Can You See Her?: An absolutely compelling psychological thriller
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‘I see the woman who hurt my fingers squeezing them when she brought my beautiful boy into the world, who did it again when she gave me my crackpot daughter. I see a woman with her nose covered in flour when I came in from work, making biscuits with the kids and no dinner for me.’ He stops. We are both crying now – we can’t help it. He is telling us the story of our life so that we can look at what we’ve lost and be thankful for all that we still have.
‘Don’t say any more,’ I manage.
‘I want to.’
‘I know. Just sit here with me for a minute. Let’s sit.’
I lean my head on his shoulder. He puts his arm around me. Simple things.
‘I see the woman on the phone that terrible night,’ he whispers. ‘I see her break into tiny pieces and I know in that moment that I can never put her back together.’
‘You see all that?’
‘Every time I look at you. Every time I look at you, you’re everything you’ve ever been in every moment we’ve been together, and I see that, I do – I see all of it and it’s just that for a time there I didn’t want to. I couldn’t cope with seeing it, Rach. And I’m so sorry.’
‘There’s no need to say sorry to me, love. I didn’t see you either, did I? Not really.’ I kiss his cheek and we cry fat tears together because at last we can, and it’s tough, the toughest, but it’s better than crying alone.
‘Let’s go for that drink now,’ I say. ‘I’ll finish my essay tomorrow.’
It’s for my bereavement counselling course. If it continues to go as well as it has been, I should qualify next year. As I said to Amanda, I’m pretty good at making connections. I’ve had a lot of practice. And it wasn’t just me who felt invisible. There are many people who live their lives thinking no one sees them: the homeless, the elderly, the poor, the lonely, the heartbroken, the grieving, the mentally ill, the disabled, those who haven’t found their voice, those who haven’t discovered what they’re good at, those who shun praise and attention, those who work quietly with love and patience. I could go on. I want to connect to all of them. I want to connect to you. I want to tell you that whoever you are, I care about you. I am interested in the troubled tickings of your heart; I want to know what makes your soul ache, what makes it sing. I want to tell you that all our souls ache sometimes, sometimes sing. I want to tell you that love helps. I want to tell you that love heals. I want to take your hand in mine. I want to tell you that I see you.
Epilogue
Saturday night. A middle-aged couple cuddle up in front of a film, takeaway boxes stacked on a tray at their feet. Their daughter is away at university. The house feels empty without her, but they are making plans for their first holiday alone together in over twenty years. If you saw them from the street, you would see a peaceful, happy couple, warm and safe in their home. Lucky them, you might think, so close after all these years. You would have no idea what they have been through, how strong they have to be every day just to keep going. But no one sees them. No one is watching them. Not anymore. On the street, all is still. It is October, cold, no night to be out.
But people are out, despite the chill, the hint of mizzle in the autumn air. Down in the town, a homeless man shuffles along the bank of the canal. It is shadowy here. From the bridge above, the reflection of a street light elongates, yellow and shimmering in the water, the amber glow of the moored-up gas-lit barges. He sleeps beneath the bridge these days, in a dirty Oxfam suit and a sleeping bag he found behind the pub where he used to drink. He doesn’t go there or to the betting shop anymore. Even if he had any coins left to feed into the machines or buy himself a pint of bitter, they would drop through the holes in his tattered trouser pockets.
He is hungry. He is so hungry that, there on the towpath, he digs into the rubbish bin in the hope of finding some food. There are a few plastic bottles, fast-food containers, a half-eaten pasty, which he devours in three animal bites. The meat and pastry are cold and soggy with rain, but it tastes all right. Further in, an apple core, which he slips into his pocket. The rubbish piles up on the wet gravel. Almost at the bottom of the trash, a supermarket bag ignites a spark of hope. But in it are only writhing maggots, left by the fishermen who come here at weekends. In disgust, he throws it into the canal, where it floats, then fills, then sinks. If he were to dive in after that bag, those maggots, he might see the glint of a blade in the dark depths of the water, a knife lying flat on the canal bed. A Spanish hunting knife, the type you’d find in a tourist shop, unsheathed from its brown patterned leather case, washed clean of blood. But he doesn’t dive in; why on earth would he? Instead, he carries on pulling out the litter, finding nothing more.
Leaving the scattered rubbish on the path, he shuffles back to his makeshift home and sits on the decrepit foldable picnic chair he salvaged from a skip and repaired with a coat hanger. Here under the bridge, at least it is dry. He lights the gas lamp one of the barge dwellers gave him for light and warmth, takes a fiery swig from his hip flask. From his breast pocket he plucks the front page of an old edition of the local newspaper, whose headline he reads most days, the name he knows as well as his own bones in bold black capitals above the picture of the woman whose almost daily cruelty crushed him up so tightly he has never been able to unfurl.
Ingrid Taylor given three life sentences.
He felt shock, yes, but not surprise when he first read that headline. What was a surprise was that Ingrid appeared to have had his friend Rachel, the barmaid from the Barley Mow, in her sights, had waged a hate campaign against her and driven her to a breakdown. He has no idea why she would do this, but he knows that she could – that she is capable. He knows that this was what she did to him. People like her leave bodies behind them on the road, literally and figuratively.
He folds the page back into its pre-made creases, returns it to his inside pocket and pats the neat square it makes over his heart. Along the canal path, a couple of young lovers are taking a stroll, pointing out the group of coloured barges, there, where the canal breaks into a fork. They don’t say hello. They don’t see him. No one sees him.
At the other end of the canal, the sandstone railway bridge, black with soot, shudders under the beat of the train that speeds away towards Liverpool Lime Street. It is the same train a young woman catches on her way back to university after a visit home. She too is outside on this cold autumn night. She has taken a bus from her student lodgings to Sefton Park and now stands on the grass, surrounded by trees in the near pitch darkness. In her numb, gloveless fingers is a white sheet of A4: a typed letter, signed in biro. Her therapist told her to write letters during her anger-management counselling. Anger is common in grief – the girl knows this now. She knows too how it can inhabit a person, how it can turn to hate, how that hate will find a way out, no matter what. She and her mum have spoken about this. But she is not the girl she was back then. She doesn’t know who that girl was, but it wasn’t her.
There is no one about. No late-night walkers on the path that runs around the lake. But even so, she feels self-conscious at what she is about to do. It is time to fulfil a promise, her promise to a dead girl. She kneels on the damp grass and clears her throat.
‘Dear Jo,’ she whispers aloud, her throat already closing with tears. ‘I am so, so sorry for what I did to you. If I could turn back time, I would. I was in a terrible place. My brother was everything to me, and when he was killed, my world fell apart. My family exploded and there was nothing left. My mum wouldn’t speak to me, my dad was never there. I was so lonely, Jo, and I was so angry, but I know that doesn’t excuse what I did. I only took the knife from the garage because I wanted to protect myself. After what happened to Kieron, I thought it would keep me safe. I was stupid, I was wrong. The thought of my beautiful brother on the wrong end of a knife that night and me using one on someone else, some other innocent person, is too horrible to think about. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m not saying I’m a victim. All I know is, every single day I think about how, if
I hadn’t taken that knife out with me, what happened would never have happened. I was so angry. And when I saw you talking to my mum, linking arms with her, laughing, I just freaked. I was jealous, raging. I was mad. I should never have come after you. I was only going to have a go at you for talking to my mum; I swear I never meant to hurt you. I only wanted to scare you and I don’t even know why. I’d been drinking and I know I did scare you. I scared myself. But when I read that you’d died, I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. I know others were killed but I had nothing to do with those, I swear. But I’m so sorry for you. I’m sorry for your parents and everyone you loved and who loved you. Please forgive me, Jo. I am truly better now and I will never, ever carry a weapon with me as long as I live. I’d rather die than kill. I wish I could go back and change what I did, but I can’t.
‘Rest in peace, Jo.
‘Yours, Katie.’
Crying violently now, she stands and digs out the cigarette lighter from her jeans pocket. A flick of the cog, and the flame licks at the corner of the paper, spreads quickly. At the last, she drops it to the wet grass, where it flashes, consumes itself and dies. A gust of wind sends it rolling, then dancing away in black, flaking wisps.
‘Goodbye, Jo.’
She turns and walks slowly back to the pathway, her boots sucking at the soaked lawn. There is no one about. No one would see her if there were. She is lost in the darkness. Invisible.
Desperate to read another compelling psychological thriller from S.E. Lynes? Read Mother now!
Mother
Get it here!
Christopher would never hurt anyone. Not intentionally. Even after everything that’s happened I still believe that…
Christopher Harris is a lonely boy. A boy who has never fitted in to his family. Who has always felt something was missing from his life.
Until one day, when he discovers a suitcase in his family’s attic. Inside the suitcase is a letter. Inside the letter is a secret about his mother that changes everything.
What price would you pay for the perfect family?
Christopher finally has a chance at happiness. A happiness that he will do anything to protect…
An unputdownable thriller about the lies we tell and the secrets we keep, Mother will hold you breathless until the very last page and leave you reeling. Perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train, The Sister and Apple Tree Yard.
Buy now!
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Books by S.E. Lynes
Can You See Her?
The Lies We Hide
The Women
Valentina
The Proposal
The Pact
Mother
Available in audio
The Lies We Hide (Available in the UK and the US)
The Woman (Available in the UK and the US)
The Proposal (Available in the UK and the US)
The Pact (Available in the UK and the US)
Mother (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from S.E. Lynes
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for taking the time to read Can You See Her? My next book is well under way, and I hope you will want to read that one too. If you’d like to be the first to hear about my new releases, you can sign up using the link below. You can unsubscribe at any time and your email address will never be shared:
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This is my seventh novel, so if you are new to my work, hello, I hope you enjoyed this so much that you now want to read my back catalogue! If you have been reading me since my debut, Valentina, thank you for sticking with me – you’re a trouper.
Many disparate elements go into the making of a book. The seed of Can You See Her? was found in an article on the invisibility of the older woman. Among other works of fiction quoted in the piece, Mrs Dalloway was mentioned. I had read this Virginia Woolf novel years ago, and on closer inspection, I found all sorts of relevant passages, not only on the invisibility of the older woman but on her intuitive power, the intimate embrace of death, time and the torture of hours passing, the ‘thousand pities’ of never saying what one feels, the deep need for communication… all sorts of ideas that related to what I was trying to do with Rachel. Principally I wanted to look at the menopausal years and ask whether or not it’s really all about the hormonal shift or whether much of women’s mental load could be made lighter. I certainly wanted to play my part in getting this subject into the open in a way that women could relate to and men could read about while being entertained.
I also wanted to put an empath at the heart of a psychological thriller for a change. The relationship between the predatory narcissist and the empath is well documented and a central trope of psychological thrillers; the challenge was to give credence to the idea that too much empathy, the erosion of personal boundaries, could, in extreme circumstances, become something obsessive and much, much darker. Whilst the reader is in no doubt that Ingrid is a ‘wrong ’un’, I wanted the reader to at least accept the possibility that Rachel could have become ill enough to be seeking the ultimate connection in the shared experience of death. In this story, the whodunnit was not the real mystery. The mystery was Rachel and how she could be brought to an understanding of herself, her grief and despair, which is where the sad and shocking twist lay.
As a parent of two grown-up kids who are always out and about in the city, I worry a lot about knife crime. I tend not to have a high body count in my books, but in this one it was unavoidable. Knife crime is an ongoing tragedy of our time and the sheer number of deaths, particularly among the young, is part of that tragedy. The double tragedy of the murdered/murderer siblings provided the last twist as well as a moment of dark symmetry. The real-life tragedy begins perhaps in the fact that our young people feel the need to arm themselves in the first place. But what emerged through the crafting of this story was what was really troubling me most deeply: namely the atmosphere of anger and hate that seems so pronounced at the time of writing. The idea of anger becoming hate and hate always being misdirected and never solving anything became a very important theme, and again there was a pleasing symmetry in a story about a woman misdirecting her love towards strangers when she could not find it at home. In a book full of water images, I liked the idea of the leak in the bathroom finding its outlet in the kitchen wall.
For Can You See Her? I have returned again to my home town, Runcorn, where I lived until I was eighteen and which formed much of who I am. I was married in the town hall featured in this book, spent much of my youth in the Red Admiral pub and the Cherry Tree disco, and if we ever got fish and chips, it was from the Langdale Road chippy, where we would run to catch it before it closed. I took some geographical liberties with St Michael’s graveyard – coming from the Grange area of town, Rachel would have gone to a nearer chippy and she would not have had to park so far away and cross the cemetery to reach Langdale Road, but hey, I needed that scene.
I could go on and on, but if you enjoyed Can You See Her? I would be so grateful if you could spare a couple of minutes to write a review. It only needs to be a line or two and I would really appreciate it! I am always happy to chat via my Twitter account and Facebook author page if you wish to get in touch. I am happiest when answering questions about my work or hearing that what I have written has resonated with someone. Any writer knows that writing can sometimes be a lonely business, so when a reader reaches out and tells me my work has stayed with them or that they loved it, I am utterly delighted. I have loved making new friends online through my novels and hope to make more with Can You See Her?
Best wishes,
Susie
The Lies We Hide
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The truth can set you free, or make you a prisoner…
Now a successful lawyer in the city, with a life poles apart from her dark beginnings, Nicola has returned home for her mother’s funeral. But as she stands in her mother’s house, remembering the woman who sacrificed everything for her children, Nicola has to confront the guilt that she feels for leaving her family behind. And the belief that she played a part in the events that led to her brother going to prison for murder.
All Carol wanted was to protect her children, but escaping her husband was only the beginning of the story. And when Nicola learns the truth of what her mother did, it will change everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.
A gripping, emotional story of family secrets, and the strength of a mother’s love in the darkest times. The next powerful read for fans of The Silent Wife, Kerry Lonsdale and Emily Bleeker.