The Disappeared Read online

  About the Author

  Amy Lord is a writer, blogger and digital marketer from north-east England. She won a Northern Writers’ Award in 2015 for The Disappeared and was also longlisted in the inaugural Bath Novel Award. An earlier manuscript saw her shortlisted for Route Publishing’s Next Great Novelist Award. Amy is currently working on a new novel, which was developed as part of a year-long mentoring scheme with Writers’ Block NE.

  Praise for The Disappeared

  ‘Provocative and prescient, The Disappeared is an unflinching tale of resistance in dark political times. Set in a near-future Britain where books are banned, this is a thought-provoking dystopian debut.’

  – Caroline Ambrose, Founder of The Bath Novel Award

  ‘The Disappeared grabs you by the scruff of the neck with its gripping narrative. But as well as that, it breathes down your neck with the eerie probability that this bleak dystopian universe will soon reflect the world that we inhabit. With populism and the misuse of technology on the rise, this novel is as harrowing as it is enthralling.’

  – Matt Abbott, poet and activist

  The Disappeared

  Amy Lord

  This edition first published in 2019

  Unbound

  6th Floor Mutual House, 70 Conduit Street, London W1S 2GF

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  All rights reserved

  © Amy Lord, 2019

  The right of Amy Lord to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-78965-028-0

  ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-78965-027-3

  Cover design by Mecob

  For Ste, for the best half of my life

  With grateful thanks to Susan Robson for helping to make this book happen.

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  Alison Simpson

  Laurie-Ann Spencer

  Lucy Sullivan

  David G Tubby

  Philip Whiteley

  Louise Wilkin

  Part One

  One

  I was eleven when my father disappeared. It’s almost twenty years since the night I last saw him. I still remember that knock at the door; it echoes down through the years, as it echoed that night through the walls of our home.

  I use the word ‘disappeared’, but it always feels like a lie. My father didn’t vanish. He didn’t walk to the shops for a packet of cigarettes and fail to come back. He didn’t run away to start another life somewhere, another family. He didn’t even leave behind a body, washed up on some riverbank, or slowly spinning from a straining tree branch.

  That last night with my father was like every other. He returned late from his job at the university, where he lectured in English Literature. Public transport was unreliable in those days, when the regime was still taking hold. He would walk the five miles home each day, carrying his bag, heavy with papers. I would watch from our sixth-floor window as he made his way across the car park, past the burned-out shells of old hatchbacks, where the braver children would sometimes play army, machine-gunning each other with sticks or old bits of piping. His ragged hair would take on a life of its own in the breeze, his thin shoulders tensed beneath the weight of his students’ words, twitching uneasily at every fake bullet that came his way.

  By then we had been moved into the flat. Shared accommodation, they called it. We weren’t allowed to live in our house in the suburbs any more. My mother mourned the loss of her rose garden and the expensive paper that lined our living room walls, its delicate floral pattern climbing from oak floor to corniced ceiling. She wept about the silverware she was forced to leave behind, a wedding gift from the grandmother who passed away weeks after her marriage.

  Our new home became a one-bedroom flat, former housing association detritus that stank of cat piss and had holes in the plaster the size of fists. I slept in the bedroom while my parents shared an old sofa bed in the main room, which was littered with piles of my father’s books, the vibrancy of their spines bringing life to the beige world we found ourselves adrift in. He had salvaged as much as he could from our house, but my mother wouldn’t let him risk rescuing anything more. He would fret sometimes, struck by a jolt of longing for a particular book that had been abandoned.

  We hadn’t long fallen asleep when the knock came. I sat up in bed, disorientated. The knock came again. It was dark, but I could hear my parents whispering in the front room, my mother’s voice low and pleading.

  ‘You can’t let them in. Think of Clara.’

  My father snapped, ‘I have to, Lucia.’ I listened to them half-dressing in haste. I could picture my mother smoothing her hair as he opened the door, a nervous smile on his face. I crept out from beneath the covers to peep through the slit in my bedroom door. The sudden light made my eyes water.

  They barged in without invitation: four men in the black and grey uniforms of the Authorisation Bureau. The door was flung back hard; there was a crack as it hit the wall. My father was jostled as they marched into the living room, where there was barely enough space to stand.

  They were all much taller than he was, with broad shoulders and thick arms. They were young too. I didn’t realise how young until years later, looking back.

  There was another man with them. They saluted him stiffly. ‘Major.’

  He barely acknowledged them. ‘Please, excuse the interruption. I’m sorry we had to call so late, but we need to ask your husband some questions.’

  He addressed my mother, who hung back, clutching her thin dressing gown closed over her nightdress. The width of the sofa bed was between them, yet she took a step back as his eyes raked over her.

  My father moved forward, his body shielding her from the major’s gaze. ‘What’s all this about?’

  Without speaking, the major turned his back and began circling the small flat, taking in every detail. He ran a finger over the piles of old paperbacks that lined the walls. ‘So many books…’ With a flick of his wrist he sent them tumbling, sliding across the floor in a wave of yellowed paper and dust.

  There was a pause; the air still after an avalanche. He stooped to retrieve one of the novels from the floor and examined the cover. He held it up for my father to see. I was too far away to read the title of the book, but I recognised the colours on the jacket. It was the memoir of a South American
poet who had spent much of his life as a political prisoner. I knew it was banned.

  The major flung the book at my father’s chest. It landed with a dull slap and ricocheted back onto the floor. He signalled his men, almost casually. They didn’t speak, just moved forward as one to take my father by the arms, fingers digging into his flesh.

  In a blur of satin and bare legs my mother dashed across the room to clutch at his clothes. ‘No, please. You can’t take him. You can’t.’

  They shoved her away and she stumbled on the carpet of books, catching her feet and falling back onto the sofa bed, her dressing gown falling open to reveal the nightgown, almost sheer from age under the harsh lights. All the soldiers stared at her. She might as well have been naked. She moaned softly and I could feel the air in the room begin to boil.

  My father went to help her up. It was a mistake. One of the soldiers drew his weapon and brought it down quickly on the back of my father’s head. He fell, his knees crumpling, a rush of air escaping from his mouth. His face landed against my mother’s stomach and she clutched at him, trying to draw him closer.

  All four soldiers came to life. They gripped his arms and heaved him up, but he was dazed and couldn’t stand. The back of his head was bloody. They were forced to support him, a dead weight, bare feet trailing behind. My mother was crying and saying his name over and over, trying to hold on. One of the youths released his hold on my father and pushed her back onto the bed, looming over her as she tried to shuffle away. With him between us, I couldn’t see her face.

  The others dragged my father outside. Our neighbours huddled behind the cracks in their own doors. They stayed hidden in their darkened flats, too afraid to emerge, although we all knew they were watching.

  And he was gone. My final image of my father was not his face, but the soles of his feet as they disappeared through the door. I remember vividly how dirty they were. I felt tears on my cheeks and my body shook as I tried so desperately to stay quiet.

  My mother was crying too, trying to pull herself up off the bed, to pull her clothes together. Her eyes flickered wildly from the doorway to the man leaning over her. A strangled noise escaped from the back of her throat.

  I had almost forgotten the major, when he put his hand on the soldier’s arm. ‘Go and make sure they have the prisoner under control.’

  When my father was gone, the major sat on the bed beside my mother, who huddled with her knees crushing her chest and a fist in her mouth to muffle the sobs. She turned her face away. Slowly, he reached out a hand and touched her hair.

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to see this, Mrs Winter. But I hope you understand. Your husband broke the rules and we can’t allow that.’

  His fingers twined through her hair softly, pulling strands loose from their clip. She had beautiful hair, long and dark; it shone in the light.

  ‘I know it’s difficult, but really, this is the best thing that could have happened. You’ve got the chance to redeem yourself, away from your husband. You can have a new life.’

  A sob choked its way free from my mother’s lips. She clamped her hand over her mouth as his fingers stilled in her hair. He sighed heavily.

  ‘Perhaps this isn’t the best time to talk. It might be better if I came back another day.’ He released her hair and stood, brushing his hands over his uniform to make sure it was all in order.

  He looked at her for a long moment, as though he wanted to say something more. But he settled for ‘Good evening.’ With a nod, he turned to leave. The door stood open behind him.

  I burst from my hiding place to close it, caught the echo of his boots as they strode away and down the stairs; caught the whisper of the neighbours as they faded back inside their homes.

  I tried to force the door shut, but it wouldn’t go. The soldiers must have broken something when they forced their way in.

  ‘Mama,’ I wailed, looking to her for help. But she was lost to me too, curled up on her side, the soft fabric of her dressing gown rippling as her shoulders trembled. I cried harder. Clutching a chair, I dragged it across the room and braced it under the door handle so that no one else would be able to come in.

  I crossed the room in a rush, my eyes blurring as my feet slid on the discarded books. I could fall at any second; fall and never get up. I flung myself on the bed next to my mother, tried to curl my body around her but she tensed at my touch and pulled away.

  Cold, I lay alone on the edge of her bed, listening as she sobbed herself to sleep. I stayed awake all night, staring at the broken door handle. Just before dawn there were footsteps in the hallway. They stopped outside our door. I held my breath as someone rattled the handle. But the chair held and the rattling stopped. I listened to the footsteps trail away into the night.

  Part Two

  Two

  It was mid-morning and the streets were quiet. I kept my head down as I walked to the university, carefully avoiding the cracks in the pavement where weeds had broken through, threatening to catch my feet and make me trip.

  Outside the Employment Bureau office on the corner there were still a few men huddling in the hope of work. An armed guard watched them lazily. Usually the vans came early to collect them and transport them out of London to work in the fields, or take them to a building site to haul breeze blocks, or to clear rubble from a demolition site. Sometimes the jobs involved disposing of bodies from a recent purge, but no one was supposed to talk about that. Those who were particularly desperate for work would linger throughout the day, waiting for something, anything that would help them feed their kids that night.

  I glanced at my watch and began to walk a little faster. I was due in the office soon, ready to receive a line of students who all wanted to discuss their latest grades. Usually the ones who came to complain were those with rich parents. But it was only those with government jobs whose grades I would end up changing. It was a dance; a game we played. I’d give them a bad grade to highlight their lack of study or the laziness of their ideas and they’d come to see me, arrogant and secure enough to know I’d have no choice but to give them a higher mark if I wanted to keep my job.

  There was a commotion ahead and I glanced up, my pace slowing abruptly. Two black vans had screeched to a stop, surrounding a small car. Soldiers were hauling a woman with grey hair out of the car while she yelled and hollered. They shoved her face down on the bonnet and her shouts stopped. I crossed the street quickly, looking away. Traffic shifted like water around a stone as everyone on the street diverted their attention from what was happening.

  I hurried down a side street instead, somewhere I didn’t usually venture, even during the day. Tightening my grip on the bag slung across my body, I felt my shoulders tense. My eyes began to dart from side to side.

  The acrid smell of burning filled the air and my nostrils flared. I walked by an underpass where a group of men huddled around an oil drum, warming their hands over the flames. They looked up at me as I passed, their eyes blank and sunken. I tried not to look at them, but it was a compulsion. Whenever I came across a group of men broken like this, I always looked for my father. Sometimes I’d imagine I saw the curve of his cheek or the colour of his eyes, but it was never real. So many years had passed, but I still missed him every day.

  There was a patch of scrubland further along the street. There had been a children’s park there at some point, but it had been vandalised so many times and there was no money to repair it. Gradually anything of value was stripped away. Now it was a place where homeless people sometimes lived, albeit briefly. This wasn’t a city where it was safe to stay in one place for too long.

  I heard the voices first, before I saw them. A sense of dread awakened in my stomach.

  A family was hunched together on the wasteland, a flimsy tent that had seen better days behind them, quivering in the breeze. An old shopping trolley sat beside it, with what I assumed to be everything they owned in this world.

  There were four of them: an older couple and a teenage boy and girl.
They had lilting accents that I struggled to place. A group of boys were dancing around them. I could hear the taunts they were flinging, the insults, the racism. Most of the boys appeared to be in their mid-teens, but some were younger.

  The family sat there silently as the boys’ cries grew louder. I stopped, caught in the web of tension that filled the air. The father looked like an old man. His face and hands were scarred and he had a vacant stare that made me wonder if he was even aware of what was happening. His wife cowered behind him; the children stared at the floor.

  The boys continued their dance. At this time of the day, they should have been in school; there were penalties for truancy. Usually the only children who skipped classes were already abandoned or alone, or living in poverty. Society had little for them. This group had found someone with even less and they revelled in the power that gave them, however fleeting. I could picture them all in the sleek black and grey uniforms of the Authorisation Bureau, taller and throwing blows at their victims, not just words.

  ‘Whatchoo fuckin’ lookin’ at, eh?’

  The pack turned towards me and I froze. The siblings looked at me, their eyes demanding my help.

  ‘I…’

  I didn’t have any words. I didn’t have any breath. My mouth opened and closed and I wondered how it had come to this. I’d never forgotten what it felt like to stand in the darkness behind my bedroom door and fear what was about to happen. I’d never forgotten what it felt like to witness violence.

  It still shocked me when it came. Most of the boys were looking furiously at me when it happened. The youngest of the gang, who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, picked up a rock that was lying on the ground at his feet. I watched him as he weighed it in his hand, studying the smooth texture of the surface. And then he threw it.