The Forgotten_An absolutely gripping, gritty thriller novel

by Casey Kelleher

  ‘Talk about it? Oh, I can talk about it. That bit’s easy. Where should I start? Shall we talk about my night terrors? The ones that plague me every time I close my one remaining eye. That make me unable to sleep, so then I’m awake all night. Suffering with insomnia. Alone with my thoughts. Wondering what the fuck happened to me. Who the fuck did this to me. Then to spend my days exhausted and in excruciating pain. Every part of me aches. My muscles, my bones, my skin. How’s that for talking, Derek? Who did that help? Me or you?’ Robert shook his head. ‘Talking doesn’t change shit.’

  ‘But the groups might help you. Talking about what you went through might trigger a memory. It’s an important part of the healing process, and it reminds you that you’re not alone.’

  ‘Why aren’t you listening to me, Derek? None of you are. That’s exactly what I want. To be left alone.’ Robert had heard enough of the man’s spiel now. He was getting angry. Pissed off with always being spoken down to, preached to, by people that didn’t have a clue what he’d been through.

  His face a bright puce. Spittle spraying from his lips as he shouted.

  ‘I don’t want your help. I’ve told your lot a thousand times over, I don’t want any of it. Why won’t you listen to me? Why won’t you all do what I ask? Leave me alone, so I can live my life without you lot always sticking your fucking noses in.’

  Again Derek didn’t respond. Instead he wrote something else down in his notebook.

  More notes.

  ‘What was that?’ Robert asked then, pursing his mouth, his face twisted with curiosity.

  He knew when he was being judged and that’s what Derek Wheelan was doing. Judging him, scribbling bullshit down on a bit of paper about things that this prat didn’t have a first-hand clue about. ‘What did you write down, just then?’

  Incensed. What the fuck did any of these social worker busybodies know about what he’d been through. About his suffering?

  ‘I’m just making some notes that’s all,’ Derek said, ignoring the steely glare that Robert insisted on throwing him. Knowing that Robert Parkes could be very angry and volatile when it came to having these sorts of review meetings.

  He’d attacked a social worker before.

  It had all been in the man’s notes. How Robert, even with his limited mobility, walking with a limp, had managed to pin the man up against the wall and shout abuse at him. That’s why none of his department had wanted to take Robert’s case on. That’s why they’d handed Robert over to Derek to deal with. Derek had thicker skin than a rhinoceroses hide, although he’d be lying right now if he said he wasn’t starting to feel intimidated by Robert.

  Tapping his pen against his notebook as he persevered, determined to be the one that made a difference, he couldn’t just give up on him.

  ‘Our only aim is to help you live a full life again, Robert? Don’t you want that?’

  Robert bit his lip, silent then. His anger subsiding.

  ‘Are you getting out at all?’ Derek asked, wondering how Robert Parkes spent his days. ‘Do you have any visitors?’

  Robert shrugged again. Bored with the questions now. He knew the drill.

  ‘What about work? Have you been actively looking for a job?’ Derek said, glancing down to the laptop on the floor. ‘That’s another part of your rehabilitation, Robert. Getting you working once again. So you can be financially independent and contribute to paying your own way again…’

  ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ Sitting forward in his chair, his hands clasped together. Robert nodded then, as if finally understanding.

  The cheeky fucker had been trying to catch him out. Turning up announced and seeing what Robert had really been up to.

  Robert looked at Derek intently, so that the man would be in no doubt about Robert’s ‘life plan’ when he left here today.

  He would say this only once.

  ‘Who do you think’s going to want to employ me, Derek?’ Robert leant in. His voice laced with anger once again. Annoyed that Derek Wheelan seemed to be under the illusion that it was as easy as that for him to simply just apply for a job. As if no one would notice. No one would say anything. ‘Look at the state of me. Who the fuck wants to employ this huh?’ Robert said, slapping himself hard on the forehead. ‘What would I do, huh? Serve up Happy fucking Meals to little kids. Me – Mr-fucking-Crispy with one fucking eye. I’d terrify the poor bastards at first sight.’ Robert was shouting now.

  This was what the meeting was really about, he realised. Why Derek Wheelan was here today. They were trying to get Robert off the system. All this rehabilitation bollocks was really about Robert paying his own way in the world again.

  They wanted rid of him.

  ‘No one wants to employ me. I look like a fucking monster.’

  Robert was glaring at Derek now. Willing the man to come out with some bullshit to say differently. When they both knew it was true.

  Even he struggled to look at himself in the mirror most days.

  The horrendous sight of his unrecognisable wrinkled, scarred face staring back at him. His left eye gone, the eyelid sewn shut. Just a jagged line of scar tissue there now.

  A monster was an understatement.

  He looked alien. Like nothing of this world.

  ‘What about a job working behind the scenes. As a cleaner or something?’

  ‘I can’t work with chemicals. My skin reacts to everything. It’s painful enough as it is,’ Robert said losing his patience now. Derek just wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  ‘Perhaps an office job?’ Derek persisted. ‘We have a scheme set up with a couple of big companies. I’m sure we could find you a placement there. Nothing too strenuous. Office work mainly. Filing and photocopying etc. That kind of thing…’

  ‘I said, I’m not interested,’ Robert said. His voice low, but his tone defiant.

  Derek Wheelan made another note in his notebook.

  Tapping his pen against the page, his following silence speaking volumes.

  ‘What did you just write?’ Robert said, sensing the man’s disapproval.

  He was up and out of his seat then. Making a grab for the notebook, the two men struggled for a few seconds before Robert managed to overpower Derek. Grabbing the book from the man’s hold he scanned the notes that were scrawled across the page.

  His eyes staring down at the underlined words on the page.

  Depressed. Non-compliant. Difficult.

  Igniting Robert Parkes’s anger then, like a red flag to a bull.

  ‘This is you being understanding, is it? This is you showing me your support,’ Robert spat, now. ‘Coming around here and looking down your nose at me. Judging me. So what if I don’t leave my flat? So what if I don’t have any visitors? That’s my choice,’ he bellowed. ‘My fucking choice for my life. I just want to be left alone. Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘But shutting yourself away in your flat like this, it’s not healthy.’

  ‘Healthy?’ Bored of the patronising conceited tone the man was using. Talking down to him as if he was a child. As if he wasn’t capable of thinking for himself.

  ‘Read your notes, mate, I’ve got life-changing injuries. My face and body are completely unrecognisable. I’ve been forced to wear a surgical mask for the past three years, and I have restricted movement in the left-hand side of my body. I lost my fucking eye. I look like I’ve just stepped off the set of a horror movie and you’re sitting there telling me you’re worried about my health?’

  Robert threw the notebook back at the man. Slamming it into his chest.

  ‘I can’t even remember my own fucking name. I have no idea who the fuck I am or where the fuck I’ve come from, and you’re telling me I need to get my arse out there in the world and file some fucking paperwork? Why? So it looks good on your fucking paperwork. So you can be the smug bastard in your office that feels as if you’ve made some kind of a difference. So that you can go back to your superiors and get some brownie points of your own?’

>   Derek Wheelan looked suitably ashamed of himself then, as Robert Parkes saw right through him. Of course he wanted to help Robert. That was his job. But there was a small part of him, too, that wanted to be the one that made the breakthrough. The small part of him that thought he could do better than his colleagues had done in getting through to Robert.

  If his superiors were to hear about Derek’s progress with Robert, it would only go in his favour too. He was so close to a promotion.

  He backtracked.

  ‘Look, if you’re not ready to go back to work then I understand. But the counselling, it might help. It might jog your memory. Don’t you want to remember who you are? Who your family are? Don’t you want to find them?’

  ‘All I want is for you to get out of my flat and leave me the fuck alone.’

  He lost it then. Grabbing Derek Wheelan roughly by his collar, Robert Parkes hoisted the man up and off the chair. Frogmarching him to the front door, before launching him out onto the balcony.

  ‘I really think you should persevere with your counselling, Robert. I think it would help you,’ Derek Wheelan said, in one last-ditch attempt to get Robert to listen to him as he rubbed his throat with one hand. His notebook still clutched tightly in the other.

  ‘And I think you should persevere with fucking off away from my doorstep and not coming back here again. Ever,’ Robert bellowed before slamming the door in the man’s face, glad to finally get rid of the nosey bastard.

  Robert Parkes had far more pressing matters to attend to. Alone again, he picked up his laptop.

  His hands were still shaking, he realised, as he clicked on the keyboard so that the screen lit up, revealing the photo he’d discovered just seconds before Derek Wheelan had rudely interrupted him.

  Derek Wheelan was wrong.

  Robert Parkes didn’t need him; he didn’t need any of them. He’d managed quite well on his own.

  Finding out stuff about himself that even that bunch of social services degenerates couldn’t, so it seemed.

  Robert stared down at the screen, taking in the sight of the picture-perfect family staring back at him.

  The woman wearing a royal blue floor-length gown, her vibrant red hair trailing down behind her shoulders. Those piercing green eyes looking back at him.

  Cutting right through him.

  Next to her, a man. Dressed in a smart grey suit, his arms leaning down and touching the child’s shoulder who stood in between them.

  ‘St George’s Hospital’s charity ball’, the article said.

  He knew these people?

  The revelation caught him off guard, ripping through him, as if he’d been physically struck. The photo had triggered something in the dark, buried recesses of his mind.

  He felt as if his brain had suddenly been launched through space and time, as a million thoughts and questions ran through his mind.

  It was too much.

  All of it was too much.

  Running for the bathroom, he made it to the toilet just in time to throw up, emptying the contents of his stomach until nothing but bile burned in the back of his throat.

  Holding onto the wall then, as the blood rushed around inside his ears, his heart pounding inside his chest.

  And suddenly, Robert Parkes remembered it all.

  Seventeen

  ‘Babe.’ Shouting now as he crouched down on the cold tiled porch floor and lifted up the letterbox to see if he could see any sign of Jess.

  Kyle Boyd knew that she was home.

  He’d only left here two days ago. And even that had proved too much for him. Being away from his Jess.

  He hated seeing her this angry. She was just doing her usual and ignoring him. Shutting herself away from him. Punishing him for fucking everything up the other night.

  ‘I know you’re still annoyed with me, Jess. And I’m sorry. Truly I am. But I need to talk to you, babe. Open the door!’

  Nothing.

  Just as he’d expected.

  The girl was only too happy to leave him standing out here in the pissing rain.

  He knew he had his work cut out for him, turning up here after she’d turfed him out and trying to get Jess to see him. His girlfriend wasn’t exactly the forgiving type and Kyle had been calling her non-stop, over a million times in the last hour alone, all of which calls Jess had completely ignored. Switching off the phone in the end so he’d get the message.

  Only, Kyle Boyd had no intention on just giving up.

  Jess was angry with him, but it wouldn’t last. It never did. She always forgave him in the end. Which was just as well, because as much as Jess could be a cold-hearted cow sometimes, Kyle loved the very bones of the girl.

  He loved everything about her. How over-opinionated she was, how she always thought she was right. How she didn’t take any shit from anyone, not even him. Especially not him.

  And even if she did sometimes boss him about and call him the odd name, he knew that deep down she didn’t really mean it.

  It was just her way of letting him know his place.

  Jess was as feisty as they came, he got that. The girl had to be. She’d been left with no choice.

  From what he’d been able to gather from the tiny snippets she’d allowed him to know about her life, it had been tough for Jess. Really tough.

  The poor girl had the scars to prove it.

  Horrendous disfigurements that had been gouged out in her flesh. Huge lacerations inflicted all over her body. Marking her forever.

  Scars that Jess had desperately tried to hide from him the first few times they’d gone to bed together, insisting on wearing a T-shirt or top of some sort. When she’d finally given in and let him see her body fully, he’d been sickened. Not by the sight of them, to him her scars only made her even more beautiful in his eyes. But for what she must have been through.

  He’d been sickened at the thought that someone so sadistic and twisted had thought that it was okay to inflict that kind of pain onto somebody.

  To hurt them so badly, to leave them so broken.

  She said that she was damaged goods. Kyle had said she was a warrior.

  She didn’t believe him though.

  Jess had been angry about them, full of rage, in fact, and no matter how many times Kyle had tried to broach the subject with her, she’d always refused to tell him how she’d got them. Just the mention of them made her completely clam up.

  Quickly, Kyle had learned not to push the matter.

  That Jess would tell him in her own time; only, as stubborn as ever, she never had.

  Whatever had happened to her, whoever had happened to her, the fucker had royally fucked the girl’s head up too.

  Jess had become hardened. Wary of everyone.

  That’s what she’d told him.

  Though of course, Kyle couldn’t imagine her any other way. The way she was, was all he’d ever known.

  Cold. Unforgiving.

  She preferred it that way, she’d said. Keeping people at arm’s length. Determined not to depend on anyone ever, she’d only ever look out for herself.

  Only eventually, she’d allowed Kyle in.

  And Kyle had naturally grown very protective of the girl.

  That’s what you did when you cared about someone. You protected them, and Kyle cared about Jess more than anything else in the world.

  Which is why Kyle was here now. He had to make her see that she couldn’t just give up on him.

  He’d fucked up, yes. But he’d make it up to her.

  He just needed one more chance.

  And if he had to beg and plead with her, then so be it.

  ‘Come on, Jess. I know you’re in there. Please, let me in. I’m bloody soaked through.’ Lifting the letter box and staring through, he thought he could see her standing just behind the glass panel of the kitchen door. The outline of her silhouette leaning up against the glass.

  She was listening, that was something at least.

  ‘Jess, please. Look I fucked up. I know that n
ow. Seriously though, you need to open the door. I’ve been thinking about what you said, and I’ve found a way for you to get your revenge on Nancy. You’re going to want to hear this, trust me, babe.’

  Kyle waited.

  He could hear her footfall then, padding across the laminate floor in the hallway.

  Standing up, just as she opened the door. He stared at her with his puppy-dog eyes.

  Droplets of water running down his face. His hair stuck to his head.

  The rain was pouring down now, and still she didn’t invite him in.

  Instead she leant against the doorframe with her arms folded across her chest. The look on her face said that already her patience was wearing thin, so Kyle took his chance.

  ‘I’m sorry, babe, really I am,’ Kyle said, taking his shot at begging Jess for forgiveness. ‘I know I messed up. It won’t happen again. I’m going to make it up to you though.’

  Then grabbing the folded newspaper from inside his jacket pocket, Kyle tapped the page.

  ‘Here, look at this.’

  ‘What is it?’ Jess said, not convinced that Kyle even had a brain inside his head, and if he did, he’d probably be dangerous.

  She just wanted him off her doorstep, aware that some of the neighbours’ curtains were twitching now. That Kyle was once again drawing attention to himself, and to her, when the idiot should be anywhere else but here. Laying low like she told him. Jess decided the quicker she heard him out, the sooner she could get rid of him.

  Only Kyle seemed hyper, convinced he had the solution to all her problems.

  Standing there grinning at her like an overgrown oaf as he held out the newspaper and pointed to the photograph on the entertainment pages.

  ‘She’s got a kid, Jess.’ Kyle tapped the page, his finger hitting the picture of Nancy Byrne.

  He’d read the article. It was some charity ball for a kids’ hospital. She was there with some bloke called Jack Taylor he’d recognised from when he’d fitted the alarm system at the house. A small child in between them.

  There’d been no sign of the kid at the house when he’d been there, but she definitely had one. It said it right here in black and white.