The Disappeared Read Free

throughout
days that should have been carefree.'
    'What
does it represent to you?'
    She
shook her head, pretending to herself that she didn't know, but words were
forming by themselves and spilled out almost against her conscious will. 'For
every something there is a nothing. For every object an absence . . . It's not
death I'm afraid of, it's emptiness.'
    'You
fear being disappeared?'
    'No
. . .' She struggled to put her mental state into words. 'It's of being where
there is nothing . . . and of not being where there is everything.'
    Dr
Allen's face registered his struggle to understand. 'Like being trapped on the
wrong side of the looking glass? Out of time, out of place, out of context.'
    'I
suppose.'
    There
was silence as the doctor scanned his notes, then rubbed his eyes, straining
with a thought his expression said he found troublesome but necessary to
express. He looked up and studied her face for a moment before deciding to
voice it. 'Are you a woman of faith, Mrs Cooper?' His use of her surname
confirmed his unease.
    'Why
do you ask?'
    'The
trinity is a powerful Christian symbol. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. . .'
    'Lots
of things come in threes: mother, father, child. Good, bad, indifferent.
Heaven, earth, hell.'
    'An
apt example. You were brought up in faith, as I remember. The concepts are
vivid to you.'
    'We
were sort of Anglican, I suppose. And there was Sunday school.'
    Dr
Allen looked thoughtful. 'You know, I think you're right. There is a piece
missing - the girl, the space beyond the room. Whether it is emotional, or
physical, or spiritual I couldn't yet say. But sometimes what we fear most is
what we need. The most powerful stories are often those about strange saviours,
demons who become an inspiration . . . like St Paul, or —’
    'Darth
Vader?'
    He
smiled. 'Why not?'
    'This
is sounding like a good old-fashioned diagnosis of suppression. Believe me,
I've tried letting it all hang out; it wasn't a happy experience.'
    'Would
you do one thing for me?' He was suddenly earnest. 'I really would like to have
one big push to crack this open.'
    'Fire
away.'
    'For
the next fortnight, keep a journal. Write down your feelings, your impulses,
your extremes, no matter how bizarre or irrational.'
    'In
the hope of finding what, exactly?'
    'We'll
know when we see it.'
    'You
can be honest. Is this a last throw of the dice?'
    He
shook his head and smiled gently. 'I wouldn't still be here if I didn't think I
could help you.'
    Jenny
pretended to be comforted, but couldn't help feeling that psychiatry was a slow
road to nowhere. She had a small grain of faith that somehow, some day she
would look up into a clear sky and feel nothing but undiluted happiness, but
how that would come to pass was something she couldn't yet begin to answer.
Perhaps her discussions with Dr Allen were worthwhile; at the very least he
stirred her up from time to time, made her look into the corners she would
otherwise avoid.
    Later,
as she drove home through the starless night, a single phrase of his kept
repeating itself: strange saviours. It was a new idea to her. She liked it.

Chapter 2
     
    Jenny
had become used to living with the noise of a sixteen-year-old in the house,
and part of her missed it when Ross spent the weekend with his father in
Bristol. She would have phoned Steve, the infuriatingly free spirit she
described as her 'occasional boyfriend', but he hadn't called her for nearly a
fortnight, even though he had been forced to acquire a phone; the architects' practice
he was articled to during his final year of study had insisted on it. She had
encouraged him to break out from his self-imposed exile on the small farm above
Tintern, where, for ten years, he had tried to live out a self-sufficient
fantasy. Now that he went to work in the city and spent his nights at a
draughtsman's desk they scarcely saw each other.
    She
didn't like to admit to loneliness - escaping from a suffocating marriage to
live in the country was meant to be a