Dare to Remember: Shocking. Page-Turning. Psychological Thriller. Read online

  “Well, I’m the dog walker, really. But he’s my responsibility. Lisa Fulbrook.”

  The receptionist writes down their names and promises to call if she hears anything.

  Back on the street, Lisa looks around and starts to run back towards the lake, not knowing which direction to take, but desperate to keep looking.

  “Wait,” Jessica says. “Wait, let’s just think for a minute. You’ve looked everywhere around the lake and asked everybody. Nobody’s seen him. Where might he go, if he can’t find you?”

  She stops for a minute and looks at Jessica, realisation dawning. “Home. I haven’t been home. He could be there, or at my neighbour’s…”

  “Okay, you run home, I’ll stay here and keep looking. If he’s there, call my mobile. You do have a land line, don’t you?”

  She nods.

  “Here, I’ll write my number on your hand.”

  “Thank you, thank you.” She runs as fast as she can, her legs weak, her heart thumping at the unfamiliar exercise. She’s there in five minutes.

  The gate is ajar and Riley is sitting at the front door.

  When he sees her, he saunters towards her as if nothing has happened, tail wagging. Weak with relief, she collapses onto the path and hugs him, her cheeks straining at the unfamiliar sensation of a smile.

  “Riley! Where were you? I’ve been looking and looking! Were you here all the time, you little monster? Don’t scare me like that. Don’t ever, ever do that again.”

  She ruffles his head and he runs around her excitedly. She stands slowly and ushers Riley inside. It’s time to call Jessica.

  *

  “Lisa, hi! Come on in, have a coffee.”

  “I just wanted to say thank you for helping to find Riley.” She hands Jessica the flowers she’s clutching.

  “You didn’t need to do that. I was happy to help. Hello, Riley, you monkey, what got into you? You scared your mum half to death.”

  “He certainly did,” Lisa says.

  “Go on, have a quick cup of coffee with me,” Jessica says, opening the door and beckoning her in. “I could do with some company.”

  Lisa checks her watch, in the pretence that she’s busy. But her mind goes blank; she can’t find a spur-of-the-moment excuse.

  “Um, okay, then,” she says, regretting it immediately. It’s only a coffee, she tells herself. Don’t panic.

  They walk through into a small but immaculate kitchen. Everything looks clean and new and there’s a faint smell of fresh paint.

  “The dogs’ll be fine in here,” says Jessica. She indicates the kitchen table flanked by curved wood chairs, an invitation for Lisa to sit.

  She inserts herself into the space between wall and table, feeling out-of-place and anxious. Jessica puts biscuits onto a plate and starts to make coffee, her movements neat and efficient. Riley makes himself at home on the dog bed in the corner; Bobby, unconcerned at the intruder, flops down by the cooker.

  Lisa watches Jessica, noting the sparkle of an engagement ring on her finger, a wedding ring slotted neatly into the curve in the gold.

  “So, how’s Riley after his adventure yesterday? None the worse for it, I bet.”

  “No, he’s fine. Probably had a great time exploring. I’m the one who nearly had a heart attack.”

  “We love our dogs, don’t we? I’d hate to lose Bobby.”

  “I don’t know what I’d have done if he’d been really lost, or run over.” Though she tries to say it lightly, Jessica glances at her, a look of concern flitting across her face. She places coffee cups and milk on the table and sits down opposite Lisa. “What do you do for a living, Lisa?”

  More small talk. She has to force herself to be friendly. It’s just a cup of coffee with a new friend, she tells herself, what could be the harm?

  “I sub-edit technical documents, from home.”

  “Is that interesting?”

  She attempts a smile. “No, not really.”

  But Jessica’s expecting more.

  “It pays the bills.” Then, a little too fast, to shift the attention: “And you – what do you do?”

  “I’m a teacher – lapsed. I had to leave my job when we moved here.” She plays with her hair, smoothing a flat section over her fingers. Lisa lets her talk and Jessica seems not to notice the shift in subject.

  “My husband’s in the oil business,” she says. “To him, nothing else is important. He lives in a man’s world, travels a lot. Sometimes he’s away for a couple of months. I’m bored, to be honest, I need to get back to work.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “He doesn’t like the idea. Thinks I need to be at home, looking after the house. Unfortunately, I disagree.”

  “That must be difficult for you,” she says, trying to empathise, but the problem seems trivial and she’s already wondering how to get away.

  “Oh well, it’ll sort itself out,” Jessica says, as if to finish the subject. “Anyway.” Jessica jumps up to clear the mugs. “Let’s have a drink one evening. I need to get out more.”

  Lisa feels a flush sweep across her face.

  “I… don’t… I mean, I’m not… I’ve been ill… I don’t go out very much.” Her voice trails away and she’s left staring awkwardly at her hands.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Jessica pauses, clearly hoping she’ll fill in the gaps.

  “It’s okay, it’s nothing really.”

  “Maybe I could come to you one evening? If you’re up to it? We could walk the dogs and then have a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine. Or you’d be welcome to come here. Mike’s away most of the time and I’m on my own a lot.”

  “Maybe… soon.”

  Jessica doesn’t push her further, to her relief, and she gets up hurriedly, feeling awkward and guilty.

  Promising to return the favour though not meaning to, she makes her escape and walks quickly home.

  *

  When she’d first arrived at the cottage, with its squeaky front gate, its front path green with lichen and the paving cracked and uneven, she made sure not to linger at the door, not wanting to meet the neighbours. But the little house next door was always quiet and the only sign of life an occasional bark from the overgrown back garden. Once she started walking with Riley, she began to look forward to her outings with the good-natured dog. She ventured further each day, as far as the lake and its well-worn pathways. Riley seemed to love the routine, appearing at the same time every morning through a hole in the fence between the two back gardens and returning home only when she took him back at dusk. She grew to love his companionship, his soft fur, his dark eyes looking at her.

  One evening, when she went next door to take Riley home, John seemed dazed and even more frail, so she offered to look after the dog for a few days until John was better. “Only if you don’t mind,” she said. “He does seem to love our walks and I’d be happy to have him.”

  He opened the door a few inches further and looked at her, frowning.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. She nodded.

  “That would be so kind of you. I feel bad, not being able to exercise him. Riley is my wife’s dog, really – I kept him when she died but I’m too old to look after him properly. He’s a good boy.”

  And that was it – Riley became hers. The dog comes and goes as he pleases through the hole in the fence, the arrangement stuck, and John seems content that his pet has found a more capable owner.

  Riley is her lifeline. She knows that. He provides comfort, companionship and a kind of rhythm. Before he arrived, she’d started to fold in on herself, living her life at her desk and on her sofa, only venturing out to the shop round the corner for the few items which were her staples. She’d begun to feel frighteningly transparent, as if she was fading away very slowly. The routine of walking seems to ground her, to give her solidity where before there had been none.

  *

  Stamping her feet at the gate and fumbling for the keys with numb fingers, she notices John at his door. He’s wearing a tw
eed coat, several sizes too big for him, and a woollen hat. He looks shrunken, his skin deathly white.

  “How are you, John?” she says when he sees her.

  “It’s so cold,” he says, his eyes watering with the chill wind. “Can’t seem to get warm.”

  “Do you need anything?” she says, pulling at Riley, who’s struggling to get to John. “I’m going to the shop in a while.” It comes out without warning.

  “Come in, come in, can’t leave the door open,” he says, shuffling into his dim hallway and indicating the kitchen door as she wipes her feet on the thin mat. “Go on in, it’s the warmest place.”

  “I don’t want to disturb you,” she says, still reluctant to go in. In the hallway it seems even colder than outside and she wonders if he’s got the heating on. If he even has any heating.

  “Not disturbing me – not much on, these days,” he says, a flash of irony in his eyes. “Got a list somewhere. One minute.”

  He ushers her into the kitchen. It reminds her of her childhood home, with a Formica table, worn grey rug and wing chair in the corner, mismatched cushions pressed into a person shape and an old-fashioned antimacassar on the back. On the heavy wooden sideboard he shuffles some papers and finds a notepad. He tears off a sheet with a shaky hand and gives it to her. The writing is faint and wobbly. Tea, bread, Digestive biscuits, orange squash, fish fingers, frozen peas, washing powder.

  “Is that all you need?”

  “I wouldn’t ask, it gives me a little trip out usually,” he says. “But it is freezing out there and I’m not feeling good this week. Just get the small size of everything. Here, take this – it should be enough.” He thrusts a couple of notes into her hand.

  A silver-framed picture sits on the sideboard by the pile of papers – a small, white-haired woman in a patterned dress, arm in arm with a young, smiling man in a red T-shirt, blue sky behind them.

  “My wife, Elsie,” he says, seeing her glance. “We were married thirty-five years. And that’s Oscar, my nephew, my only relative. Lives in Spain, lucky beggar. Wish I was there.”

  “Me too.” She smiles weakly at him. “I’ll be back soon with your shopping.”

  As Lisa returns home, John’s groceries in hand, she realises she’s getting involved. But, despite herself, she doesn’t seem to want to stop.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Every Wednesday morning she drops Riley next door with John and walks down to the train station in the village. She travels the one and a half hours to the city. She hunches by the window, staring mutely at the passing scenery, hoping no-one approaches her.

  It is agony, this confrontation, every Wednesday, each week.

  Post-traumatic stress disorder. She dislikes the term, feeling it reduces her to a category, so that they can file her in the right place. She doesn’t want to be lumped together with other people, with other traumas. And she doesn’t have a ‘disorder’. Something horrible happened to her which can’t be changed and it’ll always be there in her past, an irrefutable fact of her life. She’d rather just leave it there.

  Though, if she’s honest, she is suffering and she knows it. The nights are particularly bad and often she feels numb with exhaustion in the mornings. Even when she’s awake, it returns to haunt her. When she’s asleep, she’s unable to ward off the nightmares which plague her two or three times a week. They’re horrifying, visceral. She’s so freaked by them, she feels as if she’s possessed by some malevolent spirit, attacking her in the night and controlling her mind.

  She’s almost given up trying to sleep at night, though she goes through the motions and climbs into bed every evening, late, next to Riley, his soft black muzzle quivering with canine dreams, his legs twitching. She’s thankful for the TV in the bedroom, the DVD player and the stack of old movies she keeps by the bed, carefully chosen for their gentle, unreal, Hollywood-glamour stories and their U certificates. She can’t watch the news – it’s too sad, too bad, and most dramas and soaps too full of violence, anger and sorrow. So she wraps herself in Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn and Clark Gable, immerses herself in the black-and-white studio sets, the immaculate outfits and grooming. Sometimes she dozes off, only to wake at the end credits. She never, ever sleeps through the night.

  Her only other distraction is a pile of books from the charity shop (not crime, not thrillers, not sad) in which she can lose herself. She avoids the Internet except when she needs it for work and has given up her mobile phone, abandoned at her mum’s house. Social media terrifies her.

  The flashbacks have followed her too, undeterred by geographical distance.

  She walks to the local supermarket to stock up. It’s a small, unassuming shop, with a slope up to the door, three aisles of groceries and a fresh meat counter at the back. She takes a basket and heads for the chilled cabinet. As she moves towards the end of the shop, selecting a hunk of cheese and cartons of milk on the way, there’s a woman waiting at the meat counter and from the door at the back the butcher appears, a knife in his hand.

  As she registers the knife, she feels the blood drain from her face. Her breath catches and her hand flies automatically to her throat. She starts to shake and the basket falls to the floor with a deafening crash. It’s all there again, so real, so terrifying. She drops her bag and runs instinctively to the door. Outside on the concrete ramp she sinks to her knees, her forehead against the glass window, tears brimming, gasping for air, her heart beating out of her chest, only able to see the knife – that knife, the other knife.

  She’s only dimly aware of what follows. There are people around her, holding her hand and supporting her by the elbow as she struggles to her feet. The customer at the counter and the shop assistant take her into a back room and give her some warm, sugary tea while the shaking diminishes and the tears finally stop. They’re kind and motherly, middle-aged women who seem to take it all in their stride, and despite her embarrassed pleadings, they walk her back the short distance to the house.

  “A panic attack,” says the assistant, whose name tag declares Marilyn. “My son gets them all the time, I know what it’s like. Don’t worry, dear, you’ll be fine once we get you settled.”

  Back at home, she collapses onto the sofa with Riley beside her, covers herself with a blanket and hides from the world.

  *

  She doesn’t say much to the psychotherapist.

  In her head, she calls him The Psycho in a grim effort to amuse herself. It also helps to distance her from him, to keep him from getting too close.

  She’s early and wanders from the station through the streets until she feels pinched with cold. When she gets to the consulting room, the waiting area is empty. She sits and looks at the bare walls, wishing, again, that she didn’t have to do this. The magazines placed neatly on the coffee table seem far removed from her life. She stares at the rug in the centre of the floor, its black-and-white whorls oddly mesmerising. She fiddles with the scarf around her neck, knotting and unknotting it, playing with the fringes, waiting.

  He appears at the door and his smile is friendly. “Lisa, come in.” He wears beige trousers and a blue jumper over a checked shirt. Informal, but neat. His hair’s thick, greying slightly at the temples, touching the collar at the back.

  She walks into the now-familiar room, trying to appear relaxed. She settles into an armchair, tense and uncomfortable.

  “So, how have you been this week?”

  What can she say? Fine? It would be a lie.

  “The same.” She knows it’s not a good answer, but she’s tired already.

  She almost feels sorry for him. It isn’t that she dislikes him, it’s more that she hates everything about the visits and doesn’t, can’t, believe they’ll help. The therapy draws attention to the one thing she never wants to think about again.

  Yet there’s no option. Sleeping pills are not a long-term solution and they don’t seem to be helping much anyway.

  He asks if she’s using the diary. He wants her to record her ni
ghtmares, emerging memories and feelings. She hasn’t forgotten to do it, she just doesn’t want to. It seems wrong, somehow, to write it all down, as if in the writing it becomes more ordinary. And more real. She doesn’t want it to be real.

  She wonders if her case is more difficult than he’s used to. Probably not, she’s sure there are worse experiences out there. More terrifying than the unknown. And yet she’s not making progress and it’s of her own doing.

  Behind him is a picture on the wall, splashes of colour on a white background, a silver frame. She tries to pick out shapes. Her eyes flick to the therapist as he speaks, and back to the picture when she answers.

  On the way home the passing scenery forms a familiar backdrop for her disengaged emotions.

  *

  She hears Riley bark as she closes John’s front gate. The clicking of claws on the tiled floor and soft sniffing noises precede the arrival of John’s shuffling feet and his shadow behind the frosted glass. He stands back as Riley makes a rush for Lisa’s legs, nearly knocking her over.

  “What a fuss!” he says. “Never made that much fuss over me.”

  “It’s self-interest. I feed him and walk him, that’s all.”

  “He’s been inspecting the gardens as usual, keeping guard on his estate.” Today he looks brighter, a little less stooped.

  “Come on then, Riley, off we go.”

  She decides to walk down to the lake to get some air after the therapy. She needs to balance the day. The light’s fading as she approaches the footpath and it’s that quiet, calm moment before darkness when the wind drops and everything seems to pause, waiting for the moon to rise. The lake is deep grey, its edges lapping softly against the muddy banks, and the trees stand stark against a dappled, cloudy sky. There’s no-one about but she feels safe here, away from the city, from the people and the past. She inhales the evening air and keeps Riley close so as not to lose him in the shadows.

  That night, the rain sets in. She hears it first, drumming on the roof of the tiny kitchen, and smells it, earthy and organic, as she opens the door for Riley to go out. He takes one look at the sheets of water pounding the paving outside the back door before heading determinedly upstairs.