by Ann Gosslin
‘Well, all I can say is, it’s nice to know the old manor is being put to good use. So many of those homes from the glory days of the robber barons have fallen into ruin. Have you driven by the old Bennett estate up the river? Such a lovely place that was. A family home from way back, and then a girls’ college in the fifties. But the only thing it’s fit for now is the wrecking ball.’
*
Under the mournful gaze of her landlady’s cocker spaniel, Erin checked the letter box on the front porch, though there was never any post. Except for the phone company, no one had her home address, and she preferred it that way. In her first few weeks back in the country, reeling with culture shock and tinged with an uneasy dread, she’d lost confidence in her ability to pull off her pose as an Englishwoman. Though her accent came naturally after twenty years in Britain, ever since moving to Lansford, the cadence and vocabulary of American speech threatened to return. Though no one had doubted her story so far, she instinctively kept her distance. How shocked the Meadows’ staff would be if they discovered she was American as apple pie, born and raised in a small town not three hours’ drive away.
Before passing through the narrow strip of dirty snow that led to the entrance to her flat, she glanced back at the street. No shadows lurked in the shrubbery, no car idled at the kerb. Safe to scurry to the door and unlock the deadbolt she’d installed on the day she moved in.
As she climbed the stairs, her thoughts shifted from the day’s worries to the pleasures of a hot bath and an early night.
Once through the double-locked door, Erin set her bag down and shut the curtains, before turning on the lights. Only after a quick peek in the closets and under the bed was she able to relax. That she sometimes felt compelled to check the flat twice or three times before going to bed was bothersome, but not enough to do anything about. Long ago she’d sworn off anti-anxiety drugs of any kind. The furred tongue and foggy brain. Never again.
In the kitchen, the cupboards were bare. A box of crackers, a handful of black olives, and a wedge of cheese too small to satisfy a mouse were all she had to eat. She’d meant to shop yesterday but had stayed late at the clinic to comfort one of her patients.
Running out of food was a bad sign. She usually kept the pantry well-stocked. A holdover from childhood, where locked kitchen cupboards were the norm, and her portions strictly monitored. At least there was a bottle of Cabernet in the fridge, still half-full. She poured out a glass and carried it to the window. Through a gap in the blinds, she scrutinised the darkened house across the alley. Her neighbour, a large man with a penchant for plaid shirts and tracksuit bottoms, kept odd hours. On nights she couldn’t sleep, she liked to stand by the window, waiting for a sign of life. The blue glow of the television or the flare of a match.
Stuffed into her shoulder bag, the two items she’d been avoiding all day called out to her. The Greenlake file and a thick envelope from Julian that arrived in yesterday’s post. Which was the lesser evil? She placed them side by side on the heavy oak table. Door number one or door number two?
Physician, heal thyself.
Hannah’s voice. Wise counsellor, fairy godmother. It was Hannah who’d pulled her back from the ledge when Erin, a university student in Bristol, was still reeling from the demons that had chased her across the Atlantic. When had they last spoken? Tomorrow, without fail, she would send a detailed missive to her friend.
With Hannah’s voice urging her on, she pulled the tab off the bulky envelope from London. A cascade of glossy reprints spilled out onto the table. Copies of her latest publication. Always a thrill to receive them. But what was this? At the sight of Julian’s name listed as first author, a flicker of rage spread through her chest. Once again, he’d given himself top billing for her work. Did the man have no shame? One of the many reasons she’d been more than ready to put the Thornbury Clinic behind her. A piece of paper, torn from a yellow notepad, fluttered to the floor.
Hello E. – I hope you’re settled in by now and are happy in your new role. How do you find life in America? I do hope they’re treating you well over there. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you again how sorry I was to see you go, but it’s good to know you’re continuing our work on the other side of the pond. I’ve no doubt the Board of Directors at the Meadows recognise what a coup it is to have a Royal College of Medicine honouree on their staff. Rather impressive, indeed, and they’re lucky to have you.
I’ve enclosed reprints of the Anorexia paper for your files. I meant to get them to you sooner, but things have been rather chaotic around here. On the home front, Amanda has finally moved out, after months of wavering, so there’s that as well.
Congrats once again on an excellent publication (and don’t think I’ve forgotten you contributed the lion’s share on this). Keep me posted on your new life.
Warmest wishes, J.
P.S. You’re sorely missed around here – the clinic isn’t the same without you…
She dropped the note on the table. The lion’s share? When he’d done nothing beyond his minimal role as supervisor. The man was infuriating. And what was that annoying ‘J’ scrawled at the bottom of the page. A misguided attempt at intimacy? How like Julian to wait until she was safely on the other side of the Atlantic to make his move. Not that there was the slightest chance she’d ever reciprocate.
Out front, the street was empty, the cracked pavement rimed with frost. Shadows flickered on the ground by the rubbish bins. Rats? Or some other unsavoury vermin. Snowflakes drifted through the air. Across the street, the windows were dark. Before closing the curtains, she checked the pavement again. The shadows by the rubbish bins were gone.
The Greenlake file was next. Though she had no intention of taking the case, it was essential she come up with a plausible excuse for Niels. She carried the file and a glass of wine to the sofa.
Timothy Warren Stern, Jnr. Born, July 18, 1960 in Brookline, Massachusetts. The murders of his mother and sisters were committed on August 26, 1977 in the family home at 44 Easton Road, Belle River, Maine.
Belle River? She squinted at the photo. Timothy Warren Stern. Tim Stern. A chill snaked down her spine. She knew him, or of him. Scenes from childhood summers in Belle River vaulted through her head. She dropped the file and closed her eyes. But this was good news, wasn’t it? She was off the hook. That she knew the patient, however marginally, was an obvious conflict of interest. Now she could decline the request with a clear conscience.
Except she couldn’t. How could she admit a connection to a patient from Maine when Niels thought she’d grown up in England? And that bogus story she’d told him about her family. An only child, her parents happily retired and living in a seaside village in Sussex. All lies. If she came clean, she’d be reported as a fraud, struck off the register, and hustled onto the next plane to Heathrow. An ignominious end to a stellar career, of everything she’d ever worked for.
Deep in the cellar, the ancient boiler grumbled to life. Tim Stern. She closed her eyes, trying to conjure a face. A shaggy-haired boy… in some kind of hat? Lurking behind a counter. Amongst a tangle of synapses, the apparition briefly sparked and faded away.
She’d have to invent another reason to refuse the case. Her history with Leonard Whidby might be something she could work with, though she’d hoped to keep that notorious blot on her record under wraps. In the morning, when her head was clearer, she’d formulate a plan. In the meantime, an invisible force drove her back to the file on the table.
The Stern murders. Impossible to summon a clear-cut memory of the crime, having only learned about it years after the fact. Belle River was a small town, so she must have seen Tim Stern before, even if she couldn’t remember his face. She flipped to the photo – slack jaw, hooded eyes – before taking the plunge and reading straight through.
August 1977. The mother and sisters brutally slain. Tim’s flight across the state. His arrest and trial. The verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Incarceration at Greenlake, formerly Atherton Sta
te Asylum, a maximum-security psychiatric facility in upstate New York. The father, out of town on business when the crime occurred, had not testified at the trial. When it was over, he’d sold the family home and moved out West. Where exactly, the file didn’t say.
And while all that was going on, where was she? Trapped in that house on Gardiner Road, struggling to survive. She rested her head on her arms and listened to the tick of snow on the window. Was it a mistake to come back? Twenty years ago, she’d bolted from the country, like a frightened deer fleeing a fire. Would the new life she’d created from the ashes of those early years, one painstaking day at a time, come crashing down, just when she thought she was free?
From under her jumper, she pulled out the silver quetzal, totem bird of the Mayans, and held it in her hand.
Please, let me be okay. Please.
An appeal to… what, or whom? A confirmed rationalist, she didn’t really believe anything – or anyone – was listening. But praying to something, however vague, was a childish habit she’d yet to relinquish. Even though, in her heart, she knew that a lump of metal, however cherished, could not keep the past where it belonged.
She switched off the light and peeked through the blinds at her neighbour’s flat across the alley. All was dark.
In the morning, she would tell Niels she wasn’t taking the case.
5
The observation room was empty. The bed freshly made with a clean white sheet and the clinic’s monogrammed green blanket. That could only mean one thing: that Cassie had agreed to treatment and was transferred to one of the rooms upstairs. Erin was giddy with relief. Whatever she’d said to her yesterday must have got through.
At reception, Janine was on the phone and signalled for her to wait. By the time she hung up, Erin was fizzing with adrenaline, already designing Cassie’s treatment programme in her head. When was the last time she’d felt this keenly about a patient?
She leaned over the counter, trying to catch a glimpse of the intake list. ‘Where have they put Cassie Gray?’ Erin hoped they’d given her the Larkspur room on the second floor. With its walls of primrose yellow and large windows overlooking the river, it was the nicest of the patient rooms upstairs.
‘Cassie Gray?’ Janine scrolled through the roster. ‘I don’t see her on the list.’ She leaned closer to the screen. ‘It says here she was discharged this morning.’
‘Discharged? On whose orders?’
‘Dr Westlund’s.’ A worried look clouded Janine’s eyes. ‘Is something wrong? I’m sure he said—’
But Erin was gone, sprinting up the staircase to Niels’ office. She rapped on the door and flung it open without waiting for a reply.
Perched behind an outsized mahogany desk, Niels stared at her, open-mouthed. One of his patients, a tiny, freckled girl from Ohio, who suffered from agoraphobia along with a host of other anxieties, sat primly in one of the big leather chairs.
Erin hesitated. Interrupting a patient session was a grievous flouting of the rules, but this couldn’t wait. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I need to speak with you.’
Niels’ face was rigid. ‘I’m with a patient.’ Each word bitten off like thread.
‘I only need a minute.’
He turned to the girl in the chair. ‘Hold that thought, Lisa.I’ll be back in a flash.’
Niels hustled Erin into the hall and closed the door, his lips pressed into a thin line. But if he was annoyed, she was boiling with anger. What right did he have to discharge a patient without consulting her?
‘Why did you send Cassie home?’
‘Is that what this is about?’ He gave her an exasperated look. ‘It was time. And there was no clear indication she’s a suicide risk.’
‘She’s at risk of something. What about the foster mother? Cassie said the woman hit her. I can only imagine what else she does behind closed doors.’
‘Foster mother?’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘Oh, right. Janine called social services for a copy of Cassie’s file, and get this, they’ve never heard of her. She’s not a foster kid. Not adopted. Lonnie Tyler is Cassie’s real mother.’ He looked almost gleeful as he imparted the news. ‘Quite a little tale she spun for you.’
A pain bloomed in Erin’s chest. The hints of abuse. That bit about being a dumpster baby. All lies. And to what purpose?
‘Even so,’ she said, struggling to regain her composure, ‘you could have given me a heads-up before sending her home.’ But her words fell flat, even to her own ears. I’m an idiot. How easily she’d been duped. And yet… that Cassie felt compelled to lie could be taken as a cry for help. ‘I just hope the next time we see her,’ Erin said, trying for one last shot across the bow, ‘it won’t be in the morgue.’
‘Unless she seeks help on her own, there’s nothing more we can do for her.’ He met her look head on. ‘We did everything we could.’
Blood rushed to Erin’s face. She was in no mood to be reasonable. ‘Just so you know,’ she said, ‘I won’t be taking the Greenlake case.’
He had opened the door to his office, but pulled it hastily closed. ‘Why? It’s just a formality. Two or three days of your time, tops.’
‘A formality?’ Three people were brutally killed. And the man responsible could be released into the community on her recommendation. It was hardly a formality. Not when lives were at stake. ‘I have a conflict of interest.’
His mouth twitched. ‘Then take it up with the head at Greenlake. If he’s got a problem with it, I’d like to have it in writing. In the meantime, I’m going to tell the board you’re taking the case.’
*
Too upset to return to her office, Erin escaped to the soothing hush of the conservatory, hoping the tropical air and lush greenery would calm her down. Lately, Niels seemed to take pleasure in pushing her buttons. When they’d first met during the hiring process, his dedication to patient care, coupled with an affable nature, made for a winning combination. She thought they’d get along famously, but his handling of Cassie’s case revealed a side of Niels she hadn’t seen before.
She closed her eyes and allowed the enticing scent of citrus blossoms to transport her through time. A long-ago summer holiday in Crete, where she’d wandered through a lemon grove under a coppery sun, the blue Aegean glittering in the distance. Through half-open lids, she scanned the sky with its darkening clouds. More snow was forecast for the afternoon. She pressed her palm to the cold glass and shivered.
White male, 43. Mother and sisters brutally slain.
The branches of the chestnut trees scrabbled against the sky. Near the fountain, the naked limbs of a clump of hydrangeas shook in the wind, while the bronze dolphins and leaping sea sprites, glazed with ice, seemed oblivious to the weather.
Cassie was gone. Sara, discharged. Her three remaining patients, all suffering from various degrees of anorexia, were settled into their treatment programmes. She could afford to take a day and drive upstate to Greenlake. Once she’d met this Dr Harrison, she would invent a story to explain her connection to the patient – over from England with her family for a holiday in Belle River, the same year as the murders. Small world, isn’t it? – and excuse herself from the case. As long as the threatened storm didn’t block the roads, she could leave for Greenlake first thing in the morning and return to Lansford by late afternoon. Up and back in a single day. And that would be the end of it.
6
Belle River,
Maine August 1977
A kinetic knot of pre-teen girls hover by the ticket booth, passing around a tube of cherry lip gloss. Cascades of hair gleam under the lights. A girl with a pageboy haircut lingers by the door, plump arms clamped across her chest. She sneaks longing glances at the other girls, but they smirk and dance away.
Their shrieks of laughter hurt his ears. The light stabs his eyes. Four hours and sixteen minutes to go till his shift is over.
He’s dumping popcorn into a carton when a gang of local boys swagger in. Denim jackets glazed with rain water. Sly flas
ks of whisky shoved into the waistband of their jeans.
Rat-a-tat-tat. A pewter ring in the shape of a skull whacks the counter. Eyes like silverfish. Wild blond hair. The one they call the Viking.
‘Can I get some service over here, or what?’
A curvy, sloe-eyed girl in a yellow sundress is clamped to the boy’s side. History girl. Angela. His heart teeters from its perch… and dies. On a pollen-filled afternoon in May, she’d smiled at him once.
‘Hey, dickhead.’ Stubby fingers stained with engine oil snap in his face. ‘You on something? Gimme two Cokes and a box of popcorn. Make it a large, on the house.’ The furtive smirk turns sour. ‘You lookin’ at my girl?’
Like a whipped dog, he lowers his eyes and hands over the popcorn. Later, he’ll put the money in the till from his own pocket. He wouldn’t want Mack to think he was stealing.
In a haze of cigarette smoke and laughter, the gang disappear into the dark. That skinny boy from biology class, his greasy brown hair tied back with a rawhide cord, who everyone calls the Duke, turns back and snickers. ‘Moron.’
Angela tosses him a shy look over her shoulder. He signals with his eyes, I will save you. But she slips through the red velvet curtains, forever lost.
He blinks and turns away, hoping to settle the storm in his head by studying the coming attractions. A cheesy horror film about a group of teenagers on a camping trip. Astronauts lost in space. A pre-historic Tarzan knock-off. On the stylised movie poster, a squadron of pterodactyls, their wings spread against the sky, darken an angry sun.
Rain spatters the pavement. Gusts of humid air sweep in through the open door. Except for the mousy girl hiding in the shadows, the lobby is empty. She’s staring at the door like she wants to flee. The previews have already begun, but the film won’t start until seven on the dot. He beckons her over.
‘It’s your lucky day. Sodas are free till the movie starts.’ He cocks his head at the dispenser. ‘What’ll it be?’