by Mark Tilbury
‘I’ve got a problem. I’m at Chorley Station with a fare, and he won’t cough up.’
‘Okay, Ray. You want me to call the police?’
‘Yeah. He’s probably on drugs or summat. Keeps babbling shit that don’t make sense.’
‘I’m on it. You want me to stay on the radio?’
‘Nah. He’s only a teenager. I can handle him, but I ain’t sure what to do with him. And he’s got his arm in a plaster cast. I don’t wanna hurt him.’
‘Okay. Stay safe. Speak later.’
Ray returned the handset to its stand.
Tommy’s eyes were glazed over, and he was mumbling incoherently.
‘Bella says she’s gonna bite your dick off if you go anywhere near her again.’
Ray shuddered. ‘I don’t know anyone called Bella.’
‘She’s gonna bite it off and feed it to the fish.’
Ray opened his door and left it ajar.
‘I fuckin’ hate Bella. But I hate you more.’
Ray didn’t respond. Tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Glanced around the car park. Tapped his foot against the accelerator pedal.
‘She reckons you need a magnifying glass to see your dick, so I suppose the fish wouldn’t get much of a meal.’
Ray opened his mouth to respond, seemed to think better of it, and clamped it again.
‘I dunno how you manage to fuck with your big fat belly in the way.’
Ray focussed on the rear-view mirror.
Tommy opened the passenger door and got out.
‘Hey! Where’re you going?’
Tommy didn’t hear him. He walked towards the station, plaster cast swinging. He’d had enough of being shipped around from pillar to post. Being used. Treated like shit. Doing stuff that would make good old Charlie boy’s moustache curl. He had a date with the next fast train.
Ray took a few steps towards the station. Stopped. ‘Ah, fuck it. The police can deal with it.’
Tommy marched on. Past the ticket office and up the steps to platform four. This was the moment he’d been waiting for all his life. No more hurt. No more pain. Just sweet oblivion.
You’re on the right track, a voice whispered in his head. The Paddington express, calling at Reading and the undertakers. Make sure you have your one-way ticket ready for inspection.
The platform was deserted. Several workmen in bright-orange fluorescent jackets were milling around in the distance. Tommy watched them going about their business like overgrown illuminous ants.
The platform clock read twenty past eleven. Charlie was probably back home by now with a nice bag of supplies. A piece of fruit for every occasion. The Vitamin Man. Eat a nice orange, it’ll go straight to the heart of your memory.
‘Fuck you, Charlie. You’re about a much use as a little dick in a wishing well.’
Tommy giggled and clapped a hand over his mouth. Sometimes his brain came up with the funniest things. It was a shame it couldn’t remember who the fuck he was and where the fuck he’d been.
Tommy stood on the edge of the platform, unaware of the two policemen and the taxi driver approaching him. He’d never been so happy in his life.
A few hundred yards past the workmen, an express train rattled along the tracks, the driver blissfully ignorant of the life-changing incident waiting to hijack his life.
Tommy was mesmerised by the train, as if he’d been destined to meet it since the beginning of time. An explosion of metal and bone as two opposing forces collide. The predator and the prey. Only, for once, the prey was a willing participant.
The train sounded its horn and thundered towards the platform at over a hundred miles an hour. Electricity buzzed on the tracks bringing life to the steel.
A hundred yards away now, the driver visible in the cab. Tommy took a deep breath and prepared to take his final leap into the unknown. He put one foot closer to the edge.
As he rocked back and forth to gain momentum, strong arms wrapped themselves around his chest and hauled him away from the edge.
At first Tommy thought he’d suffered some sort of seizure. Or his fucked-up mind was playing tricks on him. He kicked out as the invisible force dragged him backwards, heels bumping on the concrete.
‘It’s all right, son. I’ve got you.’
Tommy’s confused brain told him he was probably dead and in the arms of God, but then he saw the other policeman and the taxi driver bobbing in and out of focus, and realised he was still very much alive.
And this scared him more than anything else in the world.
Chapter Eleven
After spending the rest of the day in hospital having various physical and psychological tests, Tommy had returned home with his father in possession of a new drug, and the promise of a referral to the mental health team at Oxford.
Great, so not only had he failed to kill himself, he was now going to have to endure weeks of psychiatric tests probing his head for signs of life.
‘Whatever were you thinking of?’ Charlie said, helping his son into bed. ‘You scared the hell out of us.’
Oh dear, how can I ever make it up to you?
‘It’s a good job the taxi driver didn’t want to press charges.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you remember what happened?’
‘No.’
Charlie sighed. ‘You must’ve been aware of what you were doing. You ordered the taxi from here.’
‘Perhaps I wanted to go on holiday.’
‘It’s no laughing matter, Tommy. I dread to think what might’ve happened if the driver hadn’t called the police.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Charlie sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Did the cabbie do something to annoy you?’
‘I don’t remember.’ A lie. He vividly recalled the taxi filling with smoke, the driver thumping the steering wheel and turning into that psycho lump of lard who’d made his life a living nightmare. But here was the thing: he couldn’t remember his name or what he’d actually done to evoke such hatred.
‘You know I love you, don’t you, son?’
Tommy didn’t, but he nodded anyway. There was something in Charlie’s eyes. A little boy lost look that made him seem almost pathetic.
‘I’d do anything to help you, Tommy. Absolutely anything. But you’re gonna need to help me out a bit here. Let me in.’
‘Okay.’
‘You can talk to me anytime. Mum, too. And your sister.’
Tommy thought Danielle was the only one he’d consider opening up to, if there was anything to open up for. ‘But I can’t speak about it if I don’t have a clue what happened.’
‘That’s why you need to go to therapy.’
‘But what good’s it gonna do if my mind’s blank.’
‘They’ve got ways of opening up your mind. Techniques to get inside your head and see what’s really going on.’
‘Like what?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘If I knew that, I’d do it myself.’
Tommy looked at his father and experienced a sudden surge of sympathy. Charlie was only doing his best. He couldn’t help it if he didn’t understand.
‘It might take a while to go through the doctor, but in the meantime, we could book an appointment with Dr Marks.’
‘Who?’
‘The one I told you about in Feelham.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Helped me to realise it’s important to remember the good things in your life, even when it seems as if the world’s a really dark place. He also taught me about the power of affirmations and positive thinking.’
‘Huh?’
‘Saying out loud everything positive about yourself and your life. Living in the present moment instead of worrying about what might happen in the future.’
A tear slipped from Tommy’s eye. ‘Right.’
‘Learning from the past, remembering the darker times and how you still survived.’
‘But I can’t remember the darker times.’
‘But
Dr Marks can help you through that. He also does regressive hypnotherapy.’
‘What’s that?’
Charlie chewed on his lip thoughtfully before answering. ‘It’s when they take you back through different stages of your childhood, right up to the present moment. For what it’s worth, it really helped me to understand why I acted in certain ways when faced with high levels of stress. Why I always drank when I had a perfectly good partner to share my darker thoughts with. Two lovely kids who needed me. A nice house and something worth living for.’
Tommy wasn’t sure there was anything left to find in his mind. ‘Is it… dangerous?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘He’s in complete control at all times. It’s like being asleep and awake at the same time.’
‘Oh.’
‘And I’ll be right there with you to make sure you’re okay.’
‘Did you find out much about your childhood?’
Charlie was quiet for a moment. ‘Yeah. Loads of stuff I’d forgotten all about.’
‘Like what?’
‘When my mum took an overdose and I couldn’t wake her up.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. It was during the school holidays, and my dad was at work. I thought it was weird, ’cos it was gone ten and she still wasn’t up. When I went to her bedroom to see if she was still asleep, I found her lying on the floor. There was a bottle of vodka on the bedside table and two empty bottles of pills.’
‘How old were you?’
‘It was just after my tenth birthday.’
‘What did you do?’
‘At first, I panicked. Tried to wake her up. Remember how to give the kiss of life like we’d been taught at school. I was shaking all over. Running around like a headless chicken. Looking out the bedroom window to see if anyone was outside that could help. Then I called an ambulance.’
‘Was she dead?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘No, thank God. They took her to hospital and gave her some stuff to drink that made her sick.’
‘Is she still alive now?’
‘No. She died four years ago from cancer.’
‘Did I ever meet her?’
‘Once or twice when you were small. She moved to Cornwall after my parents split up, so it was quite a distance to travel. The thing is, nearly losing her explained so much to me about my insecurities. Why I always tried to blot things out.’
‘Like losing your job?’
‘Yeah. It goes a fair bit deeper, but that’s the general gist of it.’
For the first time since he’d returned home from hospital, Tommy experienced a proper connection with his father. ‘I’m sorry. That must’ve been really shit.’
Charlie shrugged. ‘Thing is, I didn’t really remember much about it until therapy. Just snippets. Odd pieces of a jigsaw that made little sense on their own. Mum being ill. Visiting her in hospital with my dad. Daffodils on the bedside table when she came back home. It was as if my brain had somehow shut out all the rest. Dr Marks said it was the mind’s way of protecting me from the trauma of finding her unconscious.’
‘D’you reckon that’s what’s happened to me?’
Charlie stroked his moustache. ‘Possibly. Only in your case, it seems to have locked the whole thing away. Now we need to find the key to unlock that door.’
Tommy examined the fragments he had left. Bella. The driver with the fat neck. Cigarette smoke. It was like having three cards left from a fifty-two-card pack. ‘And if we don’t find it?’
‘We’ll look elsewhere. Hypnotherapy’s only one part of all the things Dr Marks can do.’
After a short silence, Tommy said, ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘What for?’
‘All the horrible stuff I’ve said. I didn’t mean any of it. It just comes out, as if there’s another person inside me who I can’t shut up.’
Charlie put a hand on his son’s shoulder. Squeezed it. ‘Don’t worry about any of that. The only important thing is we get you better. And if that means a few outbursts and a bit of name-calling, so be it. It’s the least of my worries.’
‘Tell Mum I’m sorry, too.’
‘Would you like her to come up so you can tell her yourself?’
‘Later. I’m really tired.’ Truth was, he wanted to be left alone to cry. Taste his grief. Mourn the loss of his entire childhood.
‘So, you’ll go to see Dr Marks?’
Tommy nodded.
Charlie stood. ‘Mum will be over the moon. She misses you, Tommy. Misses you more than you’ll ever know.’ He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.
Tommy pulled the duvet up over his head, rolled onto his side, and sobbed himself to sleep.
Chapter Twelve
Dr Marks was nothing like Tommy had expected. He was short, bald, with a squashed nose and constantly pursed lips. He didn’t wear a white coat or carry a clipboard. He also sounded as if he was breathing through a straw.
Marks extended a hand. Shook Tommy’s with a firm grip. ‘Good afternoon, Tommy. Do take a seat.’
Tommy sat in a dark-green leather chair positioned near a tall yucca plant. He rested his broken arm on his lap and tapped his foot against the oak veneer flooring.
Marks invited Charlie to sit in a plastic chair next to his son, then sat behind a mahogany desk decorated with a laptop and a printer. ‘So, Tommy, let’s get straight to the point. You were found out the back of beyond by a motorist, and you have absolutely no idea how you got there. Correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘And no recollection of anything before you woke up in the hospital?’
‘No.’
‘And you’ve been diagnosed with retrograde amnesia?’
‘That’s right,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s as if his memory banks have been completely wiped clean.’
Marks typed something onto his laptop, looked up, smiled. ‘Well, yes, that’s certainly one way of looking at it. I prefer to call it stored away in a deeper part of the brain.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Of course.’
Marks turned his attention to Tommy. ‘Okay, young man, the only rule I have in this office is my clients are honest at all times. Even if I ask you something you consider irrelevant or none of my business, you must be truthful. Okay?’
Tommy thought of Bella and the mysterious driver. ‘Yeah.’
‘I’m not here to judge you or make assumptions about you. My only aim is to get to the truth and see how it speaks.’
‘Okay.’
Marks typed again, then turned his attention to Charlie. ‘So, Dad, let’s start at the beginning. What was Tommy like as a child?’
‘He was a good kid. Never any bother. Did as he was told. Football mad.’
‘Did he ever seem withdrawn?’
‘Sometimes. But not excessively. Just the occasional strop and shutting himself in his room.’
Marks nodded. ‘Anything going on at home out of the ordinary?’
‘Only what we talked about after I lost my job. Drinking too much to blot it all out. But never in front of the kids.’
‘Kids can be extremely perceptive. They don’t have to witness something to sense a change in the atmosphere.’
Charlie stroked his chin. ‘Right.’
‘What about your wife? How did she react to you losing your job?’
‘Naturally, she was worried. Especially about money, what with all the other stuff going on.’
‘How was she with the children?’
‘A bit less patient. Snapping over things she wouldn’t normally.’
Tommy listened to the conversation pinging back and forth. Couldn’t see how any of this was relevant to his current predicament.
Marks took a deep breath. ‘So, Dad, what can you tell me about the day leading up to Tommy’s disappearance?’
‘Just a normal day, really. Tommy had gone back to school, and my wife and Danielle were at work until around teatime. After dinner, Tommy and Danielle went to their rooms. Then they had some s
tupid row about a hairdryer Tommy had borrowed without asking, and Danielle told Tommy he was adopted.’
‘Did Tommy seem in any way upset when he returned home from school?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘He was in a pretty good mood. He’d been picked to play on the school team. Moaned a bit about how boring maths was and said he couldn’t wait to drop it when he did his A-levels. But other than that…’
Marks switched his attention to Tommy. ‘Does any of this seem familiar to you?’
‘No.’
‘Not even your day at school?’
‘No.’
‘Your hospital report says you suffered a fractured skull, a broken wrist, and some cracked ribs. You also suffered some scarring and bite marks to your back and buttocks. Is there anything else I’ve missed?’
‘I’d like to spend half an hour with the bastard who did this to him,’ Charlie said. ‘Give him a taste of his own medicine.’
Marks nodded. ‘Yes, well, revenge is a natural response to such a traumatic event. Unfortunately, anger will only serve to damage you, not the offender.’
Charlie sighed. ‘I just want the bastard caught.’
‘Perfectly understandable. And I can assure you, I’ll do all in my power to help you both get to the bottom of this. But for now, we need to take a cold, calculated look at what we already know and go from there.’
That’s handy, Tommy thought, seeing as I know a great big fat fuck all. Marks’s laid-back manner irritated him. It was all right for him to be all rational about it; he wasn’t the one who’d been abused and left with a brain about as much use as a one-legged footballer.
Marks addressed Charlie again. ‘Has Tommy had any history of substance abuse?’
‘No.’
‘Self-harm?’
‘No.’
‘Anger issues?’
‘No.’
‘Letters home from the school concerning attendance?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘No disrespect, Dr Marks, but I don’t see how any of this is relevant. My son disappeared for a year, and he doesn’t remember a thing about it. Even if he wasn’t behaving well, it hasn’t got anything to do with what happened to him.’
Marks stroked his nose as if trying to flatten it further. ‘Not directly. But it might have some bearing on his reaction to certain situations.’