Can You See Her?: An absolutely compelling psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  ‘The truth was, I’d had no effect on them whatsoever. They hadn’t noticed me come in or go out. I had no presence. They hadn’t seen me. And when I got back with the coffees, Mark didn’t nod or say thanks or take any notice of me. He hadn’t seen me either.

  ‘I was invisible. I no longer existed. Like I’d vanished from my own life.’

  2

  Rachel

  It’s all been a bit overwhelming. I expected to still have the handcuffs on but they took them off at some point, before they brought me here. Actually, I’m wearing fresh clothes. They’re mine but I can’t think when I… Hang on, no, I think I slept here. I did, of course I did. Did I bring an overnight bag, or what? No, of course not. They led me out of the house in handcuffs. Not like I could have said, hang on a minute while I grab my toothbrush, is it? They must have brought me these clothes at some point, brought me here. My jeans are too big for me now; they fall down when I walk. But that’s not important. She seems happy to let me waffle on. I know she’s thinking she’ll get more out of me if she lets me take the road less travelled. It might take longer but there’ll be less traffic, less risk of a standstill. We’ll always be moving forward.

  Blue Eyes coughs into her hand. ‘Mrs Edwards—’

  ‘Rachel. Call me Rachel. Can’t be doing with Mrs, and to be honest, Edwards is Mark’s name, isn’t it? I was Ryder originally. Rachel Clarissa Ryder. Think my mother had delusions of grandeur, bless her.’

  ‘All right. Rachel.’ She smooths her hand across my notes, as if to flatten them, and presses her lips together. Same shade of lippy as yesterday – must be her favourite. ‘You realised you were invisible. That came as a big shock, which is understandable. Then what happened?’

  ‘Blood everywhere, that’s what happened.’

  ‘Blood?’ The eyes widen, sparkle like crystals.

  ‘First nosebleed in thirty years or more. Used to get them when I was a teenager in moments of stress. I can remember apologising to Mark as I dashed in front of the telly on my way out. Needn’t have worried, when you think about it. He should have been able to see right through me.’

  I meet her eyes again but my smile dies on my lips. She’s right to look at me like that. There’s nothing to joke about. And why I said sorry to Mark for having a nosebleed, I can’t fathom, but as I keep saying, this is where I’d got to in life – apologising for myself while doing everyone else’s bidding. It’s no wonder I was invisible. I’d done that to myself. I didn’t realise it then, obviously. But I do now. I’d done it to myself.

  ‘So, you left the room?’ The eyes flicker with… is that frustration? Was I talking out loud or have I been sitting here catching flies?

  Actually, there’s a fly in the room. I can’t see it but I can hear it buzzing and tapping against the window pane. It’s fallen quiet now. Must have given up. What did Blue Eyes say her name was? Angela. Andrea. Alison. Something that starts with an A.

  I try and think what I last told her. I’d run out with my nose bleeding, hadn’t I? Yes, yes, I had. I carry on from there, tell her how I sat on the edge of the bath and held a tissue to my nose. So far, so normal. I held up my hands one at a time and turned them over and over to check that I could see them – not so normal. They were definitely there, my hands. I was there too, in the bathroom mirror: straggly grey hair badly in need of a cut and colour, glasses in need of a clean, flab pooling over my elastic waistband and a face full of bloody tissues. I was shaking. I looked knackered, as in literally fit for the knacker’s yard. Gaze off-focus, like an NHS poster for the devastating effects of… oh, something bad.

  All of that, yes – but not invisible, surely? I could see me. I existed. I blew onto the palm of my hand. My breath was hot, which meant I was alive. Another trickle ran from my nose. I thought it had started bleeding again, but it hadn’t – it was running clear. As were my eyes.

  ‘At least I was in the bathroom,’ I say to Blue Eyes, tears running in the then and the now. ‘Plenty of loo roll and I wasn’t bothering anyone.’

  She passes me a tissue from the box on the table. ‘It sounds like you were very sad.’

  Her kindness is confusing under the circumstances.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’ve not cried in front of another person in a very long time.’

  That night, Mark switched the bedside lamp off, muttered goodnight and rolled away from me as per. I lay there blinking, making stars. Can’t remember what I was thinking about. Composing a shopping list, probably. A list of some sort, anyway. Actually, no, I was thinking about how Mark and me first got together. How he walked me home from the community centre disco one night because Lisa had gone home with another lad. We’d stopped at the end of my mum and dad’s driveway, unable to say goodnight, and just stood there in the dark, talking and talking about our dreams, life, God, the universe and all that stuff you talk about when you’re in those fragile years between youth and adulthood and you’re figuring everything out: who you are, what you want, what you don’t. Even though we’d known each other as kids, that night it was as if I saw him for the first time. It was the first time I realised that a proper conversation that runs true and deep is one of the most intimate things there is. We carried on talking like that through our first date, when I bought a can of Bass shandy from the Spar and we sat on a bench and ate Hula Hoops and it seemed like our conversation would never end. By the time there was anything physical between us, I thought I was going to pass out with excitement. It was just a kiss, that first time, his hand resting softly on my waist. And just like a conversation, when a kiss is deep and true, it can change the course of your whole life.

  I must have dropped off eventually, because I woke at quarter to five, which you could attribute to stress but actually it wasn’t unusual. I’d been waking up with the covers thrown off for a year or two, limbs like gravestones, legs and cleavage sticky-salty with dried sweat. But it wasn’t the sweats that had woken me; it was a nightmare, which came back to me as I hauled my heavy bones out of the sour sheets.

  I’m running down the high street. It’s daytime. In front of the Co-op, five or six turquoise buses rattle in the depot. Shoppers crowd the pavement. And here comes me, naked, completely naked, running, trying to hold my hands over my bits while my stomach wobbles like raw bread in a gale. That’s when I realise to my sweating horror that I know everyone, absolutely everyone.

  But no one is taking any notice…

  I can’t catch my breath. Heat flares up in my chest and my forehead pricks with sweat. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Just let me…’

  Blue Eyes is holding out my glass of water. ‘It’s OK, Rachel. Don’t rush. Would you like a cup of tea? Should I open a window?’

  I shake my head. The glass smells of dust but the water’s wet and it soothes me. With my tissue I dab at my forehead, focus on breathing myself cooler.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘It’s OK. No need to apologise. Tell me what happened after that.’

  ‘I went downstairs,’ I say after a minute or two. ‘I made a cup of tea and ran my usual checks on the iPad.’

  A glance at her notes. ‘Checks?’

  ‘For violent crime. Regional and national news. I do that every day. Well, I did. I started it last year. I was building up evidence to take to my MP. I mean, it’s an epidemic, isn’t it, this knife crime? Who’d be a parent of young adults now? I tell you, it’s terrifying.’

  That has her scribbling with that lovely silver fountain pen of hers. Her nails are short and painted dark grey. I suppose I didn’t mention my clip file in my statement. But they didn’t ask. They’ll have found it by now, I expect. That and the knife. And that poor lad’s clothes would still have been in the washing machine.

  My eyes fill. She hasn’t replied, and for the umpteenth time I’ve no idea whether I said that last bit out loud or what. She’s still writing me up, anyway. Writing me up before they lock me up. They’ve brought in the big guns with this one: Blue Eyes, big boss, top dog.
Her hair is short. Trendy, you’d say. I thought it was white, but it’s more of a pale lilac. Rainbow colours glint in it from time to time, like petrol caught in the sun. What must she make of me? I wonder.

  She looks up, the merest twitch of the lips. ‘Carry on.’

  I tell her how the sun was coming up when I went downstairs that morning. How ghostly my reflection looked in the buttery windows. How the teaspoon clinked loudly against the side of the mug when I stirred in the sugar.

  Armed robbery leaves two dead in Stockton Heath.

  I skim-read. Both gunshot wounds, another seriously injured in Liverpool General.

  House fire in Warrington. Suspected arson.

  Suspected arson… but no casualties. Kids, I thought. Arson about. It’s an old joke, one of my dad’s, when he was compos mentis enough to make jokes.

  I printed off the armed robbery, slid it into a plastic sleeve and clipped it into the file. The nationals had a stabbing. Croydon. Young lad, as per. Intensive care. The usual links: Reform school exclusions to tackle knife crime; One in four teenage girls involved in violent crime; Hold schools accountable for expelled students, MPs urge; Third man arrested over double murder at Warrington house party.

  The Warrington house party had been the week before. I wondered if the Croydon lad would make it through the night. The first twenty-four hours are crucial. I printed that off too and put it with the others.

  ‘The clip file.’ Blue Eyes’ fore- and middle fingers make an L around her mouth, her thumb a chinrest. ‘This is the same file you showed to your neighbour, Ingrid Taylor?’

  ‘Ingrid? Why, did she say she’d seen it? I never showed anyone.’

  The police must have spoken to Ingrid. I wonder what everyone’s been saying about me. Who else the police have spoken to. Ingrid must have looked in the file when I went to the loo or something. I wouldn’t have thought she’d be interested in anything to do with me, to be honest. She was so stressed about her own life. I felt sorry for her. I thought it was her with the problems. Turns out it was me.

  Blue Eyes must think I’m getting agitated, because she asks if I want to take a break. I don’t. I’m just getting started.

  ‘Let’s leave the file for now,’ she says. ‘Tell me about the morning after—’

  ‘Invisiblegate?’ One glance tells me she thinks I’m being flippant, which I’m not. ‘Right you are,’ I add. And I press on.

  Once I’d done my clippings, then said a few words and observed a minute’s silence for the victims, I cleaned up the kitchen after Katie’s do. It was mostly bottles and cans to recycle, crushed crisps to hoover up, then a good mop. Someone had put their fag out in the plant pot and there was a smashed glass on the patio, but that was about it for damage. It only took an hour or two so, and by eight o’clock I was showered and dressed. But on precious little shut-eye, I was still jittery. Katie’s mate kept staring right through me in my mind’s eye. A pain had lodged itself in my chest. The panicky feeling wasn’t as bad as it had been the night before, but I did catch myself staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, literally foaming at the mouth. I spat into the sink, splashed off the excess toothpaste and faced myself head on. Leaning in close, I bloodshot-eyeballed myself, wondered how I’d got to be this woman no one saw.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ I said. ‘Who are you, Rachel Clarissa Edwards?’

  I used to be Rachel Ryder, fittest girl in fifth year. It was my name scrawled on the lads’ toilet walls, me that got to go out with Nick… Nick… oh, what was his second name? No, it’s gone… Anyway, he was the best-looking lad in our school. God, he was boring. I used to panic whenever he started talking to me. Turned out to be gay in the end, but we were none the wiser back then, although the eyeliner should have been a clue. Suffice to say, when I was young, I’d walk into a room and heads would turn. I expected it. I dressed for it. I wanted it. Quite when I’d stopped expecting it or dressing for it or wanting it, I don’t know. Now I could walk into a room and no one would even see me.

  Bedford. Nick Bedford, that’s it.

  Anyway, somehow the years had worn it all away. Worn me away. I’d been so busy raising a family, working, looking after my mum at the end, getting my dad settled into the home up in Halton. I’d been looking one way and now I’d looked back and there I was: someone who used to be Rachel Ryder, a woman whose husband once told her she was out of his league, the same woman who now washed his pants and made his dinner, and he didn’t even know she was there, let alone say thank you. Hadn’t done recently, anyway.

  I thought a long walk might help. I stuck Archie on the lead and headed down Boston Avenue to the town hall gardens.

  ‘The town hall?’ Blue Eyes glances at the statement, as well she might.

  ‘Where they found two of the victims, yes. But it’s also where Mark and me got married, back in the Jurassic age, when we were young and I was pretty and confident and he was funny and kind.’

  When our friends said he was punching above his weight. No one would say that now, obviously. He still has a good head of hair, albeit silver, whereas I’ve let myself go – I hold my hands up to that. But I want you to know that I was trying so hard to get myself back, the old me, honestly I was, before all this happened.

  ‘Why did you go to the town hall specifically?’

  She’s not daft. Hardly going to let that drift by, is she?

  ‘I’d been going there a lot this last year,’ I say, ‘to the bench by the pond, even before the… attacks. I suppose it’ll be taped off now, won’t it, until they’ve gathered the forensics, if that’s what they’re called, or is that only America? I’m guessing they’ve taken the body to the morgue by now.’

  Her mouth flattens. The slightest inclination of her head. ‘So you walked there.’

  ‘That was my first long walk. You might say it was the start of… everything. It was definitely when I started looking for someone who could see me, even though I don’t think I knew that was what I was doing at first.’

  Angela who might be Andrea or Alison is scribbling away. I look down before she looks up.

  I walked and walked that morning. There were only about half a dozen people out and about. None of them looked in my direction. If they did, their eyes didn’t register me, their mouths didn’t curl into any kind of smile. And yes, I did wonder at that point if any of them could see me or whether all they saw was the dog walking on a floating lead like a cheap special effect from some low-budget film.

  ‘So you went to the crime scene.’ Blue Eyes taps her pen against the palm of her hand. ‘Although it wasn’t a crime scene as yet.’

  The fly has started up again, buzzing, headbutting the pane as if sooner or later it’ll fly out. I wonder if Blue Eyes can hear it, whether it’s bugging her like it’s bugging me, but she’s as self-possessed as a sphinx.

  ‘It was just my thinking place then,’ I say. ‘That’s all it was. I suppose it’ll have that yellow and black tape you see on the news, won’t it? Will there be a white outline of a body taped out on the ground?’

  Her mouth tightens. Disapproval, that’s what I read anyway.

  ‘I expect I’ll be on the news, won’t I?’ I go on, like an idiot. ‘One way to get seen, I suppose – I’m a Celebrity, Don’t Let Me Out of Here.’ A laugh escapes me but dies. ‘It’s where I took the girl as well, obviously. But she was found on the road, wasn’t she?’

  Blue Eyes gives me something on the smile/indigestion spectrum. She’s saying nowt, giving me enough rope. I wish she would; I’d hang myself right away, save anyone else the bother. I take the customary deep breath. Once more unto the breach. What’s a breach? No clue. Get on with it, woman.

  I get on with it. There was a man in the town-hall gardens that morning. He was standing at the top of the rise, behind the kids’ park where I used to take Kieron and Katie and push them on the swings. He had an Alsatian on the end of a long lead and he was looking out over the main road. Loneliness came off him. I could almos
t see it shimmering in the air. His trousers needed a good iron and he looked to be in his mid-fifties, but at the same time he looked older – as if, like a dodgy mechanic, life had added years to his clock. He didn’t notice me looking. I wondered if he’d see me if I stood right in front of him. I didn’t, obviously, that would’ve been nuts, but I knew, or felt I knew, instinctively, that he’d suffered. Lost someone – his wife, possibly. Don’t ask me how. He seemed sort of… trapped in himself, unsure of how to get out. Something about the way he looked across to the houses beyond the railings, as if something might appear for him. Someone. He was yearning… just… yearning.

  I grab two tissues from the box and wipe my eyes. ‘I just had this overwhelming urge to ask if he was all right.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘I didn’t. I mean, you don’t, do you? We don’t ask people we don’t know if they’re OK, do we? Not as a rule. I just said good morning but I don’t think he heard me. He hadn’t seen me, that’s for sure, so I went and sat on my little bench, where I used to sit while Kieron and Katie fed the ducks. We used to take a picnic there when it was warm enough; they thought it was our secret place, bless them, and their eyes used to pop out of their heads with excitement when they heard the ice-cream van coming up the town-hall drive. An egg-mayonnaise bap, a few breadcrumbs for the ducks and one vanilla cone each, and honestly, you’d have thought I’d given them the world.

  ‘I didn’t sit there for long. I was too antsy. In the end, I thought I’d pop and see Lisa.’

  ‘That’s Lisa Baxter?’

  ‘Yes. She’s my best friend. Well, she was.’