2004 - The Reunion

by Sue Walker

  Danny plunged his hand in again. “Righto. Second runner-up. Number zero twenty-three! Zero two three!”

  “Yes! Me!” Innes watched as a giggling Sarah pushed her way to the front and joined the other two on die tiny stage. She teetered precariously on the edge as Ranj handed her the prize. She ripped off the green crepe paper and laughed, holding a pound box of Black Magic and a book token aloft. “Thanks, everyone! When you next see me in two weeks’ time, I’ll be the size of a house and crosseyed! Merry Christmas!”

  There was some half-hearted clapping and then Danny was digging in for the second-to-last time. “Zero three one. Zero thirty-one!”

  A little boy of about ten elbowed his way forward, raffle ticket waving above his head. Dr Matt Benson, an American psychiatrist from the main hospital, scooped him up into his arms, shouting in his Southern drawl: “For those of you who haven’t met him yet, this is Dale. My nephew. He lives in London with my sister, Lee-Anne, whom I saw a minute ago. Lee-Anne, you there?”

  “She’s in the bog!” someone shouted. Innes joined in the general laughter.

  Matt Benson was lifting the little boy on to the stage. Ranj bent down, holding out the long, fat, cracker-shaped parcel. It was far too heavy for the child, and Innes stayed back as the crowd unconsciously made a semicircle around him while his uncle lay the gift on the floor. Within two minutes all was revealed: a bright orange tent.

  “Wow!” Matt Benson hoisted the boy on to his shoulders. “Say a big thank you, Dale. Dale loves camping. Anyone mind if we set up in the garden right now? Only joking!”

  Innes noticed Anna, standing on the outside of the circle, meeting Adrian Laurie’s eye. They’d picked it up immediately.

  The atmosphere had turned—subdued, edgy. She felt, rather than saw, the darting looks passing between some of the others. It was too dark to make much out But Ran) was charging on, unaware. “Right! Star-prize time! Danny, do the honours please!”

  Innes stood on tip-toe as Danny, like an expert illusionist, ostentatiously pulled his shirtsleeve back and dipped his hand slowly in. “Zero zero seven! Double o seven. Lucky for more than James Bond, it seems!”

  “Yesl Mine’s ya bass!” Alex was right at the front and was hauling herself up beside Danny and Ranj. Ranj handed her the lavishly beribboned box, stopped a moment and frowned as he seemed to weigh it in his hands. Then continued smiling and congratulating. “Well done, Alex. I know you’ll enjoy this. Have a great Christmas!”

  All eyes were on her, straining to see what she’d won. Innes was reminded of the snowmen frenzy in the garden a few hours earlier as Alex ripped at the paper, offering a running commentary to all. “Ah…right, I see. It’s one of these trick presents. Paper on paper, boxes in boxes. Like bloody Russian dolls! Sneaky buggers! Here we go.” She’d already shed three layers of wrapping and emptied two boxes. Ripping at the lid she pulled back the last of the red tissue and stared at what was nestling among it. With a yelp, she dropped everything, leaped off the stage, and kicked and punched her way through the crowd, howling.

  “No! No! Nooo!”

  Each watched as she fled from the room. Innes inched forward, anxious to see the upturned box. Ranj was there, kneeling down. Carefully he lifted the box and scowled. Still entwined in the crumpled tissue was Alex’s prize.

  Climbing rope and a hunting knife.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Innes had slept like the dead. No dreaming. That surprised her after her visit to the Unit building. She’d got very jittery there. Stupid, really. And so many memories came flooding back. Things she hadn’t thought about for years. But this morning she’d allowed herself to consider what she was doing. And why.

  Three, three, out of the six people she’d spent the best part of a year with in a psychiatric hospital had recently been involved in fatal incidents. Lydia might well be alive, but, by the sound of things, the quality of that life was compromised beyond repair.

  She mused on their lives in the Unit. Of all the crazy games they’d played to amuse themselves, annoy each other, goad staff, they’d never played who’ll-be-dead-in-a-quarter-of-a-century. Not surprising. Like all youth, they had times when they had seen themselves as immortal. However, unlike most other teenagers, they had all suffered their share of pole-axing morbidity, when intrusive, depressing thoughts were on the agenda day and night. But she would never in a million years have predicted that, counting Carrie as well, three of them would be dead. Another half dead. All by their own hands.

  And that was why she was doing this. At six-thirty that morning, meaningful, rational— to her at least—resolve had set in. Three former patients’ lives had been effectively obliterated in a handful of months. The only known link between these people was the Unit. Coincidence was totally inadequate as an explanation. For God’s sake, what the hell had been happening at that bloody place to lead to this? For the hundredth time that morning she lay back on the bed, notepad on knees, her scribbled jottings beginning to hurt her eyes.

  She’d written drugs/drugs therapy? It was an obvious one. And yet not. The simple fact was that very few of the patients were given any medication. That was part of the new-fangled regime. Keep away from the more conventional treatments. Only use them if all else has failed, if absolutely necessary and for short periods of time. Certainly, a few of them had been given medication but very sparingly. The ‘chemical cosh’, so reviled now but in constant use then in psychiatric hospitals, was never a built-in feature of the go-ahead Unit.

  As the morning wore on, she’d resisted giving too much credence to a slowly forming ‘sci-fi’ theory that maybe experimental drugs had been used in that most experimental of places. Maybe there was some kind of horrendous neuro-psychological backlash that manifested itself in middle age in the patients? Christ, maybe they’d all been given it in the food, drink or something. Or maybe they’d all been subject to hypnotherapy and couldn’t remember anything. She’d smiled to herself and scored a line through these more outlandish ideas. Too X-Files!

  But it didn’t stop the odier, more nebulous worry: that maybe something in them all, either in their treatments or in their various illnesses, had unwittingly created psychological time-bombs. Time-bombs that ended in agonizing, reckless, unnecessary deaths…

  An hour later, she pulled out of the hotel car park, skirted the city and headed south. She was relieved to be doing something and leaving her unhealthy, brooding mood far behind in the hotel room. Traffic and weather went her way, and she was pulling into the beach-side car park by midday. Yellowcraigs was windy. She clambered up to the top of a dune. A lot of people out for a weekday. Various mothers with children. Old ladies and men with dogs. Hoods up and heads down against the sand-blasting gale.

  She turned inland and made the five-minute walk to Dunes Road. A carved wooden sign at the entrance to the short drive told her she was at ‘Craigleith’. She studied the blackened mass that had once been a fine family house. And, ultimately, the crematorium for a father and his three children.

  “Can I help you?”

  She spun round to see the smiling face of an elderly woman, who was clutching the tartan lead of a soaking wet West Highland Terrier.

  “Oh, I, I, eh, I’m sorry.”

  The woman nodded to the remnants of ‘Craigleith’. “What a mess. And an awful tragedy. I’m Jean Lament. I live next door. In ‘Kittiwake’. Are you visiting or…?”

  The small, neat woman let the question trail off. Innes knew she wasn’t suspicious of her. She clearly looked too respectable to be a burglar. Nevertheless, the woman wanted to know why a stranger was in her private road.

  Innes crouched to pet the small dog, blowing kisses at the beast, making it overexcited and causing it to bark shrilly. She stood up again and looked at ‘Craigleith’. “Actually I knew someone who lived there.”

  “My goodness! Not dear Lydia? Robin?”

  Innes offered a suitably doleful smile in reply, not wanting to invite too many unanswerable questions about
her interest in the place. “Yes. Lydia. What actually happened? I just heard something about a fire.”

  The old woman sat down on the brick wall, inviting Innes to do the same, and she talked on, staring into the mid-distance towards the sea. On closer inspection Innes could see that the woman really was getting on. Eighty if she was a day. Her hair was white and thinning. But her complexion was good. Tanned. Lined. Healthy. A strong face. She had a refined, lilting accent. The north-east, Caithness or Sutherland, she reckoned, as she listened to the woman’s story of her former neighbour.

  “Lydia was a lovely girl. Had a lot to cope with, what with her man being an officer in the Navy and everything, and being away from home for long periods. The children were all at private school down the road. I think Angus was about to go to boarding school. Wee Hamish was the youngest and had just started at school. Lydia was a good mother. Always telling me she wanted the best for them. I get the impression that maybe she hadn’t had a very happy childhood. I didn’t even know, until I read it in the papers, that she had any parents still living. She never mentioned them and they never visited. And they just live in Edinburgh. So near. Ach, well. You never know what goes on in other people’s families, do you?”

  Innes couldn’t have agreed more, and leaned forward to pat the dog, attempting to seem casual in her next inquiry. “Uh-huh. And this fire? I’ve only read a -couple of reports. There’s a suggestion that it was started deliberately?”

  Jean Lament paused, head shaking in bewilderment and pity. “It was well covered in the local paper and at the inquiry into their deaths. My granddaughter works there at the paper, so I’ve got a bit of the ‘inside track’, as they say. Anyway, there’s no absolute proof about that. If it was arson, no one knows who did it or why. They think Lydia was under some sort of stress before it happened. May have known of some threat. You see, she’d been awfy depressed. But she told no one, not even her husband. And no one noticed. Myself included. It only came out when her GP gave evidence at the inquiry. When he suggested that she share things with her family and friends, you know, take the load off, apparently Lydia became very agitated. Was adamant that no one should know there was anything wrong. But, in terms of the tragedy, that was all a bit circumstantial. It may just have been pure coincidence that Lydia was having a hard time and this happened. On the other hand, there was gossip about her husband’s job in the Navy. Something ‘top secret’, perhaps. But he didn’t do secret things, like captain a nuclear submarine. He was just a career officer on a ship, for goodness sake. And of course there was his racing stuff. All those cars and motorcycles and petrol and oil on the premises. A bit dangerous, I would have thought. But, who knows?”

  Innes waited as the old woman paused for a wistful moment and then went on. “Lydia’s doing well apparendy. Physically that is. But she’s…they’re not sure, really. They thought she had brain damage at first and it seems that there is some loss there, but it also looks like she’s got rather serious…serious psychiatric problems now. They say it might be…what do they call it? Yes, some sort of post-traumatic problem. She’s in a specialist place not far from here. The Broughton Clinic. A few miles down the coast in North Berwick. I visit her regularly. I’m not sure she knows me, to be honest. It’s been terrible, terrible.”

  Jean Lamont edged herself closer to Innes. “There was one funny thing. It’s been on my mind. About two weeks before the fire, Lydia had some visitors. Two. A man and a woman. Not together. The man I didn’t see very well. It was at night. But the other one, diat one I got a good look at. It was very unusual. You see, they never had visitors other than tradesmen and his, Robin’s family.”

  Innes shrugged, unsure of where this was going. “So? Why should that matter? These visitors, I mean?”

  “I think it matters. Because she was never the same after that. Every time I saw her she was nervy. Odd. You see, I saw her at her front door with the man. The one I didn’t get a good look at. You could see that she didn’t really want him there. But it was a couple of days later when I saw her with a woman. Youngish. Attractive. Smartly dressed. They were talking out on the drive. I couldn’t hear what was being said. But I’m telling you, Lydia looked scared. Terrified out of her wits! I can’t explain it any more clearly. She just looked ill. Dreadful. Like she’d seen a ghost.”

  She met up with Jean Lament again after a couple of hours’ break. Innes had spent the time down at the harbour of the seaside town of North Berwick, picking away at an unappetizing sandwich, worrying about the ethics of her next step. Her mood had changed again: back to one of mild dread. Maybe it was time to return to London. Stop this now. But that wasn’t going to be the answer. She’d embarked on this most surprising of personal journeys. She felt utterly alone in it. Although how could it be any other way? This was her past she was excavating. Only she could do it. And it was high time she did. It was still there—the underlying nag of fear that had stayed stubbornly in her gut since Isabella’s phone message. That had been the catalyst for all this. And she wouldn’t, couldn’t, ignore it.

  The old lady was rattling on as they stepped out of the car at the visitors’ parking area. “You’re not allowed any further by car unless you’re passing through. Still, the walk’s a nice one on a day like this. The Broughton Clinic’s in a separate building from the main hospital. It actually has quite a few functions, including two locked wards for some real poor souls.”

  The long semi-rural walk down a tree-lined private road to the clinic was more of a reminder of the Unit than Innes needed. She slowed her pace, the urge to turn on her heel and run almost irresistible. But, as they rounded the corner, the mirage was broken. The Broughton Clinic bore no resemblance whatsoever to the old Unit mansion. Here was a modern two-storey ugly box of a building.

  They approached a reception area that had more glass and hot-house plants in its atrium than Innes’s own overpriced health club back in London. A quick glance to her left and she knew why. An unobtrusive but clear sign PRIVATE WING this WAY answered her questions about the expensive architecture. She wondered how on earth they’d managed to put the locked wards, with presumably the most seriously mentally ill, cheek-by-jowl with those who wanted to be pampered.

  She checked out of Jean Lament’s well-meaning but inane babbling to the receptionist and paid attention to herself. She was nervous. It was an important moment. This was the first time she’d met a Unit patient since she’d left the damn place.

  And what of Lydia? Innes’s view of her twenty-six years ago had been of a basically nice girl who could sometimes have the devil in her. A manic depressive. If she was ‘up’, life was great and Lydia loved everyone, well, almost everyone. But her ‘downs’ had cast a dark and sour pall over the Unit, staff included. During those episodes, Lydia would withdraw into herself, monosyllabic at best, creepily mute at worst. But Innes had known the girl was an acute observer during those periods. Lydia spied on people. She hadn’t been the only one. But Innes had often seen her doing it. Eavesdropping. Watching. Perhaps even plotting, paranoia conjoining with the black despair in her sick mind.

  “Lydia Shaw is no longer in Ward 17. She was moved to what we call the Annexe last week.” The receptionist was smiling helpfully at them both.

  Jean Lament took a step forward. “The Annexe?”

  “It’s a kind of halfway house. Locked at night but open during the day. It means she’s doing well. You’ll be pleased, Mrs Lament. Just a moment, I’ll call one of the nurses to come and see you.”

  Moments later, a pretty-faced, obviously gay male nurse was standing in front of Innes, smiling a welcome to both. Muscular, shaven-headed and called Charge Nurse Johnny Wallace.

  “Hi, Jean, lovely to see you again.” Innes shook his hand as Jean Lamont made the introductions. “And welcome to you, Innes. It’s good to see Lydia having new visitors. She doesn’t get enough of them.”

  “But what about her parents?” Innes asked.

  She caught an eye-to-eye exchange bet
ween Jean and Nurse Johnny before he answered. He kept the smile as he delivered the sad truth. “They don’t visit. Lydia has no other blood relatives. That’s why we encourage friends and the like to come.”

  That was hardly surprising. How could the bitter divisions, present in Lydia’s family twenty-six years ago, have led to anything other than estrangement?

  “And her husband’s family?”

  The awkward Jean/Johnny exchange happened again. He just shook his head at Innes.

  “Oh, I see.” She followed the other two down a long airy corridor. So, Lydia’s in-laws thought she’d killed their son and grandchildren. What other reason could they have for staying away?

  Johnny was keeping up a running commentary about Lydia’s condition. “It’s still very early days. We thought there’d been some neurological damage. It’s just very difficult to know exactly what. The senior medical staff here are a bit puzzled by Lydia’s case actually. She performs well in various tests which involve tasks both physical and mental but she seems to have blocks of some kind in communication. She can also get very aggressive. The main problem seems to be behavioural, which of course can have a physical cause, in terms of brain damage, or a psychological one. By that I mean the shock and trauma of the event itself.”

  “Lydia is very difficult to deal with. I know that you, Jean, have found her to be a different person from the one you used to know. Personality change is not uncommon in such cases. After the fire she was in a coma for three weeks. Then just came out of it. Anyway, I can’t promise she’ll know either of you today, but it’s worth a try. Sometimes she responds to Jean. Sometimes not, eh? We’ll see. It’s certainly better for her to be here, seeing visitors and being able to get outside. Lydia’s obviously no longer the severe worry she was when she first came in. It’s just we don’t really know what’s going on with her. We can only hope for the best and keep her stimulated and occupied.”