How to Disappear

by Gillian McAllister

  Hello there from my bedroom, through the wall, to yours! he sends, with a waving hand emoji.

  Bolstered, she begins to type. So … what’s it like here? Fill me in!

  He doesn’t reply for a while, even though he’s read it, but, after a few minutes, a voice memo appears. Zara blinks, surprised, and presses ‘play’.

  Okay, so, he says, like sending a voice note is totally normal. Let me fill you in on York. This street is alright – it’s pretty quiet. There’s countryside not far away, I’ll have to show you one of these days …

  Zara lies back on her bed and listens to his voice, low and pure and honest, her eyes closed as he teaches her about her new neighbourhood. Later, she gets the courage to send a voice note back, and he reciprocates. They spend the evening that way, as intimate as a phone call, as convenient as a text, with the ability to redraft and start over. To self-edit, as witness protection requires.

  Zara is enrolled in Hastings School the next day, once they have had a chance to catch up on sleep and re-buy the things they couldn’t bring with them. Their possessions have dwindled so much, but still they lost more. They couldn’t take anything that was in the washing machine overnight, halfway through a spin. Gone, too, is Zara’s shampoo, lying damp and forgotten in the shower tray back in the Lake District. She hadn’t even finished a full bottle. That’s how long they lasted there.

  She ought to feel nervous, but she doesn’t, just knowing Dom is there somewhere. A friendly face in the crowd, a friendly face in Room 11 of the music block. Like she has already got an advantage over York before she’s started.

  It’s break time, towards the end of the winter term. The playground is gilded with frost. A teacher stands nearby, his back to her, watching the students in their hats and scarves walking, talking, laughing. Zara is totally alone, nobody even looking at her. She is invisible, which should be welcome, but it isn’t. She’s only human.

  Cold and bored, she lets herself into the block that says Music on it. She finds his room, raises a gloved fist.

  And knocks.

  Don’t fall in love.

  That evening, like a little gift to open at the end of the day, a new voice memo arrives.

  God, it was so nice to see you this afternoon. I don’t know if I’m being way keen here, but I like you, Suzanne Steele. Anyway, let me tell you about my evening. My little sister, Imogen – she’s four – literally sucked a reed diffuser, and we had to go to A&E. She’s fine, but her breath now smells of fresh linen …

  55

  Aidan

  Shepherd’s Bush, London

  Eight days to go

  ‘James?’ Brian says on the phone. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’ve rented a warehouse in Central,’ he says. ‘The twentieth of December, remember? Can we all be there to discuss major strategy? Unless we’ve found her by then.’

  ‘Can’t do the twentieth,’ Brian says coolly, even though he’d agreed to it on Telegram. ‘It’s my birthday. The twenty-first, instead?’ And then he adds, ‘Can you re-book? It’s a good idea. It’s a good idea to have a group-wide meet. We’re two months in and – nothing. Didn’t think it would take this long. Surprised your scrapers haven’t turned much up.’

  ‘I’ll move the booking,’ Aidan says.

  ‘Where are the results? You told me it would be easy.’

  The hairs on the back of Aidan’s neck rise up slowly, like a cold hand sweeping slowly up his spine.

  Aidan stammers. ‘They’re … it is harder than I thought. The kid got lucky with the reverse image search.’

  ‘Yeah … well, it wasn’t them. Was an empty house.’

  Aidan sends another grateful thanks out into the universe. ‘I’ll try to be better on the scrapers,’ he says, relief making him feel pathetically grateful.

  ‘Justice,’ Brian says quietly. ‘That’s all we want, isn’t it? Luke’s been playing games with the homeless people, and everyone is acting like it’s murder.’

  ‘Right,’ Aidan says tightly.

  ‘It’s harmless fun, isn’t it? So long as the tramps behave themselves.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Aidan swallows bile.

  ‘Innocent until proven guilty, ridiculous, really, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Anyone can say anything about a young lad, and he’d get tried for it, on the strength of … what? Words. That’s it. Just words. Just as well he won’t be a footballer, now. All because of a little game, is all. A harmless game.’

  How strange it is, Aidan is thinking. The lies we tell ourselves as parents. The self-delusion.

  ‘Let me know how the scrapers are going. Soon,’ Brian says to Aidan.

  Aidan is on the phone to his mother that evening, right before bed, tidying up. ‘And how’s the … what you spoke to me about?’ she asks tentatively.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he says.

  ‘Have you stopped?’

  He winces as she says it. He can’t lie to her. Not so directly.

  ‘No,’ he says quietly. ‘But it’s under control.’

  ‘Aidan,’ she says again, using his name with a power only his mother can.

  ‘I know,’ he says quickly, blushing, glad she doesn’t know the rest of it. The beating. The police. The total disaster that is the scrapers. How many crimes he’s probably committing, joining in conspiracies. He closes his eyes and holds the phone tight to his cheek. It’s hot, almost like it’s his mother’s body heat he can feel against his face, here on this cold December night in London.

  He opens his eyes and catches his reflection in the window. He momentarily doesn’t recognize himself. He’s been doing press-ups, and his shoulders are rounded now, his chest a drum. His face is sallow and sunken, beyond tired-looking. His jaw has changed shape. The dentist couldn’t make him emergency crowns. He’s had to have a temporary denture, ill-fitting new teeth, and his jaw juts out now. He looks like a man who has been running on empty for too long. Somebody who’s had a breakdown or been out of work for years. Who’s been marooned on a desert island or been sent to prison. He looks like a thug. Somebody who would do anything in desperation. Absolutely anything.

  ‘Stay safe,’ his mother says to him. ‘Aidan. Please, stay safe.’

  56

  Zara

  York, Yorkshire

  Six weeks gone

  Dom, in that way of his, sent Zara a calendar invitation last night, with the subject Bettys and general York tour after school? She accepted it immediately. The world has cracked open, for Zara. All the things she didn’t do because she has been ashamed of her core self have opened up to her. She could do anything. Go to a late-night lecture. Go to Cephalonia to see where Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was set. Talk freely about what she likes, without shame.

  She tells herself she is being cautious, that she is resisting getting close to him. She is. But it’s a basic human need, isn’t it? To be spoken to, to open up. To be touched.

  They’re sitting opposite each other in the opulence of Bettys now. They had to queue, but Zara has always liked the anticipation of queuing. An emblem of optimism, looking forward to something, literally staring at it with a load of people who feel the same way. She’d said this to Dom, who had laughed. It smells of roasted coffee beans and spices here.

  ‘It’s funny to be live, and not sending you voice notes,’ Dom says, with a smile.

  ‘Why the voice notes?’

  He shrugs. ‘Just like them. I wanted to chat to you but not … you know? Not scare you away.’

  Zara stares across the busy restaurant, watching the waiters and waitresses, watching the plates of food and the three-tier afternoon teas being delivered. She wonders if she has ever met somebody who was in witness protection before, without knowing it.

  ‘They’re nice,’ she says. ‘I like them, too.’

  Dom smiles at her sincerely across the table. ‘So, Suzanne,’ he says. ‘Suzanne like the Leonard Cohen song.’

  ‘That’s me.’ Zara smiles tightly. Zara, Girl A, Sienna, Suzanne.

&
nbsp; ‘Were you named after that?’

  ‘Do you know, I’ve never asked. I doubt it,’ Zara adds, when his eyebrows go up. ‘Mum’s not into music.’

  ‘Not into music,’ Dom says, shaking his head slightly like he can’t believe it. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never asked that.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Zara says, and she means it. She would have asked, if she was really called Suzanne. She sips a cappuccino. It has three shots of coffee in it. She’s never had one before, but she ordered it without thinking, acting on impulse. She’s never done that before, either.

  ‘So what’s your story, then, Suzanne-by-the-river?’

  ‘My story?’

  ‘Siblings?’

  ‘None,’ Zara says, a wave of sadness moving up through her. She’s never thought about that. She’s never thought about the future with her stepsister, and now it’s gone. Twenty-somethings. Early in their careers, meeting up in London together for drinks, celebrating their thirtieth birthdays together in the same year, moaning when their parents annoyed them … all gone. That future, all gone.

  ‘An only child. I thought as much.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yeah, you’re … you know. So composed.’

  Zara laughs at that. He’s right and he’s wrong, all at once.

  He catches her laugh, and raises his eyebrows, wanting her to share.

  But she doesn’t. Can’t. Something shifts behind her eyes. She can feel it. She’s told so many lies now that she can feel the physiological effects of them. When she speaks the truth, she feels light and confident. And when she lies, she feels heavy, like her eyes are black. Cognitive dissonance, is it? When the outside is not the same as the inside?

  ‘Where’s your dad?’

  ‘Never met him,’ Zara says truthfully. ‘You?’

  ‘He’s in the army. It’s hard. I don’t know. He feels like … like a very distant uncle.’

  Zara picks up a menu on the pretence of ordering some food and stares at it, trying to mask that her eyes are wet. Will Aidan one day become like that? She can’t imagine it, her careful, kind stepfather. ‘I guess that’s natural,’ she mumbles.

  ‘Yeah. Maybe. Do you miss having a dad?’

  There’s a pause. Here she is again, at the crossroads. A whole path in front of her. A whole person will be available to her if she tells the truth. But if she doesn’t, she will be safe. And so she can’t. She can’t jeopardize it again.

  ‘Does it get cold up here, in the winter?’ she says. The weather. So benign.

  Dom’s expression closes down. ‘Yeah, a bit,’ he says.

  They make small talk after that. It’s the best way.

  She records a voice memo to Dom that evening, in the privacy of the bathroom, away from her mum. In it, she tells him everything. What she did when she saw the crime. Why she did it. That they were taken into protection, then moved again, because of another of her indiscretions. She tells him how lonely she feels, how fucked up, how responsible. And she tells him her secret, too. About the motto, and about her plan. And then, before she presses ‘send’, she presses ‘delete’. She doesn’t hear from him. If he saw her recording, he never says.

  Zara wakes early the next morning. Six o’clock. Her mother is still sleeping. She sits on her bed, and looks at Dom’s WhatsApp profile.

  Last seen yesterday at 22.17.

  She clicks on his photo and looks into his eyes, wishing she could tell him.

  As she does so, a text comes in from him.

  When’s the next date?

  She closes her eyes in relief. She hasn’t driven him away: it isn’t too late.

  57

  Lauren

  York, Yorkshire

  Six weeks gone

  Lauren is certain that Zara is falling in love with the boy next door.

  She knows all of the moods of her daughter, but this one is new. She realized it last night, over meatballs. Zara was present in body but not in mind. She was staring at her phone and smiling. When she got up from the table, Lauren watched Zara bump into the kitchen bin because she was on her phone, and then not even notice that, either. That’s when Lauren knew.

  And Lauren is jealous. She is standing outside a nursery, now, before an interview, and she is jealous.

  God, she has never once felt jealous of her daughter. Not when she was brand new, one day old, and had an eternity stretching in front of her, when Lauren’s time was almost half spent. Not when she looked like a model on holiday in a bikini. She’s not ever been jealous – because Zara is an extension of her. She is Lauren’s descendant, her successor.

  But now she is.

  She is jealous because the lies Lauren has to tell are bigger. They won’t be subsumed into the past so easily, like Zara’s lies. When you’re twenty, who you were at sixteen is irrelevant. But Lauren has been Lauren for over forty years. She can’t move on.

  So, instead, she is standing here, staring at the finger where her engagement and wedding rings used to be. She’s lost the tan from the summer entirely, so there’s no longer any evidence of them. It never happened, none of it.

  Lauren reaches the reception of the nursery. Her lipstick is smeared. Her hair a mess. Later, she is looking forward to eating a Portuguese custard tart on the bus.

  The reception has wooden floors, a branded rug with the nursery’s name on it. High Trees. They’re going to ask her competency questions, she is thinking, as the receptionist slides the glass screen back. ‘Can I help?’ she says, and Lauren thinks: no, nobody can. Suddenly, I can’t recall a time when I helped a difficult child to develop, or I reported a safeguarding concern. Perhaps she can just tell them the truth. A half-truth. That she really, really needs this job. That she would be good at it. That she will love the children. That there is nothing better, to her, than seeing a three-year-old late talker say, ‘Lauren, look!’ out of nowhere, as though somebody just turned on the speech part of their brain overnight.

  ‘I have a four-thirty interview,’ she says. As she speaks, she smells it. All nurseries smell the same. Poster paints. The plastic smell of lunchboxes: cucumber and bread. She blinks and glances around her. She is home, home amongst these smells and the little starfish hands and feet of the children she will fall in love with. Lauren forgets her frizzy hair, her smudged lipstick.

  ‘Great,’ the receptionist says. Her nails click on the keyboard. ‘Please can you confirm your name?’

  ‘Leonora,’ Lauren tells the receptionist. She glances at herself again, reflected in the glass screen. There is no Lauren any more, she tells herself with her eyes. Lauren is gone.

  ‘This way,’ the receptionist says.

  Lauren isn’t prepared, thought she’d have a few minutes to wait in reception, to calm down, to think of the right answers. She’s led, instead, into a back room where two women are waiting for her, their hands folded. It smells of stale tea and chalk. It’s heated by a single electric heater, under the table they’re sitting at. Both women have their feet on it.

  ‘Leonora? Nice to meet you,’ one of the women, who has dip-dyed hair, says.

  ‘And you.’ Lauren extends her hand, then sits down in front of them on what appears to be a child’s chair. It’s lower than she thought it would be, and the surprise jolts her spine.

  ‘So, tell us a bit about you,’ the woman says.

  Lauren stammers and stumbles her way over an introduction to somebody she doesn’t know herself. She’s sitting so low, compared to the two women, she feels like she’s in Alice in Wonderland, like she’s shrunk or become distorted. Panic fills her veins. The children’s paintings on the wall take on a menacing air, the burnt smell of the heater becomes cloying. The interviewers’ eyes look too wide, too prying. Lauren is covered in sweat within minutes.

  ‘I …’ she says. Where’s she from? Bristol? London? The Lake District? Her mind is a shut-up shop, closed for business. She can’t retrieve the current story she’s supposed to be telling from the rubble of the lies.

/>   She leaves after the second question. She can’t do it. She’s not up to it. She’s broken.

  She goes into the bar a short walk from the nursery and drinks three wines alone. She lingers for hours, drinking moodily, shopping on her phone. Then she buys a cake from a late-night dessert place. She’ll eat it all, alone, on the couch, until she feels sick. She finds a taxi rank. She’ll treat herself. She can’t be bothered to get the bus again, and sit tensed at every stop when people get on.

  There’s a queue outside the taxi rank, bodies fenced into a small enclosure surrounded with metal railings, and Lauren joins them. A woman’s arm presses against hers. Lauren closes her eyes with the pleasure of it, and pretends it’s an embrace. She enjoys it so much, that stranger’s body heat against hers, that it is the best moment of her day, standing and pretending and watching the black cabs come and go, a traditional, familiar sight. Beetle-shaped. Yellow light on the top.

  One arrives for her after twenty minutes, and she collapses tipsily into the seat with her back to the driver, not wanting to look at him. He asks her for her address and she has to look for it on her phone. She’s got the street down, but not the postcode. Her voice catches as she reads it off her phone. Another house, another postcode, another name. The driver doesn’t make eye contact, and she’s glad of it. Maybe she shouldn’t have got into this taxi without checking his licence. Maybe he was waiting just for her. Maybe he’s dangerous. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Lauren sits back, drunk, not caring. The disastrous interview is proof she cannot sustain the anxiety of it any longer. Kill me, then, she thinks bitterly in the back.

  She takes her shoes off and puts her feet up on the seats in front of her. Fuck it. Fuck everyone.

  She opens her phone and prepares to do a deep dive on to the internet. Aidan first: nothing. No posts since she left. Well, good. He should have come, she thinks angrily. He is miserable without her and she without him.