by Sue Walker
She snapped out of the thought as Alex lectured on. “And, Innes, I just want to emphasize how misguided I think you’re being. And I have to be brutally honest with you. I think your…how can I put it? Your mission to find out more about those of us who were in the Unit and our various fates in life is somewhat ill considered. And a…touch…unhealthy. Still, after our little talk, you might think differently on all this tomorrow. But I feel that you’ve had a wasted journey, both here to me and to Scotland in general. I’m sorry.”
Alex’s tone now had the force of a dismissal. Innes was more than happy to leave the claustrophobia of the situation. And there was another nagging worry. As she stood up, she couldn’t help but feel she’d been handled. Experdy managed. But she had no idea what to say next, except a mumbled thank you for the drink and a weak smile as she handed Alex her business card on the way out. “In case there’s anything else you remember, especially about Abby.” As she walked to her car, with Alex offering a polite wave of farewell, she felt the visit had been worse than useless. Alex had been in overriding control, and her devil-may-care attitude to each and every concern raised had left Innes embarrassed and confused. Maybe it was time to get home to London. Stop this nonsense. And just book herself a year’s worth of self-indulgent sessions with Liv.
As she pulled out of the driveway, she could see Alex still at the front door, unwaving now, merely checking her off the premises. And despite more than half a lifetime apart, bringing with it perhaps the wisdom of middle age, Alex remained to her as impenetrable as she had always been.
FOURTY-FOUR
Alex watched as the tail-lights disappeared round the corner. She headed back inside, threw herself on to a sofa and shut her eyes, reviewing what she’d just heard and seen.
She knew she’d been very smooth in her performance. Granted, she was in her own home, her own surroundings, but she had kept it together very well indeed. Outwardly at least. Innes Haldane’s phone call that morning had just about finished her. She’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions. Frozen with shock, she’d consented to seeing Innes, not having the least idea about how she’d been tracked down. From the brief phone call she knew Innes’s knowledge was limited. The knowledge she did have seemed to revolve around the recent deaths. That was fine. There was no hint of menace or dangerous knowledge evident in the call. Still, the intervening hours waiting for her arrival had been nerve-racking, working out how to handle Innes, what story to spin, if, as she thought and hoped, Innes was clueless.
And as for her lies tonight, delivered with such aplomb to Innes? Well, she was pretty much certain that she’d put her off. Granted, she had the address list and had been snooping around in the Hebrides, and round at Simon’s place. But she had only got so far. Innes Haldane might be as intelligent as herself, but she had always been trusting and naive and, to that extent, a rather stupid woman. Although her visit and her nosing about in things left a nagging worry, there was something far more pressing. She wandered over to the dining table. Christ, die photos had been sitting here, in plain view, while Innes had been here! But she hadn’t gone anywhere near and she wouldn’t have recognized Sarah. Well, probably not.
She’d tracked Sarah down at her partner’s place. Debbie Fry’s house was registered as her business premises. It had involved a couple of cloak and dagger evenings, hanging about in her car. But she’d got lucky the second night. Both of them arrived together. They looked similar. Like sisters almost. Fit, tanned, short hair. Typical middle-aged dyke thing. But she knew who was who, all right. Alex shuffled through the photos she’d taken that evening and the next morning. And the ones of her place by Loch Fyne. Loch Fyne. The bloody cheek of it. Following her out there had been a bit trickier. She’d been able to get Sarah’s practice address in Glasgow the same way that she’d found Debbie Fry’s. She’d only opted to sit it out in Morningside at the Fry woman’s place because she didn’t immediately fancy a trek to Glasgow. But, having seen Sarah a couple of times, the initial shock, yes shock, had worn off. The other afternoon she followed her from her central Glasgow offices all the way to Argyll. It had been a tricky drive, but she surprised herself. Loch lyne/What did that mean? Everything or nothing. And now, she had to decide what to do.
She wandered out of the living room. Her head was beginning to hurt. That episode with Innes Haldane was the last thing she’d needed. Time for another drink. She wrenched at the fridge door, the sucking noise as it opened and closed sounding unnaturally loud in the high-ceilinged kitchen. She filled the ice bucket and grabbed a half-full bottle of Scotch from the worktop. Maybe she’d make a night of it.
Back in the living room, she threw herself into one of the armchairs and sloshed a generous slug of whisky into her tumbler. She downed it in a oner. Simon had been a flicking fool. It was all his own fault. She downed another treble in two cold yet burning gulps. He was a fool. He’d fucked it up for them all. Danny was gone. Shit. And Abby? Well, inevitable really. And convenient. Oh, Christ. She raked a hand through her hair. Her head was killing her. Too many thoughts. Too many memories. Stop it!
She reached clumsily for the TV remote and started channel-hopping, rattling through the sixty-odd cable channels, first settling on one, and then flicking back and forth. After a few minutes and another huge drink, she angrily hit the standby button and die screen went black.
“Fuck it! Fuck it, fuck it!”
She raised an unsteady hand upwards and backwards and hurled the TV remote against the opposite wall, feeling satisfied as it shattered. She slumped back down in her chair, eyes closed. She might as well pass out here. It felt cold, though. Like a draught somewhere. Couldn’t be. She tried to warm herself up widi one more whisky, draining her glass before it slipped on to die carpet. Shit. The lighting was low, and she was almost out of it. She snuggled into the armchair, ready to drift off, confused images of Innes, Sarah and Simon flitting across me back of her eyes.
The cold had roused her. But she was too late. As she turned her head, she caught die sight of her muslin curtains flapping dirough die open French windows, but men her eyes focused on die immediate foreground. Hands were reaching over her head and covering her throat and mourn before she knew what had happened. And, in a moment, she felt die taut muscles in her face twist from surprise, to recognition, to horror.
THE UNIT
One hour later
Confidential note from Charge Nurse Ranjit Singh, to Bead of Psychiatric Nursing Services
20 March 1978
RE: Adolescent Psychiatric Unit (APU)
My RCN representative has advised me to write to you, in confidence. However, please feel free to use the contents of this note should the need ever arise.
It has been with increasing anxiety that I have seen the last of the 1977 intake leave the Unit and take their respective places in the wider world. I think you are aware of how much I was looking forward to taking up my post here when the Unit opened in 1975. That hope and pleasure have stayed with me up until this past year.
I know I do not have to tell you how important group dynamics are to the success (or failure) of therapeutic communities. Patients are selected as individuals but also on the basis of how they will wor-k as a group. Over these past nine months or so I have become increasingly worried, and I am now convinced, that fundamental errors have been made in the selection of the 1977 intake. This group have, by far, been the most difficult, most disruptive and, sadly for them, had the least successful outcomes in terms of their treatment.
We clearly cannot keep patients indefinitely, but we can refer them on, either, to main hospital psychiatric services or to outside therapeutic agencies. This has not been done in any patient’s case from this particular group.
I am very concerned that, in some cases, we have released highly disturbed, possibly even highly dangerous individuals into society. Enough chaos was wrought here these past few months. I fear that what may be unleashed in coming years to an unsuspecting world may be well beyond that.
FOURTY-FIVE
There was more than enough light for them to see each other and their surroundings. He’d made sure of that. Beside each single bed was a low-wattage lamp. And he’d lit every second one.
Simon looked directly at Alex. Although the tape across her mouth prevented her from speaking, her eyes held plenty of expression. As she’d awoken from the drug he’d given her at her house an hour before, her attitude had gone from puzzled disorientation to fear, and now she was trying a look of defiance. He’d ignored that one and continued to do so. He was relieved that she’d survived the journey here and woken up at all. He’d had no way of knowing how a bucket of Scotch would react with the drug he’d injected her with to make her easier to handle. But she was alive. That was something. As for her surprise at seeing him? The man she thought a water-logged, bloating corpse awaiting discovery in the Firth of Forth was very much alive. Yes, despite the attempt on his life, he’d survived. Had lain low to make sure that his ‘death’ made it into the local press, and then he’d formed his own plans for Alex.
He checked her bonds. Legs spreadeagled and secured to the bed-ends. Hands, enclosed in handcuffs, were freer. He’d put in wall bolts with generous lengths of chain attached. All ready for her. Now, without a word, he left the room, dosing the door of the female dorm sofdy behind him, refusing to acknowledge her struggling body or expression of pleading terror.
He took his time down the wide staircase, checking that everything was secure and as he wanted it. He paused on the lower landing to take a look at what he knew had been a male patients’ bedroom, now an empty shell of peeling wallpaper with a single rusting bed-frame in the corner. The staff overnight rooms were in much the same state. The second male patients’ bedroom was similarly kitted out to the female one and had obviously been used for something residential in recent years. He shrugged to himself. None of that really mattered now. Everything was his. He’d bought it all. The hospital authorities had been desperate to offload the place for years. A property developer had initially bought it, couldn’t get the planning permission he’d needed, and was happy for Simon to take it off his hands. It was the opportunity he’d been looking for. The building. Its contents. Its land. Its memories. Its secrets. Its history. Its pain. They were all his.
On the ground floor, he wandered slowly towards the main room. The vastness of it, with its quadruple bay windows, still made him pause each time he entered it. Slivers of street-light were filtering through the huge wooden shutters. Like orange laser beams, targeting enemy points on the scuffed carpet beneath his feet. If only they had been real lasers back in 1977. Picking off each and every one of them as they lay in their psychodramatic comas. None of this would have happened. Relaxation exercises! He wished now that there had been other, rather more strenuous activities imposed on them.
Back in the hallway, he toed open the door of the study room. An old desk. Two chairs. Nothing else. It had always been a soulless room. He’d preferred to do his studying out in the garden when the weather was good, or in the kitchen between meal times. He moved through to the kitchen. It was still the same. Still had its now-ancient industrial ovens and cooker. Half a dozen round tables and stacks of grey plastic chairs stood against the wall. The place was deserted. Lifeless. Finished.
The room he wanted was back at the end of the long hallway. Glass on three sides. Two blinds tucked neatly up. The third, keeping prying eyes away from the outside of the building. He settled himself at the desk. How many nurses had sat here? Writing up notes? Missing things? Suspecting others? He could almost hear the murmurs of Anna on the phone to Dr Laurie. The hearty laugh of Sarah Melville as she joshed with Ran).
He bent again to his task. Time to double-check it all. The papers. The tape. He pressed the play button on the cassette player, listening to the sombre tones of his own voice.
“We saw them from some distance away. The moon had come out and it was quite easy to see, what with the light reflecting off the waters of Loch Fyne, and we all had torches. There were two of them. When they saw us they began waving. Tentatively at first. Unsure. And then they realised that we were just kids. Nothing to worry about. I heard one of them say, ‘They’re smiling. They’re friendly. Allies. Not the enemy. We’re saved!’”
He pressed stop. Enough for now. He was satisfied that the tape was working. He gathered up the entire package, ready to make his way back up to the top of the house. It was as he’ was clearing everything from the desk that he noticed it. It was a shock. He could have sworn he’d left that at home, in his study, where he’d read and re-read it with the night wind and sea spray pouring in from the open window. The discovery of it here among the others papers had shaken him and he needed to sit back down. Recompose himself before going upstairs and continuing with what he had to do. The pale blue envelope was becoming tatty from regular handling. He slid the matching coloured sheets from it, running a finger over the indigo ink. A fine, loopy script. He felt like he’d read it a million times. In that case, what harm would there be in reading it again?
The fact of it, her killing herself, he had to admit, had been a surprise. A shock. When he’d paid her a visit at her home in London some weeks before, her reaction to him had been, initially, remarkably calm. As if she’d been expecting something of the sort. She couldn’t have been of course. She’d made him lemon tea, served in the finest bone-china cups and saucers, listened silently to his tale, and eventually wept. He’d liked her. In truth he’d liked her when they were in the Unit. She seemed so normal to him that he sometimes wondered why she was in there. But he also remembered how Laurie’s sessions ripped the heart out of everyone, and Abby’s dysfunctional family life had been laid bare, as had everyone else’s. No, no wonder Abby had obsessive, control issues, which she kept fairly well hidden in the Unit but which surfaced in highly tense, withdrawn moods from time to time. A visceral, permanent, dug-in tension he could still sense in her, twenty-six years later. He guessed she’d just learned to live with it.
He stroked the first page of the letter. He knew now what had happened to her that day by the shores of Loch Fyne, more than half a lifetime ago. He understood. She was essentially a good person. Maybe she should have done more? Instead of walking away in disgust. But no, she couldn’t have known, couldn’t have predicted the rest.
He’d found it hard to be in her close company. She was indeed striking. In every way. A lasting and sensual beauty that would—would have—carried into her old age. How lucky Danny had been to have known diis woman. To have been loved by her. In another time, another world maybe…maybe he’d have tried with her. Her sexual and other, deeper forms of magnetism were almost irresistible. But he’d put those thoughts away almost as quickly as they had emerged.
They’d talked about his life, her life. She was worried. Desperate. He had reassured her. It was only as he was leaving that she told him what had happened on the ferry. He’d almost collapsed at that.
He opened up the letter, head shaking as he re-read her words.
Dear Simon,
I can’t begin, to explain, what meeting you again, has done to me. I wasn’t afraid like you, thought I might be. Just sad. So sad. It’s dear that Danny had very much, led me to believe the wrong things about you. About you being a bit mad and thinking it was somehow our fault, everything that had happened to you, and your family. And he also led me to think, if not actually believe, that you were involved in Lydia’s fire. It was wrong of him to do this, but, as you yourself said, he obviouxly wanted, maybe needed, to see me, and he was terrified that you might look me up first. For all that, all Danny’s misrepresenting of you, I am sorry, although, I cannot say that I regret having met Danny again, even if we started out from a position, of deceit.
When, I look at everything that happened all those years ago, my overriding feeling is one of guilt. I can never make amends for any of it. The, odd thing is that if I really try hard to remember how I felt then, what I saw then, how it all was aft
erwards, despite what you said when we met, I should have known, better. Things were different in the Unit afterwards. Things were tense beforehand. Strange, perhaps that was part of the cause of what happened later. I don’t know. I think you may have a better idea of why things happened, you are after all the psychologist.
What I can’t understand—and I have thought this through again and again, until my mind, my memory, reels—is why I didn’t notice anything that night when we all met up again. True, we were all a bit worse for wear, with the whisky and dope Carrie had brought along. I mean, that was part of the whole thing, wasn’t it? Running off to get boozed and doped up. Thing is, I wasn’t enjoying any of it very much, and the thing down by the loch did it. I stormed off, telling Danny that I wanted some space. He promised he’d be up at the fork in the high road ‘soon’, as he put it.
I blundered about in the forest, probably thanks to having drunk too much, and got genuinely lost for some time, with no map, no compass. And then, I saw you all. A silent, bedraggled, downcast group. But I just thought you were a bit drunk and fed up that the absconding prank had got us all lost, cold and tired. I’ve done everything I can to try and conjure up that moment when I met you all and we were waiting it out for the inevitable—for the staff to drive past and find us. I just don’t remember anything specific. Maybe it was because I was being self-centred. I was sulking because Danny and I had had that row. As I saw it, he’d wanted to stay drinking with you all and larking around by the loch, rather then to come with me. I just don’t know why I never picked up on anything specific. And that is another appalling lapse on, my part that I can never forgive myself for.
Anyway, afterwards I was unsure as to why things were different in, the Unit. The evening did niggle at me and I did ask Danny about it, but I didn’t really piece the two things together—that night and the atmosphere in the Unit afterwards. And within weeks I just wanted to do my time and leave, you knew what it was like. Waiting for a, leaving date. Waiting for the staff to finally decide when they thought you were fit to go back into the world. I became fixated on leaving. I wanted to get on with living. Living as normally as I could again. So after a while I blotted it all out. It was wilful ignorance on my part. And it is that knowledge that I can never reconcile within myself. Never.