His heartbeat is building a little as he opens the last door into the bedroom. It is small, like the living room, and dark because the window overlooks the back of the house. There is a form in the bed, but the duvet is pulled up high.
Shane moves closer. People are so easy to read when they are asleep. Shane feels, sometimes, as though he can see into sleeper’s souls, that their stories float around their lifeless bodies like an aura. He can tell the good from the angry from the damaged beyond repair. Sometimes, not often on the streets, but sometimes, he sees the bad.
He needs to see the doctor’s soul.
As though sensing the approaching danger, the sleeper stirs. He mutters something and pushes the duvet a little further down the bed. Now his face, damp with sweat, can be seen. He is a youngish man, only a little older than Shane, and his face is handsome in the poor light.
He is talking in his sleep. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, get away from me.’
The aura around him is deeply troubled. This man seems lost, more in need of help than many of the street sleepers he spends time among.
So worried does the sleeping doctor look, that Shane begins to back away, but a folded newspaper on the bedside cabinet catches his attention. Another story about the murdered girl; Bella, he’s learned she was called. Shane has followed the investigation, stealing newspapers whenever he can, picking discarded ones up off the ground when the newsagents are more vigilant.
Pain is building in Shane. Thinking about Bella is so hard. His breathing is getting deeper and faster. His fists clench and the handle of the knife digs deep into the flesh of his palm. Sweat breaks out all over his body. He pictures himself slashing the knife indiscriminately around the room, ripping open everything in its path. He howls his misery but the sound doesn’t escape his head. Shane has had years to perfect the art of silent rage.
His head is spinning.
The doctor called Joe is waking up. His breathing is no longer audible. He is lying still; is possibly even conscious. Without making a sound, Shane turns and leaves the bedroom.
He relocks the door to the stairs and leaves the knife on the worktop in the kitchen. He makes sure the windows are as he found them and then steps out through the door, locks it and then takes a moment to throw the key carefully back through the narrow gap in the window. He hears a low thud as it lands on the rug.
The pain is beginning to subside by the time he reaches the bottom of the fire escape. He scales the wall and sets off through the night-time city.
28
Felicity
When the River Cam leaves the city behind, it loses much of its reflected colour and nearly all of its noise. Also, quite a bit of its momentum. The Cam of the countryside is a slow-moving waterway of gentle greens, lit by lightning bolts of silver where the light can reach the water. Once out of the city, the willow trees become bolder, leaning perilously close to the water, as though they might take hold and halt its progress altogether. Nettles, brambles and ferns join the conspiracy from the banks as do the weeds that stretch out in the flow. Both the river, and the surrounding vegetation seem to soak up all sound. The river, once it leaves Cambridge, becomes a slow, silent slither of green.
On this evening in early July, the heat of the day is gone and a breeze lifts the surface of the water. The hedge beyond the towpath is dense and the trees behind that are high. The rear end of a mother duck bounces around near the bank whilst her babies mill about her, hoping she might disturb something that they can gobble up. In the fields nearby cows will graze until darkness claims the land. It is a scene of perfect English peacefulness, marred only by the fair-haired young woman, staring wildly about her, on the verge of screaming.
Felicity isn’t injured this time – she checks quickly – but she’s exhausted and her clothes are damp with sweat. Her phone tells her it is 9.15 on Tuesday 2nd July. She has four missed calls and two messages.
Her phone starts ringing and she answers in a low, hesitant voice.
‘Felicity? Are you OK? I’ve been worried about you.’
‘I’m OK,’ she says, although she knows she is not. She wishes it hadn’t been Joe, and yet who else would call? A wave of loneliness sweeps over her. She has no one but a man whom she pays to talk to her.
‘You missed our appointment. I’ve been ringing you for three hours. I’m outside your house right now.’
He is persistent, her only link to humanity. He says, ‘I’m sorry if that seems intrusive. I didn’t want to cross the line, but I’ve just finished work and thought I might as well drive round.’
‘Is my car there? Is my car outside the house?’ She speaks without thinking.
‘Felicity, where are you?’
‘I don’t know.’
His voice drops. ‘Felicity, talk to me. Don’t hang up. Are you hurt?’
She checks again. She can feel no blood on her face, no fresh tenderness. She doesn’t think she is hurt and tells him so.
‘I can get the police out to you if you’re in danger. I’ve got contacts.’
‘No!’ She cannot be involved with the police again.
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m by the river.’
‘In the city?’ She hears the fear in his voice. Does he imagine she is about to throw herself in?
‘Felicity, listen to me. Does your phone have Google Maps?’
It takes her a second or two to process the question, then, ‘I think so,’ she says.
‘If you open that app, it will tell you where you are. Can you do that now?’
She should have thought of that herself. She would have thought of it given time. She puts the call on hold and finds the app.
‘I’m between Waterbeach and Upware,’ she says, when the GPS has found her.
‘OK, bear with me. I’m trying to find you on my phone. All right, I’ve got it. You’re actually on the towpath? Are you closer to Waterbeach or Upware?’
She checks the app again. ‘Upware. I’m not far from Upware.’
‘Right, I want you to walk upstream. I think I can see a road that runs close to the river. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
* * *
It is dark by the time he finds her. She doesn’t see him until he shines a torch in her direction. He walks towards her and for a second she thinks he is about to take her in his arms. He lowers the torch and they stare at each other in the moonlight.
‘Do I need to take you to a doctor?’ he asks.
She shakes her head. ‘I’m fine. I’m so sorry.’
He takes her back to his waiting car. There is a blanket on the front seat and she doesn’t object when he places it over her.
‘Do you have your keys?’ he asks, as he sets off along the narrow country road that will take them south.
She feels her shirt pocket and finds the irregular lump. ‘I do.’
Only when they are on the edge of the city does Joe speak again. ‘Can you tell me what happened.’
She replies, ‘I don’t know.’
They drive in silence for a little longer then he gives a heavy sigh.
‘I should have made it clearer when you came last week that there are physical causes of memory loss,’ he says. ‘Even if we can rule out a head injury, there are other possible problems.’
She turns to look at his profile. ‘I’ve thought about Alzheimer’s, or a tumour.’
He half smiles, but kindly. ‘You’ve leapt to two of the worst possible scenarios and also the most unlikely. Memory loss can be a result of problems with the thyroid gland, or an infection. It’s even possible, although unlikely, that you had a mild stroke.’
She finds she is comforted, a little, by the possibility of a physical cause to what is happening. Given the choice between cancer and insanity, who wouldn’t choose cancer?
‘The sudden onset of your symptoms suggests a physical cause,’ he says. ‘I can try and speed through the tests tomorrow.’
‘Thank you.’
&nbs
p; He doesn’t need directions to her home and she is relieved to see her car in its usual place. He parks and switches off the engine.
‘I’d like to come inside and make sure you’re all right,’ he says. ‘May I?’
She doesn’t feel she can refuse him. It is as though the incident has drained her of confidence. She is not fit to be in control of her own life.
‘What’s the last thing you remember?’ he asks, when they are both in her kitchen.
‘Leaving work and heading into the city to see you,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if I arrived or not.’
‘You didn’t,’ he says. ‘You look cold. Why don’t you get changed? If you don’t mind me helping myself, I’ll put the kettle on and get you something to eat.’
He has taken over and she has no idea how to stop him. She leaves the room and while she is changing into tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt, she hears him moving around in the kitchen. He is whistling softly to himself.
Freddie won’t like this.
Felicity almost cries out. Someone is in the room with her. And yet no one is. She checks quickly in the wardrobe, beneath the bed. She is alone in the room and yet the sense of an invisible presence is so strong she feels she can almost reach out and touch the person who spoke to her.
‘You OK in there?’
This time it is Joe’s voice, and she heads back to the kitchen. He’s found bread and butter, cheese and olives. She grabs the breadknife and cuts a slice, then cheese. She eats like a savage.
‘Sorry,’ she says when the trembling in her limbs is slowing. ‘I was starving.’
‘Ready to talk?’ he asks.
29
Joe
‘Ready to talk?’ Joe asks.
‘Of course.’
‘I’d like to look round your house. Will you show me?’
‘There’s not much to see,’ she says. ‘There’s a basement downstairs, do you want to start there?’
‘Please.’
He follows her down the narrow staircase into a small, tiled room. He hears the gurgling of a central-heating boiler and registers the washing machine and tumble dryer, the ironing board tucked behind a tall cupboard. There is a small pile of ironing in a basket on the worktop. A sizable cupboard beneath the stairs is padlocked shut.
‘What do you keep in here?’
No answer. Joe turns to find Felicity is heading back up the stairs. When he follows her, she is waiting for him on the ground floor by a narrow hall table.
‘Nice polar bear,’ he says, spotting the smooth and stylised statue that she is looking at.
‘I usually keep it upstairs.’ She is frowning, not remembering, or choosing not to acknowledge, their previous conversation about polar bears. ‘But I think I moved it myself the other night. Yes, I did. That was definitely me.’
Brightening, she shows him into the bedroom. The room is simple and neat, with fitted wardrobes. The only furniture apart from the bed are two bedside cabinets. On one is an iPad and a box of tissues. The other is empty.
They climb another set of stairs. As they near the first floor, Joe spots the loft hatch directly above the head of the stairs. She shows him into the living room, striding ahead to rearrange cushions on one of the sofas. He watches as she looks around, as though trying to spot anything out of place, and her eyes rest on the TV set. A red light shines from the bottom right-hand corner. She walks towards it and presses the on/off switch.
‘I don’t like to leave it on standby,’ she says. ‘I don’t know why I did.’
‘Can we see what channel you were watching?’
She doesn’t reply. Her attention has been caught by something directly below the TV on its supporting glass table.
Joe says, ‘If you don’t normally leave it on standby, you could have been watching it when you went into your fugue state. We might be able to pinpoint a particular programme that triggered you.’
Felicity looks up, uncertain.
‘Can it do any harm?’ he says.
She switches the TV back on. They wait until the picture emerges of a back alley in an American city. A woman runs screaming towards the camera.
‘The horror channel,’ she says. ‘I’ve never watched that.’ She bends to pick something up from the glass table. A pair of spectacles in a brown case. ‘And these aren’t mine.’
Joe takes them from her as screaming fills the room. Felicity switches off the TV and the screaming stops. He opens the case and peers through the glasses. Distance vision.
‘I don’t wear glasses,’ she says. ‘I have perfect vision.’
‘Could a friend have left them?’
‘No. No one comes here.’
Joe says, ‘Are you sure no one else has keys?’
She shakes her head.
‘There’s something I want to do before I go. Will you indulge me?’
She looks wary.
‘I want to look in your loft.’
Her eyes open wide. ‘My loft? What on Earth for?’
He doesn’t want to answer that. To answer it would be to frighten her.
‘It will set my mind at rest. Please?’
She shrugs and he leaves the room. He is tall enough to reach the catch on the trapdoor. The loft ladder glides down soundlessly. The space revealed by the loft light is low, with barely enough headroom for Joe to stand upright. Along one edge is a neat line of packing cases and holdalls, standing opposite them a row of plastic storage boxes. He can see a pair of skis in a canvas carry bag and a tool kit. At the far end, pushed against one wall and barely visible in the shadows, is a large trunk-shaped object covered in old curtains. Felicity’s loft is as neat as her house and were the circumstances different, he would ask her, not entirely in jest, if she dusts up here.
‘Joe, why are you in my loft?’
‘Give me a minute.’ He begins to crawl along the plyboard floor, away from the curtain-wrapped trunk. A cold-water tank ahead of him is lagged to prevent freezing in winter and beyond that is the dividing wall between Felicity’s loft and that of the next house along. He has a suspicion, and until it is laid to rest, he won’t be easy. He has reached the wall. He uses his phone as a torch and sees that the wall is made of plywood. He pushes it gently and it falls away, landing with a clatter on the floor of the next loft.
‘Joe!’
He turns to see Felicity’s head appear in the hatch and waits until she has crawled to join him. Together they look to the loft space that stretches the entire length of the terrace. His torch isn’t strong enough to reach the end, but he remembers a row of half a dozen or so houses. If the other dividing wall is also plywood, then six sets of neighbours, and people with keys to their houses, can access Felicity’s home.
‘I had no idea,’ she says.
‘When cottages like these were built, people didn’t need their lofts,’ he says. ‘They didn’t have enough stuff to worry about storage. The roof void is just an empty space at the top of the house that nobody bothered about. It’s only in the last few decades that people have started cutting access doors and building dividing walls.’
‘Anyone can get into my house,’ she says.
‘Come on,’ he tells her. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
* * *
‘Were you a boy scout?’ she asks, a half-hour later.
He has found several empty cans in her recycling basket and using a screwdriver from the tool kit in his car, punched a hole in each. They hang now, on string, from the loft door like a cut-price Christmas decoration.
‘Anyone tries to open that hatch tonight, the racket will wake you up in an instant and scare the crap out of them,’ he says. ‘You dial 999 and leave via your bedroom window, waiting in your car for the police to arrive. Tomorrow, I’ll put a heavy-duty bolt on that door and you need to get on the phone to some local builders. I doubt your insurance policy is valid without solid dividing walls on both sides. You also need to ask some hard questions about whatever survey was done when you bought the place.�
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‘I can do that. The bolt I mean. You’ve done enough.’
‘When I’m gone, I want you to lock and bolt front and back doors and check all the window locks. Tomorrow, changing the locks would be a very good idea.’
‘You really think someone is coming into my house? When I’m out and when I’m asleep?’
He is saddened by the look of hope on her face. ‘No, Felicity, I don’t. I think you’re suffering temporary bouts of amnesia that have either a physical or a psychological cause. Whatever the cause is, though, we’ll find it and we’ll treat it. All this stuff’ – he gestures up at the swaying cans, ‘We’re just ruling out all other possibilities and making sure you can sleep at night.’
He says good night shortly afterwards and drives home, wondering if he’s done the right thing by drawing her attention to the communal loft. He may have fed her anxiety, put ideas into her head about intruders and made her condition worse.
30
Felicity
No sooner than Joe has driven away, Felicity goes back to the loft, letting the cans clatter against the wall as she lowers the hatch. Once inside, she ignores the cord that would turn on the light and turns away from the still-collapsed plyboard wall that Joe discovered. She has no interest in that. She has come for a better look at something else. Something she spotted earlier as she climbed up to join Joe. Something that has appeared, as if by magic, in her loft.
She is carrying a more powerful torch than the one Joe used, but for the moment she doesn’t switch it on. There is something about what she is doing that feels shameful, better suited to darkness, and so she crawls carefully along the boarded loft floor towards the opposite wall.
Only when her fingers touch the old curtains does she switch on the torch. She lets her hands rest on the fabric that she can see now is a deep maroon.
The trunk beneath is black, heavy-duty plastic. It has a military look about it, as though it is holding weapons, or explosives, or something that needs a solid casing. There are two locks, neither of which she could force open. The trunk is something she has never seen before, and had no idea was in her house.
The Split Page 10