How to Disappear

by Gillian McAllister

  She worked through a book about it, with Aidan, CBT for Dummies. And then she saw the therapist who said the nice things to her and wasn’t weird or whacky – not at all as Zara had expected her to be. She told her that she can do kind stuff for herself. That life doesn’t have to be one series of imagined disasters after another. At the first session, Zara said flatly, ‘That isn’t true,’ but then, session by session, she realized that maybe it was. Maybe things didn’t need to be risk-assessed, maybe escape routes didn’t need to be planned. Maybe a shopping trip could simply be enjoyed.

  She is better now, she’s been better for a year maybe. The summer before she saw the murder, she kept finding herself thinking: I’m not worried about this any more. I’m out, I’m having fun. I’m myself again. Weird, awkward me.

  Nevertheless, now, Zara isn’t anxious, but she can’t stop her mind spinning over the lie she told the police. The judge addressing her in the courtroom. Her shame behind those curtains.

  Luke and Mal stood over Jamie, and then Jamie reared up, unpredictable, like a monster. Shouting, lashing out. Mal passed Luke the roof tile, and Luke cut Jamie with it, as cold and clinical as a surgeon. And yet, somehow, the law treats Luke and Mal as if they did nothing wrong.

  So she lied. And then her lie was exposed. She panicked. That’s the truth of it. Cracked under cross-examination. She winces as she recalls it. She wishes she could go back, and hold her own, not rise to the barrister insinuating Jamie didn’t value his own life, that he just lay there like a victim. If she had held her own, her evidence wouldn’t quite have made sense, but that would be better than this. Two killers released. It’s wrong. She just knows it, deep inside her. She made out to Harry that she regrets it, but she doesn’t. She knows she’s right.

  It’s all bound up with Waste Not, for Zara. She saw the attitude to homeless people all the time. Commuters walking past them, not offering a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ to a Big Issue request: just silence. People saying, ‘You shouldn’t give them money, they’ll spend it on drugs.’ And some of them would. But Jamie would spend it on something to keep him warm, a hot drink. Anna would spend it on dog food. There is as much variety in homeless people as there is in life. But nobody can see it.

  If there is a God who observes who does and doesn’t step on paving cracks – one of Zara’s very first worries – or think good thoughts, he would recognize that those footballers were in the wrong. Because they were. She reached Jamie after Luke and his friend had left. He smelled of blood and urine. The blood didn’t smell like iron. It smelled like meat. That sickly-sweet smell of the butcher’s. A lime tang of urine underneath that. And at least Luke served some time. At least there is that.

  When she told the police that Jamie must have wet himself in fear, they said, ‘Yes, or he didn’t have access to bathrooms.’

  But Jamie never usually smelled. He wasn’t an alcoholic and he didn’t piss himself, she had said forcefully, but nobody believed her.

  This is what she is thinking about as the sunlight dapples the pavement in front of her. That she wasn’t in the wrong. She wasn’t.

  And now she knows it.

  The high street is cold with frost. The sky blue above her. There is a car idling next to her, coasting along the street. People have started doing their Christmas shopping already. A couple walk along with Starbucks red cups.

  The car slows even further. Zara slows, too, looking at it. There is something strange about it. It’s not … it’s not coasting. It’s going to stop right next to her. The wheels are aligning with the kerb.

  The front passenger’s window rolls down slowly. Inch by inch. Zara can’t move away. She’s frozen. She can’t do anything except watch as, little by little, a man in a balaclava is revealed. He reaches a gloved hand towards her right arm and pulls her towards the car. Her side slams against it.

  And this is it, and this is it, this is it. She is in true and proper danger. She thinks, suddenly, of her mum and Aidan, of the phone call they will receive.

  ‘So, Girl A,’ the man in the balaclava says, his breath hot and physical, both a noise and a sensation, right next to her ear. ‘We said we’d make you pay,’ he continues. ‘Guess how much it cost to get your name? Hardly anything. Just a bit of courtroom incompetence.’ He laughs, a cruel laugh, his mouth opening just slightly behind the black wool.

  She is sweating and trying to move away, trying to reach into her pocket for her phone, but the man pulls tighter. She tries to reach around her back with the other hand, but he grasps that, too.

  ‘Get in,’ he says.

  Zara looks into his eyes – brown and cruel – and opens her mouth. ‘Help,’ she shouts at passers-by, as loudly as she can. ‘Help me.’

  A woman carrying a paper bag from a bakery starts, shocked, but walks on. A cluster of kids at the bus stop look curiously at her. Everyone has noticed but, for this second, and the next, nobody has decided to step up and help.

  ‘Somebody!’ Zara screams. His grip tightens on her. He is going to try and pull her into the car with him. He is going to threaten her. He is going to say he has a knife or a gun and she needs to be quiet and get in the car or he will hurt her. Her entire body is trembling.

  He is holding her fast to the car, but she is thrashing around, screaming.

  A man straightening a sandwich board outside a café stops and stares. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ He runs towards them, and he is pulling her away from the car, and the man in the balaclava releases her, and she is crying and snot is running out of her nose, and she is saying thank you, over and over, to him, the café man. The car window goes up, and the car revs its engine and speeds away.

  ‘No number plate,’ the man says sadly to her. ‘They probably wanted your purse. Or your phone. Thieves.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Zara says. Her heart is still pounding. But something else is settling around her. After the adrenaline, the fear, and the relief that she is safe. A realization. It was them. The club. They know her. They know what she looks like. Her eyes dart around the street.

  ‘Nobody else did anything,’ the man says, looking around them.

  Zara looks at him closely. He’s wearing a red bobble hat. He has a dark beard. Big cheeks. Looks friendly.

  ‘That’s London for you,’ he adds. ‘Full of cowards.’

  ‘I need to get home,’ Zara says. ‘Sorry.’ Her voice catches, and he reaches to clasp her shoulder, but it makes her flinch.

  ‘You should tell the police. It was a silver Mercedes, the new type,’ the man says. ‘Let me … let me walk you?’

  ‘No, I’ll call my mum. Really,’ Zara says. Her entire body is trembling like it does in the cold. She needs to go. She needs to go home to safety. They have found her.

  8

  Lauren

  Islington, London

  ‘Where are you?’ Lauren says, the second her phone rings and she sees it’s Zara. ‘You’ve been ages.’

  ‘Someone just grabbed me,’ Zara says.

  Blood flashes up Lauren’s body, hot and then freezing. ‘What?’

  ‘They tried to get me into a car. It was them,’ Zara says, her voice full of tears. ‘The people. The footballers.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Lauren says, and her voice must be shrill, because Aidan’s head snaps up. ‘Where are you? Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ Zara says. ‘But can you come and get me? I’m on the high street. By the bus stops. Please be quick.’

  ‘Coming,’ Lauren says, car keys already in her hand. She would send an air ambulance, a police car, the cavalry. ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘No, a man – a man helped me. We’re outside his café. Please come,’ Zara says, her voice watery and scared-sounding.

  Still on the phone, she motions to Aidan, who follows. As she does it, she realizes. This moment, here in the sunlit kitchen with her husband and her dog, this is the moment. Everything has changed. Turned on a dime. She stares at her hand on the door handle, wedd
ing rings catching the sun.

  Nothing will ever be the same again.

  Lauren has never been so angry in her life.

  Zara is home. And they have called Harry, and the police. Aidan didn’t have to insist, as he often does. There was no debate over whether it was serious. Lauren stabbed the numbers into the keypad of her phone, her entire arm tense with rage. How fucking dare they.

  Zara is sitting on one of the bar stools in the kitchen, holding a cup of tea. ‘It was awful,’ she keeps saying.

  Lauren wants to keep reaching over to touch her, to check she’s still there. That nobody harmed her, her baby. As she reaches for her, Zara’s eyes follow her fingertips.

  ‘I know. We’re going to get it sorted,’ Lauren says. She shifts closer to her. She needs to tell her about the Find Girl A Facebook group, before the police get here and assume she knows. But she doesn’t know how. She doesn’t want to crack her, her fragile daughter, not after this.

  ‘Tell me everything you can remember about the man.’

  ‘He was …’ Zara says, but she can’t continue. She hangs her head, looking down into her lap. Her hands shake. Tea splatters the knees of her jeans, darkening them in little navy drops.

  Lauren looks away. She can’t bear this.

  ‘God, it’s so stupid. Almost nothing happened,’ Zara says.

  ‘Not nothing,’ Lauren says. ‘You were almost abducted.’

  ‘He was in a balaclava,’ she whispers.

  ‘Oh,’ Lauren says. ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘What if I get scared of going out again?’ Zara says.

  Lauren’s stomach folds over in sadness. Even now, in the face of all this, Zara is most frightened of her own anxiety. Maybe Lauren parented her all wrong. Maybe it started with Paris.

  Lauren and Aidan had taken Zara and Poppy to Paris when they were six. They’d been together for just over a year. Lauren ordered a glass of wine on the Eurostar and gaily commented on the speed of the train, the things they’d do once they got there, how quick and easy it all was. Zara was curled in on herself. Poppy’s eyes were wide, taking it all in. Their two daughters, so opposite. Like each belonged with the other parent.

  Almost as soon as they checked into their hotel, Zara started running a fever. She’d had a urinary tract infection the week before – Lauren was forever telling her to drink more, but she wouldn’t – so they dosed her up with Calpol and had a quiet evening. She was better the next day. Eyes bright, smile wide.

  They were walking along, after lunch, past a shut-up restaurant in Le Marais covered in ivy, worn like a green fur coat in the sweltering August humidity, when Zara stopped walking. Her little hand went to her head.

  Lauren must have made a gesture, or a noise, because Aidan stopped and looked at her, lifted his sunglasses up to see her properly.

  That’s when she saw it. Or perhaps that’s when it developed. A kind of pallor. Zara is always swarthy, but she goes sallow when pale, and on that day, she’d gone grey. Lauren had never seen skin that colour before. She crouched down to look at her properly. Little dots of sweat along Zara’s upper lip. Eyes drowsy. It came from nowhere.

  In the hospital, it was explained to both of them in stilted English that Zara had sepsis. Drugs were pumped intravenously into wires taped to the back of her hand that made Lauren wince.

  Zara had opened her eyes after four days sleeping, and began to recover. Lauren stayed in Paris for five more weeks with her. She had no choice. She didn’t care about the hospital bills or the fact that all she had brought with her were three T-shirts and a miniature bottle of travel shampoo. Nothing in Lauren’s life mattered – because Zara did. She had assumed the mantle willingly, six years before, and she never wanted to give it back.

  ‘We’ll sort them out,’ Lauren says now. ‘Where the fuck are the police?’ It feels like her insides are on fire. Those little shits. Those fucking little shits. Zara exaggerated their crime in court – their very real crime. And so they go and commit another!

  ‘I just wish … I wish we could go back,’ Zara says.

  ‘Me, too,’ Lauren says. ‘And just have you not testify,’ she adds, without thinking.

  Zara stares at her, a strange expression on her face. ‘You wish I hadn’t done it?’

  ‘I’m not saying that,’ Lauren says, though that is exactly what she was saying. ‘But don’t you wish that you’d just looked the other way?’

  ‘No,’ Zara says. ‘That is what everybody does to homeless people, Mum. I wish I had stuck to my lie. Not crumbled under questioning.’

  Lauren sinks her head into her hands. Teenage principles.

  Zara gets to her feet. ‘I’m going to get changed,’ she says tightly, standing in the doorway.

  ‘Sure,’ Lauren says, resisting the urge to follow her up there, to stand watch over her all afternoon, all night.

  Aidan fiddles with his phone. ‘Look what it’s caused,’ he says sadly, Lauren’s argument with Zara seemingly a permission slip for him to criticize her daughter.

  She rounds on him immediately. ‘Don’t you say that. She did not cause this. They may have got off on some technicality – self-defence, yeah, sure – but look what they’re doing.’

  ‘But you just said –’

  ‘She’s an idealist,’ Lauren says. She picks up an orange from the top of the fruit bowl – it looks magnificent, towering goodness right there on the counter for her daughter. She’ll feed her up and heal her. Vitamins, minerals, the works. ‘The greater good, and all that. If we erode that …’

  ‘You just told her you wished she hadn’t done it.’

  ‘It’s fine for me to say that,’ Lauren says. ‘Not you.’

  He strides away from her, uselessly switching on the coffee machine, then turns back around.

  She senses a tension emanating from his body. The difference between their perspectives, where she falls to forgiveness and he to judgement. It reverses if they are talking about Poppy. Of course it does. It’s as natural as the orange in her hands.

  ‘This is –’ Aidan says. He is rhythmically pulling his hair back from his forehead, elbows on the kitchen counter. ‘You know what else I don’t understand?’

  ‘What?’ Lauren says through a sigh. She is not very interested in the things Aidan does and doesn’t understand. It’s happening. They need to act, not think. God, she wishes she hadn’t let Zara out. Wishes she had been there. She would’ve pulled that balaclava off. She would’ve been able to identify him, and get him, this time.

  Lauren begins to peel small segments of orange skin off, unable to get a proper purchase, a satisfying whorl. She looks up to the bedroom. Her daughter will be fine. She’s up there, now, safe and warm and well. Lauren will protect her.

  ‘Why they’re so bothered,’ Aidan says. ‘They’re disgruntled football fans but why would they … actually … why would they go for her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because they’re violent,’ Lauren says.

  ‘Something’s off about it,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘We need Zara to tell us what the man looked like,’ she says. ‘His build. Anything she saw. And then we go and find him.’

  ‘Find him? There are a hundred and fifty fans in the group.’

  Something folds deep inside Lauren like a popped soufflé. This is bad.

  A package is delivered while they’re waiting. Lauren wants to distract herself from the roaring terror in her ears, so she opens it. Hannah, Lauren’s sister, has sent her a Korean face mask in a padded envelope. It’s a decade-long in-joke between them, their quest to find the product that will stave off ageing. They have tried everything. Retinol-A. Sheet masks. An infused sponge from Spain that made Lauren’s eyes sting. A selfie came in from Hannah the other night with a carbonated cleanser frothing around her smile lines. Thinking of you all! was all it said.

  Lauren, hands still shaking, turns it over then opens it. Inside is a tarry black substance. She presses her fingertip into its surface.
It yields, leaving a perfect oval print.

  Lauren puts the pot down as Zara arrives back in the kitchen in her yoga wear.

  ‘Will the café man be able to identify him?’ Lauren asks her. Maybe he saw more than Zara.

  ‘Like I said, he was in a full head balaclava,’ Zara replies. ‘Car had no plate.’

  ‘Who were you with? Before?’

  ‘Anna. She knew Jamie well,’ Zara says, not meeting Lauren’s eyes. ‘We had a nice talk. About everything. And then the car …’

  ‘Right,’ Lauren says. She swallows. She needs to tell her about the group. It’s the kindest thing to do, to tell her soon, before she finds out from elsewhere.

  Aidan passes her a coffee she didn’t ask for; a peace offering between husband and wife. He never holds a grudge against her. Atmospheres are immediately dispelled. ‘Oh, forget it,’ he will say, minutes after rows. After a lifetime of crap men, Lauren couldn’t believe how easy Aidan was.

  The mug warms her hands, the smell comforting and toasty as it rises up. She sips it, thinking.

  Lauren tries to imagine what she would like in this situation. She would want to be told directly but reassuringly, she decides. Not by the police or a third party: by her mother.

  She doesn’t hesitate as she turns to Zara, even though her whole body is trembling. The sun has gone in. It’s started to drizzle on the windows outside. No, she tells herself. This is all fine. The police are coming, the lawyers. They will crack down on this group and we will all move on with our lives. But still. Her hand trembles.

  Zara looks across at Lauren. ‘What?’ she says.

  As Lauren puts the orange down, she sees that Zara is trembling too. Her hands shaking, just a little, the same as Lauren, almost like they are still connected by an umbilical cord, never severed, after all.

  9

  Aidan

  Islington, London

  Aidan lets in an amorphous sea of experts. They stamp the frost from their shoes and fuss with their coats, sparkling on the shoulders with freezing rain.