‘What’s up?’ Zara says. ‘Oh, my whole life’s over?’ She smells squeaky clean, hot and soapy. Something about it is nostalgic to Lauren.
Lauren’s jaw sets, then she nods. Of course. Of course. But that isn’t Lauren’s fault. In fact, a small voice speaks up inside Lauren, it’s Zara’s fault.
‘Can you leave now?’ Zara says, her eyes looking just past Lauren to the door.
Lauren looks at her daughter’s angular shoulders, at the tiny pinch of fat appearing over the towel held tightly around her. Her caramel-coloured skin.
‘Quickly?’ Zara says.
Lauren says nothing in response. Her daughter has very rarely spoken to her like this. Rude, aggressive. No, the worst is that it is dismissive. As though Lauren doesn’t matter at all. Happy first day at work for her, she thinks bitterly.
She leaves without saying goodbye, even though she knows that is childish. She stands and waits for the bus in the cold, dense cloud. It arrives twenty-five minutes late and takes cash only, which she has to dig around in her bag to get. It isn’t a London bus. No vibrancy. Just a few tired old silent commuters. No phones playing music. No teenagers who look like they need a mother, all low-slung jeans and attitude.
The first morning passes slowly in a fug of loneliness and the unfamiliarity with the nursery systems. She eats lunch alone, taking exactly the sixty minutes’ allotted break, and thinks about Jon. Let’s say he is a Holloway fan, she thinks, while eating a cheese sandwich that’s still cold from the fridge. Why wouldn’t he have harmed them yet? And how would a football fan have secured fake passports? It’s just not possible.
God, she wants a friend. Somebody to discuss this stuff with.
‘I’m being mad, just tell me I’m being mad,’ she would say to a girlfriend.
‘Totally,’ the friend would say.
She loses herself in the children in the afternoon. She’s in charge of the babies. Her favourites. Six months up. Fat bottoms rounded with nappies. Gummy smiles. Naptime and milky-smelling skin and warm little hands on her collarbones as she soothes them to sleep.
If Lauren could have just raised babies for all her adult life, she really thinks she would have. Babies and dogs and keeping a house. She knows it’s unfashionable to admit it, but she used to love hoovering the living room, cooking a pie, lighting a candle, putting popcorn in bowls ready to watch movies. Catering to everybody’s needs. There was something loaded about it, home-making, like it had been passed down through generations of women. The soft, wet sorting of laundry, the burn of bleach on her hands as she scrubbed floors. Something primal.
But her new house … it is not a home yet. It is not capable of being tidied, cleaned, loved. Not yet. She is thinking this as she is changing one of the babies’ nappies. The baby has dark eyes, so like Poppy’s and Aidan’s that Lauren almost cries.
She is preparing to go home, at dead on five, when a colleague called Pippa approaches her. ‘Smile,’ she says, holding an iPhone up.
‘Oh – no,’ Lauren says immediately, but the photo’s been taken. ‘No, that’ll be rubbish,’ she says, thinking quickly of a reason why she can’t agree to a photograph.
‘It’s fine. We like them candid,’ Pippa says, showing her.
It’s a nice photo, actually. Lauren is surprised. She doesn’t usually take a good photo. Always looks misshapen, somehow. Distinctive, Aidan once called her, while trying to dig himself out of insulting her.
But she’s looking up towards the camera in this one, a neutral expression on her face, one hand blurred, moving up to stop the photo being taken. ‘It’s better to be surprised, or you’ll look too formal.’
‘Right,’ Lauren says, thinking. Oh, fuck it. She has no energy to fight systems today. The photo will just have to go online. Sod Jon. Dodgy Jon. It’s just a single fucking photo.
‘Fancy a drink?’ Pippa says. ‘There’s a pub just …’
‘Sure,’ Lauren answers. A spark of something ignites within her. Here it is: a building block of a life being presented to her. A drink with somebody who may become a friend.
Lauren took a full four decades to handpick her friends. Her twenties were spent enduring friendships with people who said things like, ‘You did not just admit to that!’ and, ‘Sometimes, we do let the kids watch television – but only when they’re ill.’
But, in her thirties and forties, she found them. Over-sharers. Drama queens. Women like her. Women who lived without shame or pretension, who cried messy tears on her in restaurants over the division of chores, who would WhatsApp photographs of cracked nipples, suspicious moles, filthy kitchens. Her tribe.
She wants to speak to Hannah. She wants to speak to her friends. It thuds in her chest, every moment of every day, like a second heartbeat.
She heads to the nearby pub with Pippa. They sit at the bar, on high, rickety stools. Zara is at the after-school drama club. Lauren lets a breath out. She could even confide in Pippa about Zara. About the struggle of parenting her.
‘So, is Cumbria very different to Bristol?’ Pippa says to Lauren.
‘Um, quite similar … both old. Bristol is bigger,’ Lauren says. She glumly sips at her cocktail. All of the booze – rum, vodka – is in the bottom, and she can feel it rushing pleasantly to her head. Shit. She can’t get drunk at five o’fucking clock.
‘Is Bristol quite upmarket?’ her colleague asks. On the way here, Pippa had called herself frugal, said she had a coupon for this pub, and Lauren had thought sheepishly about how expensive Bill Gates was, and wondered if they could really, truly be friends. Probably not.
‘Yeah, a bit,’ she says now to Pippa. She stares into the distance of the room, past the dark wood bar, past the stained-glass window – it’s the oldest pub in the Lakes, apparently.
What’s the point? She stirs her drink miserably. It’s empty. It’s so empty to be making small talk about a city she has never lived in. To be answering to Lindsey and not Lauren. To be telling lie after lie after lie.
‘And you have a daughter?’ Pippa goes on. She is tall and blonde, with a fringe that is slightly too short. Lauren can’t quite work out if it is stylish or strange. Poppy would know, and Lauren wishes she could ask her.
‘That’s right,’ Lauren says. A lump in her throat. She downs her drink and orders another round for them. Pippa is surprised, eyebrows disappearing up under that fringe. Fuck it, it is weird, not fashionable, she decides. Lauren knows she’s drunk already, but she doesn’t care. ‘She’s struggling, actually.’
‘Oh, what with?’
‘New school, and stuff.’ Lies and court cases and murders – you know, teenage moodiness. The usual, Lauren thinks.
‘She’ll soon settle,’ Pippa says, but the advice is so inadequate, because Lauren can’t begin to tell the whole truth.
She hands over a £10 note – at least the drinks are cheap up here – and leans back on the bar stool. ‘She’s just turned sixteen,’ Lauren says.
‘Sienna, right? Did you say?’
No, Lauren is thinking. She is not Sienna. She is Zara.
‘That’s right,’ Lauren says.
‘Single mum?’ Pippa says.
She’s got a sympathetic expression on her face, and no wedding ring, so Lauren knows the question comes from a good place, but nevertheless, it does her in. It is the undoing of her. She sips her drink down, the alcohol swirling in her stomach, and nods again.
‘Single as fuck,’ she says, much to Pippa’s surprise. ‘Sorry,’ she says, smoothing her hair back from her face, trying to collect herself.
No. She can’t. She can’t do it. The bar tilts in front of her, like it is a see-saw and somebody has sat on the other end. She blinks.
‘Sorry, I have to get off now,’ she says, downing the rest of her cocktail and grabbing her coat and bag from by Pippa’s feet. Pippa is saying something, but Lauren can’t work out what. She is underwater, drowning in a swamp made of alcohol, and she has to leave to tell somebody the truth, because, if she d
oesn’t, that person will be Pippa.
‘Sorry,’ she says again.
On the bus, she pulls the burner phone out of her bag where it always sits. She stares and stares at In Case of Emergency, right until she arrives back at the stop near her house. She trudges up the frosted driveway and lets herself in.
Zara isn’t back, and Lauren dials her number. ‘Where are you?’ she says.
‘Out.’
‘Yes, obviously. Where?’
‘Do I have to tell you everywhere I am now?’
‘Sorry?’ Lauren says, not to admonish Zara but, really, because she is genuinely shocked.
‘I said … do I have to tell you where I am?’
‘Well …’ Lauren prevaricates. She doesn’t want to be the bad cop, the nag. It doesn’t come naturally to her. She thought they’d got away with it. Over halfway through the teenage years with hardly any rebellion.
Zara takes advantage of the pause. ‘Good,’ she says crisply.
And then, to Lauren’s shock, she hangs up.
Tears clog Lauren’s throat.
She goes to sit by the boiler. The repairman said he wasn’t sure what was wrong the other day, that he’d come back with some ‘things to try’, but she fiddles with the pressure gauge handle anyway, twiddling knobs uselessly. She wants a fucking bath. She wants a bath so hot her skin steams when she gets out of it. She wants a Belgian bun. And she wants her husband.
She’s reaching out. Not to Hannah. Not to Poppy, but to the person whose presence she feels next to her even when he’s not here. Whose presence she can almost conjure up. Aidan’s.
She flips open the burner phone and finds him.
And so it’s the combination of the dream that does it. The dream, the colleague and the drink. And the boiler.
And her daughter. Her sedate, easy daughter, speaking to her like she is trash. Lauren buries her head in her hands, then begins to type.
I got it, she sends to In Case of Emergency, before she can stop herself.
Lauren relishes doing something she regrets. Something she wants to do. She always says to Aidan, ‘God, just do it already, and then get on with regretting it.’
I’m here, she writes. A second text.
She goes into the menu and finds her credit. Aidan’s put £50 on it: not the behaviour of somebody wanting a back-up plan, a contingency, something ‘just in case’.
A new message fires back from him. You found me.
Yep.
I love you, he writes.
She smiles through tears. She could ask him about Jon now, her husband who she is supposed to never contact again, but she doesn’t. It would worry him too much. He’d go into overdrive, call Jon up himself, probably, and wreck the precarious foundations Lauren’s tried to build.
Z was so rude to me earlier, she types.
She lets a breath out. Finally. Somebody to confide in.
I’m sorry. Give it time x
She treated me like a piece of shit.
Aidan seems to be waiting, not typing back, and Lauren can imagine his solemn, understanding gaze. She can say anything to him. Anything at all, and she will be accepted by him.
And so she says it. The thing she’s been thinking. The thing she could only admit to him.
I love her, but I don’t like her right now. I hate so much what she’s done to us. It makes me feel ashamed x
You’re perfect. Anyone would feel as you do. Don’t sweat it x
She pauses, looking up at the boiler. She doesn’t need to be held in the bathwater now, like a big, hot hug. She doesn’t need that, because she has him.
33
Aidan
Shepherd’s Bush, London
One week gone
Lauren has texted him. Their relationship has always been wordy, tens of texts a day. And now, here they are, linked by two illicit burner phones, only it doesn’t feel illicit: it feels right. He’s sure it’s safe. They’re untraceable, and nobody knows about them.
He taps out a rundown of things she shouldn’t be doing. Website photos, hobbies, make sure she’s not being followed. Everything he’s learnt since she’s been gone.
Of course, she dismisses him. Thanks for the info, she says, with a detective emoji.
Miss you, he writes.
More than I can say, she writes.
She doesn’t return the sentiment explicitly. She doesn’t have to: they are one person. Split in two.
The phone may be safe, but he shouldn’t have texted about personal stuff. He is thinking this as he strips the bed in the Shepherd’s Bush flat. That is not what they’re for, and the slope is so slippery.
‘Already, everything is covered in your fur,’ he says to Bill, then looks around. It’s Lauren’s flat, from her life before him. He unbuttons the duvet cover that he sweated in last night.
His burner phone makes a sound as he’s removing the pillow cases. He tries to resist it, to relax, instead. He’s got to learn how to relax. His smartwatch keeps telling him his heart rate is too high, and he can feel it sometimes at night, blood pounding in his ears, a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, as he tries to sleep. But it’s no use. He sits on the bare mattress and reads the message.
@James Thomas, Kevin has written. Scraper yielding any results?
Aidan leans forwards on to the pillows, his breath hot and shallow.
Shit, shit, shit. He’s always being chased. Never being proactive. He needs to get ahead of them, or they’ll figure him out. Hurt his arm, too. Or worse.
He doesn’t appreciate the entire group knowing. He types a reply.
A few more hours, then will have first batch.
He makes the bed using Lauren’s sheets. Perfect white seersucker duvet cover. Soft grey pillows. A pink throw. He makes it the way she would, neat and tidy at the edges. It still smells of the fabric softener she always used. He hasn’t been able to find it, spent half an hour in Sainsbury’s smelling them all last time he was there, but ended up leaving without any.
Bill immediately jumps on to the made bed, the duvet coated again in seconds with his fur.
Keep us posted, Kevin writes back. Please.
Aidan stands, looking at the bed. The two pillows in the exact centre. Something catches his eye on the street outside. There’s a woman below who resembles Lauren. Blonde hair. Thinner. But something about the way she holds herself. Something about the arm reaching to touch the bag strap across her shoulder.
The phone goes off again.
Firm lead, Jackman3 has written. His avatar is a skull. More soon. Narrowing things down.
Aidan’s hands shake as he types.
Great, what have we got? he writes.
Nobody answers him, despite seven people having read his message. He’s still on the outside of this damn group. He has to know what they know.
In a frenzy, he adds: Was thinking we should have a group-wide meet up. Next month? To share info.
It’s too early to suggest it. He shouldn’t have. He doesn’t yet have their trust. But there is a firm lead. They’ve never said that before. He panicked.
@James Thomas u concentrate on those scrapers, Kevin says.
Aidan drops the phone on to the bed like it has burnt his hands, like he has been branded.
34
Lauren
Coniston, the Lake District
One and a half weeks gone
Lauren bought a packet of cigarettes last night and smoked them all, one after the other, out in the garden. She hasn’t done such a decadent thing for years. To literally set fire to eleven pounds in less than an hour.
And now she is on the bus again, thinking about London. She misses so many things about it, but part of it is the shopping. It was always so easy to shop there. Little treats. Crêpes on the way home. Pic ’n’ mix from the stall in the Tube station. A bunch of daffodils from a street vendor for £1, just because. Sod it, three bunches. They would brighten up the hallway and the lounge. A Costa coffee to take home and finish on the sofa.
She is trying to forget her altercation with Zara. It is just a difficult period, she is telling herself. Zara will come back to her. Open up. Be nice again.
She mists up the black window with her breathing. Outside, it’s frosty. The coldest November on record, apparently. The bus lurches to a stop, its suspension sighing loudly. A teenager gets on with a blast of frozen air. The hairs on Lauren’s arms rise immediately. He’s tall, rangy, and glances at her twice. The first look is curiosity, the second something else.
She opens her phone and tries to distract herself.
She types Hannah’s username into Instagram. It won’t harm anyone if she looks up her sister most days privately, will it? Just to see how she’s getting on?
As she lands on her account, goosebumps break out across Lauren’s shoulders. Account is private. Request to follow? She’s made it private. Why? Are the Find Girl A group monitoring her?
She’s got to know what Hannah’s up to: if the IVF transfer worked. She just has to.
Without thinking, Lauren presses ‘log out’ on her account, and logs in as Aidan: AidanMadison5. Password: th1sis3ncrypted.
She’s in. She navigates immediately to Hannah’s post.
35
Aidan
Central London
One and a half weeks gone
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Hannah says to Aidan as he kisses her on the cheek. One of her curls attaches to his beard, and she laughs awkwardly.
They duck into a nearby restaurant.
‘I’m sorry about last time. I gave you the third degree.’ She smiles up at him, revealing the gap between her front teeth.
How to Disappear Page 19
