A Person Could Disappear Here Read online

  He had me spun around and bent over the kitchen table before I knew what was happening; held in place with one large hand on the small of my back as he tugged off my knickers with the other.

  I tried not to inhale as he put his face close to mine; his cheesy beer-breath hot on my skin.

  “There’s one rule in this house. You. Do. As. I. Say.”

  It hurt. I wasn’t ready. He huffed and called me a frigid bitch.

  The butter dish was within reach and he scooped up a mess of it that made little sucking noises as he rubbed it over himself.

  “Hmm. Let’s try a tighter hole,” he said, his mouth close to my ear as he smeared stickiness around my anus, spreading it open with his fingers before pushing his buttery dick inside me in one long thrust.

  Condensation coated his beer on the table just inches from my face; little beads clinging to the glass for dear life, reflecting the room in microcosm. I watched as a single droplet lost its hold and traced a path down the bottle to join others that pooled; as he pounded and grunted.

  Over soon… It will all be over soon…

  And it was. It felt like forever, but the whole thing probably took less than three minutes. A hundred-and-eighty seconds. Such a small span of time; barely long enough to boil an egg. But more than long enough for me to know I’ll never be the same.

  Chapter Three

  ABBEY

  JOURNAL ENTRY THREE

  My mind won’t stop racing. Nerve impulses surging, thousands of synaptic explosions going off in my head as thoughts fall over each other in a jumbled frenzy. Endless hours of torment; the same questions tumbling around my brain…

  How long before I’m missed?

  Will the hotel even care that I haven’t returned? Or did they just give the room to someone else?

  Cristina hasn’t heard from me since I sent her that video two days ago. Is she worried yet? Does she realise yet that something is terribly, horribly wrong? When she does, how long will it be before she can get the Met police or Foreign Office to believe I’m missing? Do they get involved when British citizens go missing abroad? Even if they do, what can they do from London?

  How long will it be after I’ve missed my return flight before she’ll be able to get anyone there or here to give a damn? And even if she does, who would come looking for me? The Sheriff’s department, State Police, the FBI? They could all start searching, but how will they know where to look? Hell, I don’t even know where I am, exactly.

  Nebraska’s a big state. Isn’t it? But then every state in America is bigger than the whole of the UK, never mind England or my tiny part of it. The Met police would be hard-pressed to find a person that someone didn’t want found in the capital. How many times would London fit into Nebraska? A hundred? More than a hundred? That’s a huge haystack, and I’m a very small needle…

  Chances are, I am not going to be found.

  I’m not going to get married, not going to have a family. I wasn’t in a rush to do either, there were things I wanted to do first, but I did want those things. One day.

  I didn’t just want to see Europe, I wanted to experience far-flung places and cultures on other continents. The spicy bustle of street markets in Delhi and Marrakesh. The serenity of a Buddhist temple in Bhutan. The ethereal beauty of the Aurora Borealis in Tromsø.

  I loved my job, but I didn’t plan on working there forever. I was going to start my own publishing house.

  I had so many dreams and thought there was time enough to make them come true, but now? I know how these things go. It’s not such a leap from kidnapper to killer. If I don’t find a way out, there’s a good chance I am going to die… Here… At only twenty-five…

  No. I can’t think like that. Isn’t there always hope?

  Of course, the Greek myth about the first human woman being created as man’s punishment after Prometheus stole fire from Mount Olympus for them, thus bringing about the end of Man’s Golden Age is just a load of misogynistic clap-trap. It’s easy to see how this myth came to be. Back in the seventh century (BC that is) it was used as an excuse for the oppression of women; something to keep us in our place. Thinking about it, how much has changed on that score?

  And even today the church needs to come up with an explanation as to how evil can proliferate when there’s a God; a divine, benevolent creator who does nothing to stop it.

  But why should womankind be blamed for all the ills in the world? Especially when, throughout history, the atrocities committed around the world in the name of religion, to claim land, or a duplicitous guise under which one country can steal another’s oil reserves, have been perpetrated by men.

  That’s not to say some women aren’t capable of being just as ruthless or selfish as any man, but generally speaking we’re naturally more nurturing. We don’t spend our time squabbling like children over ideologies, borders, or who has what. We want to make things better.

  We’re making headway, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever get the chance to prove how much better the world would be if we ran it all, because the myth of a woman being the originator of evil remains.

  It’s perpetuated still to the extreme in patriarchal theologies that demand women inhabit the edge of society, like Dementors hovering around Hogwarts, clothed in entirety because, more than her vagina or breasts, a woman’s face is her most tempting body part; her greatest awrah. And god knows men can’t be expected to control their most basic impulses in the presence of any woman; to keep it in their trousers and behave like grown-ups. Oh, no. Naturally the fault lies with the woman, so she must shield men from the sight of so much as an inch of bare skin, lest they be overcome by uncontrollable lust.

  In England, domestic chastisement of a wife may no longer be allowed just so long as the stick the husband uses is no thicker than his thumb, but despite the suffragettes, women’s movement and the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts of the seventies (now combined with other anti-discrimination laws to form the Equality Act) in everyday reality women have little more power now than they did back then. Maybe even less when you consider that now we’re expected to work full-time, raise the children and still do the cooking, cleaning and laundry, i.e., all the chores men think are beneath them.

  And the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements are testimony that influential men in Hollywood (and the entertainment industry in general) are still exerting their power, demanding sexual ‘favours’ of aspiring actresses in return for the promise of a glittering career.

  So, despite all our advances, whether it be because of the first woman in mythology or the Garden of Eden’s, Eve, women are still, possibly irrevocably, tarnished; still something to be ogled, used, and kept in our place.

  We may be allowed to go out into the world and find fulfilling employment, but fundamentally our role is still to get married and perpetuate the species.

  Isn’t that the most basic of biological drives that led me to fly thousands of miles in search of love?

  And don’t think I don’t know how many people (even some women) will sneer at that and see me as some silly, hopeless romantic. But how does my looking for love (however subconsciously or biologically driven) make me weak or stupid? Ultimately, isn’t that what we’re all searching for? Love. A life partner. A soulmate.

  If it were the other way round and a man travelled across an ocean to meet a woman he’d met online, he’d be hailed a romantic hero. I’m betting there are plenty of romance novels that use that tired trope. Oh, and he’s also ridiculously handsome and rich of course. Because in the oeuvre of romance novels the old adage is still true: that a man in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wife.

  I’ve just re-read what I’ve written. Went off on quite a tangent, didn’t I? Blimey, it reads like Virginia Woolf’s ramblings – or to use the proper literary term: stream of consciousness. Call it what you like, I read To the Lighthouse for A Level. All that rapidly switching of perspective, run on sentences and meandering paragraphs; talk about big snooze. No flipping idea
what the woman was going on about half the time. And who cared about that privileged lot? I couldn’t muster much interest in any of them.

  Why couldn’t we have done The Pursuit of Love or Love in a Cold Climate instead? True, they’re also set in the rarefied world of the privileged, but Mitford’s characters are so much more interesting. She injects humour into them, while still examining their innermost emotions and deep desires. So much so, I connected with them, which is the whole point isn’t it? Surely every author wants readers to feel some sort of emotional connection to their characters. Whereas I felt nothing but disinterest for Woolf’s, I remember I cried when Linda died.

  I was glad when we moved on to the other two novels on the syllabus. Although the raw and ghostly passions in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors in Wuthering Heights was jarring after the genteel social rigidity of Pride and Prejudice.

  Anyway, my point at the beginning of all this was, Hesiod may not have said why, after spilling all the evils out into the world, hope was the only thing left in Pandora’s jar, (and it was a jar, box is a mis-translation) but if you look at the story another way, a less misogynistic, women-are-the-cause-of-man’s-ruination way, and take it for the metaphor it is, the reason is obvious.

  No matter how dark your situation may seem, if you look hard enough, you’ll find hope clinging to the edge.

  Cristina will look for me. And she’ll kick up such a stink the authorities will have to help her. I don’t know how, but I know her. And she won’t rest until she finds me.

  I hope.

  Chapter Four

  CRISTINA

  “I’m telling you, mum, something’s wrong.”

  Mum gives me that look. You know, the one people give small children and old people who are going ever so slightly gaga. The head tilted to one side, oh so patient look, that’s oh so annoyingly patronising when you’re not a small child or quietly going doolally.

  “Honestly, love. Don’t you think you’re overreacting? How long’s it been since Abbey sent you that video?”

  “Two days, but that’s not the point. The point is, I’ve heard nothing since and her phone goes straight to voicemail.”

  “She went there to meet a man. A man she’s been flirting with online for some time. I was young once and if it were me, I’m damn sure I’d have better things to do than call you every five minutes.”

  “Well it’s not you. And eww. Thanks for that mental image.”

  “Ah yes, I know you’d be happy to think your father and I have only had sex twice to produce you and your brother, but–”

  “Yes, thank you, mum, but we’re not talking about your sex life with dad right now. And, oh dear God, why do I have to be the only one whose mother is so happy to talk so openly about things her daughter really does not want to hear by the way. We’re talking about Abbey. My best friend, who’s missing.”

  Mum casts her gaze to the ceiling for a moment and sighs. She’s going to say more. She always says more. But I’m saved from having to hear whatever she was about to say as dad comes in with dinner.

  There had been gossip; the female neighbours whispering over fences and at the letter box on the corner as they’d wondered what exactly my father had started building on the patio within minutes of our moving in; leaving mum to oversee the moving men and make sure everything ended up where it should be, while Alessandro and I stayed out of earshot and explored our new neighbourhood.

  “He’s Italian,” they’d said in breathless awe; a collective flushing of cheeks as they discussed their new, exotic neighbour.

  Fifteen years later and in his early fifties, dad still cuts quite the dash. And the local ladies still coo and flutter their lashes; fingers agitating necklaces, palms pressed against chests as they blush. But they were and still are wasting their time. Dad had and only ever will have eyes for mum.

  And who can blame him? Quite the sex kitten in her heyday, (if the old black-and-white photo that sits on her dressing table is anything to go by) she’s now taken on the mantle of elegant mature woman, comfortable in her own skin and still oozing sensuality.

  Ask, Prezzo, Zizzi, not to mention Dominoes, Pizza Hut and even Dr. Oetker, there’s no shortage of pizza chains, takeaways or frozen options, and some of them aren’t that bad, but they’d all kill to know the secret of why dad’s pizzas are the best. I’m not saying that because he’s my dad, they just are. And I should know. I’ve eaten it in Naples, Florence and Milan, so I know the real thing when I taste it, and dad’s has them all beaten. It’s partly because he insists the only way to cook pizza is in a real forno a legna. Hence all the whispering when we’d first arrived here; there wasn’t room for it indoors, and anyway mum said it would make the kitchen too hot. The other reason? Well, I’ve made him promise to pass on his secret to me in his will, but for now he says the added ingredient is love. Soppy old romantic that he is.

  His cheeks are flushed from the heat of the wood-burning oven, and his smile is wide as he comes in through the French doors from the patio.

  All conversation stops for a moment as we all pause to inhale the mouth-watering aroma of garlic, basil, fruity extra-virgin olive oil and mozzarella di bufala of the deceptively simple yet delicious pizza margherita as he carefully slides it off the peel and onto the serving board in the centre of the table.

  The moment doesn’t last long though as, with the impatience of children on Christmas morning, Alessandro and I dive in, cutting off slices, holding them carefully by the crust that’s puffed to perfection as we ‘mmm’ around our mouthfuls.

  Mum takes advantage of my inability to speak to get in first with dad in the hopes of getting him on her side. After nearly thirty years of marriage she knows how to play him, knows exactly which buttons to press. This one being his over-protectiveness towards his children.

  “Enzo, speak to your daughter. She wants to go wandering around America on her own. You read about so many awful things happening over there every day. Shootings. Serial killers. Tell her it isn’t safe.”

  Dad takes a sip of wine. “Your mother’s right. It isn’t safe, piccolo. But tell me, why do you want to go?”

  “Because Abbey is missing, papa. If I don’t go, who will look for her and bring her home?”

  Papa. Yeah, that’s right, mum. I know a few tricks too. Dad can never refuse me when I call him papa. And look pleadingly at him; pinched brows, wide eyes and lips slightly parted, as I am now.

  Mum’s on to me. I can see her exasperated expression vaguely in my peripheral vision but keep looking directly at dad.

  “Why do you think she’s missing?” he asks.

  “Because she checked out of the hotel two days ago when she last made contact and she’s not answering her phone.”

  Alessandro sucks tomato sauce from his fingers as I and mum wait impatiently to see which of us will win over dad as he takes another ponderous sip of wine.

  “A girl in her twenties who hasn’t answered her mobile for two days? It’s unheard of. I can see why you’re concerned. But you cannot go to America alone. Alessandro will go with you.”

  My brother has laissez faire down to an art form; nothing troubles him. He drifts through life just letting things happen because, as he says, they’re going to anyway so why worry about it? So, his only reaction is to shrug and reach for another slice of pizza.

  Mum isn’t blessed with Alessandro’s sangfroid. She leans back in her chair, glares at my father and slaps her palms down on the table. For an English woman she’s very expressive when she wants to be; talks a lot with her hands. She must have learnt that from dad.

  “You’re displeased with me, tesoro.”

  Just because she’s married to him doesn’t mean mum’s any more immune to dad’s charms than any other woman. All women, really. The neighbours, sales assistants in shops who fall over themselves to serve him, even the teachers at my school. There had always been a definite fluttering of the female faculty on parents’ open day when he walked into the school hall. It�
�s his smouldering eyes, I reckon. That and his impeccable manners; his gentlemanly and delightfully old-fashioned way he has of kissing the back of women’s hands rather than shaking them. And him calling mum, tesoro does it every time.

  The maddened look in her eyes softens a little to one of mild irritation. Maybe she’s on to him too. “But what about her job?”

  “She has her holidays. And if she discovers Abbey truly is missing, she can extend her time off and take a leave of absence. Surely even her employers would understand the gravity of the situation then.”

  “And if they don’t she’ll be out of a job! And what about Alessandro? Is he to lose his job too?”

  “I doubt it will come to that for either of them,” dad pacifies. “Even if it does, there are other jobs. Our daughter the computer genius, our son the graphic artist. You’ve raised clever children, Stella, who care, are informed and always do the right thing. They’re a credit to you.”

  He takes hold of mum’s hand. Oh, he’s really laying it on now.

  “And besides, Abbey is like a daughter to us. If something bad has happened to her and she needs help, how could we live with ourselves if we did nothing? If the tables were turned and it was Cristina–”

  “Alright. Enough... Abbey should never have gone there. She should have made him come here.” Mum’s objections are carried away on the harsh huff of breath she expels. “But you’re right. We need to find out what, if anything, has happened to her. We owe it to Ellie and Matthew.”

  ***

  “So, are you going to help me or what?”

  Now it’s agreed I’m going to the States to look for Abbey I want to crack on. The first thing I need is a photo of Jensen – or Double J as he calls himself on Facebook. (His profile pic won’t do because it’s of his abs. Narcissistic tosser.) Because I’m not one of his ‘friends’, I can only get that via Abbey’s account. Problem is, I don’t know her FB password, or the one for her laptop to access it from there. Which is why I come to be staring daggers at Nathan; work-mate and would-be hacker, who’s being annoyingly unhelpful.