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

by Meg Carter

  Did I do it already? But no, I can’t have – not without Pete.

  ‘You were supposed to mind him, just for an hour or so.’

  I didn’t do it, not me.

  ‘Please, take her to the kitchen.’

  It’s Saturday, not Monday.

  ‘What went wrong?’

  It was me. I went wrong. Lied to my family. Let bad things happen. With Leonard, Pete. Took money, though I meant to give it back. Because it was all about me. Not the baby. Us. Just me. Listen. Please, understand.

  ‘Were you jealous?’

  Me.

  ‘Did he slip?’

  All about me.

  ‘She’s evil, that’s what she is.’

  Me and my word—

  ‘You know what you should do with someone like her, don’t you?’

  —my word, against hers.

  ‘Lock her up, that’s what.’

  Not a bad person. Just a bad mother.

  ‘Lock her up and throw away the key.’

  27

  Fort William, February 2016

  ‘Miss Hamilton?’

  Her eyes open onto a world without colour. Just blankness. An expanse of white. Clean and true. Until she moves her head. Away from the bulb that blinds. Refocuses onto the lines between the pale ceiling tiles. Tilts her head to face the man who now stands by the side of her bed.

  ‘Yes.’ She replies without doubt.

  He smiles. ‘Well, I must say, this is starting to become a habit.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  The man has a white coat and silver-fox quiff. He holds out a hand. ‘Dr Prentiss.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I just—’

  ‘No need to apologise,’ he beams.

  Zeb is in a curtained cubicle this time rather than her own room, in a side bay on a busy A&E ward – she can tell by the sounds, though the patterned fabric obscures the view.

  ‘No need to ask where I am.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ he demurs.

  And then, she remembers. ‘What’s the time?’

  Dr Prentiss glances at his watch; it looks reassuringly expensive, with an azure face. ‘Just gone five.’

  Zeb frowns. ‘Wednesday?’ He nods. ‘Thank God,’ she exclaims. ‘It’s my friend, I was trying to get help when… he’s in a field a mile or so outside Beauloch with his leg caught in a trap, someone needs to—’

  ‘It’s OK. He’s fine – or will be. I saw him a short while ago,’ the doctor says, checking his notes. ‘Fraser… Kiernan?’

  ‘That’s him.’ Zeb sinks back against the pillow. ‘Yes,’ she sighs.

  ‘He lost a lot of blood and needed quite a few stitches but, otherwise, the leg will mend. As for you, how’s the head and shoulder?’

  Zeb sees for the first time her left arm is in a sling.

  ‘A temporary measure to hold it at the right angle after the dislocation,’ Dr Prentiss explains before she can ask. ‘We’ve X-rayed everything we need to and apart from that you’re in the clear. Although I’d like to keep you in for observation for tonight given it’s your second head bang in as many weeks, just as a precaution.’

  Gingerly, she nods in acquiescence. Her head still hurts, yet the tension in her body has already been eased by the reassurance of knowing Fraser is not just OK, but also close by.

  ‘Now all we’ve got to do is find a bed for you for the night,’ the doctor concludes. ‘Don’t go anywhere, I won’t be long.’

  Zeb thinks of the back seat of Brian’s car where she must have passed out beside Anna. Or, rather, Alma. Alma Dean. Their exchange replays in her head. You’ve found her, now tell her, the man, Brian, had said. And something else.

  Like mother, like daughter.

  Can it be true?

  Zeb thinks of how Alma looked when she last saw her – in a bad way. She wonders how she could find out what happened to her and, if indeed there is a way, whether she should try. Alma is a stranger to her, after all. A mother who turned her back on her child. A woman whose reappearance in her life has triggered no flicker of recognition and with whom she feels no affiliation or bond.

  What’s passed is past, finished. Done.

  I don’t have to know her to know who I am or where I’m going, Zeb tells herself, though as she does, her resolve starts to quaver. Because inside her there is a twist of doubt. A niggling realisation fed by the reluctant knowledge that as a result of recent events – the split with Richard, her struggle to cope, Dad’s death and now her mother’s return – her life seems to spinning her round and around. That without acceptance and resolution she will continue to struggle to move in any direction at all, let alone forward.

  Another patient is wheeled by and a voice just beyond the curtain catches her attention.

  ‘A little girl, called Evie,’ a man says. The voice is familiar.

  ‘Why, I’ve a boy the same age, at the same school,’ a woman replies. ‘His name is Billy. Is Evie in Mrs Mitchell’s or Miss Halligan’s class?’

  Fraser – it has to be Fraser, Zeb thinks.

  She lowers her feet onto the floor. Though she is fully clothed, someone has removed her shoes which are now neatly stowed beneath her trolley. She sways, then her head quickly settles. Cautiously, she parts the curtain.

  To her right, a nurse is supporting a teenage youth on crutches as he hops along the central aisle towards a sign marked X-Ray. In the opposite direction, a nurse is pushing a patient on a trolley out of the A&E area through a pair of double doors.

  Without stopping to find her shoes, Zeb chases after them. But by the time she reaches the corridor, she finds it is empty. She reads the departments and directions listed on the wall opposite. Which way might Fraser have been taken? Following the signs, she makes her way towards the nearest set of lifts. But there is no sign of Fraser nor any hospital staff to ask, so Zeb has little choice but to head back towards A&E. She tries to open the swing doors, but instead they are parted from the inside by a porter pushing a wheelchair.

  ‘Elizabeth? Thank God. We wanted to make sure you were OK,’ his patient cries.

  Zeb stares at Alma in bewilderment. She struggles to find the right words – any words – to respond as, a second later, Brian appears behind the porter in the open doorway. Horrified, Zeb lets slip a gasp and backs away.

  ‘I’ll take it from here,’ Brian declares, taking control of Alma’s wheelchair from the porter. He turns to Zeb, his eyes noting her bare feet. ‘No more running, for either of you. You and Alma – your mother, here – have got to talk.’

  * * *

  They sit opposite each other in the hospital’s ground-floor cafe, a cluster of tables and chairs in the main atrium. Juvenile clusters of silver birch grow in pine-clad troughs. Brian has made some excuse about needing to check the car. Ambushed into this reunion, there’s no place left for either of them to hide; nowhere left to run.

  ‘There’s no point in saying sorry,’ the mother begins. ‘But please, please let me try to explain—’

  With a shake of her head, Zeb dismisses these words. The enormity of the chasm that this woman has created (and now seeks to fill) feels unbridgeable. But then, as Alma’s hands start to shake, Zeb finds her hostility start to diminish.

  What choice do I have? I need to know, she thinks.

  ’OK,’ she murmurs softly.

  ‘We loved each other very much,’ her mother begins. ‘When I fell pregnant with you I won’t pretend it wasn’t awkward. We were young, it happened too early. We both had our doubts, considered other options. But I couldn’t… and then when you were born… you can’t imagine how awful that time was. The only thing that made it almost bearable was knowing Pete would always be there for you.’ Her voice cracks. ‘Just like he said he’d always be there for me.’

  Only it hadn’t quite worked out like that. As she reaches for her cup her hand shakes, spilling some coffee. For they had to be apart, she explains. They had written to each other – week in, week out. But then, as time passed, P
ete’s responses had slowed. Until she had to move further north and his visits tailed off altogether. This was some time after he met Wendy.

  Zeb shakes her head. What her mother is saying makes little sense. First she talks of other options, now she’s blaming Dad. Why did they have to write? What possessed her to move away? I’m trying – I really am, but I’m sorry, I… I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Alma says, faintly. ‘I’m not being clear. I think I need to start again.’ She breathes in then exhales, slowly. ‘Look, Alma. Soon after you were born… I went to prison.’

  ‘OK,’ Zeb answers, slowly, as her mind races. A criminal, though she hardly looks it. What was it: drugs, theft, fraud? ‘But that still doesn’t explain—’

  ‘For a long time. Years.’

  ‘Years?’

  Alma nods. ‘It was to do with… the death of a baby.’

  Zeb opens her mouth to say something but no words come. Instead, all she can do is stare at Alma as she works to decipher precisely what the woman is saying. ’You’ve got to believe me, it’s not how you think,’ her mother continues. Her words tumble out now, fast. ‘I didn’t do it.’

  A baby killer. Though she pleaded innocent, the woman is a convicted baby killer, Zeb thinks. That’s what she’s saying, isn’t it? The words conjure an alien, tabloid world of deadly viruses, drunk drivers, neglectful mothers and careless social workers who fail to spot abuse. Women responsible for their babies’ deaths.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ Alma repeats, forcefully. ‘But it was my fault.’

  Zeb shuts her eyes, but Alma carries on, undaunted.

  About how she fell pregnant too soon and considered an abortion. But then, rather than go through with it, someone else’s baby died instead. A terrible accident. Even so, soon after her own baby was born, Alma was sent to prison. But by now Zeb is struggling to listen. She is thinking of her father. No wonder Dad chose to leave this woman; to lie. Because she knows him – knew him – and there is no way he would ever have seriously considered an abortion; that must have been Alma’s idea.

  Help me, says a voice. Please, Dad, tell me what to do.

  Zeb reaches into her memories in search of a gentler place and she finds herself outside an ice cream parlour with Dad and Wendy overlooking a tiny Mediterranean harbour.

  Dozens of yachts are moored round an ancient stone jetty. Tanned crew members sat in waterside bars chatting loudly over beers and cigarettes while mysterious young women in chic swimwear baked themselves on the boats’ scrubbed decks. All she could hear was the hearty collision of French, Italian and German voices as she, Dad and Wendy sat eating ice cream beneath a giant parasol with stripes of custard cream and toy-box blue.

  It was 1993. The summer after she sat her A levels. In Corsica, she recalls, as her eyes snap open. Why the hell am I remembering this now?

  Alma is watching her daughter, attentively. And as Zeb stares back into her mother’s eyes she sees not anguish, anger or regret, but passive acceptance. A dead-eyed expectation that she will be judged badly. Resignation to her fate.

  Who are you? Instigator or victim of the disaster that broke you? then, before Zeb can soften it, the question is out: ‘Whose baby was it?’

  Alma shakes her head. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘And what do you mean it was your fault?’

  ‘I mean, he died. But I didn’t kill him. Back then it didn’t have a name but they call it shaken baby syndrome these days.’

  ‘You shook him?’

  ‘No, but he fell – not far, but it winded him.’ Alma wipes her eyes. ‘It was my word against the pathologist – there were no such thing as expert witnesses back then. Severe brain haemorrhage was the official cause of death. They found damage inside the skull. Even though it was too much to have happened just that one time. In more recent cases, the same kind of injuries have been found to have been inflicted weeks before death.’

  Zeb shrugs. ’So why, if that’s true, did they find you—’

  Her mother laughs, a bitter sound. ‘What’s that saying about the past being a different country? They did things differently in the Seventies.’

  ‘And no one believed you.’

  ‘No. And I guess I wouldn’t have believed me either. I was in such a state I didn’t know what I was doing.’ Alma’s eyes cloud. ‘The prosecution said I did it in a “frustrated, unhappy and resentful rage”.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘You don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh Elizabeth, listen. Did I mean to hurt him? No. But I was guilty… in other ways.’

  ‘Because you wanted to get rid of me.’

  Alma lets loose a wail. ‘No. Not like that.’

  ‘Like how, then?’

  ’We thought about it, yes. But then it was—‘

  ‘—too late.’

  Zeb watches a tear slide down Alma’s face. Is she being unfair? Her mother had been little more than a child. Maybe it was some kind of accident. And whatever Alma considered doing while she was pregnant, Zeb had been born fit and healthy; had been well cared for and deeply loved.

  A vibration in Zeb’s pocket makes her go for her phone. It is a text from Matty, she sees – quickly scanning her son’s mistyped request for her to come home soon, and bring him a likeness, ideally soft and cuddly, of the Loch Ness Monster. She breaks into an indulgent smile, which swiftly fades when she sees how curious Alma is, how she views the close-up of Matty which serves as wallpaper on her mobile phone. No, Zeb thinks. I will not comment or explain. You’ll have to earn it.

  ‘How long were you in prison?’ she asks.

  ‘I was released in 1990.’

  My God, thinks Zeb. She was in prison for the first fourteen years of my life.

  ‘That must have been… hard.’

  Alma nods again.

  ‘But you never stayed in touch.’

  ‘I did, for a while.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Pete, he—’

  Zeb frowns. What’s this woman suggesting, that her father somehow kept them apart? But no, none of this was his fault.

  ‘Dad what?’

  Once more she has a sudden image in her mind’s eye of Corsica.

  Dad’s there and Wendy, too, laughing as they hunch over a large bowl-shaped glass piled high with ice cream. There were five different flavours – vanilla, chocolate, coffee, pistachio and something else. And cascading down from the peak was a sugary avalanche of coulis, nuts and whipped cream. It was a real adventure – no one she knew had ever been there. And a surprise, too, for usually they holidayed closer to home: a couple of weeks in Cornwall, Wales and, once, ten days in a borrowed tent in rain-lashed Normandy.

  But this year will be different, he said, mysteriously. Something special.

  ‘After all this time, does it really matter?’ sighs Alma. ‘I wasn’t there for you. And then, when I was finally released, it was too late.’

  ‘No it wasn’t – I would have understood.’

  ’Trust me, it was too late.’

  Zeb’s eyes fill with tears. ‘So you gave up on me?’

  ‘No,’ begs Alma, reaching for her daughter’s hand. ‘Never.’

  ‘Why didn’t you write?’

  ‘I did.’

  Zeb shakes her head. ‘How can I believe that when—’ And then she remembers the memory box she found in Christine Allitt’s flat. ‘How did you get those things in the box you sent me?’

  ‘You father sent them to me. I kept them all that time. But then, when I heard he’d died—’ Alma pauses, to wipe her eyes. ‘I thought you should have them. They belonged to you, after all.’

  ‘Because you wanted to see me.’

  Her mother nods. ‘I did. But then I got cold feet. There was so much going on – not just with you, but an old friend whose son slashed his wrists. I wasn’t thinking straight. And that’s when Brian offered to help me get them back.’

  ‘Get t
hem back?’

  ‘It was a mistake. I’m so sorry if he scared you – that was never my intention.’

  Zeb is unconvinced. ‘He was too early,’ she mutters dryly. ‘Mrs Allitt, the old woman in the flat next door, had been taking my post. It was all in her flat until I got it back.’

  Alma’s face pales. ‘Allitt?’

  ‘Christine Allitt.’

  ‘An old friend of your father’s?’ the older woman asks, weakly.

  ‘I don’t think so, but she has lived in the place for years so maybe they did know each other once, a long time ago, when he lived there.’

  Alma slumps back in her chair. ‘After Tony.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Pete bought the flat… after Tony.’

  ‘Really, I don’t think—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Alma exhales, as if regathering her strength. ‘Look, I’m very sorry,’ she continues, when at last she speaks again. ‘I was selfish. Always have been. You’re entitled to your own life. Peace of mind. I should never have got in touch. I don’t deserve—’ She waves her hand, vaguely. ‘—this.’

  Turning towards the cafe counter, the older woman beckons Brian who, unnoticed by Zeb, has taken a seat at the table closest to the cash desk. A moment later, he is by her side.

  ‘Can you help me to the car?’

  ‘What, now?’ The man looks crestfallen.

  ‘I think it would be best,’ Alma says.

  ‘You’re wrong, you know,’ says Brian, turning to Zeb. ‘Alma is a good person. And if she’d had a chance she would have been a good mother, if it wasn’t for Pete. Who are you to judge? Without knowing what really happened, you can’t know what he was really like.’

  Zeb’s jaw clenches. Dad wasn’t in the wrong, she knows. He was a straight man who led a decent, honest life. A good father. Her rock. That’s what the name stood for in Greek, he told her once. She had trusted him and always would. Suddenly, she hears his voice.

  * * *

  The end of her last year at school deserved marking, that’s all, he told Wendy.

  It was late on their final night in Corsica and they were sitting on the balcony beneath a starlit sky. Zeb was supposedly sleeping inside. The recent death of a distant relative Zeb had never heard of meant they could afford to treat themselves, just this once. The funeral had taken place at a crematorium just outside London, while Zeb was at school. There’d been no mention of him before, which was strange, as for some reason the old cove had remembered his estranged nephew in his will. Or maybe Dad was a second cousin, once removed. Either way, his secretiveness had infuriated Wendy.