THE DISAPPEARANCE: Part One. 'Ellie' by Virginia Hainsworth

It’s three o’clock in the morning.  I am awake.  Again.  I gaze through the open curtains at the bare-faced moon.  It is a delicate, dreamy blue and it stares back, unblinkingly, at me.  I wish it could tell me where you are.

I turn to your empty pillow and hug it pathetically.  Where are you?  I know you are out there, somewhere, alive.  I would sense it if you weren’t.

I’ve told the children that you have gone away for a few days with work.  I hate lying to them, but what can I do?  Cassie asked if you had gone to stay with her dad.

For what must be the hundredth time, I trawl every quadrant of my brain for anything unusual in the days leading up to Tuesday morning when you left for work, as normal.  I’ve been over this so many times in my head and with the police.  You left, as you always do, in a rush.  You didn’t take your wallet and bank cards.  You never do.  Just enough money for the day.  I can never understand why you do that.

I’m afraid I’ve looked through all your papers, in your desk drawer, to see if there is anything out of the ordinary.  I’m sorry, but I just felt that I had to and, anyway, the police told me to search.  I felt like a snoop.  I couldn’t find anything odd.  Your passport wasn’t there, of course, but we couldn’t find it when we got back from holiday a couple of weeks ago.  We thought you must have lost it coming out of the airport on the way home.  Did you remember to report it missing?  I bet you’ve forgotten.  That’s so like you.

It’s past four o’clock now.  The moon is dipping down behind the houses at the back.  Just peeping over the chimney pots.  It’s teasing me.  It’s taunting me with the thought that you may have left me for someone else.  I know you haven’t, but the police referred to the possibility.  As did your mother.  She asked if everything was alright ‘between the two of you, if you know what I mean.’  As if I would tell her if there was anything wrong.  She wants to come and stay but I just couldn’t cope with that.  Part of me feels bad about saying no because she must be feeling pretty wretched.  The sliding moon has another disquieting thought for me as it slinks down even lower.  Your mother seemed a bit evasive when we spoke today.  Hesitant.  I try to cancel that thought.  She always sounds cagey with me.

And your closest friend, Jim.  Have you confided anything in him?  He said not.  No, you wouldn’t, would you?  You wouldn’t tell Jim anything you hadn’t told me.  Not Jim, of all people.

It’s five a.m now and the guilty moon has disappeared completely, leaving me feeling even more alone.  I must have slept a little, because remnants of a dream claw at my mind.  You in a dark place.  You’re calling my name, but it’s not my name you’re calling.  It’s my old name.  The one you don’t know about, the one you can’t possibly know, can never know.  I’m back in the children’s home, where I grew up.  The one I told you about.  Then I can hear my mother calling me, the mother I never knew.  But I can’t hear what name she’s using.  Her voice turns into yours.  You’re in a sunless place.  Your voice grows fainter and more fragile.  It disappears completely as I become fully awake. 

Six a.m now and the sun is well over the horizon, sweeping into the corners of my mind and casting away all shadowy thoughts.  For the time being at least.

I am left with the certain knowledge that you must be ill.  Certain, that is, until the next thought.  You’re ill.  That can be the only explanation.  I’m sorry I didn’t realise.  Can you forgive me for not noticing?  I’ll come and find you.  I’ll bring you home and look after you.  I’ll help you to get better.  No-one need know you’re ill.  I feel as though I should know where you are. 

I suddenly notice the faint outline of the moon.  It hasn’t gone after all.

It's the love that lasts

What was more shocking - the fact that my 50 year old second cousin had died, or that I found out on Facebook?  Or, was it the fact that I cried?  I cried like I loved him, really loved him, yet I hadn’t seen him in at least three years, and following that occasion I had decided I really wouldn’t mind if I never saw him again.  

He barely acknowledged me, and I was appalled at the person he had become.  It was at my brother’s house.  I had travelled a long way to see my brother, and Terry was there.  He had become a frequent visitor.  He was a mess, and was looking to my brother for support, but it was too much for him.  It wasn’t the fact that Terry needed help which bothered me though.  It was the fact that he seemed so utterly self centred, that his needs and his suffering was so much more important than the needs of anyone else; that he seemed so oblivious to others.  I had an hour to spend with my brother, and he’d told Terry he couldn’t see him when he called, but he turned up anyway.  He’d met a girl, and he had to tell my brother all about it there and then.  And the way he talked about her appalled me so much, that I couldn’t stay there to listen to it any longer, and so I left.  In the six months or so that my brother and Terry were close, my brother had rescued Terry after a suicide attempt at least twice.  He tried to help him face up to his alcoholism, but he was in denial.  My brother had had problems of his own, so was sympathetic and wanted to help, but he wasn’t equipped to help him.  Terry wanted to become my brother’s lodger, and when my brother refused, he lost interest and moved on.  

But when I cried, I wasn’t only crying for his family: his long suffering parents; his sister; his children; and his grandchildren left behind, or my brother who I knew would carry some guilt that he couldn’t help him.  When I was crying, my head was filled with memories.  Memories of when we were younger.  Memories from before it all seemed to go wrong.  There were 10 years between us, and he had been the cool older cousin admired from afar.  He was handsome, friendly and funny.  He reminded me of my first childhood crush, a young John Travolta.   When I was a teenager, he would sometimes give me a lift home from school if he was passing.  As a self-conscious fifteen year old, he took me for a ride on the back of his motorbike - the first and last ever time - it was exhilarating and I loved every second of it.  I can still picture the moment, with my arms wrapped around his leather jacket as we leant into the corners;  feel and hear the crunch of the leather, the roar of the engine, the wind catching the ends of my long hair and the heaviness of the helmet; and that feeling that I wanted the moment to last forever.  And it has.  And it will.  Another treasured memory was an evening in my early twenties, when we shared a few drinks and the family secrets - slightly embellished, but very amusing.

Interestingly, the day before I heard the news, I was having lunch with friends, when one of the ladies said how moved she had been by the media reports following the brutal stabbing of Ann Maguire by one of her pupils.  Ann was reported to have been such a loving person who did so much for so many people, and there was a huge outpouring of love for her.  One of the men in our group said that, though he didn’t know Ann and had no reason to think anything that was said about her wasn’t true, it always surprised him how people are exalted when they die and held up to be saints.  He used the example of his own headmaster’s funeral, where he was said to be the saviour of his school, when he was anything but.  We are none of us so perfect as we might appear to be at our funerals.

Isn’t that they way it should be?  There are some lost souls devoid of love and conscience, take Jimmy Savile as an example, but for the rest of us, we are perfectly imperfect in our own way.  We all have a darker side and have done things we are less proud of, but in the end, its the love that lasts, as love never dies, and that is how we should and will be remembered.  So hopefully, I will be able to go to my second cousin’s funeral, and if I do, although the last moments we shared together were not the best, I will be there with the rest of them, celebrating and remembering the love in his life, and the loving ways in which he touched mine.

The Day my Husband Left for Mars

The day my husband left for Mars, we had beans on toast for tea. We sat around the table, the children and I, stabbing beans with our forks, and looking out of the window at the dusky sky, wondering if one of the little silvery dots was him.

 I cried, of course, when he told me.

 ‘You might as well be dead,’ I said.

 Tom said it wasn’t like that. He said we would stay in touch, with video messages and emails.     

 He said, ‘Just think how proud the kids will be, when their Dad is one of the first humans on Mars.’ 

 I said, ‘They won’t have a Dad anymore.’

 He said, ‘This is a once in a lifetime chance.’

 I said, ‘What about your life with us? What about our life together?’

 He said, ‘This has always been my dream – to be an explorer, to be a hero.’

 I said, ‘I dreamed of growing old with you.’

 He said, ‘Please don’t try to stop me.'

Tom bought the new Lego Mars set for the children, and James spent hours constructing the model habitation pods and rover vehicles, moving the little astronauts in their Mars suits around the encampment.

‘Look, maybe this one is Daddy!’ he said, and I had to look away.

I didn’t go to the launch. I stayed at home, and washed the kitchen floor, tile by tile. James and Catherine went with Tom’s sister. James took the little Lego astronaut with him, clutched tightly in his fist. I don’t think they really understood that he wasn’t coming back. How could they?

After he’d gone, I grieved. It was a strange sort of grief – angry, despairing, lonely, disbelieving, - but interrupted with emails and messages from Tom, from ‘the other side’.  He wrote about space-sickness and dehydrated food. He said he missed us.

Mum and Dad brought round pies and hot-pots to make sure we were all eating properly, and I pushed the food around my plate, trying to hide bits under my cutlery like a naughty child. Tom’s parents came too, but I could hardly bear to look at their stricken faces, the mirror of my own.

My friends were divided. There were those in the ‘forget him!’ camp who talked as if Tom had left me – I suppose he had. This camp urged me to get out, start having fun, start dating. Unthinkable – in my head I was still married -a Mars widow.

The other camp didn’t know what to say to me. They averted their eyes, crossed the street to avoid an awkward meeting. I didn’t blame them.

It’s been a month since Tom left.  He wanted to be a hero, but it turns out that the world soon gets bored of grainy pictures of people floating around a space-ship. He’s old news now, until something more exciting happens - they blow up, they crash land, they kill each other – something like that. After all, it will be eight months until they even reach Mars.

I am, however, much more news-worthy.  The week after the launch, I was on TV. I sat on the daytime chat show sofa, opposite the sympathetic host with a tear in her eye.

 ‘And how are you feeling now?’ she asked, her head on one side, to emphasise her concern. ‘Do you worry about him?’

And it was then that I realised that I barely thought about Tom, hour by hour, day by day. I didn’t wonder what he was doing, or worry whether he was safe. I was too busy dealing with his absence.

I didn’t say any of this, of course. I smiled, bravely, and I said, ‘I am so proud of my husband. He is fulfilling his dream, and that is enough for me.’ The audience erupted into spontaneous applause. The Twitter feed went into overdrive.  The show went into a feature on hair-care in zero gravity, but, at that moment, I became a worldwide icon for the brave, selfless wife. 

Now our daily life is consumed greedily, examined and discussed, scrutinised and shared.  We are followed, we are photographed; there is talk of a movie.  Everyone knows who we are, and there is no escape, no possibility of return to our old lives.

Tom hurtles on in his claustrophobic capsule, into forever. He has left us, but by an equal and opposite reaction, we are leaving him, too.

At night, I dream of space. I am hanging, lightly tethered to a bit of rock, cocooned in a cumbersome suit and helmet. I am surrounded by a deep blackness, scattered with tiny points of light. I cannot touch anything, I reach out with my gloved hand and there is nothing, and more nothing. I am adrift.

FINAL CURTAIN

His were dancer's feet,
not meant to walk such empty streets.
His graceful hands
now freeze around a bottle drained of good intent.

Eyes which once looked up
in theatres full of adoration,
now stare down at shoes
with holes which let all hope drain out.

That choreography of lament,
the shuffling, aching bones and leaden limbs,
shoulders hunched in grief,
from carrying no weight of love.

His pavement stage
and gutter stalls are full of litter.
His critics now the passers-by who frown
and disapprove or throw a coin and not a rose.

But in his head,
applause lives on, his food of choice,
and as he fades into his cardboard home,
his dancing heart gives up the beat.

Final curtain.  No encore.