The Day She Can’t Forget: Psychological suspense you’ll just have to keep reading

by Meg Carter

  Viola hesitates.

  ‘Go on,’ Alma urges. ‘You’ve got to change, haven’t you?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Her roommate looks even more confused.

  ‘For the tarts and vicars Christmas party Geoff’s taking you to later – at the student union bar on Malet Street. Isn’t he picking you up in half an hour?’

  Viola checks her watch. ‘Shit.’

  ‘So go on. Get gorgeous.’

  Her roommate smiles. ‘I will. And you—‘

  ‘I’ll be OK. Where is he?’ she adds, turning back to Trish.

  ‘The TV room.’

  Alma nods then makes her way towards what was once a drawing room and is now the communal TV viewing area where, after signing in, all visitors are asked to wait.

  Leonard Parmenter is standing by the open fireplace with his back to her as she enters the room. Still dressed in his outdoor coat with his gloved hands interlinked behind his back, he is slowly moving his weight from one foot to the other and then back again. Her eyes range across the sofas and straight-backed armchairs pulled into clumsy clusters. They appear to be alone.

  ‘Hello,’ she calls out in a measured tone.

  ‘Alma!’ he exclaims, turning around. ‘You look… different.’

  ‘Oh this,’ she demurs, raising a hand to her hair. She’d almost forgotten. ‘Well yes, I guess I am.’

  ‘I thought I’d treat us to tea. At the Savoy!’ Leonard beams, unperturbed. He takes a step forward as if intending to embrace her, but she takes a purposeful side-step, neatly avoiding his touch.

  ‘No thank you,’ she says, battling hard to dismiss the memory of herself seated on his lap. The sensation of his bloated fingers in her hair; pawing her body. The sound like a low groan as he held her firm. The sourness of his breath. Don’t give into it, she orders herself. Don’t. Let. Him. Win. Then suddenly the tension welling inside her releases. No. She will not let him win, she decides, raising her head as she gathers herself up to her full height. And she will do so by embracing not cowering from this moment.

  Alma’s lips twitch as she fights a triumphant smile. The wrongness of what he did is her power.

  ‘On me, I said,’ he declares. ‘Now run along and get your coat, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘I said, no thank you,’ Alma repeats, firmly.

  Leonard frowns.

  ‘But there is one thing you can do for me,’ she adds, evenly, holding the pound notes neatly folded in her hand out towards him. ‘You can take this back. Then you can leave me be.’

  ‘Why Alma—’ he objects.

  ‘I said, you can take this back.’

  ‘Alma?’

  ‘Please. Hold out your hand.’

  To her surprise, he does just that. And then, to her amazement, before he can take them she opens her hand and lets the notes float to the floor.

  ‘Alma!’ he chides. His voice now has a menacing edge.

  ‘But I will hold on to this.’ Alma holds up the Big Ben postcard around which the notes had been wrapped. She has carefully flattened out the card and now disdainfully holds it up between a finger and thumb, like the dirty secret it stands for. ‘In case you have any more ideas about lying about me to my mother and father.’

  Leonard lets slip a laugh. ‘They won’t believe you.’

  ‘Probably not,’ she agrees. ‘But your boss might be interested. Donald Pietersen, the regional director of music?’

  Leonards’ lips purse. Then, taking her by surprise, he makes a grab for Alma’s hand and grips it so tight it makes her wince. ‘I’ll have that, shall I?’ he mutters, coldly.

  ‘No, I’ll be having it,’ another voice interjects. Its owner, a tall man in a sombre black suit, clerical shirt and dog collar, steps between them from a pair of high-backed armchairs immediately to their left where he must have been sitting. Beneath the pair of thick-rimmed Mary Whitehouse spectacles he is wearing, the face reminds her of someone. Though his thick dark hair is all slicked back. And his dress is … unexpected. Biting her lip, she tries not to laugh.

  ‘Is this gentleman bothering you, Alma?’

  ‘Reverend,’ she gasps, doing her best not to grin. For the false teeth she can now see he is wearing have totally changed the shape of his mouth. And as he speaks, carefully enunciating the tip of each word with his tongue, all she can think of is that ‘Vicar of Belching by the Sea’ played by Dick Emery.

  ‘My child,’ Geoff nods, reverentially, before snatching the postcard and dangling it high above Leonard’s head. ‘And you—’ he says, firmly jabbing the older man’s chest with the forefinger of his free hand. ‘—explain yourself, why don’t you?’

  Struggling for breath, Leonard is now highly agitated by his apparent inability to muster an answer.

  ‘Well then,’ Geoff continues, coolly. ‘If you can’t explain yourself to me, maybe you can to your superiors. Who will be hearing from me, you can rest assured. I’ve met people like you before, you know, Mr—’

  ‘Parmenter,’ Alma offers, helpfully.

  ‘Indeed. And I can tell you, Mr Parmenter, that you are all the same – tawdry and squalid. An absolute shower. So go on. Please leave, now. You will be hearing from my superiors in due course.’

  As Leonard scuttles from the room Alma stares for a moment wide-eyed at her saviour.

  ‘Geoff—’ she begins until he holds up a finger, urging her to wait for the main front door to swing to with a decisive thud. At which point Alma collapses onto the nearest sofa in fits of hysterics. ‘Thank you,’ she gasps. ‘Oh Geoff, that was simply priceless. An absolute shower… Who do you think you are, Leslie Phillips?’

  ‘Actually, I’d been planning to do a bit of a Terry Thomas. But once I got going, it took on a bit of a life of its own,’ Geoff grins, removing his glasses and ruffling his hair. ‘I’ll tell you what, though. This bloody outfit’s going to require a few modifications if it’s going to last me the evening.’

  11

  Somerset, February 2016

  Zeb peers through the rain-streaked window at the outskirts of the village where she grew up, with its rows of tightly-curtained houses, their faces dimly glowing. She has come to collect the rest of her father’s papers and check the house which, she has decided, will be far quicker and easier to do alone, ahead of Matty’s return the following morning.

  Slowing to a crawl, she passes the bus shelter from which she used to depart each morning for secondary school. The pub where she had a Saturday job for a while waiting on tables. The green which, she can see from the beams cast by her headlights, is half-submerged by standing water. And beyond that the right-hand turn, just after the empty building which was once the village primary school; the way to Dad’s.

  A short distance ahead she turns onto the track that leads to her father’s house.

  As Zeb parks on the muddy verge opposite the last in a row of semi-detached cottages, a silver SUV that’s shadowed her since she left the A-road pulls up a short distance behind her. One of Dad’s neighbours, she guesses, though the driver makes no attempt to leave the car. Buttoning her coat to the neck, Zeb hurries along the rutted track that leads to the boarded-up cricket pavilion, swings a sharp right half-way along, then follows the narrow footpath that leads to Dad’s front door. The Friday traffic was far worse than she’d expected and now it is getting late, almost six, which means she’ll have to get her skates on. But goodness, she can’t help thinking. Was the place always as dark as this?

  Number 2, Rose Cottages is the right-hand half of an estate worker’s house built by a local landowner in Victorian times. With its latticed windows and gabled front it would be the mirror image of number one, its left-hand neighbour, were it not for the colour of its front door – dark green not pale blue – and its plain, not floral, curtains.

  Light cheers the interior of just one half and it is to this side of the house that Zeb now turns. Fat wet drops of rain break across her back. Though before she can get to the front door, Dad’s neighbour – Joyce
, a retired teacher in her early seventies – appears in the open doorway.

  ‘I do wish you’d told me you were coming. Given me a chance to tidy up,’ the woman exclaims, brushing the dog hair from her navy Guernsey downwards onto her crumpled, brown trousers. ‘Only the place is pretty much as it was found, you know, after your father…’

  Zeb forces a smile. ‘Honestly, it’s not a problem, Mrs Cunningham. I just came on a whim to collect a few bits. Don’t worry, I’ve got a key. I just wanted to let you know it was me so you wouldn’t worry – you know, seeing the lights on next door.’

  ‘Goodness, Elizabeth, you’re getting soaked – please, come inside!’ Joyce frowns. ‘Join me for some supper, I’ve enough to share.’

  ‘Really, I’m fine,’ Zeb lies, trying to ignore the pulse of warmth through the open doorway. The honeyed smell of just-baked bread. Pointless on the kitchen TV. ’I’m not staying long. But maybe a little later, before I go, for a cup of tea?’

  ‘Well that would be lovely,’ Joyce replies, turning to a pile of envelopes slipped between two pots of herbs that stand behind her. ‘While I remember, you’d better take this post – just bills, I’m afraid. Oh, and so you know, the chain’s across the front door.’

  As Joyce had hinted, the kitchen is a mess.

  Cupboard doors yawn wide, their contents roughly strewn across the kitchen counter beneath. A number of drawers have been left open, too, and an assortment of instruction booklets and receipts for different household gadgets lie scattered on the floor. It’s the same in the sitting room, where cushions have been upended, bookshelves rifled and DVD boxes opened. Like the place has been burgled.

  It must have been the police, Zeb reasons, grimly, straightening the sofa then perching awkwardly on its edge. Even so, they could have shown some respect.

  Turning towards the mantelpiece – a slab of reclaimed timber set into the plaster surround of a tiled fireplace containing a modern gas fire – her eyes range left to right along the assortment of postcards and snapshots it bears, some framed, others not. Propped right in the centre is the photograph Dad took of her on the afternoon of her graduation. As Zeb stares at this she hears his voice.

  Work here, with me, he’d urged. I could train you up and you could easily take over the business.

  They were in the car driving Bristol-wards that golden July morning on their way to Zeb’s certificate ceremony. He was wearing the suit he usually reserved for weddings. A tiny fleck of white tissue clung to the place on his left cheek where he’d nicked himself shaving. She was seated, stiff-backed and stony-faced, on the front seat by his side. Anger, so intense its aftertaste still lingered, from the argument they’d had at breakfast.

  But you just don’t understand, she’d snapped. That’s your dream. I’ve my own life to lead. I just want to be me.

  Dad had been vehemently opposed to her decision to move to the city from the quiet of the countryside she’d grown up in and then returned to at the end of her studies, albeit briefly. Why was he so opposed to her moving to London? He’d grown up in the place, after all. Something happened, she now recalls him saying once. It was the nearest he ever came to providing an explanation for why, when she was three, he’d abruptly packed their bags, left the city where he was born – in a two-up, two-down in Clapton – and started again as a local photographer in a small village near Wells.

  Something bad happened, Dad had once said. The final straw.

  Now, though, all Zeb can feel is shame for how casually she’d dismissed his feelings. How stubbornly she’d refused the urge to place her arm around him to reassure him that everything would be OK. Because that day in the car she’d done neither, opting instead to sit in stubborn silence staring into the middle distance, head turned away. For Wendy, the smiling woman in the next picture – Dad’s partner of almost ten years – had been diagnosed with breast cancer not long before, which was the reason why she hadn’t come with them that day.

  Wendy. Like a mum but not quite the same – though not for want of trying, Zeb thinks, guiltily. The woman, who had married her dad around the time she’d started school, and died when the cancer returned, not long before Zeb moved into Maresfield House. And in the main she had been a good stepmum.

  Yet Zeb had sensed the incompleteness of their relationship from an early age. Now, looking back, she wonders how much this – despite Wendy’s obvious affection for her – has contributed to a certain restlessness. A lingering feeling that a fundamental part of her life, critical to the framework of her very being, was missing. The vague sense of loss this brought had cast a shadow across her otherwise untroubled childhood, a subtle patina.

  Beside the graduation day picture is another snapshot of her taken on the morning of her first day in senior school. Dressed in regulation pale blue and grey, she stands glowering beneath a pudding bowl haircut between Dad and Wendy. He is wearing a leather jacket and ‘Top Gun’ shades – a look they’d both ribbed him for, mercilessly. The three of them are outside the corner shop in the village where she grew up. It’s sunny and the trees are budding. Was it Easter? She can’t recall.

  The remaining line of pictures distracts her with other memories. Wendy’s valiant attempts to encourage her to ride her bike unaided. Her failed attempts to teach her tennis. The two of them with hair freshly styled, faces made up and nails painted after a girls’ trip to a local beauty salon. Though they’d not told Dad, of course: the excursion had been Wendy’s idea to mark the start of her first period.

  Zeb picks up the final image in which the three of them sit behind a giant ice-cream cocktail adorned with paper parasol and sizzling sparkler, mugging for the camera, unbothered by the scarlet sheen branding their faces and shoulders.

  They’d been on holiday, staying in a beachside hotel in a small fishing village somewhere in the Algarve. Mid-August – a mad time for any English man or woman to venture far beneath a scorching Mediterranean sun, especially in the days before Factor 40. She can still see the shopkeeper’s face when they bought all that Greek yoghurt. Not just the perfect breakfast, Wendy declared, knowledgeably, punctuating her observation with her snort of laughter. But the best sunburn cure in the world, ever!

  Familiar stories from a shared past now help Zeb forget the fear of her lost days in Scotland. These people, this place, they shaped who she is. As she thinks of how little she’d seen him in those last few months, tears prick her eyes. Just every few Sundays for lunch at his. Dinner in a restaurant when he was up in town. Though he was here, always here on call to listen or advise.

  How casually she takes him – took him, rather – for granted.

  Retracing her steps back into the kitchen, Zeb is relieved to see the pilot light still flickering in the boiler. She fires up the heating then opens the hanging cupboards in search of something to drink. There is tinned soup, cream of tomato, which she heats on the hob then pours into a mug.

  At least it was quick, she thinks. Better that way than to die of some dreadful, lingering disease.

  Back in the sitting room, Zeb sifts through the letters Joyce gave her. Junk mail. Notifications of bank changes. A couple of unpaid bills. It starts to rain again and the wind shakes the windows. From the garden next door comes the sound of Mrs Cunningham gathering in her dogs. Putting out her recycling. Securing the lid of an old metal bin.

  Dad’s side of the house feels too quiet.

  Zeb turns on the TV and flicks through the channels, but nothing engages her. She crosses the room to stand at the window that looks out across the common. The silver BMW is now parked outside the house next door and the outline of its driver, who is slumped in his seat reading the paper and smoking, is illuminated by the dashboard’s gentle glow. Noting the main road is still busy she decides to wait another half hour before leaving, to be doubly sure of missing the rush hour traffic, even though it’s already gone seven.

  The flickering screen behind her is mirrored in the window and as she watches, the reflected body of a woman w
ashes up on a tropical beach. Death even in paradise, she thinks, drawing the curtains. Turning the set to mute, she wraps her coat around her then stretches out on the sofa and slips into an erratic doze.

  By the time Zeb wakes a little later the room is warmer. But now it’s too late to sort Dad’s papers and she feels too weary to drive home. The sofa is uncomfortable. She moves to the armchair but its back is too straight. She goes into the kitchen and double-bolts the back door, then makes a tour of all ground floor windows, checking the locks and drawing the curtains. Only then does she turn towards the stairs.

  Zeb stops on the first floor landing. She is opposite Dad’s bedroom and his next door office, the place where he was found. Taking a deep breath, she steps past both closed doors towards the back of the house and the room above the kitchen which she will forever think of as hers. Opening her bedroom door, she sniffs the air. It’s still there, the vague funk that’s always tinged this particular corner of the house, due to a damp spot halfway up the bricked-in chimney. The familiarity of it is reassuring.

  Crossing the room in darkness, Zeb peers out towards the close-packed, towering leylandii wall dividing the grounds of the luxury bungalow at the rear with its tennis court and ha-ha from Dad’s pocket handkerchief of a garden. Though she doesn’t really need to, she draws the curtains.

  Her old bed is made up but the eiderdown is thin, so Zeb reaches up to the top shelf of the old oak wardrobe to pull down two spare pillows and an armful of extra blankets. She eases the mattress off the frame and onto the floor where it neatly fills in the gully between bed and window. She then heaps the extra covers on top, taking her time arranging pillows and cushions.

  I did just this the day Dad told me about my mum, she remembers, dimming the light.

  * * *