In The Dying Minutes: an absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by J. A. Baker

  ‘When I was thirteen years old, I found out that I was adopted. Nobody had told me. I always knew I was different, and not in a good way. I didn’t fit. I was a square peg in a round hole. I didn’t think like they did.’ Leah stops to take a breath before continuing. Her throat is dry, a slow pounding builds in her temple. She uses her fingertips to massage at the thin skin there. ‘Mum and Dad are quiet reflective people, much like my brother, although he had his moments. He was two years older than me and had started to get into some trouble at school. Nothing major really but we were very different and didn’t get on all that well. I suppose most siblings don’t. Especially teenagers. They’re built to argue, aren’t they? I guess it’s part of their DNA. They’re hardwired to fall out with each other, aren’t they? Or maybe it’s all those hormones racing around their system. Anyway, I was looking for something in the old wooden bureau one day and came across my adoption certificate.’

  She looks at Will, observing his features, searching for solace from him, some succour to reassure her that not all of what happened was her fault. He is sitting, not looking disinterested but neither does he look interested either. Once again, he has assumed a passive stance, absorbing her words, allowing her to unburden herself while he sits and watches.

  ‘I presented it to my parents who tried to bluff their way out of it, saying they were going to tell me when I was older, that they thought I was too young to understand. But that’s not the truth at all.’

  ‘So, what is the truth?’ he says, an edge to his voice, as if he knows what’s coming next.

  ‘The truth?’ Leah says more forcefully now. ‘The truth is that they were never going to tell me because everybody knew I was different and showing me the certificate would have just confirmed it. It would have affirmed everybody’s belief that I was an outsider, not a proper member of the Browne family.’ Hot tears bite at her eyelids. She blinks them away, wipes a shaky hand across her brow.

  ‘And did it make you angry?’ Will’s voice is quieter now, calmer.

  ‘Yes of course it made me angry. Fucking furious, actually. I felt like a complete fraud.’ She looks away, fresh fury uncoiling within her chest. The memory of it is still raw, the feeling of not belonging a gaping wound. ‘So I did things, made life difficult for them by way of punishment.’

  A silence takes hold as she gives Will time to process her words, to let them really sink in. If she expected further probing or questions to get her to open up completely, she couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, he takes the conversation off on a tangent, steering her away from the wreckage that has been her entire life.

  ‘And how did that make you feel? Making things harder for them, I mean. Did you feel vindicated? Did it make you feel better about yourself?’

  A sting takes hold in her face, an army of red ants crawling over her flesh, biting and burning leaving a trail of fire in their wake. Does she feel vindicated? Was all her hatred and bile actually worth it?

  Sickness wells up in her gut making her nauseous and dizzy. And why is Will even asking her such questions? She feels certain it’s to provoke guilt, to get her to dig deep within her psyche and reveal her deepest most private thoughts, to lay bare her soul for him to see. She won’t allow that. Absolutely not. She will protect her soft underbelly, cover herself up and live to fight another day. Will is supposed to be here to help her, not to expose her vulnerabilities and weaknesses. She does a damn fine job of doing that herself and doesn’t need a helping hand to make her feel even worse about her shitty life.

  ‘Well,’ she says proudly, ‘it didn’t make me feel worse, if that’s what you mean.’

  Will smiles, his mouth moving but the sentiment not quite reaching his eyes. Leah digs her nails into her palms, into her old scars, thinking how quickly the wind changes, how rapidly the direction of a conversation can change trajectory, leaving a person feeling wounded and out of their depth.

  ‘Okay, so what about your split from them as an adult? Are you ready to talk about that yet?’

  A dart of annoyance spears through her. Even thinking about that part of her life irritates her, makes her itchy with rage and fear and guilt. It’s not somewhere she chooses to visit if she can help it. But this is different; talking about that point in her life is expected when she’s within these four walls. This is a safe place even though she doesn’t feel particularly secure when she’s here. If she’s being honest, being here puts her on edge. Will’s searching questions; the choice of artwork; his proximity; even the way her scar seems more painful when she visits all make her feel a thousand times worse. Coming here is a necessary evil, somewhere she visits to purge herself, to be absolved of her sins.

  She ruminates over the final argument she had with her parents and decides that that particular story is for another day. It’s all too complex, too difficult to condense into a half hour’s conversation. She has given him the beginning, the concealment of her adoption and that’s enough for now. That’s when it all started. Or at least, that’s what she tells herself but, in all honesty, finding out she was adopted was simply a point in which she could stick a pin and say, it all started here. She knows – and they know – that her story began long before that. Her parents spent their lives trying to mould her, to get her to fit into their neat little family unit, to wedge her into their values, to squash her into their perfect little life and yet the more they tried, the greater the distance grew between them. She was their wildcard, their erratic, unpredictable child. The one who never really belonged.

  ‘I’d rather tell you about my lapses in memory. I stagger from one hour to the next, one day to the next, unable to keep track of time, unsure of how I get from one place to another. How do you explain that? And please don’t tell me my brain is a complex thing because I already know that. I just wish it weren’t. I wish it would just function as it’s supposed to, but I guess it’s all down to the effects of the crash, isn’t it?’

  Will picks up a pen, twirls it around in his fingers like a small baton then drops it onto the desk with a sharp click. The noise jolts her, causes her to sit up straight in her seat. She notices it then – the smell of burning. She stares at Will, who appears to not notice the pungent odour that is slowly filling the room. It grows stronger, becoming more and more powerful as it snakes itself around the room.

  ‘What is that?’ Leah says, eyes wide, incredulous that he hasn’t noticed. The stench is intense, filling her nostrils, setting off a growing panic in her head.

  ‘What is what?’

  And then she sees it, the sudden burst of flames behind him accompanied by a thick plume of black smoke that billows out from the wall. Will remains seated, composed, unruffled. Utterly unaware.

  Leah lets out a stifled gasp, brings her hand to her mouth, blinks, looks again. And it’s gone.

  She stares at the bare wall and presses the heel of her hands into her eyes, rubbing at them savagely before looking again, her jaw slack with shock. Everything is back to normal. No smell, no smoke. Absolutely nothing at all.

  She suppresses a sob, swallowing it down with a loud gulp. She is going mad for sure, losing her fucking mind. There’s no other explanation for it.

  ‘Everything is going to be fine,’ Will says, completely unfazed by her sudden reaction. Everything is silent, the room back to how it was before. ‘I’m here to help you. Try not to worry about things you can’t change. Just take it easy and soon you’ll feel a lot better.’

  ‘It’s difficult,’ she says quietly, a buzzing filling her head. ‘I can’t seem to keep track of anything. I’m seeing things that aren’t there and my memory is shot. I don’t even know what day it is, for God’s sake.’

  Will places his large pale hands on the desk. Leah’s eyes are drawn to them again, to the paleness of his long fingers, almost white like chalk and in direct contrast to his liver spotted face. She looks away as he nods at her and smiles. ‘How is your pain?’

  ‘Still there,’ she murmurs, the memory of the
crash sharp in her mind. It’s always there, blinding her with its lucidity. She’s still on the train, in that carriage, stuck under the wreckage, unable to get out. Unable to breathe. She can feel herself being thrown sideways, backwards, forwards, her body in agony, her mind desperately trying to comprehend the awfulness of it all. She can feel the heaviness, that crushing deadweight as it presses down on her, cutting into her soft flesh. She can hear the glass shattering, can feel it slicing through her skin, scoring her bones. The terrible screaming fills the space around her, the groan of metal pulses in her ears, the screeching of brakes causing her to shudder as the train stops, derails and tips over. Then nothing. An empty silence. Just a sinister unending fear.

  And now she is back in the room.

  Lowering her head, she fights back tears. She can’t keep going through this. It will be the undoing of her. She needs to snap out of it and work out why she was there, what it was that caused her to leave Durham and catch a train to London. She desperately needs to find that elusive chunk of time before the crash so she can determine what compelled her to head south. She hasn’t been to London since she was a child and can’t for the life of her remember making any plans to go there. She wouldn’t leave Jacob. Since meeting him she hasn’t ever left Durham. Why would she? He’s all she has, and all she will ever need. Nothing and nobody else matters.

  ‘I have to go now, Will.’ She is spent. No words left in her. She has given all she can give for today.

  He nods, making no attempt to stop her, instead leaning back in his chair, a look of understanding on his face. She doesn’t say anything else as she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and thinks about going home.

  9

  Autumn 2005

  He has to leave. As far as he can tell, there’s no other option open to him, no other way out of the living hell that has become his life. Everything has stopped – his hobbies, his love of photography, seeing his friends, trying to get back on track with his schoolwork – they have all taken a back seat since that day. He has spent the past few months putting up with so many snide comments and the hints to his family and friends that he is guilty and he has had enough. Deranged, fucked up, some sort of childish vendetta, call it what you will, his sister has made no bones about the fact that he is the one responsible. She may have remained silent about it to the police but she has bleated incessantly to anybody else who will listen about how he was there when little Lucy fell to her death. She always chooses her words carefully, edging around the issue, giving listeners long lingering looks, leaving painful interminable silences as she recalls the events of that terrible day before stepping back and letting them put two and two together so they can come up with five.

  So many times he has thought back to what happened, trying to work out what actually took place on that clifftop. The closest he has ever come to an answer that makes any sense is that Lucy was too close to the edge and slipped. Both he and his sister were there with her when it happened but everything is such a blur in his mind. One minute they were playing and the next he and his sister were arguing. Tempers were frayed, emotions running high. Lucy was there with them as they fought. And then she wasn’t.

  He has tried and tried to remember the turn of events but nothing makes sense. He has a recollection of his sister pretending to drag little Lucy closer to the edge but then she was standing next to him. Perhaps she ran back to the edge again to look over? He simply can’t remember. There was so much toing and froing. It was windy and noisy and he was angry and upset. Lucy was just a kid with no real sense of danger, no idea of what a fall from that sort of height could do to her tiny, frail body. Maybe she just slipped.

  The one thing he is sure of is that he didn’t push her. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He doesn’t have it in him to do such a thing. He is a young lad, interested in girls and cameras and fast cars and trains. He isn’t a killer. What disturbs him the most is that people even consider it a possibility, that they have so little faith in him, so little belief in him as a decent, caring person that they actually consider his sister’s words. That hurts. Despite the coroner’s findings of misadventure, that nobody was to blame, neighbours and friends still shun him, deciding to believe a teenage child over figures of authority. So much for a sense of community and for practising forgiveness and tolerance. They couldn’t wait to get their teeth into a bit of idle gossip, twisting and turning it until the story went that although nobody saw it happen, he did probably push her, that he had had an argument with his sister and snapped, taking his temper out on somebody smaller and younger than him who couldn’t fight back.

  His parents will be upset at him leaving, that much he does know, but everything is closing in on him and he can’t take it any longer. The teachers at school are pretty neutral about the whole thing but word about his possible involvement soon spread in class and the taunts and bullying have become unbearable.

  His only chance to escape it all is to disappear.

  He leaves early one autumn morning as a thin line of light is just beginning to reveal itself on the distant horizon, a streak of hazy sunlight slowly rising and growing as the earth wakes up to the day ahead. A copse of trees is silhouetted against the backdrop of a burning amber sky. That’s where he will go – somewhere with cover and water where he can be alone and not have to see those knowing glances or endure the whispers that echo and boom in his head every time he walks into a room.

  Nobody will miss him. Perhaps his parents will feel his absence keenly but they’ll soon get over it. They still have another child to pour all their love into. And God knows she needs it. She needs as much nurture and love as they can give to melt her frozen heart.

  Shrugging his backpack over his shoulders, he closes the door with a quiet click, posting his key through the letterbox before stepping out into the empty street and setting off hastily, never once looking back.

  The weather grows wilder throughout the day – gale-force winds blowing in, driving rain battering against his skin, plummeting temperatures that nip at his exposed flesh – they all hinder his progress, stopping him from getting as far as he had hoped, but none of it stops him completely. He continues regardless, body bent double against the howling wind and stinging rain. A bit of adverse weather is nothing compared to what he’s had to put up with at home and at school over the past few months. If one positive thing has come out of this whole shitty debacle it’s the fact that he has grown to know himself more than he did before. He doesn’t necessarily feel any stronger for it but he does feel older, as if he’s matured ten years in ten weeks.

  He thinks of the look on the faces of his parents as they read the letter he has left for them propped up on the kitchen table. If they get it, that is. His father is usually the first one up but it’s the weekend and on the odd occasion, his sister sometimes gets up before him. There’s no telling what she will do with his heartfelt plea if she gets to it first. Anything is possible. His heart crashes around his chest at the thought of her throwing it away, at the thought of her wicked smirk as she tears it up and stuffs it in the bottom of the bin, his words disposed of, his parents never knowing why he left. He still loves them. He just can’t take any more of living in that house, living the rest of his life with that great big weight of doubt hanging over his head.

  Did he kill Lucy?

  It’s an unbearable burden to carry. All that hatred directed at him. If that day at the beach has taught him one thing, it’s that people enjoy directing malice at others. They love it, thriving on the drama and the upset, living for spreading lies. It puts a spring in their step. Their inclination for lying and wrecking other people’s lives gets them out of bed on a morning, giving them something to look forward to. All those loose tongues, the many clacking mouths that never seem to stop. And yet after all the untruths and gossip and downright lies, he doesn’t hate them. Far from it.

  He pities them.

  They are the ones who have to go through the rest of their lives knowing what they’
ve done, knowing they have ruined his life. It sounds dramatic but he can’t see beyond this point in his miserable existence. No matter how hard he tries, he just can’t see a way around it, which is why he has chosen to leave. He has some money, not a lot, enough to see him through for a few weeks but it’s all he needs. His plans don’t stretch too far. He’s living day to day and that suits him just fine.

  Battling against the blustery wind and barrage of rain, he edges his way over the road that runs parallel to the river. Soon he’ll be at the foot of the hills. Once up there, hidden amongst the trees and bushes, he can find shelter, light a fire, eat some of the food he has brought with him. He needs to keep his strength up. Falling at the first hurdle and succumbing to the elements isn’t part of his plan.

  In the distance, the church bells ring out loud and clear. 8am. Even with a lie-in, his father will be up by now. He tries to picture his dad’s face as he reads the letter, taking his time as he digests the words written there, realising that their son can no longer stand living with people who mistrust and doubt him. He will read those words and feel a pang of sorrow and regret but will also know that they’ll be better off without him around casting a shadow over their lives. His dad isn’t the emotional type. Any reaction he has will be muted. Maybe he’ll think it’s a childish hysterical response and shrug it off or maybe he will march upstairs, shake his mother awake and go looking for him. He can’t see that happening but then he never expected his life to take the trajectory that it has. Anything is possible.