Shadow of a Doubt

by Michelle Davies

  There were six beds in my ward at the Peachick and I was the second youngest occupant by a month. The youngest was a boy who had shown signs of depression since the age of three and had tried to kill himself three days before his eighth birthday. We never became friends because I didn’t want to. I wasn’t the same as him, I wasn’t ill. The only thing wrong with me was that I couldn’t get people to listen to me. So I succumbed to the Peachick’s rigid routine and endured the creative workshops designed to tease out my deepest feelings that put me off sharing them for life and the long, painful sessions with my psychiatrist talking about Matty, until finally someone did listen and determined I was no longer a risk to anyone else or myself, and they let me out. To say I’m still angry about the two years I lost in the Peachick is an understatement.

  The second trigger they claimed to have identified took place on a Thursday after school, about a month ahead of us breaking up for the summer holidays and just before my ninth birthday. I cannot confirm the timing is correct, however, because this incident I don’t remember. Instead, the timing was based on conversations the doctors had with my dad, and if his memory was correct and it was Thursday teatime, then I at least know what I would’ve been doing – Thursdays were special because it was chips-for-tea day and the only time Mum let us eat in front of the TV. Matty and I would sit on cushions on the floor in front of the coffee table with the spindly legs and the shiny black lacquered surface and watch Scooby-Doo while we shovelled fat, salty chips from the deep fat fryer into our mouths in rapid succession like they were coming off a conveyor belt.

  According to the notes, neither of us looked up when Dad came into the room, which didn’t surprise me to read: Daphne tied to roller-coaster tracks was always far more interesting than whatever moan he’d brought home from work. Usually it involved the area sales manager for the stationery supplies firm where he worked being a wally and Dad being in the right. This time, though, the gripe involved me. Dad was furious because I had been naughty at school and the head teacher had to call Mum in, so, as a punishment, my planned Barbie-themed birthday party was cancelled and I apparently became so upset I took it out on Matty. Again, I cannot argue against what I do not recall, but what I can dispute is that even if this incident did take place, it had nothing to do with what came to pass a few weeks later. I did not plot revenge on anyone, least of all the little brother I adored.

  Anne suddenly touches my arm and I jump in fright and whip my gaze from the window.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,’ she says. ‘You were miles away. Penny for them?’

  I drag my focus away from the blur of countryside streaming past the window and give her my full attention. I know I’ve been quiet since we met at Liverpool Street to catch the train to Heldean and it’s not fair of me.

  ‘I was thinking about what happened … I can’t get him out of my head.’ Anne knows which ‘him’ I mean, and it’s not Matty.

  It’s been a while since Limey Stan has given me the kind of nightmares that rouse me from my sleep in a cold sweat, but in the three weeks since Mum died, he has visited me nightly, reaching from the shadows to grab at me, his fingers ice-cold and spindly, as he hisses his name. He looks exactly as I remember him: he has no face, only a blur where his features should be, but he is tall and broad, dressed in black, and when he looms over me, I feel as small as a child again.

  Last night’s dream was the worst so far and I am exhausted from the emotional onslaught it triggered – it ended with Limey Stan’s fingers wrapping around me like creeping ivy as he cocooned me in a burgundy velvet curtain and I woke up gasping and choking for breath and crying for Matty, who suffered that fate for real and died terrified and in pain while I hid next to him in the darkness, too petrified to stop it.

  ‘Your mum’s death was bound to bring it all up again. But you’re not going anywhere near the house, so there’s nothing to fear.’ Nonetheless, she reaches over and squeezes my hand reassuringly. ‘It’s going to be okay, Cara. We’ll get the will reading over with and then we’ll be on our way.’

  Mum’s funeral has been and gone – I abided by Karen’s wishes and stayed away. Instead, I went to work as usual. Jeannie has respected my wishes not to tell anyone else about my bereavement and not to ask intrusive questions. I think she hopes I will tell her in my own time why I ended up in foster care, but I won’t. I could not bear her to think badly of me.

  Moments later, we pull in to the penultimate station before Heldean and I have an overwhelming urge to get off and double back, before it’s too late.

  ‘We can cancel the hotel,’ I say to Anne, the fear in my voice making it wobble. ‘It’s not too late.’

  ‘Your mum asked for you to be there when her will was read,’ she answers me gently. ‘There must be a reason why and if you don’t find out what it is, I think you’ll regret it. You might finally get some answers.’

  I don’t share her expectation, but I nod. Whatever reason my mum had for requesting my presence at the solicitor’s tomorrow, I don’t think it’s something to feel hopeful about.

  ‘We’ll have a spot of dinner at the hotel and an early night and you’ll feel much more prepared in the morning. One night, that’s all you have to stay for.’

  A whistle blasts somewhere on the platform and a volley of beeps inside the carriage indicates the doors are closing. The moment to escape has passed.

  ‘I doubt the reading will even take that long …’

  Anne’s voice fades to background noise as my mind drifts back to my medical notes. Among the hundreds of pages of mistruths and supposition was one absolute, incontrovertible fact: no matter how many times they asked me, cajoled me and even threatened me, not once did I concede that I made Limey Stan up.

  Chapter Eight

  MEMORANDUM

  To: Dr Patrick Malloy, head of clinical services

  From: Dr Stacey Ardern, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist

  Subject: Cara Belling

  Date: Monday 16 January 1995

  As requested, here is the background into this morning’s incident, ahead of you being in receipt of my full report.

  Cara has been more lucid in recent weeks, directly correlating, I believe, to an adjustment to her medication. As a consequence, she has allowed me to draw her into conversations about the events leading up to her brother’s death, although she will not discuss his actual dying. Her willingness to talk about him is, I consider, the most significant breakthrough since her admittance six months ago.

  Today, however, in a bid to better understand her feelings towards her brother, I raised the cancellation of her birthday party in June. Thanks to information provided by her father at the point of her admission, we know that she reacted violently to it being cancelled, pushing over a coffee table and sending plates of food flying at her brother and causing him to sustain a cut and bruising to his face. When I broached the subject today, Cara became highly agitated and assaulted a staff nurse and myself using her fists. Neither of us was injured and the child was restrained in accordance with protocol.

  Chapter Nine

  Cara

  It’s a picture-perfect autumn day when we leave the hotel the following morning, the sky a cloudlessly bright shade of cerulean and the air invigoratingly crisp. Yet I pay no heed to its beauty as I scour the faces passing us by on our way down the high street. Every person feels like a potential threat to my well-being, that they might recognise me and expose me for who I really am, and I hate feeling like this. Normally, I go about my business with quiet confidence.

  Anne spent breakfast trying to placate me, by reasonably pointing out that it is very doubtful anyone would match the nine-year-old me to how I look now, but I remain on high alert. She does at least agree that we should attend the will reading, then collect our bags from the hotel and get the first train out of here.

  ‘Do you remember the town much?’ she asks as we walk along.

  ‘A bit. I remember the Red Lion. The
shop below it used to be Woolworths.’

  I point at the statue that now preens over a pound shop on the other side of the road. The lion appears freshly painted, its intricately carved mane glossily reflecting the sunshine bouncing off it. A couple of years ago, it had deteriorated to the point of collapse, paint flaked off, plaster crumbling, until the local paper staged a campaign to fund its renovation. I know this because I read the online version of the paper every day; the town may have changed since I last set foot in it, but I am fully versed in how.

  ‘This road’s been pedestrianised since I was last here,’ I say, nodding at the cobbled paving stones now covering the former expanse of tarmac. ‘Cars used to come along there all the time. I remember when the market was on, it used to be a nightmare. Matty almost got run over once, running out from behind a stall.’

  It was me who saved him. I saw the car coming before he did and managed to grab his arm and pull him out of its path. Matty was such a scatterbrain, easily distracted, never looking where he was going, so it was down to me to protect him. It was my job as his big sister. Whenever we went out to play, Mum and Dad would issue stern instructions ‘to keep an eye on your brother no matter what’ and I did. I kept him safe. The only time I couldn’t was when Limey Stan came for us.

  I dreamt about Limey Stan again last night. This time, Matty was there and he cheered and clapped as Limey Stan put his hands around my neck and squeezed. I woke up clawing at my throat in panic and Anne, who was in the twin bed next to mine, had to get up to calm me down. She kept saying over and over, ‘It was just a dream, Cara, it’s not real.’ But that’s the thing, isn’t it? People say ghosts aren’t real either and yet one managed to kill Matty.

  If I’m honest, the adult me who’s absorbed reams of studies and read hundreds of books on the paranormal since I was a teenager struggles to believe in ghosts. How could anyone not question whether they exist, when there is so much empirical evidence weighted against it? Yet the nine-year-old me who survived the summer of 1994 makes me believe. To that Cara, who lives constantly in my head, Limey Stan was as real as Anne is walking alongside me now and she refuses to entertain even the tiniest doubt of what I can remember from that day. The rest of the world might think I smothered Matty by wrapping him so tightly in the curtain he couldn’t breathe, but the two of us cleave to the truth, refusing to let it go. You didn’t kill him, her voice will remind me, and I nod, knowing that I didn’t. It was Limey Stan.

  ‘What else has changed?’

  Anne’s question drags me back to the present and I spend a few seconds absorbing the other alterations to Heldean’s centre. Some are more subtle, like the taxi rank moving from opposite the indie DIY store on Queen Street to a slipway round the corner – the DIY store is now a Costa – but, as a whole, it is achingly familiar, and as we continue towards the building where Mum’s solicitors are, I feel myself being absorbed into the town’s fabric again, as though I am walking into fog.

  ‘What number is it again?’ asks Anne.

  ‘Eleven.’

  ‘This is it then.’ She halts outside a town house next to a bank. There are wrought-iron railings outside, with a neatly engraved sign attached: Fairlop Solicitors. Est. 1929.

  My insides suddenly drop, as though I’ve been tipped upside down. Almost instinctively, Anne reaches for my hand and I clutch hers in return.

  ‘I can’t do this.’ My voice is almost a squeak.

  Anne doesn’t say ‘Of course you can’ or ‘There’s nothing to worry about’, or express any other sentiment designed to make me pull myself together. She knows me better than that.

  ‘What’s worrying you the most, kiddo?’

  ‘Seeing all of them,’ I answer honestly.

  ‘I expect they’re just as nervous. It’s been a long time for you all.’

  I’m trembling now and it has nothing to do with how chilly it is today.

  ‘What do I say to them?’

  ‘Whatever feels right. Just remember you’re here because your mum wanted you to be. You have her permission.’

  She’s right. I am not here by default. Whatever emotions have been stirred up within my extended family by her dying, this was Mum’s wish. As for how I’m feeling, my emotions currently oscillate between anger that she never sought to end our estrangement before she died and sadness that it’s too late now. Being forced to think about her makes me realise I never stopped loving her or my dad, despite them turning their backs on me, and the grief I’m feeling has taken me by surprise.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ I say.

  Still hand in hand, we mount the steps. Someone inside buzzes us through the front door and then, before I have time to catch my breath, there they are, waiting silently together in the reception area, their eyes fixed on the doorway in anticipation of my arrival.

  My family.

  Chapter Ten

  Cara

  Isn’t it funny how the mind works? My immediate thought on being confronted by my flesh and blood for the first time in a quarter of a century is not how pleased I am to see them, but that I have woefully misjudged what I am wearing. My relatives are in smart funereal black, while I am casual in jeans. Anne did question my choice of attire before we left the hotel, but I didn’t have anything more formal with me, and because I’ve never attended a meeting such as this, I didn’t know it was an option I should’ve considered. But clearly the occasion of a will being read demands tailored formality, not skinny-cut grey denim and beaten-up ankle boots and a man’s navy peacoat bought for a fiver from a charity shop. At least Anne’s keeping the side up in her M&S slacks, even if she is wearing an anorak with them.

  My second thought is that I don’t want to say hello first, but fortunately I’m saved from doing so because my aunt gasps out loud on seeing me, which diverts everyone else’s stares from me to her.

  ‘Oh my God, you look so much like your mum,’ she breathes. ‘I – I wasn’t expecting you to.’

  I am at a loss as to how to respond. Sometimes I struggle to remember what Mum looked like as a whole. Instead, I recall only snatches of her – the blood-red colour she painted her nails, the scratchy, lacquered blondeness of her bobbed hair, a particular T-shirt she wore with a sequinned butterfly on the front. I do have photographs of her – the social workers arranged for me to be sent a couple when I was at the Peachick – but I could be staring at images of an actress, so little recognition do they spark. But I don’t believe I resemble anything of the woman in them: she exudes glamour and poise, while I, with my mid-brown ‘unfemininny’ cropped hair and minimal make-up, will never be described as such.

  ‘So alike,’ Karen murmurs again.

  As we size each other up, I am struck by how different my aunt looks compared to the memories I have retained of her. She was always the dark to my mother’s light, inheriting the height, brunette hair and medium frame of my grandfather, while Mum was petite and fair like Nan. Now Karen is as blonde as Mum used to be and she’s rail-thin, which serves to accentuate how much she’s aged since I last saw her.

  Thrown, I look to Anne. She steps forward.

  ‘You must be Karen. I’m Anne, Cara’s foster mum. We spoke on the phone.’

  They shake hands, but my aunt doesn’t budge from her seat and her gaze never leaves me. I feel the heat of it on my face, warming my cheeks until they go pink. I stare back, wondering what she’s thinking. A fraction later she lets me know.

  ‘Thank you for staying away from the funeral.’ Then she briskly lifts her handbag from the floor and pulls it onto her lap, a protective barrier between us.

  The exchange leaves me winded, as though she’s delivered a well-aimed kick to my gut. I suppose I thought she might at least be a bit friendly. But before I can retreat to the opposite side of the reception where there are empty seats, the young man seated to her left catches my eye. I realise who he is and I’m astounded. ‘Ryan?’

  ‘Hi, Cara. It’s been a while,’ he says unsmilingly.

  The las
t time I saw my cousin was the night before Matty died. I remember it being one of the few nice days we’d had that July – sometime later, I looked it up and discovered 1994 had one of the wettest and coldest summers on record, which seems fitting with hindsight – and we’d gone to the Rec with Matty and our other cousin, Ryan’s sister, Lisa, after school to play on the swings. Lisa bought us sweets on the way with her pocket money.

  As cousins, Ryan and I squabbled like hell and even had fist fights on occasion, but we were close. Not as close as he was to Matty though, being the same age, and as I drink in his appearance, my mind is invaded with questions about what my brother would’ve looked like now. The dark curls that defined Ryan as a child are now shaved to a bristly shadow to counter a receding hairline – would Matty have lost his hair by now too? Or would his bright blond hair simply have faded to mouse brown, the colour of our dad’s? At six, he was short for his age – would the years have given him height to top mine? Would we still adore each other, like we did then?

  I swiftly blink back tears, then ask Ryan how he is. He’s about to reply when Karen hisses at him to be quiet and he meekly obeys. I look down at her, but she won’t meet my gaze again. Thinking about it, her appearance hasn’t altered that much from memory – she’s still the hard-faced cow I remember she could be.

  The third member of their group is a woman with long reddish hair sitting next to Ryan, who I’m certain I’ve never met – it’s not Lisa, put it that way. I assume she’s Ryan’s partner or wife. Whoever she is, she keeps her head bent and her eyes firmly fixed on the floor.

  Finally my gaze falls on Gary, Karen’s husband and my step-uncle. He does meet my eye, flashes me a tight smile, then quickly turns away.

  Reunion over, I’m about to take a seat across the room when the receptionist pipes up. ‘Mr Taylor is ready for you. Third door on the left along the corridor.’