Читать книгу Then You Were Gone - Claire Moss - Страница 9

Chapter One

Sane people do not call the police because their boyfriend has not texted them for four days. And Simone was pretty certain she was still sane. She also knew that it was probably best not to call the police even if the boyfriend was not answering your phone calls or emails. She did not know if he would answer the door to her as she had not gone as far as calling round to his flat to test him out.

She knew what a sane person would say, if a less-than-sane friend asked their opinion on this situation. She knew what she would say if anyone, sane or otherwise, asked her opinion. She would tell them that people sometimes avoid other people because that is easier than telling them the truth. People sometimes avoid other people even when they are in a relationship with that person, because they are in too deep, or they get scared, or they change their mind, or get a better offer. Grown adults, particularly ones who live alone and often work alone, sometimes need time to themselves and they should not have to justify that need to anyone. Even their girlfriend, if they have one, and if both parties are one hundred percent agreed that she is definitely his girlfriend.

So it was possible Mack was avoiding her. It was likely, from a dispassionate point of view, that he was avoiding her; that was what any other sane person would tell her was happening if she had been feeling sane enough to ask them their opinion.

But this was Mack. This was her and Mack. He would not play games with her, any more than she would with him. Simone was sure of it. But she was sure in such a way that she still did not feel able to go round to his flat, just in case she did find him peering round the curtains with his back pressed to the wall trying to pretend to be at the newsagents. Or, worse, she might find him there with someone else, someone younger and prettier, someone with perfectly plucked eyebrows and highlighted hair, someone more his usual type.

Simone tapped her nails against the back of her phone. It was Saturday morning and she had not seen Mack since Monday evening. He had met her from work and they had gone to see a band at Scala. Mack had been quiet, drinking a bit more than usual, talking a lot less than usual and once the band had finished he had rushed off home without inviting Simone to come back with him. She had known the band would not be his sort of thing – fiddles and foot stamping and clear-voiced, shaggy-haired female singers – but she had dragged him along to many similar gigs in the past and he had always put on some kind of pretence that he was finding the experience tolerable. She could have invited him back to her place, but she did not. A man in a mood is best left to come out of it in his own way. She had learned that, if nothing else, over the years.

And then on Tuesday he had texted her to cancel their planned meal out on Friday. He was away for work until Thursday, which she knew to be true, but now the tone of his absence had shifted away from ‘miss you’ and ‘can’t wait to see you again’ towards ‘not sure when I’ll get back, might be too tired to come over’. He would cancel the restaurant, the text said, and be in touch before the weekend. And then, at the end of the message, there it was. The thunderbolt. The reason Simone was seriously considering calling the police – or at least seriously considering the possibility of seriously considering calling the police. For at the end of the message, Mack had written, I love you x.

It was the first time either of them had said anything like that to each other. And a man like Mack – Simone was fairly sure she knew what kind of a man Mack was – would not have said that, or anything like that, as a throwaway line, a place-holder to keep her on-side until he returned from whatever tryst he was headed off to. And she was sure – nearly sure – that he would not have said that and then immediately disappeared from her life. At least not on purpose.

Because after that, after the thunderbolt, there had been – nothing. No text, no phone call, no email, no reply to any of the messages she had left for him. His mobile went straight to voicemail and there was no answer when she called the phone in his flat. So Simone concluded that she had reached the point where she either bit the bullet and crossed the line into stalker territory or sat back and waited for Mack, like the caged bird of inspirational fridge magnet fame, to prove his love by returning to her after being set free.

Simone pulled her fingers through her hair. She had taken some extra care over her appearance this morning, much as she might deny it to herself. She had not yet left the flat, but she was wearing tinted moisturiser and mascara as well as her newest, cleanest pair of jeans. The look was slightly ruined by the huge mohair cowl-neck she was wearing in an attempt to keep warm, but after last winter’s monumental gas bill she had made a promise to herself to keep the heating off until November. Now, with two weeks to go, she could feel her will beginning to weaken and had cracked out the winter woollies in an attempt to stave off the inevitable.

She knew what the best jeans and the modest make-up were in aid of, of course. It was in case Mack did come back unannounced and call round to surprise her. She wanted to look like someone he would tell that he loved.

The flat’s chilly, clinging air, along with the constant nail-tapping worry and the checking her phone and her emails every forty seconds were finally becoming too much though, and she stood up to get her coat and bag. She could step out for an hour or so, go and get a decent cup of coffee at the cafe round the corner, read the papers, act normal. If Mack came round while she was out, then he could just wait for her, like she had been doing for him. Eyeing her phone on the coffee table she considered for a split second leaving it in the flat in the hope it might buy her an hour of sanity, but she knew she would not do it.

As she picked up the phone and put it in her bag, there was a knock on the flat’s front door. Through the mottled glass of the door panels she could see the outline of someone tall, slim, unmistakably male. Simone let out an involuntary noise, halfway between a sigh of relief and a grunt of annoyance. That bastard. Where had he been? When she answered the door, her face must have betrayed her disappointment.

‘Hi. What’s wrong?’ It was a man, but it was the wrong man. It was Jazzy. Not Mack.

‘Oh, hi.’ Simone felt the sag in the middle of her body as the adrenaline shot ebbed away and the realisation sank in that it still was not him. ‘What’s up?’

Jazzy looked puzzled. ‘I just asked you that.’

‘Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine. I was just on my way out.’

‘Can I come in?’ Jazzy appeared not to have heard her. Or not to care. In Jazzy’s head the fact that the two of them had spent three years in university sharing a house seemed to mean that for ever more Jazzy would have constant unfettered access to wherever Simone was currently living.

He came in, past Simone and through the kitchenette, and sat down heavily on the sofa. He looked tired. He always looked tired now.

Jazzy turned down Simone’s offer of a cup of tea and looked round the flat. He cleared his throat and said in what she recognised as a forcedly casual tone, ‘Is – erm, is Mack here?’

Simone felt it like a punch to the guts. ‘No. No, he’s not.’ She stared at Jazzy for a moment to see if he was going to break into a grin and say I know he’s not, that’s because he’s out in the corridor waiting to surprise you! but he continued to wait, wide-eyed, for her to go on. ‘I haven’t seen him since Monday night,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought you might… I mean, I was going to ring you and ask you if you’d seen him, but I didn’t want to…’

‘Look mental?’ Jazzy was smiling and Simone relaxed enough to smile back.

‘Well, yeah.’

Jazzy’s mouth was closed but Simone could tell by the pouty shape of his lips that he was biting the tip of his tongue with his front teeth. It was something he always did when he was considering what to say next. ‘Well, the thing is, I haven’t seen him for a week either,’ he said. ‘He didn’t come back into the office yesterday when he’d said he would, and I can’t get hold of him on the phone. He usually emails me while he’s away, just for an update or whatever, but he hasn’t done that either.’

‘Right.’ Simone was unsure what to think. That Mack might be avoiding her began to seem less likely and there was a moment where, to her shame, she felt what was undoubtedly relief. But, a second look at Jazzy’s stubbly, drawn face reminded her that that option being removed only rendered what remained even more worrying. ‘I had a text from him on Tuesday,’ she added.

‘How did he sound?’

‘Fine.’ She nodded, then smiled shyly. ‘Actually,’ she blurted, unable to contain herself, ‘he said he loved me.’

Jazzy raised his eyebrows in an impressed gesture. ‘Really? Nice one.’

‘No need to sound so fucking surprised, thank you very much.’

He laughed. ‘Sorry,’ and he gave her a fond smile that made her want to cry.

‘Because at first I thought…’ If it had been anyone else, anyone other than Jazzy, she would have kept this to herself. Simone knew how most of her friends thought of her. The porcelain doll with the porcelain heart; smooth, cool, impenetrable and invulnerable to the pain the rest of them felt at their imperfect relationships. And it was a persona Simone had always been happy to play along with. So much easier than to have to open up the painful sores for inspection and discussion; better for everyone to pretend they were not there at all. But with Jazzy there had never been much point pretending; Jazzy would know everything anyway, just from the way she was breathing, from the colour in her cheeks, from the way she spoke Mack’s name. When she first met Jazzy, over a decade ago, her reserves of energy had been so depleted that she had never bothered even trying to build up the usual defensive wall around herself. No point starting now, she supposed.

‘I was a bit worried,’ she continued, ‘you know, maybe him not being in touch or anything, maybe it was because he, I don’t know, regretted it or something. But if you haven’t heard from him either, and he’s not come back…’

Jazzy winced. ‘Yes, I know. I know what you mean.’

There was a pause while the two of them looked at each other. Simone realised, to her embarrassment, that Jazzy’s breath was visible in thin clouds in the flat’s dim air.

‘Are we supposed to be worried about him?’ Jazzy asked. His voice sounded light, but as though he were consciously trying to keep it that way.

Simone looked at him. The feeling of wanting to cry threatened to overwhelm her again, but she fought it down. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.’

With every previous boyfriend Simone had always been able to play it cool with little or no effort. She was cool. But with Mack that had all, to her unending surprise, changed. At first, in the first few tentative weeks of their courtship, there had been the usual hesitation and denial and one step forward followed by four steps sideways, the two of them circling round each other, unsure whether something so seemingly perfect could really be trusted. But in the last few months, something had grown between them – what her grandmother’s generation might have called ‘an understanding’. They were together, and being together was seriously important to them both, and it was for real this time. And for the first time since… well, for the first time in a very long time, Simone had allowed some of the frost inside her to thaw, had allowed herself to believe that this man, that the life she might have with this man, might be worth laying herself open to pain and heartbreak for.

And now he loved her, and he was gone.

Simone swallowed and looked at Jazzy. ‘I was thinking about… about the police.’

Jazzy’s jaw was set. ‘Right. What, you mean like a missing person?’

She nodded. ‘What do you think? I mean, he’s a grown man, he’s allowed to go off by himself for a few days isn’t he? I just don’t want to…’

‘Look mental?’ Jazzy said again.

‘Well, yeah.’ Neither of them laughed this time and they both sat for a moment in silence. Simone watched as the wisps of their breath appeared and disappeared on the air.

Jazzy shook his head. ‘You’re not being mental,’ he said with confidence, as though consciously bringing himself back to the moment. ‘But I don’t think we need to call the police yet either. Have you got his mum’s number?’

‘No. And even if I did, there’s no way I’d ring her. I’ve only met her once, that really would make me look mental.’ Only a few weeks ago Simone had met Mack’s mother for the first time, in an Ethiopian restaurant in Lewisham with a BYO licence and Dolly Parton on the sound system. Mack had been his usual easy-going, ebullient self, at least on the outside, but Simone flattered herself that she already knew him well enough to detect something else in his demeanour, a stiffness and reserve that she had rarely seen him display. It could be that he had just been nervous, perhaps that he felt, as she did, that there could be a lot riding on this evening, that he really, really wanted to make sure his mother liked her. Or it could have been something else, something that Simone hoped she might find out about in due course. Family dynamics are a fraught and emotional thing for all but the best-adjusted, Simone knew that better than anyone, and if there was something difficult in his relationship with his mother, he may be waiting until he and Simone had known each other a little longer before he let her in on it. She had decided not to push him on it, and he had not mentioned the evening since. His mother had been pleasant and polite but not especially interested in Simone, who had come away wondering if his mother had seen her merely as another amongst many attractive young women who had skirted round the edges of her son’s life over the years.

Jazzy held Simone’s gaze for a few moments. Only someone who knew him as well as she did would have been able to see the worry behind his eyes. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK. I tell you what, why don’t we just wait until Monday? If he’s still not come to the office and we still haven’t heard from him then we’ll – well, we’ll talk again and decide what to do. But don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t come to that.’

‘No,’ Simone agreed. ‘I’m sure it won’t.’ Her words sounded firm and confident to her ears, so she wondered why she felt the panic rising again as she once more fought down the overwhelming urge to cry.