Dare to Remember: Shocking. Page-Turning. Psychological Thriller.

by Susanna Beard

  “Yes, thanks, Mum, I’m fine.”

  “Is there someone who can help? A friend or a neighbour?”

  “You know there isn’t.” She tries hard not to sound irritated, but the words come out the wrong way.

  “Well, you should get out more, it’s not good for you to be on your own. You need a friend to look after you, Lisa, everybody needs friends.”

  There’s a pause. “Oh, I’m sorry, darling… I didn’t mean…”

  “I know you didn’t.” She wants to put the phone down, but feels paralysed by her mother’s concern.

  “I wish I could do more! Why don’t you come home for a few days? At least I could cook for you, and I could walk Riley?”

  “Honestly, I’m fine, Mum. I just need to rest.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself.”

  “Maybe. I’ve got to go now, Mum, sorry. Talk soon.”

  *

  A week later, she hands him the diary, feeling slightly ridiculous. The cold has finally released its grip on her and she felt strong enough to make the journey.

  He looks at the page with its single word and then up at her, his grey eyes searching. “Shall we talk about this?” he says.

  She hesitates, picking at her fingers. “I just can’t… I can’t work out, why it had to happen. To me, to Ali. It feels like we must have deserved it or something.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, I suppose we lived a pretty shallow life. We never thought about the future. Didn’t think about much at all, really. Just had fun. It all sounds so stupid now. So superficial.”

  “And you think this means you deserved it? That your friend died, and you were badly hurt and terribly traumatised?”

  “Well, no. Yes.” When he says nothing, she stumbles on. “I know it’s not logical, but I suppose I’m trying to make sense of it.”

  “That’s completely understandable. But there are things in life that just aren’t logical. You could have been run over by a bus; that’s not logical either, and there’s nothing you could do to deserve that. Did you think you were in danger?”

  “No. But…”

  “But?”

  “It was my fault.”

  “In what way do you think it was your fault?”

  “Well, I’ve told you. He was…” she trails off, not really knowing what she’s saying.

  “He was a friend. Did you know what he was going to do?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he planned it in advance?”

  “No.”

  “So how could you possibly have foreseen it?”

  “We couldn’t.” But she resists the logic.

  “Last time we discussed your feelings of guilt about the fact that you survived and Ali didn’t. How do you feel about that now?”

  “She didn’t deserve it. It should have been me.” Her throat, already inflamed, aches with the effort not to cry.

  “Do you think you deserved to die?”

  She shakes her head.

  “But if you could change places, so you died and Ali lived, would you blame her for what happened?”

  She stares at him with wide, tearful eyes. She can’t seem to drag her eyes from his. She can’t speak. She nods once, then covers her face with her hands.

  He waits for what seems like an age. She knows he’s trying to make eye contact, but she keeps her head down.

  “I notice you won’t look at me,” he says, eventually.

  She drags her hands from her face, bites her lip and looks at him.

  “Say you were a judge looking at this case. What would you have to say about who was to blame?”

  “A judge would say, did say, that Fergus was to blame.”

  He sits back in his chair. “It seems to me that you want to blame yourself. Perhaps you want to be a victim?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The policewoman who’d come to the hospital had called one night to tell her.

  Fergus had been found guilty of manslaughter and grievous bodily harm. He’d been found with Lisa’s blood all over him and his fingerprints on the knife. The police had caught him as he tried to get past the shocked group of passers-by crouching over Ali’s body, broken and bloody, on the steps. Some bystanders had apprehended him themselves. They had held him down until the police could make their way towards them through the crowd. With an arrest made, an ambulance was called immediately.

  The police tried for a murder conviction but he claimed Ali had jumped of her own volition. Lisa, recovering in hospital, still had no recollection of the moment. He’d admitted causing Lisa’s injuries; he’d had no option when the evidence was so compelling.

  Because of his guilty plea, Lisa was spared the agony of having to appear in court. She couldn’t imagine how difficult that would have been.

  It turned out he was known to the police, with a previous conviction for possession of drugs. He got six years.

  “I’m sorry? Six years? Did you say six?” She was numb with shock, gripping the phone to her ear.

  “Yes.”

  “But… he killed someone… is that all he gets?”

  “I’m afraid so. It was manslaughter. There was no evidence that it was murder.”

  “But he still killed her – and he nearly killed me! Surely that’s worth more than six years?”

  “It’s pretty certain she died as a result of his actions. But we couldn’t prove murder. I’m sorry, Lisa.”

  “Six years just isn’t long enough. He took Ali’s life, my life’s wrecked, her parents…” Disbelief gave way to anger; she had to stop herself from screaming into the phone.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Wait, how much of that will he serve?”

  “He’ll probably be out in four. I’m really sorry.”

  Four years for Ali. Her mind was racing. She sank to the floor, holding her knees to her chest with her free arm.

  “Where? Where will he be?”

  She’d never heard of the place. She hoped it was a million miles away and hideous. She placed the phone back on the receiver.

  She called her mum. “Did you hear? He got six years! It’s a joke!”

  “I know, darling. I’ve just got back from the sentencing. I’m so sorry. We were all horribly upset.”

  “It’s wrong. It’s so wrong!”

  *

  Riley has become her comfort blanket. Apart from unconditional love, he unknowingly gives her security, keeps her calm and facilitates her limited social life. He stays close when she’s working and follows her when she leaves the room. Without him she’d have no physical contact, human or otherwise. She can’t imagine life without him now.

  Returning from the psychotherapist, she dumps the notebook with its single entry on the table and decides to go out straight away, before it gets dark. She can hear sheets of rain pounding on the roof, but she needs to get out and Riley will need a walk. She hunches into her coat, hood up, and goes to collect him from next door.

  As they make their way to the lake, she ponders the morning’s discussion and whether the process of therapy, the revealing of her feelings of guilt and self-blame, is helping or hindering her recovery. Each session is painful and the emotional aftermath so debilitating it takes at least a day for her to recover.

  She hadn’t wanted a male therapist. Since the event she’s particularly nervous around men, avoiding their presence when she can. But her GP couldn’t find a woman with the right experience – of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, fear, depression – and as she needed urgent help she agreed to see him, telling herself that she could stop if it didn’t work for her.

  Graham – The Psycho – is gentle, with a quiet, thoughtful manner, and she feels less threatened than she expected. On his desk is a picture of a smiling woman and two small girls. She likes it that he’s a family man. Behind the desk is a framed certificate confirming his qualifications.

  He speaks quietly and seems to consider each sentence, each word, be
fore he says it. Their sessions are punctuated by many pauses, which at first she finds disconcerting, but after a while she realises that the slow pace is helping to control her anxiety. He told her at the outset that the process would take some time, that it’s important to build up a sense of safety and security.

  He wants her to trust him. She’s not sure she can. Not his fault, of course, but she feels resistant, angry and fragile. Those first few sessions were difficult, to say the least. She struggled to revisit her nightmares without sobbing for the whole hour and she experienced a powerful urge to get up and leave.

  She had to tell him, at the beginning, the facts of the night when Ali died.

  At times she thinks she’s going backwards, although she’s been in therapy for many months now. The nightmares persist and the flashbacks catch her unawares. But there’s no option but to continue, at least for the moment, and the idea of changing to someone new, explaining it all over again, is unthinkable.

  Despite the downpour, which is so heavy it’s beginning to soak through the shoulders of her jacket, she takes the long route round the lake, grateful for the solitude. There’s no-one around and she sits for a while on a bench, watching the surface of the lake, which ebbs and flows in the wind, the rain forming abstract patterns on the grey water.

  She thinks about John. Will she reach old age like him and if so, what will she be like? Will she end up with a normal life after such a trauma? She tries to imagine herself as a wife, a mother, with a house and a garden and a husband who goes out every day to work. Perhaps her life will never be as she’d once hoped; she’ll be on her own from now on and her life will be forever on a different course. With a sigh she stands up, calling Riley, who’s now so wet his coat is flat and smooth.

  “Come on, then, you – let’s go home.” And they plod, dripping, back along the muddy path, over the road and past Jessica’s house towards home. She decides against calling in, though she hasn’t seen Jessica for some time – they are absolutely wet through, and she wants to get home, dry off and get warm. She resolves to call in at the house one morning on her way to the lake.

  *

  She wakes with the cold. It’s still early, but there’s no hope of sleep and she decides to go out while there’s nobody around.

  There’s been a sharp frost overnight and her breath is like white puffs of smoke. She walks fast until she feels warmer under her big jacket, only slowing down at the far side of the lake, where the frost is deepest in the shadow of the dense woodland and blades of grass stand upright, sparkling where the light catches them. Twigs are fringed with tiny thorns of ice, like barbed wire, as if warning off predators. When she touches them, the barbs collapse and disappear, leaving gaps in the armour.

  She inhales deeply and blows out slowly, watching the steam clouds disappear before her as she walks. Last night there were no nightmares and while she didn’t sleep more than a few broken hours, she feels calmer, better this morning than she has for some time.

  It’s just gone 8 o’clock as they leave the path and head home. She decides to call in on Jessica and finds her in dressing gown and pyjamas, a kettle in her hand. She opens the door with a smile.

  “Sorry it’s so early,” Lisa says. “I was just passing and wondered if you were about. Haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “No, it’s fine, I’m up, just a bit slow getting my act together this morning. Come on in,” Jessica turns away to put the kettle on. “Calm down, dogs! Tea or coffee?”

  “Tea please. How have you been?”

  As Jessica turns towards her, the daylight strikes the side of her face and Lisa notices the bloom of a yellowing bruise on her left cheekbone. “Fine, apart from falling over the dog.” She replies, seeing Lisa’s glance at the bruise. “It’s lovely, isn’t it? I caught it on the edge of the table. Lucky it wasn’t my eye.”

  “Looks painful.”

  “It’s fine now, though it was bad for a few days. It covers up pretty well with make-up. I’m so clumsy, always banging myself. And I’ve had a nightmare with Bobby, he’s been eating stones.”

  Bobby’s had a number of pebbles removed from his intestine. Jessica shows her the scar, already healing well, a shaved area of pink-grey skin around it. “Cost me a fortune at the vet. I really ought to get some kind of pet insurance for him, though he won’t be covered for this now, so I’ll have to keep an eye on him.”

  A pang of guilt hits Lisa. “I haven’t registered Riley at the vet. I still don’t even know if he’s chipped. I must check with John.” The idea of Riley being hurt or unwell frightens her.

  On the short walk back to the cottage she thinks about her instinct to cut herself off from people. It seems she’s simply replaced the basic need for human contact with the companionship of an animal, which she loves like a person. Dogs aren’t people, she thinks. They don’t hurt you, they don’t let you down.

  She calls in on John, taking Riley along with her. When he sees them at the door his face lights up and he ushers them into the kitchen while he looks for his file on Riley.

  “I’ve had reminders from them to get his jabs done,” he says, shaking his head. “I meant to pass them on to you, but I keep forgetting – memory’s terrible now.” He’s rummaging in a drawer, where he thinks he keeps the file.

  “Oh, hang on I know where it is, won’t be long. Sit down, sit down.”

  He disappears into the hallway. The room is chilly despite the electric fire in the corner. There’s frost on the inside of the kitchen window and the paint is peeling off in splinters along the edge. It probably rattles in the wind. The room has a faded, homely feel, though, as if once it was a proper old-fashioned family parlour, with its dark wood furniture and chintz curtains. But neglect has crept into its corners and damp into its wooden frames. There’s a faint smell of rotting vegetables in the air.

  John reappears with a brown paper folder and sits down with her at the table.

  “Found it.”

  He puts on a pair of reading glasses, which perch precariously on the end of his nose, and starts to shuffle through the file with shaking hands.

  “Oh, look there’s his registration paper, with his birth date. And the information on his chip. Tell you what, why don’t you take the file. It’s all about him, you’ll find the vet’s stuff there. Keep it.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  The day remains bright and crisp-cold. Her own sitting room is warm, the stove refuelled, and she spends a few hours at her desk absorbed in her work. Then, stretching her stiffening shoulders, she remembers her promise to collect John’s shopping and walks down to the supermarket. She’s comforted by the normality of the trip.

  *

  It’s Jessica’s birthday in a few days and Mike’s away again.

  “Come for a drink? I need to do something on my birthday,” she says as they walk.

  Lisa hesitates.

  “Come on, I can’t stay in on my own, that would be really sad. We’ll go to the Hare and Hounds. It won’t be busy on a Tuesday, especially if we get there early. We can walk there. The food’s not bad, you’ll like it.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Come on, Lisa, it’ll be fine. They’re really friendly in there and you’ll be with me. We can even take the dogs, if you like. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  She’s not ready to say. Jessica has no idea.

  The Hare and Hounds is probably a world away from the pub in the city. Nonetheless, she has to grit her teeth and force her reply.

  “I – all right, then.”

  “It’s a date then, good! Please don’t buy me anything though. I just want to do something on the day. I’ll collect you on the way there.”

  She doesn’t feel in any way ready for this. She’s going to have to steel herself, but determines that she must keep her promise and resist cancelling at the last minute, if she stands any chance of breaking the lonely cycle she’s in.

  That night, checking the window lock in the spare ro
om as she does every night, she stands at the window, staring at the lights of the village in the darkness. With cruel clarity she sees not the village but the lights of the city in front of her. Ali is at her side. They’re craning to see who’s rung the doorbell, standing on tiptoe, laughing, then Ali heaves open the heavy sash window and sticks her head out into the night. The panic rises, then the terrible shock of understanding, the fear, the awful weakness in her legs and the warm blood running down her neck.

  Shaking with fear, her breath rasping, she feels her legs give way. She sinks to the floor beneath the window, a foetal ball of trembling limbs. Riley, close by as usual, licks her neck, his wet tongue tickling her skin. She reaches out to silken head. “It’s all right,” she says. “It’s okay.” She kisses the top of his head, wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands, takes a deep breath and stands up, wobbling slightly.

  Suddenly, she’s angry. Mad with herself, with her restricted life, with the demons that attack her without warning. Grabbing the diary from the bedroom on her way downstairs, she decides to record the flashback right now, while it’s fresh in her mind and she can still feel the terror. Just making that small decision helps her feel stronger. She sits at the table and stares at the blank pages for a moment, then picks up her pen and starts writing.

  She spends much of the time with her head in her hands, but when she’s finished there are two pages covered with her scrawl. Reading it through is a step too far. She closes the notebook and puts down the pen. Small steps, she thinks, and goes to bed, exhausted.

  *

  On Jessica’s birthday Lisa walks into the village to buy a card. Tying Riley to the railing outside the newsagent, she wanders in and studies the rather old-fashioned selection of birthday cards. Eventually, and with some difficulty, she finds one with a picture of a dog that vaguely resembles Bobby, decides it’s the best on offer and goes to the counter to pay. A pile of local newspapers sits by the cash register and, on a whim, she buys one. It’ll be the first time she’s looked at any news since it happened.

  “Not much going on around here,” says the man behind the counter, nodding towards the newspaper as she counts out her change. “Just the usual petty thefts and school fetes. Can’t think why we bother with a local paper.”