When You Disappeared

I hadn’t jumped into Simon and I’s marriage wearing rose-tinted glasses. I’d known, given our history with both sets of dysfunctional parents, that we’d be lucky to get through life without a bump or two in the road. And when we bickered, or when screaming kids made the house feel like a prison, it was normal to fantasise about running away.

But that’s precisely what it should have remained – a fantasy. Only he’d made it his reality. And my logic reasoned that if he, the man I’d loved and trusted since forever, could do that to me, then Tom, someone I’d only known five minutes in comparison, was going to do the same.

After finding out about Simon’s deceit, I took out my rage towards him on that poor innocent heart, without Tom ever understanding why. I’d watch him over dinner and wonder why someone so attractive, funny and caring would ever want to be saddled with a family that wasn’t his. Instead of feeling lucky or grateful and that I deserved him, I didn’t trust him.

I asked myself if I was just a stopgap until he found a younger, better-looking model who could give him kids of his own. Then I gave serious thought to having his baby. It was a man’s basic instinct to reproduce, and I was stopping him from doing that, even though he’d shown no inkling of wanting his own children. But having ours hadn’t stopped my husband from running away.

Besides, I had a business to run, and I knew I couldn’t deal with all the craziness and upheaval another child would bring. And that meant it was a given Tom would leave me. That’s what people I loved did. They left me. Mum, Dad, Billy, Simon, Paula . . .

So, before he had the chance to run, I spent months trying to drive him away. I had to be aware of his every move, winding myself up a treat over what he was doing if he wasn’t doing it with me. I rifled through the glovebox of his car hoping to find a pair of some other woman’s knickers. I flicked through his wallet for receipts from places he hadn’t told me he’d visited. I checked the suitcases he stored in his garage to see if they were packed in case he wanted to do a moonlight flit. One night, I even left the kids to sleep home alone while I stood behind a conifer outside his house waiting for female visitors.

But despite every sneaky, stupid way I tried to prove myself right, there was no evidence to suggest he was anything other than a decent, honest man. And that frustrated the hell out of me – if I’d missed traces of Simon’s unhappiness, I probably couldn’t see Tom’s either.

So I created arguments over nothing – missing groceries he’d forgotten to buy; not putting the bins out before they were collected; even how he wasn’t satisfying me in bed.

All the time I knew exactly what I was doing. I just couldn’t stop myself from tarring all men with Simon’s filthy brush. They say the quickest way to drive a dog mad is to stroke it then smack it.

But my dog just kept running back for more.

12 May

‘Let me move in,’ Tom asked suddenly.

‘What – why?’ I replied, confused that after all my goading, he’d still not cracked. Quite the opposite, it seemed.

‘I’m not stupid, Catherine. Something happened the day you threw Simon’s clothes away. And while you’re obviously not ready to tell me about it, I know you need to feel more secure about us. So let me prove to you I’m serious. I love you; I love the children. We’ve been together more than two years now, so let’s see where this takes us. Let me move in.’

I looked him in the eye, pushed him onto the bed and made love to him there and then, all the time knowing we were never going to last. All it did was extend the inevitable.

I went through the motions of pretending we were a family – trying to convince myself we might just work. But eventually my resentment towards Simon reared its ugly head again. I’d wake up in the night and stretch my arm across the bed to check Tom was still there. Once I shouted at him for not being next to me when all he’d done was go to the bathroom.

I gave him the silent treatment for the best part of a week when he came home from the pub later than usual. And when I found two phone numbers I didn’t recognise on my itemised bill, I refused to believe he wasn’t having an affair.

No matter how often Tom assured me he understood my unforgivable behaviour, Simon had already ruined any future we could’ve had together.

And six weeks after he came to live with us, I asked him to leave.




SIMON

Los Telaros, Mexico, twenty-one years earlier

13 April

The pool cue snapped in half as effortlessly as a toothpick when it made contact with the old man’s shoulders. He grunted as it thrust him forwards and he sprawled across the table.

His attacker, equally as drunk and elderly as his victim, swung one hundred and eighty degrees with the remaining half of the cue in his hand, and collapsed into a disorientated heap. His counterpart fumbled around the table for a ball to smack against his assailant’s head, but when he heaved it, one too many bourbons made him lose his grip and the ball nosedived a few feet across the room instead, barely nudging the skirting board.

Trying our best not to laugh at the clumsy fight before us, Miguel and I stepped in to lift the two drunken pensioners to their feet. Their arms spun aimlessly, like hurricane-damaged windmill sails, only making contact with the smoky air around them as they fought for the attention of the same prostitute.

‘They’re like this every time,’ explained Miguel as he pulled the frailer-looking of the two up from the floor where he’d just landed.

‘Aren’t they friends? I saw them arrive together,’ I asked, safely concealing the other behind me.

‘Friends? They’re father and son!’ he laughed. ‘They share the same taste in women. By the time you leave this whorehouse, there won’t be much of life you ain’t seen.’

I’d been drug-free and hitchhiking around Mexico for the best part of four months when I’d walked through the bordello’s doors for the first time. Many towns I’d blown through had their own whiskerias – brothels that sold much more than Wild Turkey in their back rooms. Their neon signs targeted long-haul truck drivers who wanted to take their minds off the endless roads ahead with female company.

But with its orange-tiled roof and black wrought-iron balconies scattered across the first-floor facade, this bordello in Los Telaros resembled a hotel. There was no signage or indication it was anything else. I hadn’t intended to look for work, and sex had been the last thing on my mind. All I’d required was something alcohol-based to quench my thirst and a place to rest my blistered feet.

Inside, porcelain lamps on smoked-glass tables discreetly illuminated purple walls. Glass chandeliers hung from wooden rafters above white leather sofas and a solitary reception desk. Scented candles masked cigar smoke with hints of sandalwood and vanilla. The crushed velvet curtains remained closed to prying eyes.

Its true purpose was revealed at the bar, where men of all ages were fussed over by attentive girls in varying states of undress.

I’d sat at the counter, swirling ice cubes around my glass of Jim Beam, amused by the show. The girls’ acting abilities were faultless as they pretended to desire the customers and not the pesos in their pockets.

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