by Ruth Dugdall
Francis took her hand in his long bony grip and shook it vigorously. ‘Hope you enjoy the show.’
‘Me too.’
‘Has Hector arrived?’ Clive asked Francis, as they walked down the long corridor towards the Sleep Clinic.
‘Half an hour ago, his daughter brought him. He’s completed the paperwork and he’s already wired up to the EEG machine; she’s gone to get a drink in the café. He now needs to relax in order to get the best sleep possible.’ Francis threw open the double doors at the end of the corridor and said, ‘Welcome to our Sleep Clinic, Holly. It’s very impressive.’
He was right. Once through the doors, it was like stepping into a different world from the rest of the hospital: calmer and more opulent, with dimmed lighting, a cosy space against the battering winds outside. Here, the usual antiseptic smell of hospitals was absent, there was lavender in the air. The sleep unit was a six-bay ward, but each bed had been partitioned so it was in its own small area with soft lighting and crisp linen in pastel colours, a side lamp with a simple shade, and enough homely touches to make the space inviting. Each had a vase of gerberas or wild flowers, a woven rug and some art books on a low shelf. She saw the plug-in air freshener that must be the source of the lavender.
‘It reminds me of an Ikea showroom,’ Holly said, ‘with all the touches to make it seem like a real home.’
‘It’s a good imitation, isn’t it?’ agreed Francis. ‘The flowers are plastic, and the books are just empty cardboard, but it looks good.’
Francis showed them into a tiny surveillance room, from where the bay could be seen through one-way glass. There was also a bank of six cameras, each showing a bed. Five beds were empty, so only one screen showed movement as Hector shifted on his mattress. He was lying on top of the sheets in pyjamas, his feet crossed casually at the ankle and his hands rested in his lap. His seemingly relaxed pose was betrayed by his tense frown. He had contact pads stuck on his temples, forehead and chin, with wires leading to a nearby monitor.
‘I’m not sure I could sleep with that on my head,’ Holly said, thinking about Clive’s offer to contact a research team for her, ‘and knowing I was being watched.’
‘You’d be amazed how quickly the brain forgets details like that,’ Francis told her. ‘I’ve slept in one of those beds myself, wearing that cap, so I know.’
She’d heard how therapists and doctors often specialised in subjects where they had a personal history, and knew how her own trait had dictated her career. ‘Do you have a sleep disorder, Francis?’
‘Nothing so interesting,’ Francis grinned. ‘But it’s good practice to experience first-hand what we put our patients through.’
On the monitor, Hector could be seen shifting position. He looked towards the camera, his eyes weary, his jaw tense.
‘This bit always takes a while, waiting for patients to fall asleep. Go grab a bite to eat if you like.’
‘I’m happy to wait here,’ said Clive, studying the screen.
But Holly was hungry, and knew it would be a long night. More than that, she wanted to find Cassandra. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting something.’
‘Here – take this beeper. If it buzzes, you’ll know the show’s started.’
Sliding her tray onwards to the cutlery stand, Holly saw Cassandra, hidden in the corner of the café, nursing a chipped mug.
‘Can I join you?’
Cass looked up, and Holly was immediately struck at how different she seemed. Her hair looked freshly styled, and her face was dewy. She looked well rested and healthy, and even her clothes were smarter than the ones Holly had become accustomed to seeing her wear.
‘Oh, Holly!’ She smiled warmly. ‘Of course you can.’
Holly sat beside her. ‘You look well, Cass.’
‘Thank you. I feel it.’ She touched her empty mug lovingly, as though it contained a genie who had just granted her wish. ‘I’ve just sorted a lot of things out today: my head feels much clearer.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Holly. Though she was perplexed too – the last time they’d spoken, Cass was convinced Ash had shot her mum and that Hector was covering for him. She must know Daniel’s car had been seized by the police – how could she be so calm?
‘Do you think this sleep trial will give us the answers we need?’
Cass smiled. ‘The truth has to be the best thing, doesn’t it? Whatever that may be.’
It seemed to Holly that whatever Cass was thinking about, it wasn’t her mother. She was lost in a daydream.
‘Cass,’ she said gently, touching her arm. ‘If your dad’s sleep test doesn’t support his confession, what do you think will happen?’
Holly felt how unwilling Cass was to be pulled away from her happy place. ‘Then it will prove he was covering for Ash.’
‘Or Daniel.’ Holly hesitated, just long enough to acknowledge that she knew she was betraying Leif’s trust. ‘Cass, the police found your mum’s blood in the boot of his car.’
As soon as she said the words, she wanted to snatch them back. She was alerting Cass to the police’s new evidence, she had no right, and Cass could tell Daniel.
But, to her great surprise, Cass didn’t react. She didn’t seem shocked, or even angry at Holly for suggesting that Daniel could be guilty. In fact, her expression was one of pity.
‘Daniel is a good man. He loves me: he’d never do anything to betray me, and whatever the police have found there will be an innocent explanation for. Don’t you recognise true love when you see it, Holly?’
DAY 15
SATURDAY 15 NOVEMBER
42
Cassandra
I fall asleep in the cafeteria, my head on my folded arms, still seated in the chair. It seems like just minutes later that Holly shakes me gently awake.
‘The results are in, Cass,’ she says. ‘Your dad and Clive are waiting for us.’
I lift my head, yawn. ‘What time is it?’
‘Half six,’ she says. I don’t know if she went home to sleep, or if she’s been here all night, but she looks alert, sympathetic too. We both know that whatever we’re about to be told is critical.
I let Holly lead me across the courtyard to Clive’s office. She links her arm through mine and I feel a solidarity between us. When this is all over, I’ll miss her. It’s cold in the courtyard, the early sun is watery and it feels like we’re the only people awake in the world. My breath carries on the air and seagulls watch us from the rooftop. I lean into Holly for her warmth, for her comfort, and I feel her leaning back as if we’re friends. Something we can never truly be, not meeting like this.
I don’t like being here. The Bartlet haunts me, set in a cliff facing the sea, red-brick visage and dark glassy eyes. Rigid and angular and symmetrical, just like the regime inside. The council wanted to turn it into luxury flats, but the locals protested: the hospital was a gift from Dr Bartlet to Felixstowe, in perpetuity. They demanded the town honour this.
I’d like to see it burned to the ground.
Lording over the town like a fortress, its red-brick walls a prison for patients too sick to have rights. Two years ago, I was one of them. This isn’t the convalescent hospital Dr Bartlet imagined when he gave the building his name – gone are the glamorous but ailing women languishing in bath chairs, no shell-shocked gentlemen in panama hats stroll the gardens any more. Those people are ghosts, and now everything that happens here is ugly.
‘It’s just along here,’ Holly says.
I don’t need her to tell me this, I know this place; it features in my nightmares. Clive has his office in the wing at the far end that houses the locked wards, where people arrive screaming and leave mute. Last time I was here was two years ago, my discharge meeting.
Do you remember, Mum? I was told I was finally sane but still you wouldn’t let Victoria come home.
Inside the office, they’re waiting.
Dad doesn’t look like he slept a wink, though he must have or they couldn’t have conducted the test. I take
the empty seat by the window, and wait for Clive to tell us what the test shows. He fumbles with his paperwork, though I can tell it’s more from nerves than anything else, and this worries me: I’ve never seen him looking this uncomfortable.
There’s a clock on the wall, an old-fashioned one with marquetry in the mahogany, that’s probably an antique. It keeps the seconds, along with my heartbeat.
Holly takes a chair at the back of the room. I know she doesn’t want to be intrusive, but also she’s watching and monitoring everything. I’d rather she were sitting beside me.
‘Go on, then,’ says Dad, leaning back and sighing deeply, ‘tell us.’
In the silence that follows I can hear seagulls screaming outside.
‘Hector’ – Clive clears his throat, glances at the floor, then back at Dad – ‘your sleep test indicates no evidence of sleepwalking at this time. The home monitoring also confirms a regular sleep cycle. Neither test shows any sign of sleep disturbance.’
I knew it: Dad lied. ‘Now’s the time to tell the truth, Dad. You were protecting Ash, weren’t you?’
‘No, I’m not protectin’ Ash.’
Dad lowers his head, I can see the vein throb in his forehead. A seagull lands on the windowsill, taps its beak on the glass. I feel trapped, back in this place of insanity. Why won’t he tell the truth? The game is over now, he must know this.
Holly finally breaks the silence. ‘Could Hector’s medication have skewed the results, Clive?’
Clive sighs deeply, in and out. ‘Medication masks the symptoms but not the brain patterns. There were simply no markers for a sleep disorder – nothing that would suggest a sleep disorder so profound it could lead to non-insane automatism.’ He finally pushes his paperwork aside. Now he’s empty-handed, as if wanting to absolve himself from any involvement. ‘Sleepwalkers may not have disturbed sleep every night, but their brainwave patterns would be erratic and there would be indications. But there were none. No reading at any point to support the idea that Hector could have shot Maya in his sleep.’
Dad keeps his head bowed, and nurses his bad hand. I move to him, kneel at his feet and take his bad hand in mine. His is shaking and he won’t look at me, but now turns his head towards the window. I know him – he wants to be outside, where he belongs.
‘It’s over, Dad,’ I say. ‘Time to tell what really happened. You can’t protect Ash any more.’
‘I’m not, Cass.’ He’s breathing heavily. The seconds mount. I imagine the clock ticking faster or maybe it’s just my heart. Still, he won’t look at me. The seagull flies away. The North Sea is an expanse of cold dark water and I long to be there, beside the water, and out of this place. Just like the first time I was here.
‘You’re protecting him just like you did back when he shot me, defending him even when I was injured. But he shot your wife, for fuck’s sake. How can you still be on his side?’
‘Ash wouldn’t hurt Maya.’ Dad reaches for me, a rare thing, his good hand feels like a weight on my shoulder as he pulls my face closer to his. ‘I had to lie, Cass.’
‘Why?’
Dad says, so softly I have to lean in to hear him, ‘Your sleepwalkin’ has got worse, hasn’t it?’
The sharp twist in the conversation takes my breath. ‘What’s that got to do with anything? You lied!’
‘I lied to protect you,’ he says sadly. ‘We all did.’
And there, it is said. It feels like a trick; they’re going to keep me here, aren’t they? I’m going to be locked away like last time.
‘No, I’d never hurt Mum!’ The words hang in the air. I begin to shake, turning desperately to the other people in the room. ‘I don’t even know how to use a gun, Clive. You believe me, don’t you, Holly?’
‘Cass,’ she says, walking slowly towards me as though I’m a cornered animal that might escape. ‘When I saw you in the wardrobe, at the farm, you had no idea how you’d got there . . .’
‘No . . .’
‘There’s something else,’ she says, coming to my side, kneeling at my feet as if she needs my forgiveness. ‘It wasn’t Ash who shot you when you were twelve. It was my brother.’
‘What?’ I can’t understand how this has changed so suddenly, how I’m now at the centre of things. And Holly is looking up at me, crying.
‘I was there,’ she says, her voice wet. ‘I ran away, and I’m so sorry I did. But Ash can’t take the blame any more. I should have told you right from the start about that Halloween. I kept it back and that was wrong. We were just kids, out ghost-hunting. And I wasn’t sure what I saw, not until I saw you in the wardrobe at the farm. Then I realised you’re a sleepwalker, and that I’ve seen you do it before.’
I undo the buttons on my blouse, move the opening aside to show her the scar on my collarbone. ‘Your brother did this? And all these years, I’ve thought it was Ash.’
‘I’m so sorry. But if I can make it up to you, I will.’
My spine is a puppet string and no one is in control. ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. Though I do, oh God, I do. Oh, Mum.
‘Cass,’ says Clive, who’s moved to stand by the window, ‘it sounds as though your father was protecting you.’
‘No, it’s another lie, just another trick! Wire me up to that fucking machine, if that’s what it takes to prove I’m innocent.’
Holly looks hopeful. ‘Could Francis do that, Clive? It would at least prove it. Or would you need a court order?’
Clive pauses, then he finds his mobile. ‘Not if Cass is giving her permission, but do you think you can fall asleep, love? Would we be better to wait until things have sunk in a bit?’
I shake my head vigorously. I can’t wait, the test has to be done – there is no other option. ‘I’m exhausted. I’m sure I can do it. And I want it over with. Please, Clive?’
‘I’ll call Francis and see if he can do it now.’
He walks away to make the call, out into the corridor.
Dad is still breathing heavily. I know he has more to say and I want him to stop. I prefer his silence. He’s barely spoken in days or years, but it’s as though a dam has burst and it must all come out now. As though, now you’ve gone, he’s had to find a voice.
‘I was never protectin’ Ash, or Janet. You had that all wrong. It was just me and you in the house that night, Cass, and I was asleep the whole time. As you’ve heard, I don’t sleepwalk, haven’t done in years. When I made that confession to the police, I was protectin’ you.’
‘I don’t believe it, it’s a lie. You say you were asleep! Who told you that I was guilty?’
His face doesn’t change. For him, there are no more secrets to be told. ‘Daniel,’ he says. ‘He found you, just after you shot Maya. You were still sleepwalkin’ and he led you back to bed, then he woke me.’
I close my eyes, my brain desperately searching through its back files. I slept deeply that night, I hadn’t heard a thing. I woke naked and covered in sweat. Could it be true?
‘I need to see Daniel,’ I say, looking at Holly. ‘Before I have the sleep test, before I say anything else. And I want you to take my father home, I don’t want him near me.’
43
Holly
Parking her car in the driveway, Holly had a view of the cosy breakfast scene she was about to destroy. In the front room, Daniel was seated on the sofa, dressed casually in jogging trousers and T-shirt, with Victoria close beside him in her fleece onesie. Next to her, knees drawn up snugly, was another teenager who could only be Dawn. The three of them were watching something, laughing together, and the girls were sharing a plate of toast.
Beside her, Hector stirred, unclicked his seatbelt.
The old man had been silent all the way from the hospital, and he just grunted now. Holly rolled back her shoulders, straightened her spine, and opened the car door, then went to the passenger side to help Hector out. Maya’s death had broken him, and as she touched his elbow to support him, she felt his emotion: deepest despair. He’d tried to help his daught
er, but in the end, he wasn’t able to. Cass had to face what she’d done, even if she had no knowledge of it.
The front door opened, and Daniel stepped forward. ‘Hector, how did it go?’ Then he looked back at the empty car and said to Holly, ‘Where’s Cassandra?’
Hector made a sound, muffled and distressed.
‘She’s still at the hospital,’ Holly said. ‘I’ll drive you there.’
It didn’t take long to explain, and within a few minutes Daniel had gathered up whatever he needed, and they were driving back to the hospital. In all the scenarios she’d imagined, never had Holly thought Cassandra might be the guilty one. She’d been blindsided by her synaesthesia. Aided and abetted by Alfie, she’d followed the wrong scent.
Back in the sleep unit, Francis had wired Cass up, and she was lying on the bed, just as Hector had been twelve hours earlier. When she saw Daniel, she opened her arms to him, and they locked in an embrace so fierce Holly had to look away. She wasn’t needed here any more, she could go home.
Home.
Innocence Lane had been an ever-shifting landscape beneath her feet, but now it was seemingly over.
As she approached the landing, Leif opened his door and stood waiting for her. She hadn’t even reached him when she began to cry. It was tiredness, of course, but also what she had witnessed. The love Hector had for Cassandra, enough to make him lie about shooting his own wife. And Daniel’s love for her too. She’d seen how Daniel had taken Cass in his arms and started whispering to her, a monologue of calm and comfort that changed Cassandra’s expression from fear to focus, as she leaned into him and he held her tight.
Holly had doubted Daniel – she had sensed him to be a liar, a charlatan who played on the weakness of others to make his living, and she had suspected he might be guilty. But in that hospital, she had felt only his love for Cassandra.
Leif held her, still on the walkway between their flats, and let her cry herself out. Only when she had caught her breath did he ask what had happened.
It was hard at first to explain. Holly didn’t exactly understand herself, why seeing Cassandra and Daniel locked together had overwhelmed her to such an extent. Perhaps it was mirror-touch again, and she was experiencing their emotions?