Dear Amy

by Helen Callaghan

  She nods yes, injecting her voice with all the enthusiasm she can muster for the idea. Katie would love a bath; give the world for a proper bath, though a part of her suspects that even should she scrub herself raw between now and the end of the world, she will never, ever feel clean again.

  However, she does not love the baths Chris gives her, which he calls his ‘favourite time with his favourite girl’. The thought appals her.

  She sets the mug down – not on the tray, next to herself – but he quickly scoops it up to join the paper plate. Bugger. He never forgets the mug, the only potentially sharp object she is ever entrusted with.

  She wonders whether any of the others before her hung on to their mug. Like Bethan Avery. She wonders whether other girls were given knives, forks, plates, bowls and glasses, small freedoms, and each and every one has been used in an attempted escape and taken away from her successor, and then after that her successor, so that now Katie eats with her hands from paper plates.

  When was Bethan here? 1998? An unimaginable aeon to Katie, who had not yet been born then. How many girls have been in this cellar between Bethan and Katie, in all of those long years? Girls who tried to escape; girls who were cunning and bold in the face of evil; girls who dissembled, who fought; girls who had plans?

  What became of them all?

  Katie is starting to guess.

  She tries to control her trembling as he takes the tray with its paper plate, and wipes at her fingers with the wet napkins he has brought down.

  ‘Now the shops are open, I’m going to nip out and get you some clothes for the journey,’ he says. ‘Something pretty to wear. And when I get back I’ll run our bath.’ He stands up, the tray in hand. ‘So sit tight.’

  The door closes behind him, and after the rattle of the keys in the locks, he is gone.

  Katie cannot account for it, but she is rigid with terror.

  She tries to talk herself into calm. Yes, it was strange he brought breakfast. Yes, it is not her usual bath day. Yes, his disappearance last night was odd, his reappearance stranger.

  It’s no use. Her mind ticks inexorably onwards, to realization. Nothing about his words this morning have made any sense. There is no way he can get her as far as Dover without being caught, never mind Thailand. He’s not maintaining his cover as the house’s owner because there is no longer any point.

  The important things she must take away – the indisputable truths – are that tomorrow, Friday, surveyors are coming to the Grove and she cannot be found here. That Mrs Lewis has been on TV looking for Bethan Avery, whom people believe is alive, and if Bethan is alive, then she will lead the world right to Chris, and right to this very cellar.

  And Chris has been digging in the garden.

  She puts her hands to her face, barely able to breathe, as she realizes that what she has so quickly devoured, what he so carefully cooked for her, was her last meal before her execution.

  23

  ‘Who’s Angelique?’

  I didn’t answer him straight away. Part of it is that I didn’t want to answer, but the other part is that I was not entirely sure what the right answer was.

  ‘Margot, who’s Angelique?’

  ‘I don’t . . .’ I trailed off. It was gone.

  There was a long pause, while he sighed and I stared out of the car window. The sky was a cold, deep blue.

  ‘Margot, do you know anything about psychology?’

  ‘I’ve read plenty of pop quizzes in Marie-Claire.’ I folded my arms, trying for defiant, but instead feeling weary, beaten, hunted and utterly bewildered. ‘I’m an agony aunt. And I’ve been sectioned as a danger to myself and others before today. That might be relevant.’

  ‘Do you know anything about PTSD?’

  I frowned at him and swiped at my drying tears. ‘A little.’

  ‘The interesting thing about post-traumatic stress disorder,’ he continued, glancing sideways, towards the house – the curtain had twitched again – ‘is that it’s a form of extreme anxiety. Soldiers in the field get it. Victims of terrorist attacks.’ He paused, ‘Ra— . . . Assault victims.’

  ‘Thanks, yes, I get the general idea,’ I snapped. ‘It’s the one where you relive the event over and over.’ I flounced back in the seat, not interested in helping him out. Not interested in having this conversation. Why were we talking about this?

  Inside me, a reasonable, rational voice was pointing out that we were having this conversation because I have done something bad, not him.

  He thinks he is trying to help you, Margot.

  I did not want to be helped. I did not want to be helped in the worst way.

  ‘Well, yes. And no. Most people relive the events. But sometimes, according to our good friend Greta, when someone is in an unbearably traumatic situation, especially a young person, and there is absolutely no escape for them, they stay sane by cutting their ties to what’s happening to them; they cease to engage with reality and devise a new reality of their own. The mind can only stand so much bad news.’

  ‘So then what happens?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘It depends. Sometimes they simply choose to forget who they are and what happened to them. It’s called dissociative amnesia.’

  ‘You can do that?’

  ‘Yes, you can do that. But there’s always a price. You’ll always be fractured, a thing in pieces, with no continuum. You’ll never be whole.’

  ‘Perhaps wholeness is overrated. We are all different people at different times, a variety of competing ego states,’ I replied. ‘The Greek philosophers were right. No one’s ever really themselves – they are a reflection of their Platonic ideal.’

  ‘I am not interested in discussing Greek philosophers with you, Margot,’ he said sternly. ‘They are beside the point.’

  I sighed. ‘So, what else happens apart from amnesia?’

  ‘Fugues,’ he said. ‘There can be fugue states. When you wake up somewhere and hours, days, weeks have passed and you can’t account for where you’ve been or what you’ve done.’

  I did not reply. I was more troubled than I had ever been.

  ‘They happen, apparently, in response to triggers.’

  ‘Triggers.’

  ‘Yes, triggers. Things that make you remember the original trauma. Which, in your case, is very interesting. Because Bethan is writing letters now, which she did not do before, or at least if she has, you have never contacted anyone about it as far as we know. And Bethan appears out of your fugue states. Somehow, something has triggered her. Deep inside you, in the Bethan Avery part, you know much more about what’s happened to Katie Browne than you realize with your conscious mind.’

  I still did not reply.

  ‘And,’ he said, turning to me, now actively trying to catch my gaze, ‘this girl’s life may depend on this knowledge, so I need you to try and work with us on this.’

  I let him catch my gaze.

  ‘What’s this us?’ I said, with conscious cruelty. ‘You want me to work on this because you’ll get a fucking paper out of it and pay the mortgage, Martin. That’s what you want. That’s why you’ve been so much in evidence.’

  There was a long second of molten silence between us.

  His face was white, set. I had cut him, it seemed.

  ‘Margot, listen to me. I understand that you do not want to have this conversation. I understand that you’re running, and that you’ve been running all of your adult life, and that you believe, in your heart of hearts, that if you ever stop, you’ll die.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘You have made escaping what happened to you, consigning it to oblivion, your life’s great work. You have laboured and slaved to do it. You have made tremendous sacrifices in every aspect of your relationships so that you never have to be Bethan Avery again. And you have so very nearly succeeded.’ His hand nearest me moved, and then stilled, and I realized that he wanted to reach out, to touch me.

  I glared at the offending limb.

  ‘B
ut the goal is impossible, Margot. You can’t escape who you really are . . .’

  Panic engulfed me. He understood nothing.

  I had no idea who I really was, if I was not Margot.

  Then hard on the heels of panic: fury.

  I threw open the Range Rover door, hard enough to feel the joints creak. He was calling after me, ‘Margot, Margot,’ as I stormed towards the door of the cottage.

  There was movement through the net curtain, as I banged on the door knocker sharply and stood back.

  It did not take nearly so long for her to reach the door this time. Her fearlessness had gone, and her face through the crack was pale, the tiny creases of age in her lips compressed together, rumpling her skin.

  ‘Do you know me?’ I demanded.

  No reply. I realized that she must have heard Martin calling my name, and that that name has unlocked something inside her, something feral and desperate that I would never have anticipated when I first met her.

  ‘I am asking you if you know me!’ I shouted at her, tears springing up within me. ‘Am I your daughter? Am I? AM I?’

  Her eyes widened, her mouth compressed even further, but left a glint of yellow teeth – a snarl of fear, or perhaps agony. She was a perfect picture of pain.

  ‘How dare you! Get off my property this instant, before I call the police, do you hear me? How dare you!’

  Then Martin was there, and he had hold of me, trying to pull me backwards while I fought and shrieked in his arms.

  ‘Am I your daughter? Am I your daughter?’

  ‘NO!’ she shouted, as though this single word contained all of her being. The door swung wide and I thought that she was going to launch herself at me in the perfection of her rage. ‘I don’t know who you are! And if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you!’ The white bun had fallen loose, the strands framing her furious face.

  It was as if she had struck the blow already. I felt suddenly empty, slack, drained of blood.

  ‘I am so, so sorry,’ said Martin to her, dragging me back as I became limp in his arms. ‘Terribly sorry.’

  I had ceased resisting him, and let him lead me back to the car and strap me in. There was only white noise in my head. Her resounding ‘NO!’ – her rejection – had blown all other sounds away.

  She did not leave her door until we pulled away and she finally slammed it shut.

  ‘We need to get out of here before the police come. It’ll complicate things,’ he said, driving as quickly as he dared out of the drive. In the house opposite the cottage, a younger woman ran out on to her step, no doubt drawn by the shouting. With a slicing hand and a command she ushered back a small cloud of children who wanted to follow her, and in the rear-view mirror she hurried across the road, heading for Flora Bellamy’s house (Flora who is Margot’s mother, but not my mother), her face full of obvious concern. Halfway across she stopped, watching us go for an instant, before carrying on to Flora’s door.

  My shame and horror were absolute.

  As was my utter bewilderment.

  ‘This is impossible,’ I said earnestly. ‘Martin, this is a mistake.’

  ‘Oh, it was that all right,’ he replied. His eyes flicked up to the rear-view mirror and away again.

  ‘This . . . this can’t be happening. It can’t be real. Look, I have no memory of that woman. You’ve got the wrong . . .’

  ‘The Margot Bellamy that lived there had your National Insurance number, date of birth, your schools . . .’ He sighed, as though considering, and then seemed to calm down. ‘It’s Margot’s house. But you’re not Margot. That’s why you don’t remember Flora.’

  He pulled over, outside the post office, and I was trembling now.

  ‘Listen—’ he said.

  ‘No, you listen. Do you seriously believe that for one moment, for one solitary second, that I would keep up some kind of fraud, keep up this pretence, if I thought Katie Browne’s life depended on it?’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘Do you think I’m so selfish a monster that I would let a girl be raped and tortured and murdered just so I could keep my fucking shit job? Is that what you think is going on here? Is that what I look like to you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that, but—’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Martin! None! When you say Bethan Avery to me, nothing comes back! Nothing! You sound like a crazy person! I swear to God, I have no memory of—’

  ‘I know,’ he said with sudden urgency, and he reached out and grabbed me hard by the wrists. ‘Listen. I know you think you don’t remember anything. You’ve spent years excising her and you’ve become very good at it. That’s not what I’m asking.’

  I could only stare at him, dumbfounded, his hands warm on my skin.

  ‘I am asking you to take a leap of faith. To be open to the possibility that Bethan Avery may be in there, locked out of your conscious mind, and that everything that’s happened to you so far is because she is banging on the windows and desperately trying to tell you something. Something important.’

  I took in a deep breath.

  ‘A leap of faith?’

  ‘That’s it. That’s all I want from you.’

  I couldn’t speak, not straightaway. And when I did, my voice was tiny, like something I was hearing from the other side of some enormous distance.

  ‘All right.’ I licked my lips. ‘I have my doubts. But if you think it helps, I’ll try.’

  He released me then, slowly.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  We paused then, our conflict exhausted.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘How do we do this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He opened the door and pulled out his phone. ‘Wait here. I need to call Greta.’

  He was on the phone for nearly fifteen minutes, during which time I watched him pacing urgently in front of the post office, listening far more than he was talking. Every so often our eyes met through the windshield and he offered me a wan smile.

  While this happened, two thoughts circled one another relentlessly in my mind, like dogs chasing one another’s tails.

  Firstly, this was all utterly impossible and insane. I cannot be Bethan Avery. Yet it had been proved impossible for me to be Margot.

  Who am I? Who am I?

  And alongside this, even if it wasn’t impossible or insane that I was Bethan Avery, or even if it was impossible and insane, but was still, nevertheless, true, then how were we going to find Katie Browne?

  I felt sick, nauseous with anxiety, and just when I thought I could bear it no more, and was about to leap out of the car and grab him, he was suddenly jumping back into the driver’s seat, slamming the door after him.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s difficult. There are three ways to treat you. There’s psychotherapy, which takes months. There’s hypnosis . . .’

  I widened my eyes. Of course.

  ‘But with such an entrenched trauma, it’s more likely to produce false memories than real ones.’

  ‘I don’t understand . . .’

  ‘The past is a country you really, really don’t want to visit, Margot.’ He turned to me. ‘Events have proved this. Greta thinks you’d need hypnotherapy under a chemical trance. It’s all very specialized, and very high risk.’

  I shrugged. ‘If it helps, I don’t care. I’ll do it.’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ he said, starting the car. ‘They need to find someone with the expertise to perform the procedure, and then convince them that the result will be worth the potential risk to you.’

  ‘Risk to me?’

  He nodded, not looking at me, pulling out into the road. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What kind of risk? I mean, comparatively speaking, how bad can it be considering what we’re up against?’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t get into it. It’s pointless until she finds someone prepared to help us. She’s got a few names in mind, and a couple of them are in Cambridge, so with any luck we’ll hear back from her soon
.’

  ‘What do we do until then?’

  He had turned out of the village and was heading north fast. For my own part I was glad to see the back of Wastenley.

  The pause was so long that for a moment I thought he’d forgotten my question, until he said, ‘We could do things while we’re waiting. We might find something useful there.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘We could look for triggers.’ That bright green gaze was on me again. ‘It can’t hurt.’

  I nodded, as if I understood.

  ‘And where do we start?’

  He turned back to the road, and his smile was small but genuine, spiked with camaraderie, and perhaps something else.

  ‘The best place. We start at the beginning.’

  The clear blue sky clouded over as we headed back to Cambridge, but it had become a little warmer.

  ‘Snow,’ I told Martin as he punched through the digital buttons, trying to get a radio station that played actual music.

  ‘You think?’ he glanced upwards, peering at the clouds.

  ‘A fiver says it snows tonight.’

  ‘You’re on.’

  With a burst of noise, my mobile leapt into life. A picture of Lily in Halloween costume – a vivid blue-green mermaid with shells in her hair – was glowing on the screen.

  I swallowed hard and swiped to accept the call. ‘Hello there. I’m surprised you’re still speaking to me.’

  ‘Margot! I just got your message, are you all right?’

  Well, no, I wasn’t all right, but it was too much to get into over the phone. ‘I’m fine. I’m with Martin. We’re heading back to Cambridge.’

  ‘The police have been here. They’re asking about Katie Browne again . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  This stymied her. How could I possibly know?

  ‘They think it’s . . .’

  But Martin was gesturing, drawing a finger across his throat. I understood immediately. Lily would share this all over the staff room, who would share it all over Cambridge. It might do no harm, but better safe than sorry.

  ‘Sorry, Lils, I meant I knew the police had called. I didn’t know there were new leads on poor Katie. Look, the battery on my phone’s dying so I’ll call you when I get back, all right?’