She sighs out of her nose. The tears have stopped now, but nothing else has changed.
‘Well, whatever it is, remember, this too shall pass!’ Emily says.
She opens her arms and Poppy steps into them, head against the fur collar of Emily’s parka – it’s beautiful, from Barbour – and lets herself cry.
‘I hate this,’ Emily says. ‘Whatever it is, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry it’s happened to you.’
Poppy pulls back and – honestly – she doesn’t even really think about it. She could say she does it because of the power of friendship, of unconditional love, of support, or because everybody has told her what not to say, but really, she does it because, in that moment, it feels like the exact right thing to do. And Poppy trusts gut feelings.
‘Zara and Lauren have gone into witness protection,’ she says, the words sounding implausible, even to her. In the cool, blue shadow of the alleyway, she sees the shock in Emily’s eyes. She sees the whites of them, like a frightened dog’s.
‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘What? Why? Is this about the trial?’
Poppy rubs at her forehead, baby wipe still in her hand. Of course she told Emily about the trial. What else was she supposed to do? Continue to suffer completely in silence through divorces, brain lesions and murder trials? ‘Yeah.’
‘Oh,’ Emily says, nodding quickly.
‘Now there’s this … this weird vendetta against her. And she’s been taken into protection. She’s literally moved out. Disappeared.’ Poppy makes a hopeless sort of gesture, hands rising by her sides, then falling again. ‘Just like that. New name, everything.’
‘Oh my God,’ Emily says.
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s walk and talk,’ Emily says.
They step out again into the low winter sunlight and walk down the high street. It’s set to snow later today, apparently, but for now, the sky is a bright blue dome above them.
‘They’ve just … gone,’ Poppy says softly. ‘And I’m not supposed to be telling anyone. Nobody knew she was Girl A, but then this Facebook group … they just leaked her name, so she had to go.’
Emily nods. She steps past a Big Issue seller with a dog who she usually always pats but this time ignores.
They round a corner and cross a green in the shade from a cluster of tower blocks.
Emily’s face goes from a sunlit bronze to a dim greyish blue. ‘When did they go?’ she says.
‘Two days ago.’
‘God. No vomiting bug yesterday, then.’
‘No,’ Poppy says. ‘No vomiting. But still as horrible. Dad wanted me to go, too, and I wouldn’t.’
‘Wow.’
‘I know. He just sprang it on me, and I said no because of the art foundation. I am a selfish twat.’
‘Oh, you’re not at all,’ Emily says sincerely. ‘I promise.’
They reach the school gates.
‘I need to take this off,’ Emily says, gesturing to her lips. ‘Mrs Mitchell will go mad.’ She pauses. ‘You’ve got my last baby wipe.’
Poppy smiles and passes it to Emily, who starts scrubbing. She wipes at the cinnamon colour, and it blurs and feathers around her lips.
‘Will you never see them again?’ she says.
‘I don’t know.’ Poppy slips her trainers off and takes her sensible black school shoes out of her bag. ‘That’s what they say.’
‘I can’t believe they’ve just gone.’
‘I know.’ Poppy has no idea what to say. She hears her phone go off and checks it.
Her dad. Always worrying: this time reminding her again not to tell anyone. Shame and guilt flush her cheeks.
‘I’m not supposed to be telling anyone,’ Poppy says obediently to Emily, as though the act of confessing will ward off the punishment.
‘Don’t worry,’ Emily says.
And it does help. Poppy’s shoulders relax.
Emily balls up the baby wipe, its grease making her fingers look oily. ‘I won’t talk about it to anyone.’
They walk past a bin and Emily tosses the wipe upwards. It is bright white against the blue sky, momentarily, a thick red smear at its centre like a wound. Poppy blinks, and it’s gone.
Poppy likes it when it gets dark while she’s still at school. They’re coming into winter, and the snow has begun. Fat, infrequent flakes like cotton-wool balls drift down outside.
She rests her head in the palm of her hand and tunes out the fractions and the equations and the algebra. The moon is up, a reflective disc in the sky. The twilight clouds are shifting, their forms blurring with the classroom’s reflection. Maths wall hangings and strip lights mingle with skies and street lamps.
As she stares, she sees a form appear in the gloom. She blinks, thinking she’s imagining it, but she isn’t. A man is standing outside the classroom, his eyes only just visible above the window sill, hands cupped around them, looking in, hardly noticeable at first until she concentrates on him, like a magic eye picture.
She starts, chair scraping back noisily in the quiet classroom, and he ducks down. She looks around the classroom. Should she say something? No. She’ll look mad. Or worse, she’ll have to reveal everything. Who her family are. The vendetta against them. The things she’s been warned and warned again to keep secret.
She keeps watching, and he lopes across the school grounds. One, two, three steps. Then runs. He has on baggy jeans, boxers visible above them. No coat. Short, greyish hair that catches the street light as he moves towards the road.
And then he’s gone.
It was nothing, she tells herself. Some weird bloke just being nosey. Nothing.
Later, at home, she drags the dustbin down the drive. Her mum isn’t well. She got stressed about her dad, and the MS is worse again. The bin is wet with snow and bumps the back of her legs. It’s completely dark, the air a wall of cold, the frost on the streets yellowed by the cast of the street lamps. She stands for a second, looking at the neat rows of bins. Without warning, the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She looks around her. Nothing. As she turns back towards the house, she feels it again, and sprints up the driveway, her shoes wet and slippery on the frost. She slams the front door behind her, out of breath.
It’s only later, after stacking the dishwasher, her mum in bed, that she sees it. Her front door handle, moving down. She blinks, staring. Has somebody just tried the door? Surely not, she thinks, her heart racing. No.
24
Lauren
Coniston, the Lake District
Two days gone
It’s the evening of their second day in the Lake District. Lauren’s second day as Lindsey, Zara’s second day as Sienna. The sun sets earlier here, up north, just a couple of minutes. It’s weird to think of herself in darkness and Aidan still in light.
The washing machine beeps, signalling it’s done, and she jumps. She double-checks the doors and windows are locked, and takes the laundry up to the landing where the airer is. Zara appears and starts to help her hang it out. She would never usually help with this, but, like a holiday, witness protection has rejigged their routine. Her always tanned arms, with their fine blonde hairs, stretch to hang up a white T-shirt. She straightens it carefully, and Lauren watches, remembering hanging up all of Zara’s sleep suits before she was born. She’d bought them from Marks & Spencer, even though she couldn’t afford to, and washed them all while she was pregnant, her belly nudging the edge of the airer so it teetered. Lauren didn’t mind, by then, that she was hanging them up alone. She was a wild animal, left to raise her child solo, the way it’s always been.
‘You know,’ Zara says, her eyes focused on a white cotton hoody. She reaches in and unfolds one of the arms. ‘He was alive when I found him.’
‘Jamie?’ Lauren says, concentrating on a pair of socks, not looking at Zara, even though she wants to push the airer out of the way and embrace her.
‘Yeah. On his side. He had a pulse.’
‘I see.’
‘Yeah. He was looking at me.’ Zara finishes hang
ing the hoody up and looks at Lauren.
Those eyes. Lauren only ever had two encounters with Zara’s father. The one-night stand – Lauren had never had one, but it had seemed like the right thing to do on that night in the Spanish bar, full of cocktails and wearing a floor-skimming dress – and the day she told him she was pregnant. And now Zara has those eyes for life. Two brown orbs, those Disney eyes.
Zara puts her hands on her hips and looks at Lauren. ‘Do you think he knew it was me?’ The question is a throwback to the days when Zara’s anxiety led her to asking question after question. ‘Will it definitely be fine on the Tube? What if I feel weird?’
It makes Lauren wince. ‘Yes, undoubtedly,’ she says, though it is a white lie: a necessary lie. Parenthood is full of them. ‘I bet he was so glad somebody he knew was there with him.’
Zara makes the tiniest movement. An open-hands gesture. A step towards her mum. She wants cuddling, and Lauren obliges.
‘Hope so,’ Zara murmurs into Lauren’s hair. ‘He died while I was holding him.’
Lauren says nothing, Zara’s hair tickling her ear, just standing there, in their new house, in their new lives, alone, together.
‘You did everything you could.’
‘I dream about him.’
Zara withdraws from Lauren and she sees that her eyes are bottom-heavy with tears.
‘And … you know,’ Zara says, ‘he stunk of wee. And they just … after it was done, they just stood over him like he didn’t matter at all …’ She pauses, staring at Lauren. ‘Do you … I’m sorry I lied. It just …’ She takes a shuddering breath. ‘It felt like the right thing to do. I know how bizarre that sounds.’
‘You did exactly the right thing. I would have done the same.’ Lauren says ‘Of course I don’t blame you.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No,’ Lauren says. ‘You’re my baby. I don’t blame you for anything.’
She looks just beyond Zara, to the textured wallpaper, the shabby stairs. Another white lie. Lauren does blame Zara. She is only human. If Zara had told the truth, had cared less about social justice and more about their family, or even herself, they wouldn’t be here, and Lauren would be in her old life. It doesn’t stop her loving Zara – but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t blame her, either. The complicated cocktail of parenthood. Loving and liking not always aligning.
‘Good,’ Zara says, exhaling with what seems like relief.
‘So. Tomorrow …’ Lauren says. ‘First day of school.’
‘I’m Sienna Smith,’ Zara says. ‘From Bristol, escaped the accent somehow.’
‘Good, good. Birthday?’
Zara smiles as she recites it all. She’s always been a conscientious student. It’s Lauren the protection service should be worried about. She can’t memorize anything, has no idea of her new birthday without looking in the folders.
‘Best not to have any friends around this side of Christmas,’ Lauren reminds her. ‘Until we’ve got some photos up. It’s all a bit …’ she looks around. ‘It’s all a bit obvious to me.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Just say you’ll go to their house, if it comes up. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ Zara says. ‘Yes. But what if they insist?’
‘Say we’re having work done, or something. I think.’
‘Okay,’ Zara says. She reaches for the final sock and hangs it up, then pats Lauren’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ she says sincerely.
A car backfires on the street outside, and they both jump.
Lauren is up late waiting for a delivery. She’s ordered food on an app. An old vice of hers. Sneaky Deliveroos when she was home alone. There is not much finer than an illicit food drop-off.
A cake is coming. She knows it’s mad, the kind of behaviour Aidan would shake his head at, a half-smile hidden as he looks down, but it is Lauren. Vintage Lauren.
She waits by the window for her extra-large chocolate ganache cake. She will eat it, still hot, in the bath. The whole thing, all £20 worth. Fuck it. Fuck behaving herself. An app is safe, isn’t it? The delivery drivers are vetted.
A November frost has settled outside on the Coniston street. She is imagining walking Bill through it. Fat paws in the frost. A sheen to his coat as they arrive back, a warm towel around his body. She misses him so much she can almost feel his fur against her hand.
Zara went to bed at nine. She’s bored, and lonely, Lauren knows it. She hasn’t been able to act normally.
Lauren has been trying to get the boiler to run a bath while waiting for her cake. It fires up enough for a shower, but gradually fades to cold water after ten minutes. She needs to ask the protection service. It’s on her list.
The window is lit up by the delivery motorbike. Lauren rushes to the door. She pays him two £10 notes, and takes the cake, warm in a white box.
But, in a way, it isn’t the cake she ordered. It’s the company. ‘Got a busy night planned?’ she says desperately to the driver.
‘Always,’ he says, putting his helmet back on. ‘Have a good night.’
That’s it. Her interaction for the day.
She opens the cake in the kitchen, intent on calories, but jumps as a gentle buzzing noise interrupts her thoughts. It’s coming from upstairs. A soft, flaring sound. It stops, then starts again. The unmistakeable noise of a mobile phone vibrating against something. Lauren looks at her iPhone, on the kitchen counter, its black surface glossy with one globule of water from the kettle. She reaches to wipe it with the sleeve of her jumper.
She looks up at the ceiling above her. It must be Zara’s. Who could she be texting? Who could be calling her? Neither of them has a single friend. Yet. A single relative they are permitted to contact. They are satellites, alone in space, together, mother and daughter.
She reaches the landing and stands outside Zara’s room. There is silence. A pure silence that seems to throb around her ears in a way London never permitted. She presses lightly on the door and it opens, the catch cheap and flimsy, and she sees Zara lying on her back, completely asleep. She is sleeping in the exact position she used to. Legs splayed outwards like a frog – Lauren can see the outlines of her knees in the bed – one arm behind her on the pillow, palm up, fingers curled. Her little cricket baby. And, ah, there’s that feeling. That fat, happy/sad feeling, the blessing of a child, the mourning of the passing of time, the impermanence of it all. It’s nice that that feeling is still here with them, in the north, where the sun sets earlier.
Zara’s phone is resting on the duvet by her right hand, a few inches away from her. There’s no way Lauren would have heard that downstairs. And there’s no way Zara was awake just a few minutes ago. Lauren knows the many moods, emotions and states of her daughter and this one is called deep sleep. She used to watch it overtake her baby as she lay across her lap, little chest panting, mouth relaxing, lips sticking together until they released and parted, like a slow goodbye. Watching her baby daughter fall asleep was one of her favourite things to do. Still is.
She glances at the window looking to the back of the house, suddenly fearful. That this is something. A trick. A warning. The phone has stopped now, but she starts searching for it in her bedroom anyway.
Just as she’s thinking she’ll never be able to place where it came from, it begins again. A rhythmic beeping. Three sounds, then a pause. Three sounds, then a pause. She can feel her heart pulsing in her throat. What is it? Who is it?
The wardrobe. That’s where the noise is coming from. She ransacks it, pulling out the clothes she has reluctantly unpacked. No, it’s not coming from here. It’s coming from down below. She knows it might stop again soon, so she bends down and frantically feels around on the tattered carpet. There’s a burn from what looks like a pair of hair straighteners. The carpet has congealed into two lines, thick and plasticky. The only thing remaining is her suitcase. She pulls it out of the space on the floor and puts it on the bed. The sound moves with it.
She opens it, even though she knows it to be empty. She f
eels around inside it. It’s a shell case, made of hard material, and maybe that would have amplified the noise of a phone vibrating. Maybe she accidentally brought her old phone with her, she is thinking, as she palms her way around it, even though she knows that isn’t true. She knows exactly what she is about to find.
A small object sits behind the lining. She unzips it, and there it is. A Samsung flip-phone. A charger and cable bound up around it. She opens it and it’s on. Alarm 1, it says. Stop. Snooze. She stops it.
A low battery warning flashes up, which she dismisses.
The phone is blank. No apps. No messages. She goes to the contact. There’s one.
In Case of Emergency.
A number she doesn’t recognize.
Her hands are shaking. She sits on the flattened carpet, her back against the cold wardrobe, and closes her eyes. Jon said nobody’s ever been seriously harmed or killed in witness protection in the UK who has obeyed the rules. I know your husband didn’t come …
She studies the suitcase, thinking.
As she’s handling the phone, the alarm now a few minutes ago, a text comes through from In Case of Emergency.
It’s me. Did you find it? A.
25
Zara
Coniston, the Lake District
Three days gone
Bill always acted as Zara’s alarm clock back in Islington. He knew she had to get up at seven, and he always arrived at exactly then. Her room this morning felt empty and sterile.
Her mother offered her chocolate cake for breakfast, and she gladly ate it. ‘Everything is better with cake,’ she said, and Zara agreed, raising her fork in a toast. She has a plan, and it began with that cake salute. Internally, she is going to pretend she’s Poppy. Breezy, laid-back, confident Poppy. Poppy is the kind of girl who would toast somebody with a fork, not caring how she looked, and so Zara adopted it, too. She’s going to show up at her new school and … just be cool. No angst. No bookishness.
It is her first day and Zara is so nervous her hands have gone cold. As she approaches the school gates, a slow-moving car passes her. She holds her breath, waiting. Waiting for that gloved hand, that balaclava, that knife. But it’s just a parent, dropping their child off. Of course it is.
How to Disappear Page 14
