How to Disappear

by Gillian McAllister

  ‘They’re saying they will put petrol through her letter box.’

  ‘And they’re identifiable. The people?’

  ‘I can identify them.’

  ‘Is there any evidence? Have they said this in writing?’

  ‘I could get it,’ he says.

  She leaves a beat, a significant beat, then says, ‘I see.’

  ‘Could you help me if I did?’

  Lottie pauses. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Can you reopen the file into Bertha’s death? It was December – two years ago. It’s a cold case, maybe closed. They thought it was like … misadventure. Self-harm. It will coincide with one of the football players’ seventeenth birthdays. I’m certain of it. There’s your corroboration,’ he says excitedly.

  ‘You’ve got an uphill struggle there,’ Lottie says thoughtfully. ‘You’ve got a discredited witness.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And once a trial has collapsed, it is very tough to reopen it. The first killing has been deemed suicide, the second self-defence. And your stepdaughter is the only witness that this is not the case. That Bertha was murdered. That Jamie was provoked.’

  ‘Look –’ Aidan says. ‘These people know they’ve moved. They’re threatening all sorts.’

  ‘The protection service will be closely monitoring this. I’m afraid I shouldn’t have let you believe I could help you.’ He can see a line of ashy roots at her parting. Lauren’s hair colour. ‘The protection service will be monitoring the threat.’

  ‘But I don’t know anyone there. I don’t have a contact.’

  ‘Your wife will,’ she says firmly.

  But Aidan doesn’t even know where his wife is. He looks up, and can tell by her expression that there’s no point pushing her further. She has moved away from the table, has her hands on the sides of the plastic chair, ready to go.

  ‘Right,’ Aidan says. ‘How will I know, though … that they’re okay?’

  ‘They will have it in hand,’ she says, standing up. ‘You need to trust them.’

  ‘Can I just … if I monitor it, can I just have a contact here? Someone to call if …’

  He expects to receive the usual spiel. Dial 999 for a threat to life. Or 101 to report a crime.

  She stops and looks at him properly.

  ‘It’s my family,’ he says. ‘I’m so fucking scared I’m going to lose my family.’ He says it barely above a whisper in the cold, corporate lighting.

  Something in Lottie’s expression changes. ‘I know,’ she says softly.

  ‘You’re too young for kids,’ Aidan says. ‘But trust me – it changes everything.’

  ‘I have two. Twin babies. Just off maternity leave,’ Lottie says.

  ‘You’re young.’

  ‘Got pregnant too early in my career, everyone thinks,’ she says. Her expression becomes neutral again as she looks at him. She knows she’s revealed too much.

  But Aidan likes that. This is what he wants. ‘Never too soon to start a family,’ he says. ‘Best years of your life.’

  Lottie rubs at her face and he sees the tiredness, now. A subtle layer of make-up under her eyes. ‘Maybe so,’ she says. ‘I’d certainly do anything for them.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Aidan says.

  ‘Here,’ she says, seemingly spontaneously, passing a card to him taken from a box on a shelf in the meeting room.

  Aidan takes it. ‘Should I call if it escalates?’

  Lottie is still standing, waiting to go. ‘Yes. Look. Focus on the now. On what they intend to do to your family. That is what we’ll be able to get them on most easily. Those shits.’ Aidan appreciates the returned swear word. A collaboration of language. They’re on the same side.

  ‘The now.’ Aidan looks at her. ‘Okay. What if I … what if I kept an eye on the group? And passed you the information?’

  Lottie blinks slowly, staring at him thoughtfully. There is a hesitation. Something she is not saying to him. ‘I could never advise that you do that,’ she says quietly. But she holds eye contact for just a second longer than is necessary.

  He collects Bill and walks home. On their way, Aidan texts Poppy to remind her to keep quiet. After, he replays Lottie’s parting words over and over in his mind. I could never advise you to do that.

  But who’s to stop him? He’s got nothing to lose.

  He’s lost everything.

  23

  Poppy

  Battersea, London

  Two days gone

  Poppy has broken up her family. That is what she is thinking as she pulls her school tights on in the darkness of the morning. Dawn is just beginning, outside her window, grey and colourless, and she is thinking of the way her father used to look at Lauren. He never looked at her mother that way, not that Poppy can remember, anyway. Eyes crinkled up, head tilted, as he watched her.

  And now Lauren’s gone. They’ve gone. And, if Poppy had made a different decision, she would have gone, too. Suddenly, she wishes she was asked properly. Not out of the blue, in her kitchen.

  This morning, the reasons why she stayed – her mother, this house, her school – all seem tainted, loaded. Like she has to enjoy them twice the amount, because of what they have cost her father.

  She finds her school skirt and pulls it on, then her shirt. The clothes are cold against her skin.

  She sits on the side of her bed in the semi-darkness and sips her strawberry tea. She has a new Teasmade, and it’s brilliant. The tea was there waiting for her this morning when her alarm went off. The cup is warm in her hands and the steam mists her nose as she sips and thinks.

  But it’s too late. It’s all done. They’ve gone, and now her father is alone. She looks at the dawn beyond her window. The first Tube rattles by. Where are her stepsister and stepmother now? Out there, somewhere in the wilderness.

  Poppy has boarded the Tube and is currently wondering if her hairstyle is ill advised.

  She would be able to tell from Zara’s facial expression what suited her and what didn’t. Poppy would emerge on to the landing wearing a pair of peg trousers and Zara’s brow would crinkle.

  Just a few days after the murder, Poppy was at her dad’s for the weekend, and dithering between two pairs of trainers, when Zara appeared at her bedroom doorway. One hand on the frame, one on the door handle, eyebrows raised. Poppy gestured to the pillow at the top of the bed and Zara sat there cross-legged, watching her get ready, poised to offer up opinions.

  Poppy looked at her in the mirror as she redid her mascara. Zara was so pretty. She didn’t know it, but she was. Never pale or spotty or tired-looking. The arch of her bare feet, her slender arms clasped around her knees. It was all elegance with Zara. Like a ballerina. She didn’t have to try at all.

  Poppy looked at herself. Bags under her eyes. She was beginning to look old, she was sure of it, and it had happened basically since her mum’s illness had progressed. Immediately, tears started in the back of her throat.

  She looked back at Zara, who was staring straight at her in the glass. ‘Sorry,’ Poppy said. ‘I was thinking about my mum.’

  ‘Oh,’ Zara said immediately, her eyebrows drawing together. ‘I … what about her?’

  Poppy spun around to look properly at Zara and sat down heavily next to her.

  ‘Do you know if multiple sclerosis is hereditary?’ she said.

  ‘Wow,’ Zara said, swallowing. She laced her fingers in with her toes, which Poppy found vaguely disgusting, and looked down. ‘Shall I do a danger google for you?’ she said.

  ‘A danger …?’ Poppy asked.

  ‘When you google something scary for someone. I wish I had someone to do it for me.’

  ‘Okay,’ Poppy said, smiling gratefully. Outside, early September, a couple of yellow leaves were clinging on by just a thread or two against the bright blue sky.

  Zara typed away, then started reading. ‘MS is not an inherited disease,’ she said.

  Poppy’s shoulders sagged. She trusted Zara. She was so smart. She’d have gone
to a reputable website. Read a conclusion of a peer-reviewed study, probably.

  ‘Do you have … are you … why are you worried? Do you think you’ve got it?’

  ‘No,’ Poppy said. ‘It’s not that.’

  Zara said nothing, waiting. Even though she wasn’t her dad’s child, Poppy was sure she got that from him. The loaded pause. He was good at that.

  ‘I wouldn’t want any child of mine to be my carer,’ Poppy said, and the tears came properly this time. ‘It’s so … God, it’s so shit at times. I made her a packed lunch for today because I didn’t think she could make a sandwich.’

  ‘Is she in a relapse?’ Zara whispered, her eyes round and surprised-looking.

  ‘She’s always in a relapse. And I’m just … I’m snappy and I’m like a fucking grumpy old woman all the time. I’m so fucking angry with the whole … the whole thing.’

  Zara said nothing, gazing at Poppy. ‘Are you trying to decide between those?’ she said, pointing at the two pairs of trainers at the foot of Poppy’s mirror.

  Poppy liked the seamless way they shifted topic, the way only family can. From the serious to the mundane, their boundaries as open as the bathroom doors they never locked. ‘Yeah,’ she said.

  ‘Definitely the white. The others look so nineties.’

  ‘That’s the point.’

  Zara laughed softly. Poppy sat on the bed next to her.

  ‘You’re so good for caring for your mum,’ Zara said. And then she added, in a way that was intended to look like an afterthought, but Poppy knew wasn’t, ‘A nicer person than me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Poppy said.

  ‘And it isn’t fair. It shouldn’t have happened. Your mum should let you get a carer. My mum said she won’t …’

  ‘I know,’ Poppy said. She shrugged. ‘But carers are an admission, apparently.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re a hero,’ Zara said.

  And that had helped. It didn’t solve the situation, or the fire of anger that still burned in Poppy. But it did help.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. ‘You’re a way better person than me,’ Zara said again.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  Zara paused. And then she said it. ‘I lied.’ She looked up at Poppy. ‘Those lads … the homeless man …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jamie went after them.’

  ‘Oh,’ Poppy said, her mouth forming a perfect ‘O’ that she hoped – even though she should be thinking of more important things – made her plain face look momentarily beautiful.

  ‘You know what, though?’ Zara said in the quiet of Poppy’s bedroom.

  ‘What?’ Poppy said warily, not knowing what to do with what she had just been told.

  ‘I think he just felt so vulnerable, lying there, two lads looming over him – I’m sure he got up to defend himself. He was covered in his own urine. Wet himself in fear, I guess.’

  ‘Oh … that’s … that’s heartbreaking,’ Poppy said, thinking of the one and only time her mother had done the same, just a few feet from the toilet, the flies of her jeans undone, her bladder not able to last the distance. Poppy had helped her, and they’d ignored it all afternoon. In the evening, Poppy had said, ‘You know, you used to help me, too. When I was small. It’s no different.’ Her mum had smiled, but Poppy thought the joke had been too painful for her mother just then, and her cheeks had heated up later, when she had relived it. She was so insensitive.

  ‘Yeah. But I still lied,’ Zara said, her face resting on her knee.

  ‘Do you know what?’ Poppy said. ‘Fuck it.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Like you say, you know you’re right, don’t you? They’re thugs. Whatever the sequence of events was.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Zara said, smiling, finally.

  As she left Poppy’s room later, her walk was more buoyant somehow. Poppy was glad she’d lifted her up a bit. Her beautiful stepsister could be so insecure, so worried all the time.

  Today, getting the Tube into school, standing on the Victoria Line at rush hour, nails still wet from a hasty paint – coral – this morning, Poppy’s wondering what Zara would make of her Heidi braids, plaits that go right across her head. And she’s wondering, if she had told her father that Zara had lied, whether they would have avoided all this. And so she is also thinking that it is mostly her fault.

  She gets off at Green Park. Her friend Emily is waiting at the top of the steps. It’s a bright autumn day, and Emily’s bare legs are in a slice of sun, the rest of her in shadow. Concern is written across her brow, which comes into focus as Poppy mounts the stairs.

  Emily has dark hair, with baby hair at the temples that she once tried – disastrously – to shave off. She smells of lemon shower gel, though she swears she doesn’t use it. It must just be her mum’s fabric conditioner. Emily’s mother is a mother who has the energy and mental space to care about fabric conditioner.

  ‘Nice nails,’ Emily says.

  It’s an unspoken rule of their friendship: compliments. No jealousy. No dragging someone when you feel bad about yourself. Just raising someone up, and trying to say the same things to yourself.

  ‘Thanks. Still wet,’ Poppy says. She touches her index finger lightly. The polish yields, viscous and not yet set, like putty. She’s left part of her fingerprint behind in it. Damn. She always checks too soon.

  ‘Were you okay yesterday?’ Emily says. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I was just sick,’ Poppy says. That’s her story and she’s sticking to it. ‘Vomiting thing. Twenty-four hours. Horrible.’

  ‘My mum had that,’ Emily exclaims.

  Usually, Poppy enjoys her friend’s enthusiasm to discuss all things with zeal, as they recently learnt in English class, but not today. Today, there is a sick, sad snake curled up in her stomach, and it is all she can do to get through the day without disturbing it.

  Poppy looks down at her feet as they walk. She has on new pink Stan Smiths. She will have to take them off the second she is inside the school gates, but they’re worth carrying around all day for the joy she gets on this, her walk to school. She watches the salmon-pink laces bouncing as she walks, and breathes deeply, trying to calm the voice that says, repeatedly, that her stepmother and stepsister have disappeared, and that she can’t even tell anybody.

  Everything happened so quickly. There was talk of witness protection and then, like a rocket going off, it was actually happening, too fast and powerful for anybody to be able to stop it. Her eyes are wet, and she keeps them trained to the ground.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Emily says.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘It’s just the cold air.’ She tries to blink them away.

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ Emily says.

  Poppy likes it when she swears so well. Exactly like an adult. The punctuation of it is perfect. Everyone except her dad would appreciate that – only a few weeks ago, he told her off so badly for swearing.

  ‘That sounds so crass coming from your mouth,’ he had said, raising his eyebrows to her over his iPad.

  ‘Didn’t you swear as a teenager?’ she’d said.

  ‘That’s totally different.’

  ‘Don’t you swear now?’

  ‘That’s also different.’

  ‘Why?’ she’d said to him, muting the television, ready for an argument.

  ‘Because I am not pure and sweet and kind,’ he had said.

  That had shut her up.

  ‘Shade thrown,’ she’d said.

  ‘You’re cancelled,’ her dad replied, laughing.

  ‘Really,’ Poppy says now to Emily. ‘It’s just cold.’

  Emily’s mouth parts, just a little bit. She has on brick-red matte lipstick. It’s gorgeous. ‘Okay,’ she says with a shrug. And it’s that simple understanding that does it. Emily knows Poppy is lying, but is respectful enough to not probe any further.

  Real tears come now for Poppy. They’re hot and satisfying and they spill down the sides of her nose. She’s not
a pretty crier, but she doesn’t care, not in front of Emily.

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ Emily says. They stop in the crowded street while she puts her thumbs under Poppy’s eyes, skimming the tears away while still more come.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m exhausted,’ Poppy says.

  Emily stares at her, blue eyes concerned, still saying nothing.

  Commuters in suits, men with briefcases, women in heels, keep jostling them, so they duck into an alley without really meaning to, like they have been moved seamlessly in by a tide. Two industrial blue bins with black lids stand next to them. They smell hot and filthy.

  ‘God, sorry,’ Poppy says.

  Emily hands her a wet wipe from a packet and Poppy gratefully uses it to swipe away her mascara. Black tears. She uses the camera of her iPhone to look. ‘Ever the image-conscious,’ her dad will mock, but she doesn’t see it that way. Looking nice is self-care, as Instagram will tell you. It’s as important, to Poppy, as food and drink and sleep and time with Netflix and showers and downtime. On bad days, like lately, it’s a treat. Last year, when her mum’s sight went, Poppy fell asleep, thinking: tomorrow, I will wear the full-coverage Mac foundation with the Hourglass blusher, the pale pink one. I’ll do an English rose look. It had helped her.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ Emily says. So simple. So supportive. There’s no ego involved, no indignation that Poppy is choosing not to confide in her.

  Poppy clutches the baby wipe in her hand. It’s warm and wet and comforting and leaves a greasy smear on her fingertips. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s not even about me.’ She pushes her hair back. ‘It’s so selfish of me to be upset about it.’

  Emily’s eyebrows draw together. ‘Is it about your mum?’

  ‘For once, no.’

  ‘Dad?’

  Poppy raises her shoulders and drops them. It’s not about her dad, not directly, anyway. It’s about all of them. Lauren, Zara, her dad, Bill. Poppy’s been browsing dog walkers on the internet. Her dad isn’t walking Bill enough, and he’s whining. She’s hired one, and she’ll tell him soon, and make him pay them. He won’t mind. He’ll be thankful.