After the vanishing act

So off to Glastonbury with my morbid moods, I had to write this when I got back, having no internet access on the lam, so forgive me for adding some dramatic detail.
The journey takes an age and I wait it out, staring at the rain washed windows of various trains and busses whilst ignoring the passengers. I drink vending machine tea, which tastes dead to me after weeks of the home brewed, copper kettle variety. I munch on a few miniature packets of biscuits, feeling the food bunch in my stomach like wet sand. After only a short time I have become acclimatised to life on an island in a period before electricity, now it’s hard taking trains seriously.
I am the only passenger to disembark in Glastonbury, and the street is otherwise empty, a residential street. I walk for ages trying to find the shops, but discover only rows of houses and gardens. Eventually I stop at a corner shop and buy a newspaper as cover for asking directions. I follow these and eventually go through an improbable gap between some houses. There the street dead ends in a neat square of grass with a droopy birch, bordered solidly on all sides by houses. One of the houses however is not a house, but the back of a shop with a huge arch, like an underpass, through which I go. Stretching out on either side of me is the high street, with it’s colourfully fronted shops and little cobbled recesses leading to restaurants.
I wander around for a while, going in and out of shops full of glittering touristy rubbish and others selling the paraphernalia of the serious witch. The scent of handmade incense clings to me as I walk the open street, the smell of ground resin and singed herbs which reminds me of home. I run my hands over racks of thick coloured candles without interest and sift polished gemstones from hand to hand. But there’s nothing to really grab me, I feel as if I’m not entirely present, as if my real body is still on the island being shouted and gawped at.
I decide to stop somewhere for some dinner, and then check into a bed and breakfast or something. The restaurant I eventually choose is a dusky blue with hanging canopies of translucent fabric. I sit alone at an indigo draped table, eating a kind of Moroccan thing with apricots and couscous. The candle on the table burns down to its cheap glass holder and goes out. I still feel separate, as if none of these things are real. Already I want to return to the island, to get on with my real life. But I stubbornly seek out a hotel for the evening, one of the chain motorway ones with cream walls and green carpets in every room. I know that, despite my longing to return, once I do go home I will feel that same as I did before I left, ashamed, lonely and miserable.
I turn on the television as soon as I get to my room, skipping through the channels until I settle on a film that seems vaguely familiar. Flipping off the glaring fluorescents, I crawl underneath the green duvet and manage to keep my eyes open for another hour before succumbing to sleep.
I wake up the next morning and for a few awful seconds forget where I am. The television is still on, the sounds of a news broadcast filtering into the humid air. I struggle upright just as a knock comes at the door. I retrieve the breakfast that I ordered yesterday. A plastic bottle of orange juice and a plate of uniformly produced lukewarm pancakes clotted with too much syrup. As I settle myself into bed to pick at my oozing meal, I prod the remote and the faint voice of the presenter becomes audible.
Just as a preface to this – I didn’t believe it either, I still can’t.

“....Following the dredging there has been no sign of any remains, but the police statement implies that none are expected given the devastating weather conditions.”
Nothing to cheer you up like a little death with your breakfast, I twist the cap from my juice irritably. Why is there never any good news in the morning? It’s always doom and death and economic downturns.
“....Locals report that the victim had been behaving erratically and seemed unhappy, at this point suicide has not been ruled out”
Well that’s bloody typical. So you’re not leaping around with a basket full of cookies and a herd of tiny bunnies, therefore automatically it’s your own fault if something bad happens to you.
“.....It seems that the missing woman had been behaving strangely for some time, now we go live to a close friend of the woman in question.”
Wheeling out a grieving friend or relative to raise the ratings, it says a lot that I’m not surprised by this. Any further thoughts are cut off when the screen changes to show an image of Vikkie, standing in my garden on the island looking drenched and tearful beneath the presenter’s umbrella.
A cold wave of shock makes every hair on the back of my neck stand on end. They think I’m dead. Dead. It’s surreal to be sitting in the unfamiliar room watching a report on my own suspected suicide, almost as if I really am dead and this is a bizarre afterlife. Maybe it really is and....no, stop, I’m alive.
Vikkie is still being interviewed and I watch because I can’t think of anything else to do. Then a horrible thought occurs to me, my parents will have seen this. Setting aside the fact that they are probably upset, understandably so given my sudden death, they will be furious when they realise that I am not dead, but am in fact a liar and a dropout. I know that at some point it will all have to come out, I have to tell someone that it was a mistake.
I dig my phone out for beneath all the clothes in my bag, flip it open and scroll down a list of numbers. I can’t decide who to call first, my parents will be furious, which puts me off phoning them straight away, but Vikkie is still on camera which makes me reluctant to call her and give the reporters a real story.
At the bottom of the list of numbers are the contact details for Daniel Shield. Arthur, I realise, might be down there, on the beach, watching as they dredge up my sodden clothes and thinking....what? The truth is I have no idea, is he relieved that it’s all over, that his embarrassing lapse of judgement so neatly tidied itself away? Or does he feel sad, guilty, remorseful or horrified. I cannot face the last alternative, that he is simply indifferent, hardened against any concern for my welfare by my own stupid thoughtless actions.
I quickly return to Vikkie’s number and wait for the reporter to leave her alone. This takes a good five minutes as the interviewer is going in for the kill, his voice bending greasily into feigned sympathy, whilst still accusing enough to imply negligence on Vikkie’s part. At last I can’t take it anymore and dial the number just to give her an excuse to leave. As the phone in her pocket begins to chirp and she excuses herself, I feel once more the strangeness of the situation, as if she is just a character on the screen, coincidently answering a call I am making to someone real.
Her voice comes over the crackling line, “Hello?”
I hear no similar voice from the television, and assume she is safely away from the television crew.
“Vikkie? It’s Emma.”
“Emma?!” she blurts loudly “Emma, where the hell are you? We thought...”
“Yes I know, I’m watching the news right now, in Glastonbury.”
“Why are you in Glastonbury? Just how many secret lives are you leading?”
“Just the two that I know of” I joke weakly.
“I’m serious” she growls “I came up here to visit you, like I said in my message, but I couldn’t get over to the island because of the storm. The next thing I know you’re house is empty with no sign of a note...”
“What message?” I cut in
“The one I left on your phone.”
“I didn’t get a...” as if sensing my confusion, the phone, which only too late I remember has been off for over a week, gives a beep, and a brief check of the display informs me I have nine messages from Vikkie. Vikkie takes advantage of my stunned silence to continue her story.
“Anyway, I tried to find a number for that Daniel Shield guy to see if he knew where you’d gone, and all I could get was this weird number that turned out to be a house on the island. So I went there and you’ll never guess what!”
I closed my eyes and waited, feeling sure that I already knew where this was going.
“That git with the permanent scowl lives there, turns out they’re related. Anyway, he seemed a bit concerned that you’d just left, so that got me more worried and I called your parents to see if you’d gone to visit them.”
“You didn’t!” I exclaim “well done; now they’re going to hate me...”
“I think at this point they are just going to be happy that you’re breathing...and not being eaten by seals”
“Yeah, but sooner or later my being alive isn’t going to be a novelty anymore and they can get back to cursing the name of their lying, dropout daughter.” I pile my things back into my bag with the phone still clasped to my ear, then pause in dismay as something occurs to me. I grab my purse and open it, confirming that the worst has indeed happened.
“Shit! I left my cash card on the island, and I only have enough to pay for my room...just.”
“Why did you leave it behind?”
“I was in a bit of a hurry ok? Things have happened in the large space of time we weren’t speaking, oddly enough.” I throw my purse back into my bag and start going through the outside pockets.
“There’s no need to snap at me.” Vikkie snaps, causing the phone line to crackle.
“I’m sorry, stressed out. Can you pick me up?” Sudden hope lances through me, only to be shattered when she says,
“I can’t, it just about killed my car coming all the way down here so I had to take it in for a once over at a mechanic. Last time I saw it, it was up on blocks with the steering wheel missing.”
I slap a hand across my eyes in frustration and try to think of a way around the problems that keep mounting up around me. I can’t get back to the island, Vikkie can’t come and get me, I can’t get my parents to collect me because it would mean being in an enclosed space with them...
“Hang on a minute” Vikkie’s voice grows faint and I can hear her talking to someone else behind the hiss of static and constant bluster of the wind. Suddenly a voice returns, but it isn’t Vikkie.
“Emma?” Arthur’s voice comes through the tiny speaker, shock evident even with the terrible reception.
“Hi” I acknowledge weakly “It’s me...sorry about the...” how the hell do you apologise for accidentally faking your own death? “misunderstanding” I finish, mentally flinching at the poor wording.
An odd sound comes down the line and I realise he’s laughing.
“Well, personally I am very disappointed, but I’ll get over it.” He pauses for a moment “I was very worried, when you disappeared.” Any hint of humour is gone now, every word carries a weight of seriousness and I realise he’s being totally sincere.
“I’m sorry” I reply instinctively “I didn’t...I wasn’t trying to make a statement or anything, I really didn’t mean to drag you back into things, I’m sorry”
There’s a long silence.
“You’re kidding right?”
“Excuse me?” I blurt incredulously.
“Emma, you didn’t do anything you need to apologise for, you went away without telling me, so what? I’m the one who said you weren’t anything to do with me. If anything I should be sorry, and I am. I shouldn’t have shouted at you, it was just a bit of a shock, you and Daniel”
“Not me and Daniel!” I realise with a start what he must think, what neither myself (nor Daniel apparently) had told him. “Me and Daniel aren’t together...I mean we were for about three hours, which were probably the low point of my entire existence....no offence to your son.” I wince at my rambling.
There’s another silence as he processes this.
“I didn’t know that” he says finally, quietly.
I can’t think of anything to say, so I just sit, listening to the interference and a soft regular sound that I think is Arthur breathing.
“Your friend says you’re stuck in Glastonbury” his voice comes back across the line as if I have only just picked up the phone.
“Yeah” I sag in relief, finally an adult who can help me.
“I’ll come down and pick you up, it’ll take a few hours, but I’ll call you when I get there to tell you where I am.”
“Ok”
“See you soon”
“Bye”
His voice disappears and I hang up.