“I don’t know exactly. I think it started when I was pregnant with my daughter. Or maybe after she was born.”
I throw that one in, firstly to remind him that I have a child waiting for me at home, and also because we’re educated now. Everyone knows there are mothers who have suffered from postnatal depression to the point where they did something they shouldn’t have. Giving birth is no picnic, either on your body or your mind. I hope he will be understanding.
“Do you know why you chose this person? Molly Forster?”
I turn to look out the window. “I think something about her story resonated with me. Something about being on your own, having to fend for yourself. My mother, Katherine, died when I was young. My father remarried and moved to the other side of the world. He has a new family now. I think, in a way, it’s as if he was dead, too. Maybe I wanted to be like Molly: someone people wanted to find, you know?”
The last part brings unexpected tears to my eyes. I quickly rub them off with the back of my hand.
Dr Morrison nods, looks at me kindly and writes things down.
“Do you think you’re better?”
“Yes. I think so. I hope so.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because I know who I really am.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Molly Forster.”
Forty-Five
“Hey.”
“Matt!”
He has one hand on the doorknob, the other dangling limply by his side. My heart swells at the sight of him. I’m sitting in my chair, and spring up at the sight of him and throw my arms around his neck.
But he doesn’t react in the way I expect. He doesn’t envelop me in his arms or look at me with water in his eyes. He doesn’t tell me how much he’s missed me. He just stands there as I embrace him, until he gently steps away.
“How are you?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Not great. I made a mistake. It’s this stupid test. They try and trick you, you know? He was asking so many questions, so quickly, I got confused but it’s not my fault.” I realise I’m biting the side of my thumb and quickly put my hands behind my back.
“How’s Gracie?” I ask.
“She’s fine. She’s good.”
“You didn’t bring her.”
“I don’t think this is the place for her. Seeing you in here.”
“You’re right, of course. Thanks.”
He sits on the side of the bed. “The cops have been to see me,” he says. There’s a strange look on his face.
“Why?”
“They asked me about your trip to Whitbrook.”
“Why would they ask you? You weren’t there.”
“They wanted to know if you’d said anything to me, about Mrs Dawson.”
“Like what?”
“Like whether you were upset by something she might have said.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“They asked me about Barcelona. About what you were doing there.”
“What?”
“They said you were connected with someone who died in suspicious circumstances. They wanted to know if you’d ever talked about that.”
I’m biting the inside of my mouth and now I can taste my blood. My heart is pounding is my chest. Has Hugo already started acting on his threats? He’s setting me up? I stare at Matt, trying to come up with the right words to make him understand. He’s lost weight. I see that now. His face looks pale and dry. The skin under his eyes is bluish. It makes my heart weep.
“Have you done something, Rachel? Something you shouldn’t have done?”
“No. Matt, I swear. No.”
“Do you know what you said to me the day before you came here?”
Came here. As if I had a choice.
“No. I don’t remember.”
“You said, keep an eye on Gracie, Matt. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
I look at him. “So?”
“Weren’t you trying to tell me something?”
"Other than please watch our daughter?”
“I think you were saying you might do something. You were telling me to protect Gracie from you. That’s what you said, ‘don’t let her out of your sight.’”
"Oh, fuck you for that. I would never hurt our daughter and you fucking know it, you piece of shit. There. Does that help?"
We sit in silence. All I want is for him to come and put his arms around me. He doesn’t have to say anything, just to hold me. But he sits there like a limp bit of lettuce and I can’t look at him anymore.
“Rach?”
“What?”
“Hugo Hennessy called me back.”
I close my eyes.
“I mean, he called your mobile back, after you left, you know…”
He looks pained when he says it. I can see myself in my mind’s eye, punching the numbers to call Hugo’s house. I was frantic. I hadn’t changed the setting on my phone. I didn’t hide my number. I forgot, didn’t I. I am a stupid, hopeless, worthless person that put everyone in danger. It doesn’t matter anyway, he already knew.
I pinch the bridge of my nose hard. I want the pain to take over, so that I don’t have to endure the one in my stomach.
“Rachel?”
“I heard you, Matt.”
“He didn’t sound like Peter.”
“When did he call?”
“The day before yesterday. That night.”
“What did he say?”
“He wanted to know who I was and why I called. I explained, about you, the podcast you know, all that.”
I look up at that. “About me? What about me?”
He looks sheepish. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
“I told him you were ill, and that you were working on the podcast and that you thought someone we met recently was him, I mean Hugo Hennessy.”
“Why would you that? I had a breakdown, but I know who I am Matt. I’m Rachel Holloway, okay?”
He frowns. His head gives a little jerk, like he does when he’s confused about something. I used to find it endearing.
I sigh. “What did he say?”
“Not much, he listened mostly. He said he’d heard about the podcast but he hadn’t listened to it. He said he knew nothing about this Peter. He also said beside being happily married, that he’s in construction and hasn’t been able to leave the site in months. They're about to tear down the old railway station in Whitbrook and he—”
I snap my eyes to him. “The railway station?”
"Yeah. But the point is, Rachel, that Peter has nothing to do with this man, and the real Hugo has been on a construction site for weeks. I just thought you’d like to know, that’s all.”
He comes closer finally and kneels on the floor. He takes my hand and puts it over his cheek.
“Are we going to be all right?” he asks.
“I wish you’d brought Gracie with you.”
“I told you, I didn’t—”
“I know, I just wish she was here, with us, you know?”
“I wish you hadn’t insisted on calling her Grace. I’ll never know now, if you did that because she was a miracle, or because you were… unwell.”
I lean down and put my forehead against his and say, “I did it because she’s perfect.”
Just like Grace.
I don’t have my phone with me. It’s at home, with Matt. If it was here, they would have taken it away from me. But when I tell Matt that I feel really unwell, and that he needs to go and get the nurse at the station, he doesn’t ask questions, he just goes.
They come back together, today’s nurse and Matt. By now I’ve got his mobile from his jacket pocket, turned it on silent, and I’ve safely hidden it in the drawer of my night table.
“I’m having stomach cramps, I don’t understand.”
She checks how much medication I’ve been given. Am I allergic to anything? Matt wants to stay and look after me, but I tell him to go, to come back tomorrow, and t
o give Gracie a kiss from mummy.
Tell her I love her, and I miss her so much I’m going to hug her till Christmas, I say.
“I’m all right now, thank you—” I check her name tag, “—Susan. I’m fine. I have a sensitive stomach. Always have. It’s from my mother’s side of the family.”
Matt and I hug tightly. I inhale the scent of him so I can bottle it up and keep it close. I promise myself that I will find a way to make him see that I’m telling the truth.
“Will you keep an eye on Vivian please?”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Okay.”
As soon as he leaves I retrieve Matt’s mobile from the bedside table. I have phone reception. I open the web browser and search for the number. I find one, but it’s a landline. I just hope it’s the right one, and that someone’s there.
But I recognise Jacob’s voice when he picks up.
“Help me,” I say.
Forty-Six
He came, thank God. He’s sitting close to me because I insisted. We may be in a private room but what if someone walks in announced just as I say, get me out of here, they won’t let me have any visitors again.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks.
“Get me out of here,” I whisper. Jacob looks away, like he’s thinking about it.
“Rachel—”
“Molly. The name is Molly Forster.”
“Ra—Molly, look, I don’t know. Look around you. See where you are? You’re in a psychiatric hospital. Sorry, but there’s no way I can get you out of here. Even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to because you’re not well. You’re supposed to be here.”
“Jacob, right now, you are the only person in the world who can help me. I need to get out of here. I know how, you just need to do what I ask you.”
“Why are you telling me this? It’s the reason you’re here, that you think you are—”
“I am.”
“Why tell me?”
“Because I have to tell someone the truth. We don’t have a history. But you were more invested in finding Molly than anyone. It’s the reason I got you fired.”
“I didn’t get fired, I just—”
“Whatever. I thought you were in on it, with the Hennessys, I know that’s not the case now—have known for a long while. But you know so much about Molly, you’ve researched the case, you told me so. If I can convince you—and I know I can—then I have a chance.”
“And if not?”
“Then I’m either going to be in a psych hospital forever, or at least until someone kills me in here.”
He drops his head, like it’s all too much. I bring my chair even closer, so close that our knees are touching. I keep my voice low.
“You remember when we got to Whitbrook and you parked the car outside my house? I threw up. Right on the grassy knoll outside the front gate.”
“I remember.”
“Let me tell you about that house. In the middle of the front door is a door knocker. It serves no purpose because the house has an electric doorbell, but my mum picked it up from an antique shop. It’s shaped like a swan and she loved them. It’s made of brass. She got my dad to put it up. No one ever used it. I wonder if it’s still there? You push the door and you’re in the hall. There’s a dent in the skirting board on the left where I rammed my tricycle. My mother, whose name was Mary by the way, told me not to ride my tricycle in the house, but I thought I could go faster on those black and white tiles than I did on the grass outside or on the gravel path in the garden. That’s at the back of the house, the garden. It backs onto the river and it’s huge. Inside, in the kitchen are cupboards handcrafted by a friend of my dad’s called Tony Buckhouse. They have pretty door handles, round and white with a pink flower painted under a clear laminate. But one of them broke and was replaced by a plain white handle. That’s the cupboard to the far right, near the window.
There’s a walnut tree near the house at the back and on the trunk are Grace’s initials, carved. Just below those are mine. Also carved. It’s not a big tree, or at least it wasn’t when I was a kid, and you can climb it and sit on the branch that shoots out to the left. When my sister Grace turned thirteen, she was given a small toolset, they were real tools but smaller. That day we took them and punched small holes in the west wall of the garage until my mother came and took them away from us. But the holes were small and never got filled in. You can probably check that too. The French doors at the back of the house open onto a paved patio. The tiles are light grey, almost beige, with a pattern that looks like marble. One of them is cracked, it’s on the edge, almost at the far corner, and it’s a hairline crack from when my dad dropped—”
“Stop.” He sits up straight and looks at me. I say nothing. “What does it prove, Rach?”
“Molly.”
He puts his hand up, palm facing me, and says, “I’ll listen, fine, but it’s going to be Rachel okay? If that’s a deal-breaker, then tell me now and I’m out of here.”
I nod. “How could I know those things unless I was—”
He keeps shaking his head, as if he can flick off the frustration. “What, that there’s a tree at the back of the house with initials on it? Or that the paving is grey?”
“Didn’t you listen to all that I just said? There’s a bit more than the colour of the paving.”
“But all that you could have found out from newspapers! Magazines! The telly! The press were all over this for months! They had photos of everything! Including the gardens! And yes! Including the paving!”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Maybe you went in the house! How would I know? Maybe you went there after they were killed because you’re like, obsessed with them!”
He must have caught the incredulous look on my face because then he says, “People do that, you know. You’d be amazed at the fanatics out there, the kind of stuff people will do to get a closer look.”
“So how can I prove it to you? There has to be a way.”
“If you could prove it to me then you would prove it to everyone else. That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
The door bursts opened, startling us. A different nurse walks in, someone I haven’t met yet, and frowns at us, as if we’re doing something wrong. She hands me a small pill container with two tablets. I take it and put it on the nightstand.
“You need to take these now,” she says.
“Could I have some water then?” I hand her my water cup, shake it to show it’s empty. She takes it from me with a frown and while she fills it with water from the bathroom tap, I slip the pills under my pillow. She hands me the water cup and I make a show of emptying the container into my mouth.
“Shouldn’t you be taking those?” Jacob asks after she’s gone.
“No.”
“Rachel,” he begins, “if you really are Molly Forster—”
“I am.”
“Then why are you going around pretending your name is Rachel Holloway? People have been looking for you for years. Why not walk into the first police station you see and tell them who you are?”
“Because I didn’t want to be found.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are people out there who want to kill me.”
“So what’s changed?”
“The podcast, that’s what. It’s brought these people closer to finding me—they did find me. And now I need to get out of here because I’m a sitting duck.”
“Which people?”
“You know when I told you the other day, about Hugo Hennessy, that he is dangerous, that there’s more to the story—”
“Whoa, wait a sec here, I heard all this from Vivian already. You’re not still saying that Peter—”
He won’t believe me if I tell him the truth about Peter. So I don’t.
“I need to get out of here, right now. Hugo Hennessy, the real one, he’s going to come after me. Because I’m Molly Forster, and I was there when he killed them.”
&n
bsp; “It’s a lot to process, Rach.”
“I was there, Jacob,” I say, my voice shaking. “I was there and I saw it, I saw him do it. I ran away and I hid in the old railway station but he found me. I managed to get to the police, and Edward Hennessy put me in this room and called his son. I heard him, on the phone, talking to Hugo, telling him that I was sitting right here and he needed to come right now and sort this out. That it was his mess and he needed to come and fix it. So I ran, and I’ve never been back until I went with you.”
He’s pale now. He stares at me with his mouth open, and with my index finger I push his chin up to close it, saying, “You’ll catch a fly. That’s what my dad used to say.”
“Have you ever told anyone?”
“No, never. I’ve spent every waking hour since making sure no one knew. Until a few days ago that is, when I tried to tell Matt and I ended up here.”
“Jesus.”
“They don’t believe me. No one believes me. You have to believe me. You’re my last hope, Jacob.”
Forty-Seven
Technically, the only way to leave is through the foyer door, the one with the keypad. If you’re allowed to leave, a nurse presses a button from the nurses’ station that unlocks it. From there you simply walk out to the main hospital reception, and then out of the building. The other way is through the glass doors that lead to the garden. They’re open during the day since the garden is for the residents, as they call us. It’s a large garden, and there’s a tall metal fence around the perimeter, and at two different points there are gates, both of which are locked. I figured out all this before Jacob arrived.
It's possible to climb over the fence, at a spot where you are least likely to be seen. It’s too high to climb on your own, but if you happen to have someone tall, like Jacob, by your side who could give you a leg up, you could do it.
We walk out into the garden as if going for a stroll. I take Jacob to the most secluded spot I can find. You could be seen climbing the fence if someone inside happened to walk past the windowed corridor, so we have to be quick. He gives me his hooded parka to wear, and with a quick lift and a push I am on the other side. I scan the parking lot and quickly move next to a parked car that gives me some cover. Then I crouch next to it and wait, while Jacob walks out of the building the normal way, without his parka.
Missing Molly Page 22