by A J Waines
‘Rehab. Rehab.’ She played with the word, knowing it was something she’d heard of, but unable to work out how it could possibly play any part in her life.
‘You must have been arrested and they realised you weren’t right in the head. That’s how it happened with me. You’ll stay here until your case comes up in court. You’ll get to see a psychiatrist and a little nurse will follow you around.’ She walked two fingers through the air, by way of demonstration.
‘But I haven’t done anything…’ protested Sophie, screwing up her eyes, pulling at her hair, trying to reach into the past. February the sixteenth? Is that what she said?
She sat on the edge of the bed, staring into space, waiting for something to fill up the vacuum of the days she’d lost.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ve got,’ said Shareen, pointing to the locked suitcase. ‘You look like my size.’
Even if she could open it, unpacking was the last thing on Sophie’s mind. That would mean she was staying and that couldn’t possibly be happening.
She sat on the bed staring into space while trying to recall what had happened, wringing her hands together, scared, frantic about Ben. She tried to picture the house when she’d last seen it. The kitchen. She’d been in the kitchen. There had been all those people in the house. They’d turned up suddenly from nowhere. Their faces… they looked concerned, shocked… something bad had happened. Something bad… maybe it hadn’t been down the street.
Her train of thought was broken as another nurse came in to unlock her suitcase and check through the items. Sophie folded her arms and watched as the woman drew out tweezers, scissors and nail clippers and put them on a small tray. Everything sharp. She looked as if she was equipping herself for emergency surgery somewhere else in the building. The nurse also checked the existing contents of the room, and as she watched, Sophie noticed that even the mirror above the sink was made not of glass, but of reflective metal sheeting, the kind you find in public toilets.
That night, Sophie was aware of every minute sliding by; night-time taunting her with its silent, timeless, never-ending void. She fretted, jolting from side to side, trying to remember what had happened. She could hear the other woman opening containers under the bed as she fingered Sophie’s belongings, but she didn’t care. Shareen could have everything she’d got.
The fluorescent light from the corridor forced itself under her closed lids without respite, turning what should have been an enveloping darkness into one long bright tunnel.
Chapter 3
Dr Marshall was staring out of his office window when she walked in. He swung his seat round and without speaking, indicated she sit opposite him on a simple soft chair. His seat, she noticed, was tall and leather and encased him like the shell of a beetle. If she’d met him in other circumstances, she might have assumed he was a barrister or court judge. Impassive, even aloof. More at home with books than people. He opened a file and read to himself through half-moon lenses.
‘How are you settling in?’ he asked, peering over the glasses.
‘Settling in?’ He made it sound like her first week at boarding school.
‘Do you know where you are? How long you’ve been here?’
‘I think there’s been a mistake.’
Dr Marshall smiled and removed his glasses. He rested them on his notes and made a bridge with his fingers.
‘Let me give you the facts, Mrs Duke. Sophie, if I may?’ he said, not waiting for her consent. ‘You’re in Maple Ward, part of a secure unit in Moorgreen Hospital in Croydon. Two doctors agreed that you have been suffering from mental disorder. You were delirious and unable to walk or talk. You have been remanded here by the Court, under section 36 of the Mental Health Act.’
‘I’ve been sectioned?’ She’d heard the word, in connection with people who were seriously deranged or suicidal. Not me, she said to herself. I’m not one of them.
‘You were initially admitted to Keeley Ward on February the fourth, for observation and initial treatment,’ he continued, ‘and you’ve been here at Maple Ward for the last ten days.’
Sophie stared at the calendar on the wall behind Dr Marshall’s square head. Over two weeks in all.
‘Did I black out? Did I collapse? I don’t understand. I don’t remember.’
‘Mmm…’ he said unhelpfully. ‘Like last time, I’d like to record the session. Are you happy for me to do that?’
She couldn’t remember a ‘last time’.
She nodded and watched as he clicked the touchpad on the laptop on his desk. ‘I need to know what happened… can’t you tell me?’
He shook his head.
She jumped to her feet. ‘I can’t remember anything apart from strangers suddenly rushing into the house.’ Her voice rose sharply in pitch, edging close to hysteria. ‘Were we burgled?’
She cleared her throat. Stay calm. She’d got this far. She didn’t want him sending her back to the ward.
He flapped his hand, directing her to sit down. ‘You know that we have to speak again about the crime you committed and find out a bit more about why that happened. Do you understand?’
She sank down with a frown. ‘Crime? No, no, I don’t understand.’ She reached forward and snatched a tissue from a box on his desk.
‘When we spoke before, you said you couldn’t remember what happened to your husband on the last day you were in the kitchen with him. I wanted to ask you again about that time. Just try to answer my questions the best way you can.’
Although Sophie was silent, inside her head it sounded like an orchestra was tuning up.
‘Your husband was in the kitchen, wasn’t he? Do you remember how you were feeling at that time?’
Sophie stared ahead of her, desperate to bring the kitchen to life in her mind. Her husband. Daniel. She heard her own breathing; heavy, laboured. Something was clawing at the closed door of her memory, trying to break through.
‘Angry,’ she said triumphantly, screwing the tissue into a ball.
‘Ah, good.’ He sat back. ‘Angry about what exactly?’
‘That he’d been… that he is… you know, having an affair. I was shouting at him.’
There was something else. Something much worse than shouting, but she couldn’t see it, grasp it.
‘And the anger you felt – tell me about it.’
‘It was very intense… I could hardly see. I couldn’t think… I was shaking. It was all a blur.’
‘Then what?’
She sent out her bottom lip, thinking. ‘There were people suddenly in the house. I felt sick. I was crying. Feeling dizzy.’
‘Something happened before that though, didn’t it? Before all the people arrived.’
She bit her lip, feeling like the one child in class who hadn’t done her homework.
‘Do you remember picking up the knife?’ he asked.
She didn’t hesitate. ‘Knife? No!’ She planted her feet down, ready to launch herself upright again, but rocked forward instead. Hold on.
‘You don’t remember turning to face your husband with the carving knife in your hand?’
She let out a tiny pained squeak.
He leant closer and in a softer voice asked: ‘Do you know it was you who stabbed your husband?’
Stabbed your husband.
The words punched the air. Had she heard him correctly? Is Dr Marshall talking to me? His voice seemed to be coming in and out as if someone was playing with the volume control. The carving knife. Stabbed your husband.
There was red paint on the floor. No. Maybe, it wasn’t paint.
‘Oh, God,’ she said, a band of sweat creeping across her forehead as she spoke. She bowed her head and started to sob.
New shapes straightened out inside her head, like jazzy pixilation on a screen clearing into recognisable shapes. Dreadful, terrifying images that should only belong in horror films.
‘I can… see something… now,’ she whispered, in breathy tearful bursts. She sat on the edge o
f the chair, her hands pressed to her face. ‘Pictures in my mind. Pictures of Daniel on the floor with… blood everywhere. Blood on my hands. In my hair. The knife in my hand.’ She snatched a breath. ‘Did I do that? Was it really me?’
‘You recall seeing the knife in your hand?’
She let out the loud howl of an animal caught in a trap. ‘It’s a picture in my head. I can see it, but it’s not real. I don’t remember… doing it… holding it.’ She began to find it hard to breathe, wanting him to stop.
Her fingers were hooked over the desk in front of her, clutching on as if afraid she might take off and be hurled into space. Her head was throbbing. The images in her mind were pretending to be memories – hounding her, taunting her. It wasn’t real. Was it? Surely it can’t have happened the way Dr Marshall said?
‘It’s like a dream, not a memory,’ she added.
Then came a moment of ice-cold clarity, the first she’d experienced for days. ‘Are you saying I killed my husband?’
‘No,’ he said, tentatively.
I knew it! Someone else was responsible for whatever he was making a fuss about.
She saw something. That was it. She was a witness to a dreadful attack, but she didn’t do anything. It was someone else.
‘Your husband isn’t dead, Sophie, but it was a close-run thing.’
Chapter 4
Sophie wanted Dr Marshall to stop. She needed to put the whole day on pause and get away. Run. Hide. Escape. But still his voice went on and on.
‘… and your husband had luck on his side, but he’s still in intensive care.’
Her forehead crumpled. It was too much to take in.
Close-run thing. Intensive care.
The walls of the cramped office shifted inwards a fraction. The yucca plant, crippled through lack of light, slid a little closer. So too, the wastepaper basket, the standard lamp and the bookshelf. Her whole world was shrinking. Dr Marshall didn’t appear to notice.
He carried on. More questions. Endless probing. ‘You said your husband was having an affair. How did you find out about that?’
‘The letter…’ Sophie was fighting to get the facts straight and in the right chronological order. It was like trying to catch bubbles floating past in a strong breeze. ‘It was September. I came across the love letter first. It was in the pocket of Daniel’s gardening jacket, hanging inside the shed.’
As she spoke, her memories from before the incident tumbled back in a rush of complete and utter clarity. Like watching scenes from a film. She sat up straight, blinking fast.
‘We had a few people over and I was looking for tea lights for a dish on the patio. Daniel is always putting things in the wrong place – he’s very disorganised like that. I knew he’d bought some; I’d seen them on the kitchen table.’
‘And you confronted your husband with this letter?’
‘It wasn’t as simple as that. I was in shock and my first instinct was to stuff the letter back, because all these people were there. At bedtime, when I went back to retrieve it, it had gone. I started checking through his things after that, and a few weeks later I found a sexy bra and pants he’d bought – not my size. He happened to be away at a conference, so I left them in his drawer until he got back.’
‘Did you tell anyone?’
‘No, I didn’t want to say anything to anyone until I’d had it out with Daniel. I was humiliated and kept hoping there’d be some misunderstanding. But once he was back, I went to his chest of drawers and they’d gone.’ She huffed a little sigh. ‘There was a signed photo of a woman in his suit pocket and condoms in his gym bag, too. The same thing happened. Before I had the chance to confront him with them, they’d gone.’
‘And this happened over a period of weeks?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you had nothing to show Daniel. There was no actual proof in the end.’
‘That’s right, but I’d seen everything. He must have known I was on to him. He must have hidden things, taken them to work, maybe. I kept going on at him… wanting answers, telling him what it was going to do to Ben. But – and this is the thing that really gets me – he kept saying he didn’t know anything about it! Every time.’ Sophie could feel her cheeks burning and her palms getting sticky.
‘And, how did you feel about that?’
‘I told you, I was angry. Furious. Of course I was, wouldn’t you be? I still am. Why didn’t he just admit it, so we could deal with it?’ She was starting to feel self-righteous now, resolute. ‘All the arguing. It wasn’t good for Ben. I didn’t want him finding us lashing out at each other.’
‘Lashing out?’
‘Well. Only verbally…’ She avoided his eyes.
‘Did your husband ever hurt you? Get physically violent with you?’
‘No, never.’
‘And you’d never tried to hit or attack him, before?’
‘Absolutely not. Never. I’m not that sort of person.’ She realised her claim sounded stupid in the light of what Dr Marshall was accusing her of.
‘You have no history of violence,’ stated the psychiatrist, ‘in fact your family say quite the opposite. They describe you as warm, generous, devoted, self-disciplined and always concerned for others.’
Fresh tears flooded her vision. Yes – that was who she really was. The faces of her parents flashed into her mind; confused, mortified, trying to make sense of what had happened.
He frowned as he closed her file. ‘There is something I really don’t understand about this.’
Her mind shuttled on to a new thought. ‘When can I see my son?’ She reached out a twisted hand towards him.
Dr Marshall smiled, but the gesture wasn’t warm. It was the dry smile of a man who wasn’t about to give her what she wanted.
‘Soon…’ he said. ‘You’ll be able to see him very soon.’
She ground her teeth, but stayed quiet. There was no point in causing an uproar. It wouldn’t help her – she knew that much.
‘Okay. Just one more thing before we finish.’
He stood up and pulled out a drawer in the filing cabinet. ‘I’ve got some sheets here I’d like you to look at. I’m going to put them in front of you and I’d like you to tell me what you see. Tell me the first idea that comes into your head. Here’s the first one.’
He placed the card showing a haphazard black inkblot into her hand. She gazed at it. For a moment she forgot what they’d just been talking about. She looked at the card. It reminded her of the boards they’d used in a psychology class once at university.
‘I’ve seen this before,’ she whispered. ‘It’s blood.’
‘Okay. And this one? You can turn it round if you like.’
‘It’s obvious. That’s more blood.’
‘And this?’
Sophie cocked her head on one side. ‘That’s a pool of blood.’ All ten shapes looked the same to her. Blood and nothing but blood, everywhere.
‘Let’s leave it there, today.’
Sophie breathed a heavy sigh and pushed the damp tissue back up her sleeve.
Chapter 5
4 March 2018
Daniel stood in front of the hall mirror examining his ribs. Or more to the point, the new pink snake of skin running between them. Half an inch to the left and he would have been in the company of angels, the specialist had told him. Half an inch that separated life from death – about the width of Ben’s thumb.
The phone rang and Ben padded out of the lounge. ‘Dingy-Dingy, Daddy…’
‘All right, Ben, I’ve got it,’ he said.
Daniel hadn’t been able to pick up the phone until today. Since he was released from hospital, he’d let the answerphone do the job for him. He’d selectively called people back, but to be honest, not many. He couldn’t bear to face the questions, the gasps of disbelief as he stumbled through what had happened.
‘Hi, Dan, how’s it going?’ Daniel knew it was Rick straight away. He was the only person who called him Dan since school, and he hated it.
‘Okay… you know. Sorry I didn’t return your calls.’
‘No worries, mate.’
‘Mum said you came to see me in intensive care.’
‘You weren’t very chatty.’
Daniel blew out a heavy breath and realised how tired he was. A thick, heavy exhaustion he’d been unable to break through since the attack.
‘How are things… since you… since she...?’
‘Getting used to things – sort of.’ Daniel was lacking the energy to put on a brave face. ‘Actually… pretty grim, I still can’t get my head around it.’
‘It did seem… a bit out of character. Your mother filled me in at the hospital.’
Daniel laughed out loud at Rick’s understatement. He sank to the bottom stair in the hall and felt the wash of truth threaten to drown him once again. He’d never seen Sophie’s eyes on fire like that before. It wasn’t her at all. It was an impostor, a demented demon who’d climbed into her skin the second he’d turned away to butter the toast.
‘What happens now?’ came Rick’s voice again.
‘I have no idea.’
Daniel still found the entire episode too far-fetched to process. She’d wanted him dead. There was no question about it. His beautiful, elegant wife. The woman he could always spot in a crowd, no matter where they were. Not because of her height – at five seven, she was barely above average – or even her hair, a curtain of tumbling gold. It was something about her presence. There was a grace and glow about her, a mystical aura like a special spotlight around her that he’d never witnessed with any other woman.
He gripped the rung of the banister. She wasn’t the Sophie he’d encountered that afternoon. In their own kitchen. He hadn’t recognised the feral screams that spewed out of her distorted velvety lips. That face. All contortion and ugliness. He’d never seen those angular, robotic movements before; the savage hatred driving the muscles in her slender arm as she lunged at him, the carving knife twinkling in the sunlight.