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

  She shuts out the weather, turns the key twice, shoots the bolt top and bottom, and double-checks the lock on the small kitchen window. Turning out the lights, she heads for the living room, rattling the window to make sure it’s secure. She locks and bolts the front door. Upstairs, she checks the windows in the spare room and then, brushing her teeth distractedly with one hand, unlocks and re-locks the catch on the bathroom window. Finally, lights out in the rest of the house, she closes her bedroom door and turns the key. Riley is already asleep on the neat grey cover of the bed. Abandoning her clothes in a pool on the floor, she climbs in.

  Though she knows the house is secure and the street safe, she’s glad of the extra presence of the dog. Lying next to him, her arm across his warm back, she finds solace in his uncomplicated presence. She lies there, listening to the rain, wondering if tonight, at last, she might sleep.

  *

  Marilyn, the kindly shop assistant, greets her cheerily when she walks in. After the panic attack, she would have preferred not to go back there, but there are no other shops nearby and she has to eat, so she’s forced herself to leave the house.

  She avoids the meat counter and tries not to look at the butcher, remembering to breathe deeply. The demons stay away. She likes Marilyn, who took the panic attack so much in her stride, and is grateful that she made so little of it. She doesn’t ask too many questions; another reason why Lisa likes her.

  Lisa’s buying provisions for John. He calls in at the shop daily to get out of the house and to collect his newspaper, but walks with a stick to steady himself and can’t manage anything too cumbersome. As she inspects the shelves, Jessica appears in front of her.

  “Hi, Lisa, I saw Riley outside and thought I’d pop in on my way past.”

  “Oh, hi, I was just collecting some things for my neighbour,” she replies.

  “I’ll help you carry it back if you like. I brought Bobby, too – he needs a walk. Do you want to wander down to the lake afterwards?”

  It’s late afternoon and getting dark as they drop the shopping off with John. They make straight for the footpath, the two dogs trotting ahead. A cold wind flicks their hair.

  “I’ve got to find something to do,” Jessica says. “ I’m going mad on my own, with nothing to keep me occupied. My brain is dying. How can I keep it alive if I’m not doing anything with it?”

  “Have you talked to your husband about it?”

  “Not yet, but I suppose I’ll have to. He’s not the most receptive person, the last time I tried he just laughed. But I can’t carry on like this.”

  As they leave the footpath and walk towards the road and Jessica’s house, she stops and stares at a sleek BMW sitting in front of the garage. “Oh. He’s back! Come and say hello.”

  Lisa, unprepared for this, is about to demur, but she’s standing too close to the house to walk away now. The car door opens and a tall, good-looking man, his shirt collar undone and a mobile phone in his hand, climbs out. He stands leaning on the car door as they approach.

  “Hello, you’re back early,” says Jessica, reaching up to kiss him. “This is Lisa. We’ve just walked the dogs.”

  “So I see,” he says, hand outstretched, taking hers in a firm grip. “Mike. Good to meet you.” White teeth, brown tousled hair, and a slight, sweaty odour, mixed with aftershave. There’s a heavy gold chain around his neck. “Please excuse me, I’ve had a bit of a long journey…” He turns back to the car to open the boot.

  “I need to get back anyway. Bye, Jessica. See you soon.” Lisa turns away and hurries up the narrow streets towards her house.

  Back home, having fed Riley his evening meal, she makes herself a mug of tea, and sits warming her hands, wondering about the slight hesitation in Jessica that Lisa noticed when she saw Mike was home.

  *

  She dreams about the flat with its tatty kitchen and its lived-in furniture. Ali, her face pale, is standing by the window, saying something to her, trying to get her to understand, but she can’t hear her, she can’t grasp what she’s saying. She knows it’s urgent and she tries to tell her she can’t hear, but there’s something stopping her, something in the way.

  The flat has grown into a confusing jumble of rooms and corridors, and someone’s screaming but she can’t find them, running from door to door, throwing them open in a panic. She runs through empty rooms into others, equally bare and echoing, and then she’s horribly lost in the catacombs of an unfamiliar building, while the screaming goes on.

  She wakes with a start, eyes wide, muscles rigid, her heart pumping painfully and her throat swollen with silent screams.

  It’s always in the middle of the night – four or five o’clock, when no-one should be awake. Wearily she turns on the light and shuffles downstairs through the cold house for a cup of tea, which she brings back to bed and sips while she watches one of the old familiar films until the cold grey morning.

  It’s because of the nightmares and the flashbacks that she perseveres with the therapy.

  How long will it take? Will it ever get better?

  She withdraws into her daily routine, wanting no past and expecting no future.

  *

  Christmas looms. In her previous life, she’d loved this time of year – the decoration, the anticipation and the parties. An excuse to be out meeting friends, drinking and celebrating. She enjoyed the traditions – the presents, the food and the coming together of friends and family, and she insisted well into adulthood on a stocking by her bed and the full trimmings on the day.

  Usually, by September, her mum, Chloe, had bought the presents, cards and wrapping paper. Some years she’d even ordered the turkey by the end of September – and started shopping for presents for the following year. For as long as she can remember, she and her mum had spent Christmas together. In the early years there were grandparents and sometimes an aunt and uncle and a couple of cousins, but the grandparents are long gone and the aunt and uncle moved abroad before Lisa had reached her teens.

  When she was at school and later when she lived in the city, she and Ali would visit each other at Christmas. Lisa’s mum would welcome the noisy intrusion with extra mince pies and fuss over presents and food. She would even come to Ali’s house on occasion for a glass of sherry or mulled wine once the family meal was over and the girls wanted to get together.

  But everything’s different this year. It’s November when the shops start to sparkle with decorations and even the local supermarket turns its front window into an incongruous winter scene – Rudolf grinning maniacally from a snowy forest – and Lisa’s mood darkens. She dreads the familiar platitudes, the false anticipation, the requirement to be cheerful.

  Chloe calls. Lisa knows what’s on her mind.

  “Sorry, Mum, I’m going to stay here with Riley. I’m really not up to doing Christmas. What about your friends?” She doesn’t hold out much hope, but maybe her mum’s neighbours will be on their own, too, and they can keep each other company. She hears the disappointment and concern in her mum’s voice, but can’t say what she really feels.

  The truth is that she never wants to celebrate anything, ever again. As dramatic as she knows that sounds, she can’t find it in her to be happy. To pretend that everything is okay. That Ali is by her side drinking eggnog and wearing a paper crown.

  “You shouldn’t be on your own,” her mum says. “It’s not good for you.”

  “It’s what I need, Mum,” she says, trying not to be too blunt. “Anyway, I’ve got Riley, and I like being with him.” The pause at the other end of the line is a bubble of unsaid words hanging in the air between them.

  “Honestly, I’m fine. I need… quiet. I’ll come and see you soon after, I promise.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Mum, please.”

  With a sigh, her mum agrees. They say their goodbyes, leaving the bubble intact. She leans forward on the table, head in hands, wishing it could be different.

  November turns into December and the weather sets
in, cold and wet, with a roiling sky and a freezing wind that whips across the lake leaving angry ripples on the surface. Although the days are short and the weather foul, they walk further and longer, Lisa hunched and bundled up against the weather, the dog bedraggled, his coat soaked and dripping with mud, which he brings into the house and shakes onto the walls and the floor in the hallway. They climb a footpath beyond the lake, tramping across a field and up a hill behind the village, across farmland with grazing animals. They find that if they keep going, it stretches into a long loop, which, after a few miles, turns back around the hill behind Lisa’s house. It’s a good long circuit which takes a couple of hours and uses up some of the time which hangs ahead of Lisa on days when she has no deadline.

  Jessica too, is dreading the festive season, though for different reasons. Her husband’s family is coming to their house over the Christmas period. “I wouldn’t mind,” she says as they tramp along the muddy path. “Only his mum’s a fantastic cook, and I’m not. Plus our house is pretty small. It’s going to be really stressful. You’re not going to be on your own, are you?”

  “Well, yes, but I’m okay.”

  “Why don’t you come to us? One more won’t be a problem at all. It’s not good to be on your own on Christmas Day.”

  “No, really, I’m fine. Thanks, but it’s okay.” Seeing Jessica’s disbelieving look, she feels defensive. “I could go to my mum’s, but really, just at the moment, I’m better on my own. Anyway, I’ve got Riley.”

  “True, less stressful than my in-laws, anyway! Well, you know the offer’s there, and you can change your mind any time, if you like.”

  “Thanks.” She says it, but she knows she won’t.

  *

  Chloe had brought her up on her own from the age of two, when Lisa’s father, a pilot, made a fatal mistake and crashed into a field. There were no survivors. The local paper made much of it and as a child Lisa had studied the newspaper cuttings in her mother’s photo album. Over the years the paper faded into dark yellow against the thick black pages.

  The relationship she had with her mother could, at times, be difficult. Chloe was old-fashioned in her views and believed in getting on with things, rather than examining her motivations and emotions. And she did ‘get on with it’, raising Lisa competently, ensuring she had a good education and a value system that she understood and adhered to, even through her teen years, when her friends were exploring the world and getting ‘up to no good’, as her mum would call it. Lisa had always tried to be obedient, never rebelling, not wanting to upset the one parent she had left. It wasn’t until she was sixteen that she started to go out in the evenings, to enjoy her friends.

  In growing close to Ali she learned that other children had proper families, with a dad, and siblings, and fun. They would laugh at the dinner table, or argue, slamming doors and stealing each other’s belongings. Ali’s family had opened up another world to her – and in doing so gave her more empathy with her mother. She began to understand what her mum had lost. Ali’s dad, with his larger-than-life presence, deep voice and disconcerting sense of humour, was at first a frightening thing, so different and unexpected. But their family was close and laughter pervaded their home in every way. She soon began to like the maleness of it and the balance it brought to the home.

  Ali had a brother – two years younger, not interested in the girls when they first began to spend time together, but nonetheless a sibling – something Lisa had longed for when she was small. At first Connor was awkward and fidgety when they were around and Ali treated him with the typical disdain of an older sister; later, though, as they grew up, he became more confident and they got on better, laughing and teasing each other as they watched films or went out.

  She knew that her mum missed her dad. She spoke of him with such warmth and she never seemed interested in finding another partner. Or, Lisa came to realise, maybe she would have been, but with a child to bring up on her own, very little money and no career, it was simply too much for a woman like her to contemplate.

  When Lisa had left for college she worried about leaving her mum on her own and she came back frequently at weekends. She coordinated the visits with Ali and their relationship hadn’t changed in the slightest. Still so close, the two were more like sisters. So when they finished college and planned to move to the city, it seemed the obvious thing to share a flat.

  Her mother, ever practical, sold the family home and moved to a terraced cottage nearby. She seemed content with her garden and her visits from the girls. She got to know a couple of neighbours who, like her, were widowed and alone. They became a close-knit social group, meeting regularly for coffee and a game of cards. Lisa was glad she was forming a new life and felt less guilty leaving her when she returned to the city after her weekend visits.

  *

  The doorbell rings. The postman, a rare visitor, hands her two envelopes, a large brown one, which needs her signature, and a smaller white one, addressed by hand. This one looks suspiciously like a Christmas card. She leaves it to one side and opens the larger envelope, which contains a printed document she needs for her latest work assignment. She settles down at her computer, forgetting the other envelope until later when she stops for a break. Opening it without thinking, she finds it is a Christmas card, and when she looks inside, she sinks down onto the sofa, staring at the spidery writing. It’s from Ali’s parents.

  With love from Diana and Geoffrey.

  Please come and see us when you’re next in town, we’d love to see you.

  Lisa’s mum must have given them her address, despite her request not to give it to anyone. She can’t blame her, though; these people more than anyone else were connected with her, through tragedy, for ever.

  The police had taken her statement, such as it was, from the hospital room where she lay, a drip attached to her hand and a monitor bleeping next to her, curtains inadequately drawn around the bed, leaving gaps large enough for prying eyes. A woman police officer took the lead. She sat in the chair and leaned towards Lisa’s bed, brown eyes on hers. Her voice was gentle, the questions carefully worded.

  “Can you tell me what time you got home?” and “Are you able to remember who was in the flat?”

  Tears trickled down her left cheek onto the white cotton pillow as she tried to answer. Her mum had been there, holding her hand, and when she became overwhelmed with grief had insisted they leave.

  Apart from the police, her only other visitors during that time had been Diana and Geoffrey. Her mum had stayed beside her for the short visit that seemed to last so long. They found extra chairs for them, heavy blue plastic with high backs, and they sat awkwardly at one side of the bed, away from the machinery and medical paraphernalia on the other. They’d cried together, all of them, and when Lisa’s pain became unbearable, relief pumped gently into the swollen vein of her pale hand. As much as she wanted to, she could offer them very little, remembering only the early stages of that horrific night. They didn’t push her, for which she was grateful. Despite their pain, Lisa knew that no-one could be more frustrated with her own patchy picture of the night than herself.

  They had come back a couple of times when she seemed stronger physically, but she remembered no more than she had at first and she was so fragile emotionally that they didn’t stay long, not wishing to be the cause of further distress.

  Back at her mum’s, frail as she was, contact with other people was out of the question, and though cards came through the post wishing her a speedy recovery, people wanting to help however they could, Lisa hardly looked at them.

  She doesn’t display the card. She puts it in a drawer and tries to forget it. She doesn’t expect to get any others and wonders how she’s going to block Christmas out completely over the next few weeks as it gets closer.

  *

  The psychotherapist, too, seems to think she shouldn’t be alone. It’s not that he actually says it. He has a way of asking questions, but she knows very well what he means.

&nbs
p; She doesn’t know why, but right now her instinct is to exist in a kind of personal bubble, without relationships, avoiding human contact. Maybe she’s avoiding further stress; perhaps she can’t trust people any more. She knows that this situation is flawed, but it’s a reaction she can’t deny.

  He talks about group therapy – meeting others who’ve been through trauma. She recoils at the thought. Why would she want to hear other horrific stories, when her own has such a terrible grip on her? Maybe other people can talk about their horrors, but she can’t. It’s all she can do to get through each day and each night without screaming.

  “Group therapy is about the last thing I’m likely to do,” she says.

  “You don’t like the idea?”

  “It’s bad enough discussing what happened with you, without having other people hear it too. I don’t want to listen to other people’s traumas and I don’t want them discussing mine. Why would I?”

  “You seem angry at the idea.”

  “Well, it’s a terrible idea.”

  “It’s quite normal to feel anger after a severe trauma,” he says.

  It seems to her that pretty much any emotion is acceptable after a severe trauma. She could laugh hysterically and someone would tell her it was ‘normal’.

  He takes her back to the event. Her voice cracks and breaks as she talks.

  *

  The day before Christmas Eve she calls in on John, to see if he needs anything. He ushers her in and she waits in the kitchen while he writes a short list of items. He’s coughing – a hard, dry cough that shakes his whole fragile frame, and he asks her to collect some medicine for him from the chemist nearby.

  She asks if he’s got company for Christmas. “No, no,” he says. “Nobody left.”

  “What about your nephew, doesn’t he come back for Christmas?”

  “Why would he? Weather’s much better in Spain,” he says with a wry smile. “There’s only me and I’m not much cop. I expect you’re with family?”