David, a dedicated GP, simply vanished from our lives, leaving behind a tangle of sadness, dread, guilt and disbelief for our three children and me.
A life robbed of all certainty: One day, Shona Lidgey's husband left - without a trace
Since then, there have been two possible sightings, false trails, hopes raised and dashed. Time has seen my feelings change and harden, from those early days when I leapt at every phone call to something more like acceptance today, when I can admit that I feel anger as well as deep sorrow for the way David left us behind.
That is why, though it may be little comfort to him, I have a strong idea of what the husband of missing GP Dr Elizabeth Kinston is going through at this moment.
Dr Kinston is the beautiful young
doctor who hasn't been seen for a week since walking away from her
loving family. She is believed to be suffering from postnatal depression
following the birth of her second daughter ten months ago.
Since then her husband, also called David, has made an emotional plea for Lizzie, as she is known, to call him and let him know she is safe. 'It's so hard without you here,' he said.
It is hard, I know that. Harder than anyone could realise.
They are at the very beginning of what I sincerely hope will be a short journey with a happy ending, but one that can make you question everything you previously took for granted. There are no more certainties in life after someone you love chooses to disappear.
Unlike Elizabeth, my David, who was 51 when he vanished, was a long-term depressive. The day he left, he took our children Ruth, Arthur and Tom (then aged 15, 13 and nine) to school. He was off work that day and neighbours saw him return shortly afterwards.
When I returned from my job at 3pm - I also work as a GP - I found the message and thought nothing of it. It was only later, when he hadn't returned, that I started to worry. I called his phone and heard it ring in the house. I think it was then that I knew something was terribly wrong.
He had left everything behind: wallet, passport, money - even his much- loved Volvo.
At time of writing, Elizabeth has yet to be found. Her husband's understandable anguish brings back the painful early days after David left us: the sense of unreality, the expectation that at any moment he would reappear and make everything all right again, the first hesitant contact with the police, the careful search for the best likeness to release on websites.
Above all, the fearful wait for news. Any news.
The two stories are different - postnatal depression is an acute illness and David's problems were long-standing and, we thought, manageable - but there is a sequence of grief that the families of missing people seem to share.
If I can presume to offer advice to the Kinstons, it is be gentle with themselves.
You are dealing with very turbulent emotions, so don't pretend that you're fine. You're not. Allow yourself to be helped, because people want to be kind.
We used to find that a mystery neighbour mowed the grass for us while we were out. Being looked after like that meant a great deal.
I see now that I should have taken more than one day off immediately after David, who would now be 53, went. The children and I needed that time together to support each other because we were trying to find our way through a terrible trauma.
But we had no idea how to behave, except by sticking to familiar patterns of work and school. All the stress was pushed underneath the surface. And, of course, we were utterly convinced at the start that he would come back.
The effect on us has been profound. I have been forced to reassess the things I thought I knew about myself. My feelings for David have altered, too. I am angrier that he turned his back on what would now be an 18-year marriage. Our wonderful children bear scars of their own. They haven't just lost their father: he abandoned them.
David and I met on a course for trainee GPs and he told me soon afterwards that he had suffered bouts of depression since he was a medical student. Usually the black clouds lifted after a month or so, with the help of medication and exercise. But at the time he walked out he was in the grip of a particularly bleak episode that had lasted for half a year.
As David Kinston will know, GPs become adept at analysing the needs of their patients - my husband had a lot of empathy for troubled people - but they are not always much good at healing themselves.
The truly disabling aspect of depression is how it distorts the way you think, whoever you are. I'm sure it was in David's head that we would be better off without him. And it was obvious that when we moved from London to Hilgay in the Norfolk Fens in 2006, he didn't adapt as well as the rest of us. He missed our old city life.
Only a few weeks before he finally left, we had an argument and he took off in his car for one night, something he had never done before.
The text messages he sent made me worried enough for his safety to ask the police to find him, which they did, in Portsmouth. But he came home and said he had needed time to think, that was all. He said sorry. Things slipped back into a routine.
When he disappeared I felt that I should have read the signs better and somehow been able to stop him. We all wondered if it was something we'd done, if it was our fault. That guilt is very difficult to shake off.
Watching the effect on the children has been the hardest thing for me. We all processed the shock of David's loss in slightly different ways but I think Arthur, particularly, internalised a lot of his feelings, including blame.
He became seriously ill with anorexia and needed to spend four months in hospital. (He is 15 now, doing really well and has spoken publicly about his eating disorder as a participant in Dame Kelly Holmes's Unlocking Potential scheme.) All three children have emerged from this as brave and impressive individuals.
What became clear during the family therapy we had, and are still having, is how disorientating it is when one of the cornerstones of your life is knocked away without warning or explanation. You have a sense of spinning through space, and for Arthur, taking rigid control of what he ate was probably a way of trying to impose order on what felt like chaos.
My gut feeling is that David is still alive somewhere. I'm sure that the Kinstons will hold equally strong convictions about Elizabeth.
Meanwhile, we are caught in a kind of bereavement without end. We never had a chance to say goodbye to him. There was no ceremony, nothing to say that it was finished. At least a funeral, awful though it is, marks a boundary between one stage and the next for those left behind.
Even when you're busy with normal, day-to-day stuff, there's this huge unresolved issue at the back of your mind. It can ambush you at odd moments. I realised how much it affects us as a family when we watched a film, About Time, where a son has the chance to travel back and say a final farewell to his father. Let's just say there were plenty of tears.
The police and the Missing People charity have been brilliantly helpful to us. Not only have they listened without judgment and offered practical support, they have kept up the search. But we are, sadly, past the stage of physically looking for David ourselves.
'The truly disabling aspect of depression is how it distorts the way you think, whoever you are. I'm sure it was in David's head that we would be better off without him.'
The last time we tried was in February
2012, in response to a reported sighting of him in Skegness from a
member of the public. I remember it as the most demoralising and utterly
awful experience.
We walked around cold streets, put up posters, talked to people in hostels and got nowhere. We realised then that it was a futile exercise. How do you find someone who doesn't want to be found? Where do you start?
The longer he is gone, the less likely he is to leave whatever new reality he has created for himself, and the stronger the sense of betrayal that he has chosen to live without us.
If by some miracle he walked in tomorrow, I'd be very happy to see him again but we couldn't be a couple any more. Too much has changed. I'm a different woman from the one he would remember and our marriage would not function in the same way. My trust in him has gone.
We were dealt an extremely hurtful blow last year when I discovered that about two months before he left, David phoned another GP for a reference because he wanted to move to Australia. He apparently told her: 'It's my family or my sanity.'
Yes, he was unwell but his disappearance suddenly seemed far more calculated.
We know from various checks that David, wherever he is, has not gone abroad but the knowledge that he was considering putting so much distance between us has hardened my attitude. There's a part of me I don't necessarily like that cannot forgive him for that.
I used to be quite a shy, deferential person. I am tougher now and more protective of my emotions. I've gained the confidence that comes from managing as a single, working mother of three who has become used to making decisions on her own.
Most of those pointless and inhibiting worries about what other people think of me have gone. What does it matter? I have learnt exactly how fragile the things that we mistake for permanence are.
For the moment we are staying put in Norfolk. The children are settled and there is the practical consideration that I can't sell the house for seven years since David was last seen, at which point he can for legal purposes be declared dead.
The basics of paying the mortgage and the bills when your household income has been sliced in half is just one more part of the fallout. It isn't a heart-rending or romantic thing to talk about, but it is another major source of anxiety. I'm fortunate that I can manage but we are financially vulnerable in a new way since David went.
You cope with a crisis by trudging through one hour at a time, which makes it difficult to see beyond the present. Recently we've been able to sit down together for the first time in ages and look at old family photographs and DVDs. It reminded us that we have a cache of happy family memories and that David was a good and loving father. That is important to remember when you feel anger bubbling up but have nowhere to put it because he isn't here.
As for the future, the fact I can even consider it makes me think that I'm getting better.Inevitably there will come a point when the children move away. I don't want to spend the rest of my life alone, waiting pathetically for someone who may never return. I've missed having an adult partner and I'd like to meet someone new when I'm ready. Difficult for the children, maybe, because no one can replace their daddy, but important for me to consider my own happiness.
I am fighting hard not to become a victim. This isn't the worst that could have happened. We have survived and we will be OK. At the beginning, I wasn't capable of being that positive but I am more resilient now. We all are. The funny thing is that I used to dream about David coming home all the time but I don't any more.
I would like to imagine Elizabeth, David Kinston and their two little girls safely reunited long before he also stops dreaming about her running back into their arms.
Since then her husband, also called David, has made an emotional plea for Lizzie, as she is known, to call him and let him know she is safe. 'It's so hard without you here,' he said.
It is hard, I know that. Harder than anyone could realise.
They are at the very beginning of what I sincerely hope will be a short journey with a happy ending, but one that can make you question everything you previously took for granted. There are no more certainties in life after someone you love chooses to disappear.
Vanished: Two-and-a-half years ago, David wrote a note that he had 'gone for a walk'. He hasn't been seen since
Unlike Elizabeth, my David, who was 51 when he vanished, was a long-term depressive. The day he left, he took our children Ruth, Arthur and Tom (then aged 15, 13 and nine) to school. He was off work that day and neighbours saw him return shortly afterwards.
When I returned from my job at 3pm - I also work as a GP - I found the message and thought nothing of it. It was only later, when he hadn't returned, that I started to worry. I called his phone and heard it ring in the house. I think it was then that I knew something was terribly wrong.
He had left everything behind: wallet, passport, money - even his much- loved Volvo.
At time of writing, Elizabeth has yet to be found. Her husband's understandable anguish brings back the painful early days after David left us: the sense of unreality, the expectation that at any moment he would reappear and make everything all right again, the first hesitant contact with the police, the careful search for the best likeness to release on websites.
Above all, the fearful wait for news. Any news.
The two stories are different - postnatal depression is an acute illness and David's problems were long-standing and, we thought, manageable - but there is a sequence of grief that the families of missing people seem to share.
If I can presume to offer advice to the Kinstons, it is be gentle with themselves.
You are dealing with very turbulent emotions, so don't pretend that you're fine. You're not. Allow yourself to be helped, because people want to be kind.
Long-term depressive: When he left, David had been in the throngs of a particularly bleak depressive episode
We used to find that a mystery neighbour mowed the grass for us while we were out. Being looked after like that meant a great deal.
I see now that I should have taken more than one day off immediately after David, who would now be 53, went. The children and I needed that time together to support each other because we were trying to find our way through a terrible trauma.
But we had no idea how to behave, except by sticking to familiar patterns of work and school. All the stress was pushed underneath the surface. And, of course, we were utterly convinced at the start that he would come back.
The effect on us has been profound. I have been forced to reassess the things I thought I knew about myself. My feelings for David have altered, too. I am angrier that he turned his back on what would now be an 18-year marriage. Our wonderful children bear scars of their own. They haven't just lost their father: he abandoned them.
Profound effect: David's disappearance has been terribly difficult for Shona and their children to bear
David and I met on a course for trainee GPs and he told me soon afterwards that he had suffered bouts of depression since he was a medical student. Usually the black clouds lifted after a month or so, with the help of medication and exercise. But at the time he walked out he was in the grip of a particularly bleak episode that had lasted for half a year.
As David Kinston will know, GPs become adept at analysing the needs of their patients - my husband had a lot of empathy for troubled people - but they are not always much good at healing themselves.
The truly disabling aspect of depression is how it distorts the way you think, whoever you are. I'm sure it was in David's head that we would be better off without him. And it was obvious that when we moved from London to Hilgay in the Norfolk Fens in 2006, he didn't adapt as well as the rest of us. He missed our old city life.
Only a few weeks before he finally left, we had an argument and he took off in his car for one night, something he had never done before.
The text messages he sent made me worried enough for his safety to ask the police to find him, which they did, in Portsmouth. But he came home and said he had needed time to think, that was all. He said sorry. Things slipped back into a routine.
When he disappeared I felt that I should have read the signs better and somehow been able to stop him. We all wondered if it was something we'd done, if it was our fault. That guilt is very difficult to shake off.
Watching the effect on the children has been the hardest thing for me. We all processed the shock of David's loss in slightly different ways but I think Arthur, particularly, internalised a lot of his feelings, including blame.
He became seriously ill with anorexia and needed to spend four months in hospital. (He is 15 now, doing really well and has spoken publicly about his eating disorder as a participant in Dame Kelly Holmes's Unlocking Potential scheme.) All three children have emerged from this as brave and impressive individuals.
All smiles: David with his three children when they were young
What became clear during the family therapy we had, and are still having, is how disorientating it is when one of the cornerstones of your life is knocked away without warning or explanation. You have a sense of spinning through space, and for Arthur, taking rigid control of what he ate was probably a way of trying to impose order on what felt like chaos.
My gut feeling is that David is still alive somewhere. I'm sure that the Kinstons will hold equally strong convictions about Elizabeth.
Meanwhile, we are caught in a kind of bereavement without end. We never had a chance to say goodbye to him. There was no ceremony, nothing to say that it was finished. At least a funeral, awful though it is, marks a boundary between one stage and the next for those left behind.
Even when you're busy with normal, day-to-day stuff, there's this huge unresolved issue at the back of your mind. It can ambush you at odd moments. I realised how much it affects us as a family when we watched a film, About Time, where a son has the chance to travel back and say a final farewell to his father. Let's just say there were plenty of tears.
The police and the Missing People charity have been brilliantly helpful to us. Not only have they listened without judgment and offered practical support, they have kept up the search. But we are, sadly, past the stage of physically looking for David ourselves.
'The truly disabling aspect of depression is how it distorts the way you think, whoever you are. I'm sure it was in David's head that we would be better off without him.'
We walked around cold streets, put up posters, talked to people in hostels and got nowhere. We realised then that it was a futile exercise. How do you find someone who doesn't want to be found? Where do you start?
The longer he is gone, the less likely he is to leave whatever new reality he has created for himself, and the stronger the sense of betrayal that he has chosen to live without us.
If by some miracle he walked in tomorrow, I'd be very happy to see him again but we couldn't be a couple any more. Too much has changed. I'm a different woman from the one he would remember and our marriage would not function in the same way. My trust in him has gone.
We were dealt an extremely hurtful blow last year when I discovered that about two months before he left, David phoned another GP for a reference because he wanted to move to Australia. He apparently told her: 'It's my family or my sanity.'
Yes, he was unwell but his disappearance suddenly seemed far more calculated.
We know from various checks that David, wherever he is, has not gone abroad but the knowledge that he was considering putting so much distance between us has hardened my attitude. There's a part of me I don't necessarily like that cannot forgive him for that.
I used to be quite a shy, deferential person. I am tougher now and more protective of my emotions. I've gained the confidence that comes from managing as a single, working mother of three who has become used to making decisions on her own.
Memories: The family pictured before David left
Bereavement without end: For a while, Shona and her family actively tried looking for David
Most of those pointless and inhibiting worries about what other people think of me have gone. What does it matter? I have learnt exactly how fragile the things that we mistake for permanence are.
For the moment we are staying put in Norfolk. The children are settled and there is the practical consideration that I can't sell the house for seven years since David was last seen, at which point he can for legal purposes be declared dead.
More resilient: Shona, pictured with sons Arthur, 15, and Tim, 15
The basics of paying the mortgage and the bills when your household income has been sliced in half is just one more part of the fallout. It isn't a heart-rending or romantic thing to talk about, but it is another major source of anxiety. I'm fortunate that I can manage but we are financially vulnerable in a new way since David went.
You cope with a crisis by trudging through one hour at a time, which makes it difficult to see beyond the present. Recently we've been able to sit down together for the first time in ages and look at old family photographs and DVDs. It reminded us that we have a cache of happy family memories and that David was a good and loving father. That is important to remember when you feel anger bubbling up but have nowhere to put it because he isn't here.
As for the future, the fact I can even consider it makes me think that I'm getting better.Inevitably there will come a point when the children move away. I don't want to spend the rest of my life alone, waiting pathetically for someone who may never return. I've missed having an adult partner and I'd like to meet someone new when I'm ready. Difficult for the children, maybe, because no one can replace their daddy, but important for me to consider my own happiness.
I am fighting hard not to become a victim. This isn't the worst that could have happened. We have survived and we will be OK. At the beginning, I wasn't capable of being that positive but I am more resilient now. We all are. The funny thing is that I used to dream about David coming home all the time but I don't any more.
I would like to imagine Elizabeth, David Kinston and their two little girls safely reunited long before he also stops dreaming about her running back into their arms.
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