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

by Meg Carter

  It happened on the evening of her seventh birthday, after the swimming party she’d had at the local open air pool. The other girls had gone home and Wendy was clearing up after tea when Dad popped his head round the door of the sitting room, where Zeb was carefully arranging her new collection of animal Wade Whimsies, to tell her to go upstairs for her bath.

  No, she’d snapped, her lungs ragged from too much swimming; bloated with cake, and beyond tired.

  Do as your father says, Wendy chided, appearing unannounced in the open doorway.

  Don’t want to. Shan’t. Won’t, Zeb cried. Especially not for you.

  As their eyes locked, Zeb churned with a profound and all-encompassing surge of anger. Resentment for the woman who’d wandered uninvited into her home just a few months earlier, with her unwanted life lessons drawn from her childhood in Singapore and her unasked-for attempts to buy Zeb’s affection with porcelain figures. Cooking them strange food she’d never heard of, and from scratch. Dividing Dad’s attention. And now, telling her what to do like she thought she was her mum.

  Wendy’s eyes narrowed.

  Oh for Jesus effin’ Christ’s sake! Zeb cried.

  Excitement eclipsed anger as the words somehow just slipped from her childish lips and she savoured the sound of the expletive she’d often thought but never before dared say. She wondered for a moment if now she was a bad person – like Jennifer Cox, the teenage girl next door whom she’d heard shouting this when caught shoplifting in WH Smiths. Dad took a step towards her then stopped, his jaw tensed. After a controlled exhalation of breath, he directed an instructive nod at Wendy which made her immediately leave the room.

  What is it, Zeb? he asked, taking a seat on the sofa then patting the cushion at his side. Don’t you like our new friend? Zeb was too confused to answer. Because she’d expected him to be cross. So all she could do now was stand her ground with arms tightly folded, scowling fiercely.

  You need a bath because you smell of chlorine, and to rinse your hair.

  Dad paused, weighing up the gamble he was about to make. He patted the cushion once more and this time she perched beside him, though with head bowed. And you will apologise to Wendy, for me. Because I like her, Zeb, a lot. And I want her to stay. You are everything to me, but you must understand – it’s been difficult doing it all on my own these last few years.

  Zeb looked up, quickly. Challenging him to meet her gaze. Because he was wrong. You’re not alone – you’ve got me.

  That’s not what I mean. As he placed an arm around her shoulders he kissed the top of her head, softly. Don’t you think Wendy would be nice to have as an almost-mum?

  What about my real mum?

  It was the first and only time the question that had been – and forever would be – locked inside her heart was aired. Looking back, she can still remember it so vividly, down to the tiniest detail. How the sun had stencilled the pattern from her sandal onto her left foot. The way his arm around her shoulder made her feel she could conquer anything, even Jonny Lidster – the boy in her class at school who always teased her so.

  The tang on his breath from the can of beer he’d been drinking.

  The way his body warmed her own.

  Won’t she mind? Zeb stuttered. What will she say? Because everyone has a real mum, somewhere – Sara said so.

  Dad’s arm tensed. A moment before, it had buoyed her up. Now it was a weight pressing her down.

  You’re right. Everybody does have a mum. And you did, too. But sadly your mum can’t come and see you, he sighed, squeezing her tightly. Because, my little love, she died when you were born.

  Zeb’s eyes widened, as anger and frustration faded to a distant memory. For Dad had not said anything about her mum before, ever. At least not directly. Just: She loves you very much. Or: If she could be here she’d be so proud. Now, as she tried to process what he’d just said, all she could focus on was the smell of Sandwich Spread from the gobbet she’d spilled down her front at tea. Though the gloop had been quickly wiped clean, a greasy stain marked the chest of her party dress. It smelled like sick.

  Her lips quivered.

  I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before, Zeb, but it was too hard. You were too young. But you’re getting to be such a big girl now. Smart, too – everyone says so. Especially Wendy. Having her around these past few months has made things a lot easier for me, you know. It’s not about replacing your mum – no one ever could. But wouldn’t it be good to have someone other than me to, well, talk to as you get bigger? About feelings and so on.

  She looked up, hopefully. About my real mum?

  Dad’s mouth twitched into a kind-of-smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. Perhaps. And other stuff, too.

  Was she… pretty?

  Dad looked baffled for a moment, then nodded. Your mother? Yes, very.

  And clever?

  He squeezed her knee. Yes, clever too. Just like you. We loved each other… very much. And we so wanted to be together. But it wasn’t meant to be. It happens like that sometimes – complications when a woman has a difficult birth. Now come on, champ, he pressed on, lightly. How about that bath?

  No, she snapped, wriggling free of his embrace.

  Zeb—

  But now she was scrambling up the stairs. Burning her knee on the carpet as she slipped where the top step met the landing. Scuttling towards the rear of the house, to the room at the back Dad always called the guest room, though visitors rarely came to stay. Slamming the only door in the house with a functioning lock and key behind her, securing her sanctuary.

  Because Wendy was no one, she knew as she hurled herself into the darkest corner to one side of the bedroom window; buried her head beneath folded arms. Rocked her body, to and fro. Because her mum was dead.

  Disorientated, Zeb gasps for breath as her head rings with the old, familiar chant.

  Dead because of me.

  * * *

  Zeb wakes bewildered to find herself in her old childhood bed as an adult; at home, but homeless without Dad. Even so, waking dreams from her childhood have out-played the lingering fear about what happened in Scotland, trumping it with familiarity, reassurance and grief.

  She rolls onto her back. Her neck is cricked and her mouth dust-dry. It’s morning – early, judging by the half-light. The house is still. Yet though alone, she knows she has slept well and finds herself calmer than she’s been in weeks; reassured, too, by being closer to a familiar past. Though she struggled to believe it age seven when life was so much more black and white, no one could – or ever did – blame her for what happened to her mother.

  Running the shower as hot as she can bear, Zeb scrubs herself until her skin feels raw. Then, once she has dressed in yesterday’s clothes, she sets about tidying the house in readiness for the estate agents she must soon approach for a valuation, meticulously checking cupboards and desk drawers in the downstairs dining room which also doubled as an office.

  An hour later, a pile of Dad’s things sits neatly piled by the back door. Beside a boxed set of family photo albums and an ancient family Bible is the metal filing box he used to store the financial paperwork. As Zeb stares at it, she realises that these remnants of his life are also future foundation for her own. With his solicitor, she will formulate a plan for selling the place. Schedule a weekend to return and sort through everything. Find somewhere to put what she wants to keep in storage, in the hope that, one day, she and Matty will have a bigger place to live – maybe with the proceeds of the sale. Even though tomorrow’s uncertainties feel too raw to address, life will move forward.

  Zeb picks up her car keys then puts them down again. There is still one thing she has to do.

  Upstairs on the landing she hesitates passing the closed door of the room where he was found. Her heart is racing. Though the thought of what she might find is dreadful, she knows she must go inside to prove there is nothing to see. Which is almost, somehow, worse.

  The door swings open. Inside the room, the Indian r
ug stretches diagonally across the wooden floor as it has always done, its fabric flush against the board. The weave is un-snagged, the pattern unmarked. But this is where he was found, she thinks. On the floor. Almost dead, but not quite.

  How long had he been lying here, in need of help? Alone.

  Zeb shakes her head, willing herself to be strong. For there is no visible evidence of the end of a life so recently played out here. Only in her imagination.

  She straightens the curtains then takes in the sole picture standing, framed, on the sill. It is of her, as a baby, at her christening. She slips it into her pocket.

  On the far side stand floor-to-ceiling shelves containing box after box of Dad’s archived photos. For now, she decides, they’ll be safest left there. Everything, it seems, is in its rightful place – including the pile of books stacked on their sides on the floor beside Dad’s bed. A Webster’s biographical dictionary beneath a battered-looking thesaurus and, sandwiched between them, a cookery book with a cream-coloured spine which makes her pause.

  Curious, Zeb thinks, pulling 100 Amazing Tastes of the Sea free. Because unlike her, Dad hated fish.

  As soon as she weighs the recipe book in her hand she knows there’s something odd about it. It isn’t as heavy as it should be. And it doesn’t open because its pages seem to have become stuck together. Holding it up, Zeb gives it a shake. It’s hollow, she realises as something inside shifts. The cover appears to be a lid and when she peers at the side she sees a tiny keyhole.

  Still clutching the secret safe, she retraces her steps back downstairs and finds a screwdriver.

  Seated on the bottom stair, Zeb carefully inserts the tip beneath one side of the lid and prises it open. Inside is a tiny glass phial containing a gold lock of baby hair – hers, she guesses; the pair of amber earrings Dad gave Wendy the Christmas before she died; and a brown envelope worn furry with a split along one side. The envelope’s flap is folded inside rather than stuck down.

  Hello stranger, the handwritten letter begins. How have you been?

  Better than me, I hope. Life here is very different, as I’m sure you can imagine. But we are surviving, just, and counting the days until we see you again. I hoped you would make it up last weekend but I know you’ve been busy. How did the exhibition opening go, by the way? How I wish could have been there.

  We’ve been spending a lot of my time reading and listening to music.

  There’s a pretty good library here, but having no instrument has been a challenge. Do you think it’s possible to lose dexterity in your fingers by not playing? I hope not but just in case, there’s an exercise I’ve taught myself from an article I read. You put your hands on a table as if you were resting your finger on keys, then ‘play’ 1-3-5-2-4 over and then over.

  You should try it if ever you have some spare months to kill.

  Sorry, I must be strong. And knowing you’re still on my side keeps me going – along with the review coming up in a few months’ time. Anyway, there’s not much else to say, sadly, as nothing much else has happened. But come and see me soon, please. I’m not sure you realise quite how lonely it is here. Whatever’s happened, remember, nothing will change the way I feel about you.

  Yours, truly & forever,

  Always,

  A

  x

  Zeb ponders the intriguing initial but it means nothing to her. The writer’s petulant tone gives her the air of a jilted lover. A teenage crush perhaps, though with no date to indicate when the letter was written, it’s hard to say. She refolds the letter and slips it back inside the envelope. If this was important enough for Dad to hide then she should look after it, too, she thinks, adding it to the collection of things to drive back to London.

  Though the rain has stopped as she loads the remaining boxes of papers into the boot of her car, she is too preoccupied by thoughts of her imminent reunion with Matty to notice. Which is why the four-by-four she saw last night, a silver BMW still parked a short distance away with its driver hunched down in in the front seat with his head bowed as if sleeping, barely merits her attention.

  12

  Shoreditch, March 1975

  Stepping over the smouldering cigarette butt Viola has just let slip, Alma moves towards the tin map on the wall detailing the geographical vagaries of Old Street station. Tunnels, stale-smelling and dimly-lit, stretch away from them in all directions. Any of the main exits will bring them back to the surface into open air, but only one will do so the right side of the busy roundabout.

  ‘Second on the left should do it,’ Viola finally declares. ‘Come on.’

  ‘This clothes shop had better bloody well be worth it,’ Alma mutters, darkly. ‘These heels won’t stand traipsing around in circles a second time.’

  They could have travelled by tube as far as Moorgate; it would have been closer. But neither has had the stomach for it since the crash there which killed so many just a few weeks earlier. Though no one has yet discovered the cause, speculation about terrorist involvement is rife. So though neither would ever admit to believing any old rubbish about plots or curses, they’d silently risen as one to disembark as the train slowed to a halt one stop earlier than was required.

  The two girls leave the ticketing area and turn along a grimy passage. This leads into a wider, tile-hung walkway at the end of which they face two choices. To their right is a gentle slope, to their left a set of steep steps. They choose the latter and quickly emerge at street level on the right side of the busy City Road. The sky is bright with the kind of spring sunshine that makes the world seem good once more.

  A lonely Christmas back home with her parents now seems long ago. As does her mother’s revelation during their last Sunday night phone call that she’s finally redecorated Alma’s bedroom. And that she had also let slip that Leonard has moved to Germany to take up an honorary position at the Hochschule für Musik, in Dresden. Not a place Alma plans to visit in a hurry, ever.

  Grabbing hold of her friend’s hand, Viola bustles her along the side of the main road for a short distance then tugs her down a narrow alley between two boarded up buildings. Alma’s ankles, already stiff from compensating for the new boots her friend encouraged to buy the previous weekend from a stall in Camden Market, bow as she struggles to keep up.

  Entirely in shadow, the alley has a lingering, vegetable smell which makes both girls’ pace quicken until they burst into sunshine once more.

  They stop to catch their breath by a barber’s, the first shop in a parade of shuttered stores and narrow offices that veers off to their right. Alma frowns. Unfamiliar with this part of London, she is finding it difficult to get her bearings and wishes she’d brought her A-to-Z.

  ‘Which way now?’

  ‘Down the road then right at The Weaver’s Arms,’ Viola replies. ‘Another five minutes at most.’

  Alma groans. And then again more loudly when, a minute later, the heel of her left boot snaps.

  Gripping onto a window ledge, she examines the damage. But with the plastic heel dangling from the upper by a thread, there is no way she can walk in it now. Cupping her hands around her eyes she leans into the window of what looks like a saloon bar of a pub. But the glass, distorting like smeared bi-focals, makes the interior impossible to see.

  ‘Come on,’ calls Viola, already striding ahead having spotted an entrance just around the corner. ‘We’ll have a drink, fix your boot, then be on our way.’

  They buy two Cokes then choose an empty table by the window. An elderly man with a tangle of white hair is playing the slot machine. On the other side of the bar, two men nursing empty pint glasses talk at each other quickly in broad Irish accents.

  Crossing her legs, Alma slips off the broken boot, taking care not to let her unsheathed foot touch the sticky floor. With its stale odour, the brown carpet is a pungent testament to the clumsiness of the establishment’s clientele.

  ‘Wait here,’ Viola instructs. ‘I’ll ask if the barman’s got any Sellotape or glue.’


  Leaning closer to the window, Alma attempts to decode the blurred shapes passing outside.

  The first is a taxi, that’s easy. And next a cyclist. Two women – they are chattering loudly, which is a bit of a cheat. Then a man on foot – she can just make out jeans, a white T-shirt; his thick dark hair. This figure quickly steps out of range only to reappear in the pub doorway. He begins making his way towards the bar but then, noticing Alma, seems to think again. A moment later he is walking towards her.

  ‘Hi.’

  He stands next to her, waiting for Alma to look up. But she resists, irritated by the unwelcome intrusion. Searching for Viola, her throat knots in anger when she sees how quickly her roommate has fallen into deep conversation with the man behind the bar. Then, when it becomes clear that the stranger isn’t giving up so easily, she slowly puts down her glass and offers up a blank stare.

  ‘Can I buy you another?’

  ‘No thanks,’ she answers. ‘We’re just about to leave.’

  ‘We?’

  The man makes a show of glancing around the almost empty room before fixing his gaze on Viola, now seated at the bar. He pulls up a stool. ‘Your friend doesn’t look like she’s about to go anywhere.’ Alma frowns, because he’s right. ‘Go on, let me buy you another,’ he presses on. ‘Was that Coke you were drinking?’

  Alma turns back towards the bar to see Viola throw her a merry wave without pausing her conversation. Defeated, she sighs. ‘OK’.

  What is it about some men that makes them so confident they will not be refused, she wonders, as the stranger make his way to the bar. He seems supremely comfortable in himself; master of the moment, as he exchanges pleasantries with Viola. As Alma watches, something he says makes her roommate look at her then laugh.

  ‘So tell me,’ the man begins, pouring her drink a few minutes later. ‘Do you come here often?’

  Alma takes a lengthy gulp from her glass. Something about him seems familiar. But though she is sure they’ve met before, she can’t place him. Whoever he is, he is extremely good-looking. Her mood softens. ‘No, why?’