Not a single mention of the relationship between Fergus, Ali and Lisa – not even that they knew Fergus prior to the event. Is that significant? Maybe they didn’t need to find out, because he admitted the crime. But surely, if they wanted to understand why Fergus had gone to the flat, they would have asked? Even for the sake of completeness, to get the facts straight, it would be relevant. Maybe not. Perhaps they had enough to get a conviction, end of story. Well, there was something she could try to find out. Somebody must know.
She goes back to the search page on her screen and types in a date, the name of the Crown Court where the hearing was held and then Fergus Collins sentence. A page of results flicks immediately onto the screen. She steels herself and selects one of the results.
Both the tabloids and the local papers focus on the length of the sentence – all ‘shocked’ at the lenience – and the families’ emotional reaction at the result. There are dramatic headlines:
The price of a woman’s life
Her life cut short – his barely pauses
She ignores them, determined not to be sidetracked. She skims over the pictures of the Mayfields – Diana weeping, comforted by Geoffrey, Connor looking tense and grim – and focuses on the facts. The other papers give her a little more fact and less drama. She reads everything she can find, trawling through the coverage from top to bottom.
But after two hours of searching, she’s no further forward. The press reports are not going to give her anything. She stretches her stiffening back and sits back in the chair with a sigh. What next? Perhaps she should try to get a transcript of the court hearing, although she’s pretty sure it won’t give her more than she already knows. Returning to the screen to find out how to go about it, she’s distracted by a headline alongside the story of the attack.
Police to be trained in helping crime victims seek ‘restorative justice’
She clicks on the link and reads on: Police officers across England are to be instructed in how to support victims using ‘restorative justice’ under a new training scheme funded by the Police Commissioner.
Restorative justice brings together victims harmed by crime or conflict with those responsible. It holds perpetrators to account for what they have done and helps them take responsibility and make amends.
Specialist accredited trainers will help officers gain a deeper understanding of how restorative justice works and the likely outcomes and benefits for victims.
A representative for the Police Commissioner said: “For victims, meeting the person who has harmed them can be a huge step in moving forward and recovering from that crime.”
*
John’s home. The first she knows about it is the ambulance sitting outside when she gets back after an early morning walk with Riley. There’s nobody in the vehicle and John’s front door is closed, so she decides not to call in.
Last night she was awake for hours. Bad dreams invaded her sleep and she’s left with a feeling of dread. She’s weak with fatigue. Normally a walk helps raise her mood, but today the skies are dark and black clouds loom over the lake, their sinister billows reflected in the gloomy water. Even Riley seems cowed and stays close to her heels as if for protection. She forces her heavy legs back through the village streets towards her home.
Some days are like this. Though there are moments when she feels more positive, there are also moments, hours, days of flatness in between, when she doubts she’ll ever feel strong, confident and ready to face the world again. Her life is stagnant, leading nowhere. No joy lifts her spirits. On days like today she wants to lie down with a blanket over her head and shut out all her thoughts. On days like today, her dog is her only friend. She’s trying though. Even reading through the news reports is a sign that she’s starting to move forward.
But John’s home and the ambulance has gone. There’s no food in his house, not even a pint of milk, and there may be nobody else to help him out today. At about four o’clock she forces herself off the sofa where she’s been lying, gazing at nothing.
The computer stares at her from the desk like an accusation. She ignores it, collects John’s key and her bag and goes next door.
She opens the door quietly and calls out. There’s no answer, so she goes through to the kitchen. Finding his chair empty, she returns to the hallway and climbs the first few steps of the staircase.
“John? Are you there? It’s Lisa…”
“I’m here, Lisa – in bed.” His voice is muffled, as if he’s just woken up.
“I’m just going to the shop – shall I pick up some things for you?”
“Yes, thank you. I’m tired out. Be up when you get back.”
“No – don’t get up, no need. Just wanted to check, to make sure you had something to eat. I’ll just grab a few bits.”
“Thank you, dear.”
She checks in the kitchen cupboards, writes a short list and sets off for the shop. It’s started to rain, the kind that soaks and chills, and she speeds up, wishing she’d worn more than the thin black top she’d thrown on this morning.
When she gets back to John’s, miserably wet, she finds a nurse waiting on the doorstep.
“Oh, good,” the nurse says when she sees the key in Lisa’s hand. “I rang the bell but I don’t think he heard me. I’m here to check on him. Did you do his shopping for him? That’s kind. I’m Jenny, and I’m going to be looking after John, probably two or three times a day, though there might be another nurse who comes as well…” She continues to talk on the way into the house, and keeps up a constant monologue while they unpack the bags of food. Lisa begins to feel exhausted by the barrage of chatter. The nurse finally goes upstairs. With a sigh of relief she escapes to her sanctuary next door.
A couple of days later there’s a different nurse leaving the house when Lisa reaches her front door.
“How’s John doing?” she asks.
“Not too bad – getting better slowly. He’s up and about now. We come in to get him up in the mornings and come back to get him to bed.”
“That’s good. It must be taking the strain from him somewhat.”
“Are you the neighbour who helps with the shopping? He’s getting a hot meal delivered every day, so you don’t need to worry too much about food. Just the basics, if you’re happy to do it.”
“Of course. I’m glad he’s on the mend.”
“Yes – seems like a nice man.”
*
The doorbell rings, three times. Riley barks and sits wagging his tail. It’s Jessica, and it’s half past ten on Sunday. No wriggling out of this one, then.
“A vision in Lycra,” she says, waving Jessica through.
“I wish. I had to dig deep in my wardrobe for something halfway appropriate.”
Lisa has made no changes to her clothing; it’s still pretty much always black, always a scarf, always unassuming. She’s not relishing the thought of the cycling group. She feels like locking herself in and closing the curtains. But Jessica is having none of that. She seems to sense Lisa’s reluctance and starts to organise her, not giving her the choice.
“You’ll need a water bottle and sunglasses. Stick them in your backpack. Let’s go.”
The bikes are propped outside in the front garden. She follows Jessica through the gate and down the road, trying the bike out, fiddling with the gears and wrestling with the urge to turn round and go home. She pedals on towards the meeting point on the south side of the village, her hands gripping the handlebars as if to stop them running away with her.
A group of around eight people has gathered, the youngest in her teens, the oldest perhaps in his seventies. The bikes are a mixture too, with a couple of proper mountain bikes rubbing shoulders with sit-up-and-beg styles complete with shopping baskets.
“Good to see you all. It’s a lovely morning for a gentle bike ride!” a man wearing a hi-vis jacket announces as they all gather round. “We’re doing a circuit today around the outskirts of the village. Takes about two hours at a slow-to-steady pa
ce. If it’s too much for anyone, we’ll slow down, or take a break – and we’ll have regular stops anyway to look around us. We’re not in a race, we just want everyone to enjoy themselves and appreciate the scenery. Obviously, stick together as far as possible, but don’t hold up the traffic or we’ll get into trouble. Jan will stay at the back to make sure we don’t lose anyone. Okay? Let’s go!”
They set off. Lisa holds back, pedalling apart from the others and concentrating on the new sensation, her leg muscles gradually waking from a long period of inactivity.
They’re soon out of the village, on an unfamiliar, quiet road, which turns through fields of ripening crops. Cows watch with huge curious eyes as they pass and dogs bark, unseen, from cottages and barns. After a slight incline of a few hundred yards, the leaders stop at a viewing point. Miles of countryside stretch out into the distance, chequered with fields of yellow, green and brown. Tiny white houses and barn buildings are dotted about and far away into the distance is a line of grey buildings, marking the outskirts of the next town.
Lisa stares and lets the calm wash over her like a gentle shower.
*
“Cycling? You haven’t done that for years,” her mum says.
The excursion on Sunday had opened Lisa’s eyes to her surroundings. And she’d soon got over her anxiety; the other cyclists had seemed as happy to leave her to her own devices as she was to leave them.
She feels as though she’s had a glimpse of how things could be. Her spirits had lifted and for the first time in over a year she’d felt a glimmer of something – happiness? No, not happiness, not quite. Perhaps peace, of a kind.
“I’m glad I went.” She watches as her mum folds clothing into neat piles on the kitchen table – a routine she’s watched since she was tiny.
“Will you go again?”
“I expect so. I don’t think I’ll ever be a keen cyclist, but a gentle tour around the area is fine for me. The countryside is lovely round there.”
Her mum gives her a sideways glance, an eyebrow lifted very slightly. She sees hope in that look. She turns away, not ready for optimism. It’s not resolved. Not yet.
*
A couple of days later her legs ache so much she can barely move and she’s saddle-sore in places she didn’t know she’d used.
“I’m so unfit,” she says to Jessica as they walk around the lake. “I didn’t realise how bad it had got.”
“It’s only that you did something very different – you’re fit for walking, but not for cycling. We’d better go more often.”
“Yes – but my muscles would disagree. I feel like I’ve run a marathon. I wonder if Riley would come with me if I tried cycling with him on the lead…”
“I wouldn’t. It might be a bit dangerous until you’re more stable.”
“You could be right. Anyway, I enjoyed it. Thanks for encouraging me. I would definitely have pulled out without you.”
“Said it would be good for you. So I don’t need to feel guilty for railroading you? It’s great for our fitness, in a number of ways.”
“I know, I know. Still not sure I can handle the social side, though.”
They walk in comfortable silence for a few moments along a narrow part of the path, where nettles grow high on each side and the lake is obscured by the late summer foliage.
“So, generally, is it getting easier, do you think?” Jessica says, when the path widens and they can walk side by side again.
“I don’t think ‘easier’ is how I’d put it. I’m a bit stronger, maybe, in some ways. I can’t get it out of my head, though, and I still don’t sleep well. There’s something there but I just can’t reach it.”
“What does The Psycho say?”
“He doesn’t really say anything. It’s more prompting me to work on it myself. It’s up to me, really, in the end.”
*
The light fades from the garden and Riley’s asleep on the sofa. She reaches for the diary, sits down next to him and starts to write her own account of the night that Ali died.
It’s hard going, but no worse than she expected. She starts with the pub – the people they saw, who they sat with, their conversations, their drinks. She focuses on the details, hoping that they will trigger what’s missing. She takes her time, eyes closed in concentration, brow furrowed. She’s never done this – not even for the police, not in this minute detail. They’d stopped asking once they had the admission of guilt from Fergus.
The pages fill up. A pulse in her forehead starts to throb as she concentrates, but she keeps going. Her scrawl gets more unruly as she works and she chooses every word carefully, crossing it out with a heavy line if it’s not what she means.
She reaches the moment outside the shop when they left Fergus to go home. She takes special care over what she writes from that point on. She chronicles her story from the flashbacks she’s endured over recent months and from her dim recollections, as if they’re two separate strands meshing together to reveal the full, horrible truth.
She remembers climbing the stairs when they got home, Ali going ahead of her and dropping her keys when she reached the door to the flat. She describes their home in detail – the tatty furniture, books on the shelves, the mugs on the coffee table. The open window and Ali leaning out to call to Fergus when he rang the doorbell. She recalls running down to let him in and his sickly, whisky smell. Her stomach churns. She puts down the pen and goes to the kitchen, pours a glass of water, her mind still held by the scene. She returns to her task, forcing herself to keep going.
When she reaches the part with the knife, her hand starts to shake and she stops writing as an image flashes.
It was one of our kitchen knives. Which one? The knife wasn’t used as evidence at the hearing, so her mum hadn’t seen it – and hadn’t mentioned a description of it either.
A wave of nausea rises from deep within her, the rancid taste of bile flooding her mouth. She drops everything and runs upstairs to the bathroom, where she empties the meagre contents of her stomach, retching and retching on emptiness.
*
She stops there, exhausted from the effort and the sickness. Over the next few days she can’t bring herself to return to it, bile rising in her throat each time.
As a distraction, she asks Jessica to the cinema. Jessica picks her up and they drive to the nearest multi-screen, eight miles away. The film is mediocre, the characters clichéd, Lisa’s requirement for non-violent, non-weepy films having narrowed their choice significantly. It serves its purpose, though, and for an hour or more she’s swept into another world, following a different story.
*
When she eventually gets back to the diary, on a night when she can resist it no longer, a question raises its head.
Only two people know the truth. The other one is Fergus.
Should she go to him for the answer?
Even the thought of it is terrifying. She’s read that restorative justice is supposed to help resolve the victim’s fears and to empower him or her. She can see how that might work in certain cases, but would it help her tie down the truth? Would she go through all that fear, the stress of seeing him again, only to come out none the wiser? Does he remember more than she does? If he does, will he admit to it? Maybe he remembers less – what then?
She examines her need to know, picks at it, worries at it, not sure where the urge will take her.
All this questioning, this need to remember, has been triggered by Connor and his accusations. There’s no evidence that she’s culpable in any way; nobody is questioning her role in the tragedy. She’s the victim of an unpredictable, violent offence, just as Ali was.
But actually, she knows what’s driving her on.
It’s the half-memory that came to her when she was with Graham.
Fergus might be the key to unlock that memory. By meeting him, it might just help her well and truly move on. To grieve for Ali and be the person she thought she could be.
*
“You wan
t to visit Fergus?” Graham says.
“No, I don’t want to visit him at all. I don’t want to see him, ever again. But I really need to know what happened. The details. The truth.”
“The truth?”
“I know that I haven’t remembered something crucial. I’ve searched the media, asked my mum about the hearing. But there’s something else.” She looks down at her hands.
“I’m wondering what’s making you feel that there’s more to know,” he says. “Is it possible you might be punishing yourself, looking for something to validate your feelings of guilt?”
“Maybe.”
There’s a pause while he waits for her to raise her eyes to his. She does so reluctantly and waits.
“I think it might be useful to re-examine those feelings. Are you comfortable doing that now?”
“Okay.”
He waits.
“We talked about survivor guilt and me feeling guilty because I survived and Ali died. I know it could have been either of us who died. Or both, even. We couldn’t possibly have known he would turn violent. He’d given us no reason to suspect it in any way. I was the one who physically let him in that night, but that was just chance – Ali could easily have gone down to let him in. So I don’t think that’s why I’m blaming myself.”
“Go on.”
“I could easily have died that night. Another inch or so and the knife would have cut an artery and I’d have bled to death. Or he could have grabbed Ali and I could have ended up falling out of the window.”
She’s listening to herself trying to give all the logical reasons not to feel guilty. The words sound credible. But her feelings aren’t logical. “Whichever way I look at it, it still feels like my fault. To me.”
“Let’s take a slightly different tack. What do you think his intentions were towards you both?”
“I don’t know. As far as I remember he mentioned having a threesome. That’s what he said, so we thought it was about sex. But when we said we wanted him to leave, it changed. He got aggressive. That’s when he seemed to focus on me.”
Dare to Remember: Shocking. Page-Turning. Psychological Thriller. Page 18