They’re seated, and Aidan finds that he likes, despite himself, to see a poor facsimile of his wife. Different smiles, different hair – Hannah’s is dark and curly – but definitely a resemblance. Something around the brow bones. The mannerisms, too.
‘How’s it going?’ Hannah says, looking directly at Aidan. She glances down at the drinks menu.
He is envious of her, for just a second. She has only lost her sister. Her grief is simple.
‘You know, it’s tough,’ Aidan says, trying to ignore the ghostly presence of his wife at the empty seat next to him. She’d be on the wine. She is almost here with him, his beguiling wife. He knows her so well he can construct her out of nothing, like she is a work of art he sculpts into being.
A waiter approaches and Aidan orders a beer, Hannah a lemonade instead of her usual vodka and Coke.
He knows then. His head drops. He should be feeling pleased for her, but the consequences of it stretch out in front of him like a straight railroad. Hannah fusses with the menus while Aidan’s heart strains in his chest.
When their drinks have arrived, Aidan sips his beer, enjoying its malty coldness, watching her, wondering when she will tell him. He knows the Starling sisters well, and, sure enough, she does it immediately.
‘Look, I just told Insta, literally two seconds ago, so now I want to tell you. The embryo took,’ she says.
Despite the sombre dinner of just the two of them, and despite the fact that Aidan keeps watching the window in case somebody is watching him, his chest feels full of hope, for just a second or two.
‘One beautiful baby, inside me.’ Hannah smiles. She looks disbelieving as she says it.
‘Oh, congratulations, Han,’ he says sincerely.
Hannah raises her lemonade to him. ‘Hard won, right?’
‘Just a bit,’ Aidan says. His face is hot. He’s smiling at her – he hopes nicely – but, inside, thoughts are going off like fireworks. He grips the edge of the table. He needs to sort this out. Work it through. What it means for them, that their blended family is growing. Growing across a wound where Lauren once was.
He stares at the menu, thinking. Sea bream with winter greens looms up at him as he tries to think. Corn-fed chicken …
Right. What should he do?
Hannah has been trying to get pregnant for four years. She’s never managed it, she once told Lauren while he ironed awkwardly in their living room, within earshot but probably not supposed to be listening. ‘Not a chemical pregnancy, not a period a day late, nothing,’ Hannah had said.
‘But you ovulate. So I’m sure … God, I know it’s tough. But I bet it is just a matter of time,’ Lauren had said.
‘How much time, though?’ Hannah had said.
‘A year, tops.’
It has taken three more. The IVF started a few years ago. Hannah never spoke to Aidan directly about it, but, as things go sometimes in families, she expected that he would be told, had once shown Lauren a row of injection marks across her stomach in front of him.
It feels so wrong to hide this from Lauren. She’s been there through all of it. A hundred pregnancy tests, at least. Hannah used to order them in bulk off Amazon.
But then what will Lauren do, if she finds out?
Squid ink pasta with a parmesan crumb. He can’t think here. He excuses himself and goes to the toilet. He stares at the mirror. His shirt is rumpled. He doesn’t suit a beard. He looks like a professor or something. He leans over the sink, his head near to the taps, thinking. He blinks, looking at the reflection of one eye in the polished metal.
In the quiet of the bathroom, it comes to him: if she finds out, Lauren will contact Hannah. She’d do it immediately. She’d breach protection. That is what she would do. He knows it as easily as he recognizes his reflection in these taps. He knows his wife.
Zara is her priority, but Lauren is hot-headed, makes decisions based on heart, not head. She would risk everything, as she would for Aidan if he asked her to, as she did for Bill. There is consistency in her wildness, once you know the rules. And Aidan does.
So she mustn’t know. He stands upright again. He will have to keep it from her. His poor wife. He is tasked with shielding her from the happiest moment of the past ten years. And all in the name of protection. Protection. He fucking hates it.
‘Will Lauren find out?’ he says later, once their food has come.
Hannah shakes her head. ‘No. I don’t think so …’
‘But the internet.’
‘It’s on lock down – I’m not accepting anyone new on Insta. I decided, the other day. Just in case … you can learn a lot about me from that account.’
‘Right,’ Aidan says, thinking. ‘That’s good. But … it’s such a small world. Could you take it down?’ he says. ‘Your post? Just for a bit? Just … while Lauren is still so … it’s all so new. Breaches always happen sooner, before the people in protection are properly settled in.’
‘Maybe. Yeah,’ Hannah says. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ She gets her phone out and fiddles with it for a few minutes. ‘Done,’ she says, looking back up at him. She stares out of the window for a few minutes, sipping her lemonade and thinking.
Aidan gazes at her profile, half in the restaurant’s light, half in shade. There’s so much Lauren in her. Yes, yes, the forehead, the hairline. He is mesmerized.
‘Weird for you to know, and not her,’ Hannah says eventually, biting her lip and looking down into her lap.
Aidan is still staring at her, still trying to find the features of his wife hidden amongst hers, so says nothing in return.
When he gets back to the flat, he sees that the dog walker Poppy hired has been, and taken the money he left out for her. Bill is tired, sleeping in his basket in the bedroom. Aidan reaches to stroke his head. He lets out a little, low whine, a sad whine.
‘I miss them, too,’ Aidan says to Bill. ‘I miss them so much.’
36
Lauren
Coniston, the Lake District
One and a half weeks gone
It’s a positive pregnancy test. Hannah has put a positive pregnancy test on Instagram.
Lauren’s eyes race over the caption.
I would be doing you a disservice if I kept this private. I have faithfully chronicled every step of my #IVFJourney here. Every injection, every egg harvest, every failure, every false hope. And now, here we are. Transfer day has been and gone, and – right now, right this second – I am #pregnant. #FourYearsInTheMaking #48PeriodsLater #Perseverance #NeverGiveUp.
Lauren’s eyes are hot and wet. Not just the pregnancy. Not just the years and years and years of toil, but the fact that – right now – a brand-new relative of Lauren’s is growing in her sister’s womb.
She logs out as Aidan and back in as herself. Hannah must have gone private because of the group. She must be saying no to all new follower requests, despite wanting to grow her following. It’s all for Lauren.
The strip lights of the bus seem too bright as they move through the Cumbrian darkness, the seat patterns garish. She and Aidan wouldn’t be speaking, if he were here with her. They wouldn’t need to be. They had infinite days ahead of them in which to talk, so they would be wasting it, time’s passing, on this bus, not bothering to engage. She likes to think of it. Of them: old, complacent, in love, with nothing at all to worry about, not really.
It’s just her and the teenager, who has put on big headphones over his ears, his feet on the seat opposite him. She stares at him. He looks at her just briefly, one glance over his shoulder, but that’s all it takes. In Lauren’s mind, he is checking for his weapon, then putting a knife to the driver’s throat, and killing Lauren, too.
Google Maps tells her she is one stop away from her house – she still doesn’t know exactly where she lives – and so she presses the ‘stop’ button and dismounts in a panic. She just can’t risk it. Bravery means nothing if you’re wrong.
She stands and watches the bus pull away. Lauren is left on the dark street
alone. She begins to walk in the direction of home, when she sees it. A lit-up shop with a little red postbox outside it. The light casts a golden glow over the pavement. Shopping. That will make her feel better.
She’s entranced by it. She’s tried to explain it to Aidan before. She loves all shops equally. Tesco. Service stations. Shopping malls. Designer outlets. Museum gift shops. It is the warmth. The yellow lighting. The quiet aisles to browse. The permission to buy something special, something nice to cheer her up – a pick-me-up. The paper bag handed over at the till. The new possession brought home, unearthed, placed somewhere. It’s a drug to Lauren.
She is alone up here in the wilderness, missing the magic of seeing her sister’s body do what she always knew it could. She’s pregnant! She’s actually, finally pregnant. The baby will stick. Lauren just knows it will.
And she’s fucking missing it.
She lets herself into the shop. It smells of newspapers and the hot, synthetic puff of electric heaters. It’s quiet, brightly lit. Polish, Lauren thinks. There are aisles and aisles to browse and hide in. Ah. This is better, she thinks, as she wanders up the biscuit aisle. Polish biscuits lie before her. Her breathing slows. It’s just her, the shopkeeper – reading a magazine – and an aisle full of treats. She takes her time getting to know this shop near her house. She buys a pint of milk, a mint Aero and some Radox – wishful thinking – then stops at the counter as the shopkeeper scans them. Her hands still.
There’s a display next to her. At first, she thought it was a tourist-style stand of postcards. But it isn’t. It’s skincare.
She reaches to finger a slippery packet. It’s a Polish sheet mask. She’s never seen one before. She turns it over, the plastic cool between her fingertips. An alarm sounds as the door opens and another customer walks in, but she doesn’t look up. A sheet mask. What are the chances? It’s a sign.
She passes it to the shopkeeper and adds a large brown envelope, a book of stamps, then pays for everything. Ten pounds, cash, part of the set-up fund from the department of protection. The receipt is binned right outside. She is deliberately obscuring her motives, her plans, from herself, not willing to look at them until it is done. And she is deliberately covering her tracks, too. She checks for CCTV: none.
Next, she googles postmarks. They’re no longer used. Only for small letters according to a forum, which she chooses to believe. If the envelope is above a standard size, then she’s safe. The only thing that will be marked on the envelope is a code which Royal Mail employees alone have access to.
She’s safe.
She leans against the postbox outside the shop. She finds an old pen in her handbag – she was allowed to keep her fucking pens – and scribbles the address on the envelope, peeling off the 59p sticker and sticking a couple of stamps in its place. Hannah Starling. She has written this address so many hundreds of times.
She puts the face mask in and, on the inside flap of the envelope, across the seal, in scrawling handwriting, writes: Congratulations. And then, in case there’s any doubt, given that she is supposed to be missing, she signs it off, L xxx.
Nobody will know. Nobody except Hannah. And Hannah won’t tell anybody. She can trust Hannah. Of course she can. She’s her sister.
Lauren places it in the mouth of the postbox and holds it there for just a second. But she must send it, because this is her sister, her niece or nephew, and she can’t let witness protection mar the occasion, leave it unmarked.
The postbox is freezing against the palm of her hand as she stands there, the envelope dangling inside it like a tongue.
Fuck it, she thinks, letting it drop, that love letter from sister to sister. That letter that says ‘I’m so pleased for you’ and ‘I miss you’ and ‘please take care of yourself’ and ‘use this face mask, from me to you’.
What harm could come from that?
Zara is home when Lauren gets there. ‘Good day?’ Lauren says, putting her handbag down where a hall table would be, except there is nothing there, and it thumps to the floor unexpectedly. She doesn’t pick it up. She is not at home here, and so it doesn’t matter.
Zara shrugs. She is sitting on the kitchen chair, her knees drawn up to her chest like she is about to tip straight off.
‘Hey?’ Lauren says.
Zara looks straight at Lauren. ‘I fucking hate this,’ she says.
‘Zara!’
‘What? You swear all the time. You said “cunt” to Aidan once.’
‘God, Zara. What’s the matter with you?’ Lauren says. She puts the milk away in the fridge, turning away from her daughter. She meant to get her a library card today, on her lunch hour, and she plain forgot. Maybe this is why she’s being like this. Inadequate parenting.
‘I can’t do this … here,’ Zara says. ‘I fucking hate it. I fucking hate it. All the lies.’
Lauren looks at her, not saying what she wants to say, which is: so why did you lie, then, and land us all here?
Instead, she says nothing, reaching out to Zara, a squeeze of a hand.
She waits for a second, feeling Zara’s hot fingers in hers. ‘I know,’ she says softly. ‘I hate it, too,’ she adds, though she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t confide her own problems in her daughter. She should be better than that.
‘It sucks,’ Zara says softly.
As Lauren crosses behind her to go upstairs, later, she sees her daughter googling something that makes her stomach drop: how to make friends, it says.
Lauren cries properly as she walks upstairs. Oh, my baby girl, she is thinking. But the internet is not the answer. The internet is loneliness. The internet is separateness. No wonder you were rude to me.
She can’t do this, she thinks, walking along the landing alone. She can’t parent alone. She doesn’t know how to do it. Aidan drew boundaries and Lauren and Zara crossed them, that’s always how it’s been. She reaches for the burner phone. She catches something. Just a whiff of it. The scent of Aidan on the phone. She sniffs and sniffs, but she can’t catch it again.
The scent of Aidan.
Of home.
37
Aidan
Shepherd’s Bush, London
One and a half weeks gone
Eleven o’clock. Three rings on the burner phone. He can see exactly who it is, and he answers, his throat constricting. This is it. They’ve found her. That firm lead.
‘Hello?’ he says. He’s been walking, trying to tire himself out, and he takes his coat and scarf off, his hands stiff and cold.
‘Oh, crap.’
‘What?’ he says, but already, the bubble of anxiety in his chest is popped with relief. It’s Lauren.
‘I was looking at your contact. I didn’t mean to ring.’
‘You were looking at me,’ he says.
She laughs.
There’s an awkward pause. A fork in the road. They could go this way or that way. But, now she’s here, on the line, how can he leave her?
‘What else are you up to?’ he says.
Lauren waits a beat. They both acknowledge it. The path he’s chosen.
‘Rowing with Zara. I just want a hot bath and to forget about it.’
‘Have one,’ he says.
‘I can’t. This boiler,’ she says. She lets a sigh out, a sort of sexy sigh, and he closes his eyes. ‘This fucking boiler.’
‘You’re calling me for plumbing support?’ he says.
‘I miss you,’ she says.
She says it loudly, boldly, and Bill must hear her voice, because he stands straight up and barks at the phone.
‘Bill!’ she says.
‘He misses you.’
‘Will you put him on?’
‘What?’ Aidan says.
‘Put him on.’
‘He’s a busy man, Lauren. He owns a computer empire,’ Aidan says, smiling the first true smile he’s felt in months.
‘Tell his secretary it’s Lauren Starling,’ she says, with a laugh.
Aidan dutifully places the phone next to Bi
ll’s ear. He can hear Lauren cooing to him. Bill barks back.
When he puts the phone back to his ear, she says, ‘I just want a bath and it won’t let me.’
He lies down on the bed. It’s warm in the bedroom, the heating on full, and the linen still smells like her. A low bass thrum of pleasure fills him up just like it did in the early days when he wanted her so badly and had to play it cool on their calls.
‘What’s it doing?’ he says, a smile in his voice. He can just imagine her. Vintage Lauren, up late, manically trying to have a bath she probably doesn’t even want any more.
‘The hot water lasts exactly five minutes. You can time it.’
‘Pressure alright?’
‘I turned a tap. It’s at full pressure.’
‘Are you running the bath taps on full?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t,’ he says, rubbing his feet together absent-mindedly. ‘Run them so they’re a dribble. See if that works better. Sometimes the water runs cold because it runs past the pipes too fast.’
Guilt is nagging at his stomach. She’s safe. He shouldn’t be taking her calls. This is the very top of the slippery slope. But he can’t bring himself to say goodbye. He can’t bring himself to leave her, not again.
‘Everything is … I just want a bath.’
‘I know,’ he says softly to her, thinking of the space at the table with Hannah, thinking, too, of what he knows about Zara. Meeting homeless people. Knowing valuable information.
Aidan isn’t going to tell her either of these things. It won’t end well. It’s not the right thing to do. Neither piece of information will benefit Lauren.
‘It’s no warmer, even when dribbling out,’ Lauren says to him, interrupting his thoughts.
He swallows. ‘Give it a few minutes,’ he says.
‘It’s cold.’
‘Cold – or lukewarm?’
‘Totally cold.’
‘Has the boiler locked out?’
‘God, I don’t know. I don’t know. I just want a hot fucking bath.’
‘I know,’ he says.
How to Disappear Page 20
