The Vanishing Read Online Free

painkillers.
    ‘Have you heard of Elizabeth Wellbeck? Or Freddie Eaton?’
    ‘Should I have?’
    Simmons started telling him about the Wellbeck-Eaton family. Sara Eaton was part of it, Freddie was her father, Liz her mother. Simmons made it sound like a dynasty. They were big in this and that, had a lot of cash and so on. He phrased it all very delicately, but Tom got the idea. ‘I’m here on behalf of Sara Eaton,’ he said. ‘She wants to meet you.’
    ‘You mean she wants some work done?’
    ‘She wants to talk to you, at least. I can take you to her now.’
    ‘It’s the weekend. She can come to the office on Monday.’
    ‘That might be difficult. She’s actually in the Seychelles.’
    ‘The Seychelles? As in … in the Indian Ocean?’
    ‘That’s right. I have a private jet waiting at an airfield just outside Luton. We can be there in about eighteen hours, if we leave now.’
    Tom stared at him with his mouth open. ‘Are you being serious? This is one of Alex’s little jokes, right?’
    ‘Alex?’
    ‘You’re being paid by someone, right? You’re filming me?’
    Simmons didn’t find that funny. He started to walk past Tom. ‘I’ll wait in my car,’ he said. ‘I’m instructed to offer you five thousand pounds for your time – to fly out to Miss Eaton, meet her and speak to her, spend perhaps two nights maximum at her location in guaranteed comfort, then you will return here by private jet.’ He was on the pavement now. ‘You can think about it for a few minutes then let me know.’

4
    Seven miles away, in her house in Fulham, Rachel Gower lay curled on her bed with all the curtains drawn and the lights off. Today was the anniversary. Twenty-two years ago, to the day. Outside it was sunny, and the garden was full of flowers and colour, but she didn’t want to see that. She didn’t want to see anything. She wanted to be a blank space, empty of thought, without consciousness. She wanted to dissolve into the bed, become part of it, sink into oblivion until the day was past and gone.
    But there was no chance of that. No matter what she did there was no chance of that. So she kept her eyes closed, listened to her heart racing and stammering, felt the panic rising.
    She couldn’t stop herself. The memories were there even if she managed to ignore them. They were there constantly, every day of her life, a movie reel that played endlessly in her head, just behind the surface illusion of rationality she wore like a set of clothes. But all the time they were insisting, probing, trying to find a way through. She had to fight it with all her strength, because if they got through they would kill her.
    April 14 1990. The anguish was still a raw wound. If she allowed her mind to go there, each trivial memory could trigger a mental collapse that would require hospitalisation, literally. It had happened ten times in the last twenty-two years. On three occasions, in the early years, she had been so desperate that she had self-harmed. In 1998 a kind of cold-blooded insanity had found her plunging her arm into a fire, trying to drive back the endless terrifying scenarios with overwhelming physical pain. She had wanted to push her face into the flames, but that would have killed her, and that was the one thing she was absolutely forbidden. She had to live, survive, be here. Because the event had left her a responsibility, a splinter of hope that bored daily into her sanity – the possibility that Lauren would return. And if that happened – and it could – she had to be alive, she had to be ready.
    She had been alone the morning it happened. Roger had worked the night at Barts, so was asleep in the spare room when they got up. She had dressed and fed Lauren herself, without waking him, then Lauren had played on the floor of the bedroom while Rachel herself washed and dressed, turning many times to speak to her. Nothing significant, though she could remember every word. Just normal chatter, a mother to her