What he was doing was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her. The most caring thing anyone had ever done for her. She was always grateful for any kindness sent her way, but she also harboured suspicious of it too. Right then however, her heart melted a little.
What did she actually want from whatever it was she had with Geoff? It’s a question she asked herself more than once. Particularly recently, with him becoming the person she’d naturally turn to with her problems. (Her madness?) What did he want? Did he want babies? Did he dream of them getting their own place somewhere down the line? Maybe even married? To be honest, that’s the kind of life she’d never even imagined for herself. She had no context for it, no experience of it. It frightened her, as she wouldn’t know what to do in a life like that. But with Geoff – and she had to remember that Geoff hadn’t talked about his past much more than she had – there was maybe a possibility. They could settle down and become a normal couple with a normal life. Why not? Other people did it, how hard could it be?
When this was all over, even later this evening – when she’d found out more about the clinic and perhaps digested the information – then they could maybe have a chat. Work out whether they were going to take the step of calling themselves boyfriend and girlfriend. Try to decide what they wanted for – if not the rest of their lives – as far into the future as they were willing to consider.
She didn’t say anything, but she reached across and squeezed his denim-clad thighs. His legs were so muscular and she always liked that hardness.
“You up for this?” he asked with his kind smile.
“I don’t know.” She was honest. “I’m not sure I’m scared. I just feel a bit silly, I guess.”
“Silly? Why?”
“Because I’m a girl showing up at a place I can barely remember and demanding information. I don’t know what kind of records they keep. What if it’s absurd? What if they laugh at me?”
As always, Geoff knew exactly what to say. “If they laugh at you, then so be it. I’ll be waiting here for you and we can head back together and decide what our Plan B is going to be.”
Alice squeezed his thigh again and took a deep breath. “I do have to do this, don’t I?”
“Yes, absolutely. You need to go in there and explain to them what’s happening to you and get them to tell you exactly what the hell is going on. Clearly something traumatic happened to you and maybe just being here will help you know what it was.”
She nodded once, just as he swung into the wide, overgrown driveway and depressed the accelerator to tackle the gentle incline up to the house.
Her emotions were a whirling tumult. Geoff’s words gave her determination afresh, a desire to see this through and solve the mysteries trapped inside her head. But as she saw the house loom up in reality, she also wanted to cry.
Part of her wished she could curl in a ball of tears, or scream at Geoff to turn the car around. She beat both those impulses back and instead gave him a weak smile.
He stopped the car, switched off the engine. The handbrake was pulled up with an arthritic creak. Undoing his seatbelt, Geoff leant across and kissed her softly on the lips. She kissed him back, needing the warmth right then.
They stared at each other. The smile they shared identical in its nervousness.
Chapter Seven
“Yes? Can I help you?”
Already Alice didn’t like the woman dressed in the nurse’s uniform. (Probably she was an actual nurse, but do nurses really sit on reception, doing their nails, while a cigarette smoulders in an old pub ashtray beside them?) This woman was the only occupant of what seemed to be a reception room. There was no other obvious way into The Butterfly Clinic, so – despite her hands trembling – Alice had pushed at one of the big double front doors and tried to bury all her nerves. She couldn’t remember those doors from her childhood, didn’t know if she’d ever walked through them as a little girl, but behind them she knew was something that drew her in and wouldn’t let her go.
However, when she stepped through, all she found was a pine panelled dingy reception room, which smelt of cheap air freshener, and this officious nurse staring at her as if she was something offensive, like chewing gum stuck under the seat.
At the far left of her desk squatted two telephones, a green one and a brown one. There were two piles of papers on the nurse’s desk and one of them was less tidy than the other, so presumably sorting through them was her work. Her nails were evidently far more important than either pile right now. And obviously more crucial and pressing than whatever it was Alice might want.
“My name is Alice Whitstable.” Standing in front of the desk, Alice kept her voice firm. “And I would like to speak to somebody in charge, please?”
The nurse’s eyebrows raised and that nail file actually stopped in mid-motion. “Speak to someone in charge about what?”
“I just want to see the head doctor. Or the head whatever it is.”
“But about what?” The nurse’s voice came out as an officious bark.
“About…” Alice steeled herself, despite fighting a losing battle with her nerves. “I think I was a patient here when I was a child. And I want to talk to someone about what I experienced.”
“You think you were a patient here?”
“I was a patient here.” She said with certainty. “There’s little more specific I can tell you, but if there’s someone who worked here fifteen or twenty years ago who is still here – or if there’s someone who can tell me what’s in your records – then I’d like to speak to them. Please.” That ‘please’ was added almost as an afterthought.
They stared at each other malevolently for a good twenty seconds. It occurred to Alice that this woman wasn’t that much older than her. She might even have been the same age; a contemporary who’d lasted longer in school and been rewarded with a crisp white uniform. With her dark hair and pale skin, the nurse could be – if not beautiful – then with the right ensemble from the boutique, undeniably striking. However there was a harshness to her that had already aged her well beyond any semblance of carefree youth. There was no obvious joy to her being. So much so, it was impossible to imagine her thin lips forming a smile. It was as though she’d set herself off on the path to be a battle-axe harridan and that was her life’s goal.
Maybe a less determined girl would have yielded at this point, but Alice wasn’t in that kind of mood.
She’d instantly recognised the large, red-brick building from her dreams. That old Victorian schoolhouse changed to a different purpose. Absolutely it was the same place. But staring at it in reality, it was also like she didn’t recognise it at all. There was no resounding clang of triggered memory in her mind. There was no feeling of warmth, or even coldness, that she had spent some of her childhood within its walls. It looked familiar from her dreams, but her conscious mind had no recollection of the place at all.
It probably didn’t help that the house had clearly seen better days. The green guttering (which clashed horribly with the red brickwork) was hanging off at the top right corner, and was seemingly only bound into place by rope. There were roof tiles missing and some of the upper-storey windows were cracked, while others were covered up by pages of yellowed newspaper. Moving slowly up to those double doors, she had tried to keep her mind calm by counting those rooms kept shrouded in old headlines. She didn’t have enough time to come up with a number, but it seemed to her like fifty percent of the house wasn’t in use. Or at least, whoever owned this place didn’t want daylight to get into nearly half of it.
She turned back and Geoff waved to her once. An encouraging wave. He’d told her that in the phone book, it was still advertising itself as a private clinic. But it was hard to imagine any would-be patients coming up that driveway and being filled with hope when they saw this place.
In a way the nurse was much the same – unsettling, rather than welcoming. Her glare only eased when, with a sigh, she grabbed the receiver of the brown phone, Alice guessed
it was for internal calls. The nurse covered her mouth and mumbled, doing a creditable job of stopping Alice hearing what she was saying, even though they were only a yard apart.
Staring down at the nurse, Alice wondered if she could help her. If some friendly advice would be appreciated. Maybe, if she popped into the shop (the shop Alice probably used to work at, she thought ruefully, but never mind) she could get this woman a whole new outfit. If, in the outside world, the nurse was a friendlier person, maybe she could give her make-up tips and remove a touch of the paleness from her skin. Then she could teach the nurse to smile and be nicer to the people she met.
They were charitable thoughts, kind thoughts, but they ended as soon as the nurse hung up the receiver and stared up at Alice. To be fair, she did raise the corners of her lips in Alice’s direction, but it was such an insincere and condescending effort as to be worthless as a smile.
“You’re in a great deal of luck, Miss Whitstable.” The tone of her voice suggested that luck was the last thing she wished Alice. “Doctor Penhaligan is free and he has deigned to give you some of his valuable time. Your strange request” – she uttered ‘strange’ as if it soiled her tongue – “has piqued his curiosity and so he will spare you five minutes.”
Alice didn’t know what she felt right then. Waves of both relief and anxiety crashed through her. She knew though that a smile burst onto her face. “Thank you!”
“The doctor’s door will be open.”
The nurse’s face returned to stern mode. She pointed her nail file in the direction of a cheap, unpainted plywood door to Alice’s left and then switched her gaze to the busy work of her nails – as if she couldn’t care less whether Alice walked through it or not.
Alice took one step back from the nurse’s desk and steeled herself. Then, without any further hesitation, she marched forward and pushed down on the creaking door handle.
“All the best!” the nurse murmured behind her.
The corridor ahead seemed nothing but grey walls and nondescript rooms, but Alice wasn’t going to turn back now.
Chapter Eight
Standing behind his desk, Doctor Penhaligan was a thin, angular man. Tall, middle aged and with a receding hairline that was grey around the temples, he had high cheekbones and a pointed nose which would have looked wrong on any man with a bit of weight to him. What struck her immediately was his obvious intelligence. The person he reminded her of the most was – of all people – Sherlock Holmes. He had a natural superiority to him, a sternness too. His blue eyes regarded her with intent, but also a playfulness – as if whatever her problem, he was going to find a way to solve it after three minutes of cogitation and a lot of big words.
When she’d entered his office and introduced herself, he was the embodiment of charm. Grinning lop-sidedly at her, enquiring how she was and whether she’d come far. Unlike the nurse, he wasn’t wearing a white coat. Instead he wore a tailored suit trousers and waistcoat, over an immaculately pressed white shirt. It had absolutely been made to measure his lanky frame. Trying to keep her smile wide for him, she noted that he wasn’t unattractive. Indeed middle age probably suited, she could imagine him seeming quite insubstantial in his twenties. However, despite his looks and his charm and offering her a seat and generally seeming kind, there was still something about him which made her feel oddly wary.
She kept smiling at him.
Doctor Penhaligan’s office turned out to be the third door along. But because of the narrowness of that corridor, Alice was surprised at how spacious it was. Most of the far wall was taken up by a grand window looking out onto the verdant – although overgrown – grounds that stretched out onto Box Hill. The wood panelling was of a far higher quality than in the reception room. Oak, she would have guessed, and matching the shade and texture of the big desk at the centre of the room. He had a big leather chair for himself, but also two other comfy leather seats for those he consulted with. In the reception room and corridor it had been somewhat battered linoleum underfoot, here it was luxurious shag carpet. It seemed to her like the kind of set up she’d find if she ever went to a Harley Street doctor. Although she guessed that no Harley Street quack would have so much electronic equipment on the walls. There was a large black video camera (its recording light showing red which made her feel self-conscious), and various other metal instruments with dials and buttons whose purpose she couldn’t possibly imagine.
Focusing on the doctor across the desk from her, she tried to put the décor, the instruments on the wall and everything apart from what she wanted out of her mind. She was determined to ignore her wariness and just get on with finding out what had taken place in this house when she was here. In particular, find out who on earth Paul was and what had happened to him. She’d made it through the door now – two sets of doors, in fact – and she couldn’t leave empty handed.
“Now, what can we do for you, Miss Whitstable?”
“I don’t really know if you can help me.” Her voice was firm, even as her fingers were clutched together on her lap. “But I’d like you to try. My” – she hesitated over whether to call Geoff her boyfriend – “friend drove me here and said that I have to try to get to the bottom of what’s happening to me.”
Doctor Penhaligan nodded once in that high and superior way that she already guessed was a part of him, as if everything she said to him was not only making sense, but he was already three steps ahead of her. She was focusing her gaze not on his hawk-like eyes, but on the brilliant white of his shirt. Suddenly, she realised that his collar wasn’t uniform with the rest of it, it was yellow with little white stars dotted higgledy-piggledy. On another man – Geoff, perhaps – it might have looked cool, but it struck her as strange that this doctor would wear a garment like that. Surely he was too old for fripperies of that kind.
He gave another of his close-lipped, lop-sided smiles. “I will endeavour to do what I can, Miss Whitstable, but at the moment I’m at a loss as to what that might be. Why don’t you just start your story at the beginning, my dear? Or where you imagine the beginning may be.”
Alice swallowed once. “Did you read about the rock singer, Richie Clement?”
Doctor Penhaligan’s eyes narrowed, showing that she’d momentarily baffled him.
“He was the lead singer of a band called Certain Danger and he died last week.”
“Ah, yes.” The illumination came quick and gave his voice a sing-song quality. “A car accident, wasn’t it? Most tragic. No age at all.”
“Well…” The words stuck in her throat for a few seconds. “I was there.”
Again he stared at her with the most polite and mannered incomprehension she had ever seen. “You were there?” he said finally.
“I witnessed it. The car crash happened right in front of me. He was thrown out, stood up briefly when really he should have been dead already and then died properly at my feet.”
“Huh,” he grunted. Then he sat back and she heard the faint sigh of the leather. His fingers steepled themselves in front of his pursed lips. Even without a white coat, he still looked most definitely a doctor.
Alice stared at him, knowing that she had to be patient even though she had so much to say – so much to get across. It wasn’t in this room, but a clock was ticking somewhere nearby.
“Interesting. When you say he died at your feet, is that a figure of speech, or were you genuinely that close? Close enough to smell a certain aroma of death, as it were?”
She blinked at him. “I was a bit closer to him at first, but then I guess I leapt back.”
“So a matter of feet and inches from this young man as he actually passed, would that be correct?”
She nodded.
“And his death, if the reports I read about it are accurate, was quite a gruesome one, was it not?”
Again she struggled to get the words out. “He had half his face torn off.”
Most people who heard that detail would have winced. Not this doctor. Maybe his lips pursed together a
bit tighter in distaste, but there was no more obvious reaction than that. He nodded three times entirely to himself.
“That sounds very traumatic for you, my dear.” Doctor Penhaligan’s voice was sing-song again, only this time maybe with a touch of confusion.
“It was.” She thought she’d buried it down, that not thinking about it meant it had gone away, but hints of tears pricked her eyes.
“A young lady like yourself shouldn’t see such things, but I suppose part and parcel of life is that you cannot avoid the more unpleasant moments of it. And it’s not like you were in anyway responsible for the car accident which killed this Mr Clement, is it?”
Strangely, she got the impression that the question wasn’t as rhetorical as it might have seemed, and so she actually replied: “No.”
“However I’m not sure, if I’m honest, quite what it has to do with us here in the clinic, Miss Whitstable? I’m more than happy to help, but I’m at a loss as to how any of this relates to The Butterfly Clinic.”
Straightening up her shoulders, Alice dried her eyes and attempted to present a calm face of strength. “I don’t know either. Not really. But since it happened, I know that I have been dreaming about this place.”
“Dreaming?”
“Yes. Vivid, uncomfortable dreams. Dreams that seem to stem from reality.”
An eyebrow raised. “About The Butterfly Clinic?”
“Yes. Dreams so real, it feels like I’m remembering them, rather than dreaming them.”
“I must say, that’s really quite bizarre.”
“And that’s why I’ve come here today,” she said levelly. “I think I can remember being here for a time when I was a child. My childhood was” – the smile she gave was the one she had long used to make the best of things – “unconventional. I didn’t have parents, not really, and so I spent my formative years in a lot of different places. And I realised, in my dream, that one of the places I can remember staying was here. I think I only thought of it in fleeting thoughts before, but since the accident I know absolutely that I was at The Butterfly Clinic.”
Certain Danger Page 4