Authors: Chris Curran
‘Matt was wonderful, but because she came early he was still in London and we thought for a while he wouldn’t get here in time. Just as well the actual labour took so long.’
Then she said, ‘I’ve been thinking about Alice and I’m really not sure you should mention the pills to her. I mean I saw them at the hen night not the reception. And even if she did have them, would she have noticed if any were missing in those horrible days after the accident?’ She carried on before I could speak. ‘And think about it, Clare, if she did realise and has lived with the thought all these years, do you really want to make her face it now?’
A surge of emotion that said,
yes I do.
But, ‘I don’t know. I just feel everything needs to come into the open if I’m ever to get my memory back.’
‘I can see that,’ she said, ‘but my brain isn’t working well at the moment so why don’t you talk it through with Lorna?’
I said I would, then told her about Mr Hillier’s letter, the other car, and my own memory of someone else being there with Downes right after the crash. ‘Trouble is the other person must surely have come from Bramstone, so was likely to be one of Mr Hillier’s neighbours.’
‘That’s a tricky one. I wonder if he’s guessed who it might be.’
‘I’m betting whoever they were they must have bribed Downes at any rate. Can’t see him lying for anyone out of the goodness of his heart.’
Emily said, ‘Look, talk to Matt. He’s local and he might even be able to find out where this Downes guy is living.’
We said our goodbyes and, while I waited for Matt to come to the phone, I had another thought. Perhaps the car driver wasn’t from Bramstone, but was a guest from the reception coming back for something they’d left behind. Unlikely, I knew, but it was a possibility.
Matt said, ‘Right, Em’s filled me in and I think I should ask around to see if I can locate this Downes fella and have a word with him myself. Unless he’s moved right away, which sounds unlikely, I shouldn’t have too much trouble finding him. And I’ll get the truth out of him, never fear.’
‘Be careful, we don’t want to scare him off.’
He chuckled. ‘You forget, I’ve spent the past few years getting down and dirty with the corporate boys. Learned a few tricks about how to get a result.’
I’d decided to discuss the whole thing with Lorna before I talked to Alice so when Alice rang next evening I said nothing about it. She had been to see Lorna in hospital. ‘They say she’s making a perfect recovery, responding well to the physical therapy, and should be out in less than a week.’
‘You don’t sound convinced. What’s wrong?’
‘It’s probably nothing, but she seems very low. It’s not unusual to be depressed after an op like that, of course, but I had the feeling something else was bothering her.’
When we’d said goodbye I knew I needed to think and I’d do that more clearly out of the flat.
Although it was beginning to get dark it was very warm and the narrow Old Town streets were still crowded. As I wandered along I thought of those first days when I had cringed away from other people. This evening I found the chatter and laughter comforting.
Eventually I stopped at a little place that called itself a café/bar. All the outside tables were full, but there was space inside and I ordered a glass of wine and a toasted sandwich and found a seat in a corner.
I’d brought a notepad and pen and as I ate and drank, I scribbled down my thoughts, smiling as I remembered Tom’s flow chart. My jottings were a lot messier than his professional looking production, but I could feel my mind clearing as I wrote.
If Dad told me he was my real father during the reception I would certainly have been upset and if I’d then spotted the amphetamines in Alice’s bag it was conceivable I took some, just to keep from breaking down. (This, of course, was what the police suggested all those years ago, although they had the reason for my upset wrong.) Steve and Toby were going to leave early so I wouldn’t have worried too much about the drugs impairing my driving. Might even have thought it would be good to drive a little recklessly and give Dad a fright as I told him what I thought of him. By the time Steve changed his mind and decided he and Toby would come with us I knew, from the evidence of the DVD, that I was too far gone to realise I was unsafe.
In any case, we might have got back to the hotel all right if it hadn’t been for the oncoming car with its brilliant headlights. The other driver was probably as unfit to be behind a wheel as I was and bribed Jacob Downes to pretend he was first on the scene.
I sat back and took a long drink of wine. My scribbled notes made sense, but they sparked no memories and generated yet more questions. Surely, if the pills were Alice’s she must have realised they were gone at some point and, if so, wouldn’t she have told me? I underlined her name, running the pen back and forth till I’d made something that looked like a thick eyebrow.
The other questions were: who drove the car with the headlights and where were they going? I underlined the words:
who drove the car
working over it with my pen until it matched the line beneath Alice’s name. Two dark brows, straight and stern.
‘Everything all right?’
The words came from far away. I was deep underwater. I dragged my eyes from the page and managed a nod for the waitress. Those two stern brows stared at me from the page.
who drove the car … Alice.
It was too awful and yet, and yet … For a mad moment it almost made sense. If Alice got back to the hotel and only then saw some pills were missing she must have realised it was me. Knowing I planned to drive back, she would want to stop me. She’d been drinking for hours herself by then, so it might have seemed perfectly sensible to take her own car. If she’d got to the reception in time she could have warned me. I could imagine her taking me aside and telling me that no one need know anything about it: we could keep the whole sordid incident between the two of us.
But she was too late, we’d already left, and she met us at that dangerous bend with her headlights blazing.
I came back to myself, aware of a man watching me from a nearby table. I must have been staring into space with God knows what expression. Horror, probably, because I was horrified with myself for thinking like this. The idea that Alice might have known I’d stolen the pills from her and kept it from me was one thing, but that she was partly to blame for the accident – how could I think so for even a moment? I tore the page from the notebook, ripped it into tiny pieces, and scattered them along the road as I walked home.
Lorna was in the same room when I got to the hospital next day, but sitting in a chair by the window, her bandaged leg propped in front of her. At the sight of her smile I knelt by her side, leaning over the arm of the chair to lay my head on her chest. We stayed like that for long minutes and I felt her hand, warm, on the back of my head, then moving to stroke my cheek, and when I looked up we shared a smile.
An orderly brought us coffee, which tasted like warm water, but it was lovely just to sit quietly together. After I’d swallowed a few gulps to moisten my throat enough to speak I asked how she was. ‘I’m fine, nearly ready to get out of here, thank goodness.’
I went to speak, but she raised her hand. ‘Before you ask, I won’t need any help. They say I can mostly manage on my own and I’ve a neighbour I can call if need be.’ She smiled again, but I could see what Alice meant: there was a new darkness in her eyes.
A brown bird sat on the branch of a tree outside the window, so still it might have been a toy.
Lorna touched my hand. ‘What is it? Tell me, please.’
‘First I need to ask if you know anything more about Dad and Matt. I’ve seen the wedding video. It seems obvious Dad is angry with Matt and Matt has admitted as much.’
She sighed. ‘All right, yes, there were big problems between them for a while. Your father knew people were already talking to Global about the possible takeover. Rats and sinking ships he used to say. But Matt upset him much more than the others because they’d been so close and, of course, he was going to be part of the family.’
‘That’s all?’
‘As far as I know, but Matt did work with Dr Penrose and if he thought Penrose was unfairly treated I can’t imagine him staying quiet about it, can you? They may have argued about that.’
It made sense and I couldn’t imagine either of them avoiding a confrontation, even at a wedding. Lorna’s dark eyes were fixed on me. ‘But that isn’t what’s really worrying you, is it?’
‘Emily told me about Alice having amphetamines on her at the hen night. Do you think I should ask if she had them with her at the wedding too? And if so, do I ask if she realised I could have taken some?’
Lorna’s hand moved to smooth her hair, still as beautiful as ever. ‘All I can say is, if I was in your place I wouldn’t. What good can it do at this stage?’
‘It would stop me imagining even worse.’
The plastic chair squealed as I pushed it back, needing to move, to get away and stop thinking these awful thoughts.
‘Clare, don’t go,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk it through. You can trust me.’ Her eyes gleamed in a shaft of sunlight.
I drew the chair close to her again. ‘You know I keep seeing that flash of light? Well, I think it might have been headlights coming towards us on the bend. Mr Hillier has spoken to the biker who was the first witness at the scene and he let slip there was someone else there before him.’
‘The biker?’
‘You know, the scruffy young guy from the trial. And I’ve had a memory flash of two people standing in the road before I collapsed.’
There was a tinge of red on Lorna’s cheek bones and she leaned forward. ‘I don’t understand. What does this have to do with Alice?’
I closed my eyes, unable to look at her. ‘I keep thinking maybe she left the reception, then saw some pills were missing and realised I’d been acting as if I was high. Do you think she might have driven back to try and stop me?’
Lorna was silent: I couldn’t even hear her breathing. When I opened my eyes she had leaned away from me, arms crossed over her chest. Her voice sounded tight. ‘This is Alice you’re talking about. Do you really believe she’s capable of doing that and keeping quiet about it afterwards?’
‘She’d been drinking, might even have been on something herself. I doubt she was thinking straight. She would have meant to help us.’ My throat was so dry I coughed over the words and my eyes began to water. Lorna waited while I gulped dregs of cold coffee. ‘And afterwards she would have been in shock,’ I said.
‘But all these years?’
‘I know, I know, but you see why I have to talk to her. I can’t get these thoughts out of my head unless I do.’
‘I can help with that.’ Her voice was gentle. ‘Because I was at the hotel that night, too. I drove to and from the reception and I hadn’t had a drink and the friends I’d given a lift to insisted on buying me one when we got back.’
She screwed up her eyes, trying to picture the scene. ‘Maggie, Peter, and I were sitting in the bar when Alice came in. We had a bottle of wine and we asked her to join us. Then … let me see … ’
She held up her hand to stop me speaking. ‘Yes. We were all sitting at a little round table by the window. I was very tired. Really wanted to go to bed, but Peter insisted on getting another bottle.’ When she stopped, lost in her thoughts, I waited as long as I could.
‘Lorna?’
‘We saw the headlights of a car and someone said, “That’ll be Sylvia, with Steve and Toby,” or something like that. But when Sylvia came in she was on her own.’
I couldn’t stop myself. ‘So Alice knew they were with me?’
‘That’s not the point, Clare. What I’m saying is that she was at the hotel hours before the accident.’
‘But she could have gone out again.’
Neither of us spoke for a long time. The coffee must have been freezing, but Lorna drained her cup. It clinked into the saucer. ‘You’re surely not going to say anything like this to Alice herself?’
Having spoken it aloud I saw how mad it must sound and how terrible it would be to accuse my sister. I leaned back in my chair. ‘No, but thank you for listening. It was important to say it: to stop it festering away. Now I have to focus on getting more out of Jacob Downes and shaking up my memory.’
‘Has much more come back?’
‘Apart from the two figures, nothing definite, but I’m sure I’m close. The moments when I feel I’m nearly there seem to be connected to situations like that night. There’s usually movement and a sudden flash of light. It’s the same kind of thing I’ve always seen, but much clearer.’
‘And you really want to remember? Whatever you discover?’
‘I have to tell Tom the truth.’
Her eyes shone and her hand came to her mouth. ‘Sorry.’
Tears threatened me too and I closed my eyes to blink them away. Lorna took my hands.
And something happened.
No flash this time; no sense of being that other Clare. Just darkness. And in that darkness, an image. A black gate. It towered there, studded with bolts, barred and padlocked. And a feeling of dread so fierce I couldn’t breathe. My eyes flew open.
‘Clare?’
I forced myself to breathe again.
‘Did you have another memory?’ Lorna asked.
‘Not exactly. I thought I saw a big gate, just a big, black gate, that’s all, but I felt so awful.’
We sat for a while saying nothing until a nurse popped his head around the door to tell Lorna her doctor was coming. As I bent to kiss her goodbye, Lorna held my wrist and said, ‘I’m so worried about you, Clare. Will you do me a favour and leave it for now? Take some time to think it through. I’ll think too. I’m due out tomorrow, so come and see me at home as soon as you can.’
As I kissed her cheek, Lorna rubbed the back of my head again and whispered, ‘I love you, my darling.’
And I left her there, looking out at the little bird, sitting so still on his branch.
When I was on the train, Kieran phoned and I asked after his mother.
‘The operation went as well as it could, but it’s obviously only delaying the inevitable.’ He sounded very low. ‘And what about you? Something else has happened, hasn’t it?’