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

by Meg Carter

  ‘If you’re sure,’ her friend frowns. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I don’t want us to fall out again—’

  ‘We’re not,’ Zeb cuts in, forcing a smile. ‘Honestly. It’s just… I feel… After sleeping on the sofa, you know… Just tired.’ And to underline her assurances, she walks Sam down the communal stairway to the front door where they hug warmly, before her friend steps out into the bright, late February morning.

  ‘Tell Matty I meant it when I said he can show me those partying Puffles next time, won’t you?’

  Zeb nods. ‘Don’t worry, I will. Talk later, OK?’

  Back upstairs, she sees the light flashing red on the answering machine as soon as she closes the door. She hesitates, distracted by the sound of electronic music as Matty – nestled on her bed, wrapped in the duvet – plays on the laptop. ‘Won’t be a minute, luv,’ Zeb calls as she lifts the handset to her ear and presses Play.

  ‘I got your message,’ says a stranger’s voice. A woman. ‘And I’m glad you called. ‘I know I missed you when you came to see me the other day but we really must speak. So do, please, try me again. At the shop. I’m there four days a week – Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays are always best, but not weekends I’m afraid, Elizabeth. Just let me know when.’

  How soon can they go? Zeb wonders. She will take Matty – he’s still little, school won’t mind. It will be an adventure. Perhaps they can take a detour on the way home via Loch Ness.

  But then she pauses. This is madness. She can’t take her son away without Richard’s say-so. And if she takes him out of school so soon after the trip to Spain she knows what her ex would call her – selfish and irresponsible, and she can’t have that. Even if he could take Matty abroad during term when he wanted to, and for a whole week, too.

  Today is Sunday, though. If she goes this afternoon she can see Anna tomorrow and be back tomorrow night. It would just be one night away. She searches online for a flight but finds no seats available. The only other option is the overnight train, which would mean she could be back to collect Matty from school on Tuesday. Not ideal, but do-able.

  Reluctantly, she picks up her phone and calls Sam’s mobile in the hope she can persuade her to exercise some of her godmotherly duties. Far better for Matty to have a couple of nights staying with her than to ask Richard, she thinks.

  * * *

  A short while later a tide of bodies carries Zeb across concrete slick with rain, and onto the bus heading south along Camden High Street to Euston Station.

  Fighting her way towards the rear of the lower deck, she eases into an empty seat next to the window. A moment later, a man in a padded jacket takes the seat beside her, thrusting her up against the window. The bus accelerates to a crawl. Trying hard to ignore the stranger’s encroaching thigh, Zeb uses her sleeve to wipe a porthole in the fogged-up window.

  As the bus stops just before Mornington Crescent, a dozen people bump against each other in their scramble on board. At their rear, Zeb notices, is a figure swathed in a dark overcoat whose face is obscured by his upturned collar. Though he is standing with his back towards her, three seats in front, there is something about the shape of him, the spade-like dimensions of his gloved right hand, that makes Zeb shake.

  Shrinking down into her seat, she wills her pursuer to stay facing the other way.

  A woman carrying a tiny baby beneath her plastic mac appears on the stairwell, fighting her way downstairs to alight at the stop she’s almost missed. Realising he will have to move to let the woman pass by, Zeb looks down and furiously fumbles in her bag as if searching for something she’s lost.

  ‘Dropped something, darling?’

  The man next to her is loud and impossible to ignore. As he twists towards her, a thick trunk-like arm pushes downwards between them, crushing her even more tightly against the pane as he feels around, blindly, for whatever it is he thinks she must have dropped.

  ‘No, honestly, it’s fine,’ Zeb begs, praying the exchange will pass unnoticed by her fellow travellers. ‘I must have been mistaken. Really, it’s OK.’

  Turning away as if to stare out of the window, Zeb shields the side of her face with the palm of her hand. But she is watching the reflected image of the man in the overcoat as he pumps the call request button to force the driver to reopen the rear doors. The bus slows to a halt and when it is stationary, he steps to one side to let the woman and baby alight before quickly resuming his position, facing towards her this time.

  Sweat beads Zeb’s hairline and her neck feels hot and itchy, but when she touches it the skin is clammy and cold. A cloying smell of wet clothes now fills the bus. At the next stop, the man in the overcoat takes a few steps towards the driver to avoid a surge of people from the top deck. The bus starts to slow. With only a narrow window before the crowd clears, Zeb’s eyes skitter towards the opening door as the stranger in the seat beside her gets up to leave. She has to get out. Grabbing her overnight bag from the floor, she makes a dash towards the exit just as the automatic doors start moving together with a weary shudder.

  She shoves her bag through the narrowing gap like a nylon battering ram and pushes her way out – half-leaping, half-slipping onto the wet pavement. Only then does she look up. The doors are shut, but the man in the overcoat is looking her way. Staring at her, hard, as he pounds the call request button.

  Zeb stands outside a brightly-illuminated coffee bar. Inside, counters are being wiped down, chairs stacked and the floor swept. Spinning around, desperately, she considers her options. Though she could make it by foot to the railway station from here, she’d need to follow the route which the bus has just taken. Turning back to face the way she’s just come, she sees a minicab firm’s neon sign and runs towards it.

  The interior of Ace Cabs is little bigger than a walk-in cupboard with a shabby counter and enough floor space only for two wooden chairs. The air inside is thick with the smell of damp fabric, stale nicotine and mint tea.

  ‘Any chance of a taxi to Euston?’ Zeb calls from the open doorway.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ a youth with an Arab scarf tied round his neck replies. He doesn’t bother to look up from the magazine he is reading.

  Backing out onto the pavement Zeb nervously scans the busy high street in either direction. Two black cabs, both with orange lights, pass on the far side of the road going the wrong way. As she wonders whether it is better to stay the right side of the road for the station and wait or to run over towards the cabs, a car quickly approaches down the outside bus lane. The vehicle, a silver BMW, draws level then starts to slow until, with a last minute pumping of the brakes, it draws to a halt a few paces ahead.

  Zeb struggles to decide whether or not she recognises the driver. Too scared to wait and see, she rushes out into the busy road. Weaving her way through four lanes of traffic, she makes the central reservation only to find a waist-high wall of metal railings. But there is a jagged hole in the divide to her left, so she clambers through it then crosses more lanes of slippery tarmac.

  Once she has stumbled onto the pavement on the far side of the road, she pauses to catch her breath. To her left is a narrow alley, to her right a one-way street. But before she has to choose, her flailing attracts the attention of a rapidly approaching black cab.

  ‘Where to, luv?’ the driver asks once Zeb has clambered inside.

  ‘Anywhere.’ Zeb slides down in the seat as the taxi retraces her steps back along the High Street then arcs right towards the bus stop she’s just run from. ‘Please, just drive.’

  ‘Boyfriend trouble?’ The cabbie is a whey-faced woman dressed in a candy-pink Juicy Couture hoody which makes her look even paler. She has a pierced lip and closely-cropped, peroxide-blonde hair, and her grey eyes are watching Zeb intently through the rear-view mirror. ‘Back streets preferred, right?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  With a jolt, the woman executes a tight U-turn then accelerates northwards towards Chalk Farm. ‘Tell me where you’re really going and I’ll take the sc
enic route,’ she says with a sly grin.

  ‘Euston – the station.’

  Zeb closes her eyes as they head north past Camden Lock and swing a left towards Swiss Cottage before cutting along the leafy avenues of St John’s Wood towards Regents Park. Then they dart across Marylebone Road before slowing to a pace more appropriate for negotiating the narrow backstreets of Bloomsbury, criss-crossing the grid of streets around Russell Square until her pulse is calm. There’s little chance he will have been able to follow them by car. Zeb now sits in the back seat, straight-backed, staring out through the rain-streaked windows but seeing nothing.

  He must have been waiting for her on the street outside, she thinks. Followed her on foot. Why hadn’t she ordered a taxi in the first place?

  Biting her lip she tastes blood as the driver heads the wrong way between two bollards marking a cobbled cut-through just south of Somers Town. Then, at last, the driver slows at a darkened junction beside a sign for Phoenix Road. She gestures briefly towards the brick colossus before them, now visible through the rain.

  ‘There’s a rear entrance if you go across Eversholt Street and turn right,’ the woman advises.

  Raising her collar against the rain, Zeb makes her way towards the station’s rear entrance. Once inside, she tells herself, she will be fine. All she needs is to get her ticket then find somewhere out of the way to wait until the train is ready to board.

  She stops on one side of the main concourse to look up at the departures board. Glancing at her watch, Zeb sees she has almost an hour to wait for the train she has booked to Fort William. The overnight service is non-stop and will allow plenty of time once she gets there to find a hotel room before visiting Anna. Reminding herself of her plan makes her feel calmer.

  When the train is ready to board, Zeb walks towards her platform. As she approaches the barriers, she inspects her ticket – flattening the bends to help it slide easily through the machine. But as she feeds the cardboard slip into the slot to open the electronic gate, a commotion from the far side of the concourse makes her look round.

  Outside the flower stall next to the coffee shop Zeb’s just left a stout, middle-aged woman is shouting angrily as she rights upended buckets and gathers up the long-stemmed flowers now littering the floor. Turning again to see the subject of her fury, Zeb sees a man of medium build with a squat neck and shaved head charging towards her; the tails of his overcoat flapping in his wake like wings.

  Spinning back towards the gate at the blast of a guard’s whistle, Zeb barges through the channel left open for suitcases and buggies. Then, a moment later, she is on the platform hurtling towards the closest carriage as from somewhere behind more angry shouting erupts. She sees the man is still running in her direction.

  Who is he and what does he want? she wonders, desperately. Why me?

  With sixty seconds before the train’s scheduled departure and as the automatic doors are about to close, Zeb somehow manages to throw herself inside, landing heavily on her burned arm as she crashes to the floor. Pain and relief pulse through Zeb’s body simultaneously as the doors shut with a mechanical wheeze. She pushes her head out of the window as the train starts to pull away.

  Craning her neck, Zeb looks back along the receding platform. The ticket barrier she just plunged through is still within sight, as is the florist standing behind it watching two transport police officers struggle to restrain the running man. He is on the wrong side of the gates – still on the station concourse, she realises, as her aching body is overwhelmed by a sense of giddiness and an urge to laugh.

  It’s going to be all right, Zeb tells herself, as she searches her coat pocket for her seat reservation. The train picks up speed and as the world outside rolls away, the city centre quickly melts into the looming darkness.

  Everything is going to be OK.

  * * *

  Zeb sleeps fitfully on the train as it journeys north towards Scotland and wakes, finally, into half-light. The world beyond her window has become a craggy landscape ruled by gathering waves of grey hills. A desolate environment, lashed by rain.

  A fragile sense of hope kindles inside her as the train slows towards the imminent end of her journey. Zeb fingers the piano charm that still hangs from her neck, considering the one word that kept turning over in her mind, again and again, in the days following Dad’s death. Orphan. Because that’s what she became once he had gone. Unless what Anna said is true. And even if it’s not, maybe this old friend of Dad’s can answer some of the questions for which she’s long craved answers.

  As the train reaches the outskirts of Fort William, Zeb folds the street map she’s torn from the in-train magazine and slips it into her pocket. Her first priority will be finding somewhere to stay. Then, if she’s lucky, she will look for the shop where Anna works. With a final glance out of the window towards the hunched shoulder of what might be Ben Nevis, Zeb rises to her feet, slings her bag over one shoulder then makes her way towards the exit.

  To the left of the main station concourse stands a line of minicab drivers, some holding make-shift signs on which they’ve written their passengers’ names. Along the far wall to her right stretches a line of pay phones. Before she can make her way between either towards the world outside, however, a stooped woman steps in front of her, barring her way. She is of indeterminate age, cloaked in ill-coordinated layers, with strips of plastic secured around each shin. Bent almost double, she is holding out a mittened hand.

  ‘Spare us a couple a’ pound, ‘hen,’ she rasps. ‘I’m short for m’ticket home.’

  Reluctant to open her purse amidst the throng of strangers, Zeb checks for loose change but, finding none, shrugs apologetically. ‘No, sorry, I haven’t—’ she begins as the woman springs forward and clamps a hand onto Zeb’s arm. Surprised by her unexpected agility, Zeb wavers as she stares into the stranger’s face for the first time.

  Though hunched, the woman is young. In her late twenties, probably. Her hair is a dull blonde, scraped back in dreadlocks. Her nose is pierced. ‘Haven’t got what?’ she mutters, thickly.

  Zeb wonders if she is on something or maybe drunk, though she doesn’t smell of alcohol. ‘Change,’ she stammers. ‘I don’t have any—’

  ‘Time,’ the woman shouts suddenly. ‘That’s what you really mean, isn’t it? You just don’t have the fucking time to care.’

  Zeb tries to free her arm but the woman’s grasp is too firm. ‘No, honestly, that’s not what I—’

  Releasing her grip, the woman pushes Zeb hard, almost making her lose her balance. ‘Watch the fuck out where you’re fucking going, bitch!’ she screeches, spinning around on her heels to direct her gaze at the small crowd of onlookers who have gathered at a safe distance to watch, as if challenging someone to intervene. ‘Did you see that?’ she presses on to her audience. ‘Almost knocked me flying, she did, and me all done up in my finest because it’s such a beautiful day.’

  Someone to the woman’s right, a youth dressed in a bomber jacket and torn jeans, starts to laugh. As her accuser sets her sights on him, Zeb melts into the crowd.

  The station’s main exit is ahead, blocked by a crowd of teenagers dressed in army fatigues spread out amidst a sea of discarded kit bags. Zeb struggles to find her bearings as, barely conscious of the idea forming or where it has come from, she turns back towards the toilets opposite the platform from which she’s just come. Beside the entrance to the Ladies is an unmarked door which she pushes open.

  At the end of a short corridor is an emergency exit leading directly into the station car park. Good luck for a change, Zeb thinks as she emerges into a world of daylight, rising wind and a marked chill which makes her zip up her jacket and pull a grey knitted hat from the inside pocket.

  The outlook is gloomy. But as she checks the map to plan the shortest route to the town centre, Zeb has a renewed sense of purpose.

  18

  Hampshire, July 1975

  Stepping into the room like an intruder, Alma is dismayed at t
he transformation: the floral walls, the matching curtains in Laura Ashley pinks and greens. Her mother has removed all of her books bar the classics, and her collection of glass animals and other childish ornaments are in the large trunk beneath the bedroom window. A cardboard fruit box has been left open on the bed for her to sort.

  It is the start of the long summer holidays and the first time Alma has visited her parents’ house in weeks. The last time she came, just for lunch, she didn’t venture upstairs: though she’d hoped for a few hours’ respite from her studies, all her mother and father had done was nag. About her disappointing grades. The Monsoon dress she was wearing. How short Viola had trimmed her hair.

  Alma can’t help wishing she’d said something sooner – though she guesses her mother would have pressed ahead with the redecoration even if her daughter had tried to object.

  Beside the box on the bed, her mother has left out a neatly folded bath towel, matching hand towel and flannel. Dropping all three onto the floor, she slumps into the space they have left. She bounces once then twice on the edge and the mattress beneath emits a familiar creak. At least some things don’t change, she thinks.

  Alma pushes the cardboard box to one side and stretches out on the bed. Not so long ago, her mother’s meddling would have felt like an intrusion; she would have sulked, and an argument would have ensued. But now, as she sits in this tiny box room that she has long ago out-grown, she feels almost nothing. Just a hope that maybe this means her parents don’t expect her to move back home after college, and with this comes relief.

  Folding her arms beneath her head, Alma stares up at the ceiling. For as long as she can remember, it has felt like she has fallen short of their expectations. Never quite good enough or sufficiently committed, her achievements were shadowed by faint praise. Well, not any more. Others are better-positioned to judge her now. And rather than resenting her parents’ ambitions for her, she will damn-well exceed them. She grins. London started out in her mind as a place of sanctuary, but by releasing her and inspiring her over the past nine months it has become so much more.