“Did you let her out? I won’t blame you if you did. You were ill, and you thought you were doing the right thing for someone who was innocent. It’s okay, you can tell me.”
“I wish I could tell you, but I don’t remember anything that happened in the room before she left the hospital. It’s all gone from my mind.”
“What does that feel like?” he asks.
“Horrible,” I admit. “Like someone stole the memories intentionally. I guess it’s like coming home from holiday and realising someone has burgled your house. But it’s all right. I’ll get over it. I’m doing better now, and I’m figuring out what’s real and what isn’t. Things got kinda blurry for a while there.”
Tom sighs. “Sometimes I wish I believed Dad had died too.”
My heart thumps. “So do I. And then I feel horrible, like I’m as bad as him.”
“Me too.”
“Tom,” I say, and my voice breaks. “I swear I’m not drinking anymore, okay? I’m sorry you had to see me like that before it all happened and I lost my job.”
“It’s okay.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re not like him, you know. You don’t have whatever it is that he has.”
My hand gropes down to grip the kitchen table and my eyes fill with tears as I stare out the window. “That means a lot.”
“It’s just the truth.”
“Still it means a lot.” I wipe away the tears with the backs of my hands and try not to sniff so that Tom knows I’m crying. It results in a dribble of snot working its way down my lips. “Hey, I have to go work in the farm shop. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah, speak to you tomorrow.”
The afternoon runs on without incident as I spend it weighing meat, counting eggs, and gift-wrapping jam jars. It’s a relief to have this time so I can try and shut off my mind from everything else. Later on, after eating toast and butter over the kitchen sink, watching Pye stalk confidently along the dry stone walls around the cottage, I suddenly realise that I haven’t heard from James Gorden today.
Leaving the toast on the kitchen counter, I retrieve my phone and pull up his number. It’s strange that he hasn’t called. We’ve fallen into a routine that hasn’t been broken since I was released from hospital.
His phone rings, but there’s no answer. I take a bite of my toast and try again. Still no answer.
Before trying the third time, I hurry around the house, checking the locks on the doors and the windows. Everything is shut, locked, and nothing has been disturbed. I get James’s answering message yet again, but this time I leave a message asking him to call me.
Without hearing from him I don’t feel safe, so I check the locks and the windows again, pulling all the curtains shut. There’s half a slice of toast left, but suddenly I don’t have much of an appetite. I grab my laptop and quickly send off an email to his website. Maybe his phone is out of battery or he hasn’t got signal. That’s when I read the latest blog post. James is in London, in the same area where Isabel was last sighted.
Chapter Twenty-Four
In a room that stinks of bleach, I look down and see the leather restraints around my wrists and ankles, holding me down onto a bed. A thin white robe covers me from neck to knees, but the material is so flimsy that the cold breeze easily penetrates down to my bones, chilling me to the core.
I remember the last time I felt this vulnerable, and it isn’t a memory I wish to revisit. In that memory I was restrained too. Not with leather, but with hands. Willing it away, I close my eyes and concentrate.
There’s a reason I’m here like this, but I’m not sure what it is. Is it to find the missing piece? I know there is one but I don’t know how to find it. Maybe someone will let me go and I can explain to them that I’ll be fine when I find the missing piece. That’s all I need, I’m sure of it. But the room is empty, apart from me restrained to the bed in a hospital gown.
I can’t look behind me because I can barely move my head, but I hear a strange sound, as if the air is moving. Perhaps a fan has been turned on, or some papers dropped to the ground. It could be a flap of wings, but I don’t see how a bird could get into the closed room. For some reason the sound fills me with dread, and a cold sensation spreads up from my toes, like someone is slowly pouring cold water over my skin.
When the flapping sound starts again, I try my best to bend my neck back so I can see behind me, stretching as far as I can, with my eyebrows lifted so I can get a better view. But it’s no good. I barely get past the pillows. Air ruffles my hair as the flapping intensifies until I can actually feel the direction of the movement coming from behind me. It’s obvious now—there’s a bird in the room with me, and I don’t like it one little bit.
The restraints remain firm no matter how much I tug them. The leather is thick, and I can’t seem to break free. A flutter of the wings puts my teeth on edge as the sound reverberates ominously around the empty room, building in volume as though the room is filling up with winged creatures. And then the squawking begins—a frenzied cawing that rings from one corner to another. Why can’t I see these things? Where are they coming from? How are they getting into the room? Sweat dribbles its way down my face, burning my eyes, as I yank at my restraints, sending my body into a spasm.
The air moves again, and this time I feel the brush of a feather against my ear, causing me to recoil and twist my neck as I try to move away from its touch. I yell, hoping the sudden noise might scare it, or them, away. But whatever is in the room with me isn’t your average disease-riddled city-dwelling pigeon—it’s much worse, much more evil, and makes me think of all those supernatural omens I once scoffed at.
One for sorrow.
The rhyme is one we all know, isn’t it? I learned it from my father who learned it from his mother. One for sorrow. Two for joy. Three for a girl. Four for a boy.
Good morning, Mr. Magpie.
I say the words out loud as if I’m in school assembly addressing the teacher. Perhaps if I say it the creature will spare me, but somehow I doubt it.
A feather brushes my cheek and I close my eyes, shivering in my restraints. They aren’t coming off no matter what I do, so my body goes still, giving up. A weight lands on my chest, its claws digging deeply through my nightgown and into my skin. I’m cold all over, struggling to breathe. This is what it’s like to die, I think suddenly, in a surreal, hallucinogenic epiphany.
When I open my eyes, I see what I’d feared before I closed them. The magpie is the largest I’ve ever seen, with tiny black eyes above its fearsome beak. It cocks its head to the left and regards me with malice. When it ruffles its feathers and puffs up its chest, ripples of blue spread along its wings like a slick of oil.
It takes a step, and the weight of its foot feels like a heartbeat. My breath catches in my throat as it angles its head down and attacks my flesh with its beak.
My screams are drowned out by the chorus of birds as they descend from the ceiling to cover me from head to toe.
I am a feast.
*
Are nightmares the mirror image of a broken mind? If so, my mind is in pieces.
Almost every night I dream of the terrible hallucinations I experienced in hospital following Isabel’s escape. The flapping of wings can reduce my legs to jelly and my insides to water. Whenever I go to work through the farm, I walk as far away from the chicken coops as I can, dreading the sound of their clucks and crows.
I open the farm shop and go indoors, turning on the lights and starting up the till. Before Isabel escaped I was never someone who enjoyed cleaning or tidying, but now I need to keep my hands busy at all times, so I set to work, dusting down the counter and rearranging the displays. Seb says the shop has never been so clean.
It’s another quiet day, which means I jolt every time the bell breaks a long silence. My eyes immediately seek out the face of the person entering, which doesn’t really put our shoppers at ease, but I still can’t help myself. They are all strangers today. The s
hop attracts a few regulars, and it supplies some of the pubs in the area, but today most of the shoppers seem to be tourists picking up treats for their holiday cottages: free-range eggs, expensive preserves, cheeses arranged in hampers. They come in couples and leave their border collies tied up outside while they peruse the aisles, deciding between Stilton and broccoli pies or cheddar cheese pastries.
By the time the day ends, I’m tired, and Seb hasn’t called in at lunchtime like he often does. I didn’t eat much today. My sandwich is half eaten, wasting a nice slice of ham from the deli counter. Rather than throw it away, I decide to wrap it up and take it home. Throwing away food is not something I can stomach. Those who haven’t always known if they can afford their next meal cannot bear to waste even a morsel that many others take for granted. As I’m closing up for the night, I realise how odd it is for me to work amongst wealth while poverty knocks at my door.
As soon as I’m home, I try calling James Gorden again but there’s still no answer. There are no new emails in my inbox, and I have one text from Tom telling me about his day with Mary and Gavin. I’m relieved that he decided to stay at home rather than go into school. The three of them binge-watched sci-fi shows on Netflix. Reading his message makes my chest feel tight. I miss him. I even miss the loud music at night and the teenage scowl greeting me in the mornings.
Today has been a lonely one, but I’m lucky to have people who care enough to make sure I’m safe and healthy. Seb has given me a home, a job, and most of the time he feeds me, too. Tom never goes a day without checking in with me. As I examine every lock and window in the house, I remind myself of that.
The sun begins to set as I lock the kitchen door and rattle the handle, turning the house gradually dark as I move systematically through the cottage, turning on the lights and closing the curtains. Each of the doors, even the internal ones, are closed, trapping me in the tiny space of the living room. I need them closed because if someone is in the house, they’ll have to open the door to move through the house and then I’ll hear them. I pull each curtain straight, and let my fingers trail over every surface, checking everything. Are the pictures as straight as I left them? Is the TV remote in the same spot? Has someone moved the coffee table an inch to the left? Is my bedding tucked in the way I do it?
Usually, after I’ve been through the entire house, I can relax knowing that no one has broken in and I’m completely alone, but this time that sense of relaxation never comes. My checks always end in Tom’s room, which is always the hardest to make sure no one has entered because I never quite remember where he left everything. I don’t tend to touch anything in his room, so I have no memory of how his belongings ended up where they did.
After finishing Tom’s room, I go back to the kitchen and begin again, taking it slowly, letting my eyes roam over the mugs on the kitchen counter, into the living room where magazines are stacked up by the sofa, into the narrow hallway with the coats on the wall, up the stairs to the bathroom where shampoo bottles stand precariously on the edge of the bath, to my room with my clothes in a heap, to Tom’s room where his posters stare down at me. It’s no good. I don’t feel relaxed.
Something is out of place. Something is different.
But what is it?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dr Ibbotson stretches his long fingers like he’s at a concert preparing himself for a performance, before lifting his right leg over his left and settling into his seat. Now that I’m no longer an inpatient at the hospital, I come to meet him once a week in his office, which is decorated much more pleasingly than the hospital room with the table. I get to sit in a luxurious leather armchair, and Dr Ibbotson sits behind a large mahogany desk. There are artistic watercolour paintings of poppies framed on the wall behind his head, and he has a full wall of bookshelves filled with textbooks and psychology journals.
“Are you still having the nightmares?” he asks.
I nod my head. “Not every night, but frequently.”
“Have you heard any voices or seen anything that you suspect is a hallucination?”
“No voices. No hallucinations that I know of. Sometimes I hear spiders moving around the house.”
“But you feel confident that you can distinguish between what’s real and what is your mind playing tricks on you?” He taps his pen on his notebook and leans back.
“I am,” I say, a little tentatively. There are times when I see a magpie in the sky, or ants in the grass, and wonder if it’s all in my mind. “It’s small creatures I’m never too sure of.”
“Look for them acting in unusual ways. You understand the laws of the universe. The basic laws of physics. If an object begins to break those laws, it’s a hallucination.”
I nod. “I know that, but I don’t think my hallucinations ever broke any laws of physics. They were… dull, I suppose. Sometimes I wish I saw crazy things, but I didn’t. I had conversations with a man and I saw ants in my kitchen. They were normal.”
“That’s true,” Dr Ibbotson admits. “Perhaps you need to understand your own triggers. Such as thinking of your father or Isabel. Alfie was always the personification of your father. He spoke to you about murderers residing in the place you work, which could be because your father represents the way you see your darker side. What do you think?”
“That makes sense,” I say, squirming in my seat. Thinking about my dark side isn’t something I care to do, but I’m all too aware of how everything is linked to my father. My main vice is drinking, which I have in common with him, as well as similar psychological issues. Sometimes I wonder whether I have the same violent nature buried deep down inside, and I wonder what it would take to wake that violent nature from its slumber. Why shouldn’t a monstrous side lie sleeping within me? I have everything else from my father.
“I know it was me who looked up all those criminals. I used to get drunk, go on the laptop, research all the infamous residents of Crowmont Hospital, and then pass out on the kitchen table.” When I say it out loud the shame makes my cheeks burn. I brush my fringe away from my forehead to stop it sticking to my damp skin. “But I don’t understand why I made up that man to tell me all the stories of the murders.”
“Perhaps because your subconscious mind never wanted you to realise how much you enjoyed learning about those crimes,” Dr Ibbotson suggests. “Why do you think that is?”
“Well,” I say, thinking. “Because of Mum. She was a victim of a senseless, horrifying crime committed by her own husband. After she died, there were reporters and busybodies all talking about it, and I hated it. I hated them for gossiping about my mum’s death like that, but at the same time…” I trail off, still not wanting to admit it.
“You’re just as fascinated by murder as everyone else,” Dr Ibbotson finishes for me.
This time, I turn away as I nod.
“Leah, it’s normal to feel like that.”
“It’s sick.”
“It feels like that to you because you’re so close to a victim of murder. It’s personal and painful. But human nature is to be curious about things we don’t understand, and most people in the world don’t understand why one person would choose to take another person’s life. You’re right, it is unpleasant to see how people can gossip about the victims and perpetrators of such crimes, but in a way it’s helping them to deal with the horrors of everyday life. Do you understand?”
Honestly, hearing him say it is a relief. “I do.”
“You are allowed to be interested in murder. You are allowed to wonder why these people committed these crimes. We’re all fascinated by it. You’re not a bad person for wanting to learn more.”
“No,” I say, “but I am crazy enough to hallucinate an entire person, so I can talk about it.”
He lowers his head and raises an eyebrow. “You know the C-word isn’t allowed in this office.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling at the same time.
“Tell me more about what you’ve learned about your triggers,” Dr Ibbotso
n asks.
“Well, I know that my parents are the main triggers. The stress of Mum’s death is what started this whole thing off. I convinced myself my father was dead and had some sort of psychotic break. My sleeping patterns became erratic. I drank too much, which didn’t help, and I began to hallucinate bugs and people who don’t exist. Then…” I pause.
“Go on.” Dr Ibbotson senses that I have new information to tell him, and he leans closer in anticipation.
“There are a couple of things I heard that, now that I look back, I don’t think were real. I was talking to Isabel once and she started saying very dark, worrisome things about her room and feeling trapped. It was out of character for her at the time and I don’t think she said it at all. And then there was another occasion when I was walking away from Chi, the charge nurse, and he said something that was out of place.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that Isabel was innocent. It wasn’t like Chi. He never gave his personal opinion about the patients. But at the time it felt so real.”
“This is good progress,” Dr Ibbotson says.
“When Chi said that about Isabel, I… I felt so strongly about her innocence. I was obsessed with it. She never seemed like a criminal to me at all. She was a young girl who needed… who needed my protection.”
“Do you think you have a strong urge to protect others?”
I rub my palms on my thighs. “I think I do. But I couldn’t protect her—I failed.”
“Isabel?”
“No. Mum.”
Dr Ibbotson nods. “I see. But you do realise that you were the child. If anyone needed protection, it was you.”
“I forced her to raise Tom. If I hadn’t done that, maybe she would have had the strength to leave him.”
“The past is the past, Leah. You are not responsible for any of the bad things that happened to your mother, including her death. It was an unfortunate sequence of events, that’s all.”
One For Sorrow Page 17