If you’re really stuck, I’d be happy to help.’

  The hourly rate she offered was generous and we agreed I would come at seven-thirty the following evening. As it turned out, the job was a blessing, since Matt had chosen the same evening to pack up his possessions and my absence made this activity a whole lot less awkward for both of us.

  There was nothing suspicious about the atmosphere at number 197 when I arrived and was led down to the basement kitchen by a confident girl of about twelve. It was exactly as you would imagine the hub of an affluent London family house on a Friday evening – full of end-of-week chaos and good-natured argument, the granite worktop piled with dinner dishes and the polished oak table now cleared for homework. In the adjoining den, I could see long, low sectional sofas in grey wool and a huge TV screen on the wall. The children – there was a boy of ten as well as the girl who’d answered the door – protested in ringing private-school accents that they didn’t need sitting, and the staggering array of technology about the place suggested they could pass a year unsupervised and still be kept amused. The girl’s phone, set down by her schoolbooks on the table, was a far more expensive model than my own, I noted.

  ‘They usually stay up late on Friday nights and watch a movie,’ Sarah said, ‘but they’re perfectly self-sufficient. You don’t have to watch the film if you don’t want to. And help yourself to anything in the fridge, of course.’

  She was far friendlier than she’d been at our previous meetings; obviously, she was grateful for my having helped her out, but I also w
ondered if the change might partly be a result of her having made such an effort with her appearance (or I so little with mine). Her dress was simply cut and expensive-looking, her heels fashionable, the overall style that of a particularly chic first lady. But when I complimented her, she immediately pawed at her hair and drew my attention to the nest of grey hairs at the parting. She had not been able to get an appointment at her preferred hairdresser, she said.

  ‘Just you wait,’ she added, in a tone I couldn’t quite place. ‘The more you try to defy it, the faster it comes.’ I didn’t know if she meant the grey hairs or the passage of life generally, and thought it safest not to comment.

  ‘Is Marcus away on business?’ I asked politely.

  ‘Yes, he’s in Dubai. Back tomorrow. He was supposed to be home today but he had to stay an extra night, hence my last-minute scramble for a babysitter.’

  It was awful of me, but I couldn’t help imagining that Marcus had stayed on not for work but for a female colleague. Of course it was possible she was the one on the illicit date that evening.

  ‘What are you up to tonight?’ I asked her. ‘Something fun?’

  ‘Oh, just a girls’ night. Well, I say “girls”, but obviously I mean women.’

  She said this in a way that made me feel excluded from the category, as if I belonged with the children. I wondered if she realised I was thirty; or perhaps there was a point at which you could no longer judge a person’s age accurately. ‘Do I need to know where you’ll be, in case I need to contact you?’

  ‘Just at the bar in the Inn on the Hill, but I’ll have my mobile, don’t worry.’

  It seemed to me that the look she gave me when she mentioned the hotel was a significant one, but I told myself I was being oversensitive.

  The evening proved delightful, simply by virtue of my spending it in a big, beautiful house with people who hardly knew me instead of the tiny, scuffed flat next door where a man who knew me well enough to be willing to move out transferred unwashed cycling gear from a laundry hamper into a backpack. I watched the film with the kids and then chivvied them upstairs to clean their teeth and get ready for bed. Their rooms were at the top of the house and they had an enormous bathroom to themselves up there, too, the run of the floor. Noting the Arts and Crafts beds and designer curtains in their rooms, the rugs and framed prints I would have admired in an adult living room, I thought, What a way to grow up! The house I’d been raised in had been a fraction of the size of this and the flat I’d shared with Dad and my brother after Mum died no bigger than Sarah’s master bedroom (into which I could not resist peeking: unlike the children’s rooms it was stark and modern, an upholstered bed and matching ottoman virtually the only furniture). Oddly, though, I felt far less envious of Sarah’s fortune this time than I had the last. Falling in love had subdued my material aspirations: I would rather have my low-grade flat with Arthur in it than this vast glittering house without him.

  Of course, the reality was I had neither.

  Soon after the children had settled, when I had just finished tidying the den and was drinking tea at the kitchen table, I heard footsteps on the path outside and the scratch of a key in the front door. Sarah was back earlier than I’d expected and I was disappointed to cut short such a comfortable evening: I’d been hoping to read some of her Vogues, too expensive for me to buy regularly for myself.

  ‘You’re down here, are you?’ Sarah called, clattering into the kitchen and discarding her handbag on the nearest worktop. In her wake followed two of the ‘girls’: Nina Meeks and Sylvie Woodhall. I should have guessed, in retrospect I don’t know how I could not have, but the fact was their arrival that night came as a serious shock to me. With preparation I might have done better, but to be faced with the wife of the man I was sleeping with, to suspect this might have been set up by Sarah for this purpose… well, I was running scared. What idiots Arthur and I had been to think conclusions would not be jumped to that day in the street: he was, after all, by his own admission famous for his wandering eye, while I was no doubt notorious for the eye-popping dress I’d worn to the Friends’ Christmas party. I imagined Sarah reporting the sighting to Sylvie and Nina: ‘She claimed she was in the hotel asking for work, but I checked after she left and no one had been in to enquire all afternoon.’ To this day I would put money on her having cancelled her regular babysitter in order to contrive the ‘desperate’ vacancy, a trap that I fell into like the fool I was.

  ‘Hello, Emily,’ Nina said. ‘You seem to be everywhere these days.’

  ‘Well, I do live next door,’ I said, in no way antagonistically, and yet I immediately felt as if I had cheeked the headmistress.

  ‘So I hear. Very cosy.’

  I gave her a weak smile, already at a loss for an intelligent remark.

  Thanks to Arthur, I knew more about Nina now, how her popularity both in print and online had made her one of the highest-paid women journalists in the UK. I’d seen her column several times. She’d give some cabinet minister a dressing-down or praise the stand an actress had made against her abusive estranged husband. Though her position was feminist, the subjects on whom she turned her scathing brand of common sense were often female ones. She had a gift, it was said, for sensing which public figures would get the reader’s goat. She was both opinion maker and spokeswoman, and I got the feeling she was about to take both roles in this encounter with me, too.

  Aware that I was both blushing and avoiding looking at Sylvie, I tried to compose myself. I began to update Sarah on the children’s evening, clinging to the safe ground of PG movies and clean teeth, but she interrupted me at once. ‘So long as they’re still breathing and the house hasn’t burned down, I don’t need the full audit.’ Her tone was droll, all her earlier warm gratitude now absent. ‘I’ll open a bottle of wine, shall I? Sparkling water for you, Sylvie?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Sylvie said, seating herself several places from me, and her voice sounded artificially merry, almost shrill. I glanced at her for the first time. Her small face had a pixie’s prettiness to it, an effect enhanced by the cap of curls from behind which her anxious eyes peeped. Unlike the others, she had not removed her coat, giving her an uncertain air, as if she thought her safe harbour here might be removed at any moment. Perhaps it was this fragility that inspired such protectiveness in her friends, such fierce loyalty, and – I gulped at the thought – the reason why Arthur had stayed with her in ‘misery’ when he could have left at any time.

  ‘Have a drink with us, Emily,’ Nina commanded, sensing that I was about to get to my feet and scarper, and she and Sarah took the seats on either side of me as if to lock me down. Sarah sloshed white wine into the glasses, pushing one determinedly towards me; she was the tipsiest of the three, I saw, the most excited. Had she joined the coven? Or perhaps she’d always been in it. What had Marcus said that first time? Not as friendly as she’d like, that was it. Suddenly my throat was full of the fear that Sarah was delivering me to the other two as a kind of initiation sacrifice. Bring us the slut and you’re in.

  ‘Did you have a good time?’ I asked mildly. ‘I thought you might make more of a night of it.’

  ‘Not at our age, dear,’ Nina drawled, not quite putting me in my place, but not seeking to put me at my ease, either.

  ‘Oh, Emily can’t imagine what it’s like to be an old crone like us,’ Sarah said. ‘She hasn’t got a care in the world.’

  ‘If you say so,’ I said, using the light-hearted tone that worked well with ruder customers at Earth, Paint & Fire. Already muscular tension was causing aches in my shoulders.

  I made myself look at each of them in turn; continuing to evade Sylvie’s eye would have been a sure sign of guilt. As our glances intersected, I felt a brief flare of how I would respond to her if we were meeting in more innocent circumstances, and I was surprised to register pity. I wouldn’t be drawn to her, not as I might be to Nina or even Sarah, were they not so overtly unwelcoming of me; she looked too needy, as if she could always fi
nd something to complain about. Even disregarding Arthur’s betrayals, I found it impossible to imagine their original compatibility at all. Had he really once desired her as he now did me?

  ‘Old crone’ was ironically brutal, of course, but the fact was that Sarah had been quite right in her comment: I couldn’t imagine being their age, I couldn’t imagine how it felt to be faded or threatened or replaced, to feel the need to be snide to my youngers. And yet, didn’t I know from the way twenty-year-old girls looked at me that they felt exactly the same about my age group? Perhaps for any generation the one just above its own is the most distasteful, even tragic, its company to be avoided at all costs. There is no solution to the unfairness of this, and few exceptions (my fascination with Arthur, for instance, but perhaps such instincts did not apply to the opposite sex). No, all you could do was try to experience your prime to the utmost while you were actually in it.

  How you knew you were in it was not something I thought deeply enough about then. I connected it too readily with attractiveness to men, I suppose, and not enough to strength of character, to courage or grace – all of which, I know now, Sylvie possessed.

  ‘How’s the lovely Matt?’ Sarah asked me.