The Memory: A Gripping Psychological Thriller With a Heart-Stopping Twist

by Lucy Dawson

  ‘Oh – I’m so sorry,’ she says immediately.

  ‘Thank you,’ I reply. ‘It was a long time ago now. He was twenty-nine. It wasn’t here in the house or anything.’ I wave a dismissive hand. ‘I know some people worry about these things. He lost control while we were driving home after a night out and smacked into a telegraph pole. He wasn’t even going that fast, but his injuries…’ I tap my own head lightly to illustrate and see ghostly trees flashing past the car window seconds before the impact.

  I was in bad temper. Michael had gently removed my glass while I’d been chatting perfectly innocently to a chap in the pub and I’d been incensed in the car afterwards.

  ‘You tell me I’ve got to give this place a chance, and then when I do interact with someone, you treat me like a lush!’

  ‘It was hot tonight; I know that’s the only reason you drank more than you would normally.’ He spoke soothingly. ‘It’s easy to create the wrong impression, that’s all. People were starting to stare.’ Gripping the wheel, he held on sensibly at two and ten. ‘You’re too smart and funny to need propping up with Dutch courage, anyway.’

  Patronised, I’d crossed my arms and slumped into a glowering, sullen silence; although he was right, of course, red wine always makes me belligerent, I have no idea why. ‘Dutch courage?’ I snapped a moment later, spoiling for a fight. ‘Hardly. I was simply talking. Actually, that’s not true – I was flirting,’ I lied. ‘There, I’ve said it. It was nice to be spoken to like a human being, not just “Mummy” who also happens to do all of the cooking, ironing, washing… I wasn’t ready to leave, Michael. I was having fun – for once. I don’t want to go back to that hole of a house.’ I flicked the hair from my eyes crossly and looked in the wing mirror. There was a car some distance behind, the headlights tracking us. I stared at them, getting closer, as we drove past the iron-gated entrance to a lonely farm; the otherwise deserted road on one side lined with tall, foreboding pine trees, and the other giving way to a steep drop off down into the valley. This could be the start of a film. Someone following us, an unknown threatening presence in the car… but they suddenly turned off and disappeared. Bored again, I sighed heavily, and Michael glanced across.

  ‘I don’t think of you as just Mummy. I think you’re beautiful.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you honestly still hate the house?’

  ‘Yes!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s a draughty money pit. We were mad to buy it.’

  ‘I really, really want you to try and give it a chance. It’s so important to me. Please?’ he begged. I ignored him.

  He sighed and, moments later, valiantly tried again. ‘It’s so eerie the way all of the moths are drawn out of the darkness, isn’t it? No control over their destiny at all. The poor things…’ He shivered. ‘I keep seeing little eyes in the hedges, too, do you? Wow! Look!’ he exclaimed excitedly, swerving slightly. ‘A badger! Did you see? Just disappearing into that field! We must remember to tell Izzie in the morning!’

  Still, I said nothing, just yawned. I wasn’t making a point, I was genuinely sleepy.

  ‘Oh, don’t be like this, Evie,’ he pleaded. ‘I’m sorry I took your drink away. You’re right, I shouldn’t have. Eve? Please look at me!’

  He put his hand on my arm, and I petulantly yanked myself free, refusing to be placated. I felt the car start to speed up – but oddly it felt as if there was no grip on the road at all – we were almost gliding… before it swerved and smashed into something head-on. When I opened my eyes again, Michael was staring right at the pole buried in the crumpled bonnet, only his forehead was oozing blood, his eyes were unblinking and his arms hung lifelessly at his side – his seat belt was taking the weight of his chest.

  I ran back to the farm we’d passed, for help. The only sound in the otherwise dark, still summer night was my feet pounding on the tarmac road and my breath coming in terrified gasps.

  Was he distracted and lost control, accidentally selecting too high a gear? Did he swerve on purpose to force a reaction, and it all went horribly wrong? But Michael was such a sensitive and sensible soul. I can’t believe he would have done that. I would so dearly love to know what happened, even after all these years.

  ‘We had one of those rows you can’t even remember the point of afterwards.’ I stare into the middle distance for a moment. ‘So silly.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Claire repeats and I hear a tremble in her voice. ‘I really do understand. My parents died in a car accident.’

  I spin back to her in astonishment. ‘Oh my dear girl!’

  Her eyes are shining brightly with unshed tears that I watch her blink back. ‘I was eighteen. They were on the way home from taking me to university. A seventy-nine-year-old lady drifted across onto the carriageway and ploughed straight into them.’ She shrugs and gives me a desperately sad smile.

  I walk back over, and to both of our surprise, take her hand in mine and quietly hold it for a moment.

  ‘Thank you.’ She squeezes it a little more tightly before letting go. ‘It will be twenty-three years this June. I think of them every day.’

  ‘Being forced to go forward into a new life you didn’t choose and would never have wanted is very hard. Are you sure I can’t make you a tea?’ I say, sincerely this time.

  ‘No, really, I’m fine, but thank you.’ She takes a deep breath to steady herself. She looks so young, suddenly, and I feel ashamed of my uncharitable first assessment of her nose. For all of her attempts at high-end fashion, you really couldn’t describe her as pretty, but attractive, or sexy, perhaps. Certainly not a boat rocker or someone who colours outside the lines though – so why on earth isn’t she viewing some smart, safe glass box in Esher, rather than my crap hole of a property in Shropshire? Something isn’t sitting quite right.

  ‘Look, Claire – do you really want to look at the rest of the house?’ Our moment of shared understanding encourages me to lay it all out on the table. I’m not exasperated, just confused.

  She flushes bright red. ‘Yes, of course I do! Sorry – have I done something wrong?’

  ‘No, not at all, but—’

  ‘I suppose usually people viewing a family home would bring their family with them?’ she says slowly. ‘I wouldn’t bring my daughter to look at anything until I thought it was a serious prospect. It would be too unsettling for her otherwise. But I am interested in your house and,’ she lowers her voice to a confidential whisper, ‘it’s a cash purchase.’

  Well. That’s me told. ‘Shall we move on to the small sitting room then?’

  I walk past her, gesturing the way, and trying to squash down the excited extra thump of my heart. Not really, not finally after all these years? I try to imagine packing up boxes and turning the key in the front door for the last time. I have to push the image away. It’s too much – I feel almost light-headed.

  ‘So this room does what it says on the tin really. It’s nice to have another space to escape to if you’ve got a houseful, where people can read or have some peace, if the TV’s blaring in the other room. It’s actually the oldest part of the house and has fifteenth-century origins.’ I point at a one foot by one foot hole in the thick stone wall of the fireplace. ‘That opening is the old bread oven from when this bit was probably a bakery—’

  ‘I thought you said it was a pub?’ She looks confused.

  ‘It’s been lots of things: pub, shop, bakery, possibly even the local abattoir at one point. There are hooks in the beams all over the place and there used to be a stream that ran outside the house many moons ago – you would have wanted running water nearby to sluice the blood away,’ I explain, only for her blank expression to give way to one of horror. ‘Not any more, obviously,’ I say gently, and obviously feeling a bit foolish, she laughs at her own reaction.

  ‘Sorry.’

  I smile and turn back to the bread oven. ‘Because the chimney leads off from here up to the roof, you can’t have a traditional fire in this room, just a decorative one. Although maybe you could fit one of those wood bu
rners that are all the rage now and feed the flue up there – I’m not sure. You said you were visiting your partner’s family? Do they live nearby?’

  ‘Yes, they do.’

  I open my mouth to ask if I know them, but before I have the chance, she says: ‘My daughter Rosamund – Rosie – is eight. She’d love a big garden to run around in and we can’t afford that where we are now. I liked the pictures of your garden very much.’

  I suddenly remember Izzie’s delight on the very first day we moved into Fox Cottage, exploring the vast garden and orchard, announcing she was going to get guinea pigs, wobbling on her bike around the rather uneven path that tracked the perimeter of the garden. It was such a hot summer that year and she practically lived outside for those first blissful months. My heart seizes at the memory.

  ‘It’s the perfect garden for children,’ I admit. ‘Let’s just finish the downstairs tour and I’ll take you out there to see for yourself.’ I move to the back of the room. ‘Another door,’ I remark drily as I turn the large iron key in the lock. ‘This one leads to the section of the house that – once upon a time – was used for grain storage.’

  I lead her through the small, narrow corridor past the second downstairs loo in which sits the old-fashioned pull-chain lavatory. The paint on the walls is flaking away with the damp, and the carpet is blackened with mould in sections. If she’s still interested after this bit, I’ll start getting properly excited.

  ‘You’ll notice it needs a bit of work.’ I give a rather nervous laugh. ‘We obviously don’t really use this section to live in; it’s still a storage area right now, in fact! Not grain though, obviously.’

  We walk into the large room absolutely stuffed to the rafters with Adam’s belongings and, again, I see it through her eyes, and feel cross that I didn’t ask Adam to at least stack things more neatly.

  ‘My daughter’s boyfriend is between flats right now,’ I try to explain. ‘He asked if he could keep everything here for a while. I hadn’t anticipated any more viewings before Christmas, so I thought it would be all right to say yes. I apologise that it looks so… cluttered.’

  I watch her look in astonishment at the two free-standing pine wardrobes, stacked sofas, a bed with a bare mattress – duvet and pillow tossed onto it – a mountain bike, suitcases, a box of vinyl, a couple of amplifiers, two guitars and at least two dozen cardboard boxes. ‘I don’t think he’s sleeping here too, but it’s sometimes quite hard to tell,’ I remark, frowning at the bed. It looks like a dosshouse – why didn’t I notice this earlier? I decide I need to move her on, quickly. ‘Now through here is the barn, which you’ll have seen on the particulars has planning consent for conversion into a separate four-bedroom house.’ I pause, as she’s still looking open-mouthed at Adam’s sad collection of worldly goods. ‘Claire?’

  ‘Yes, I’m coming. Sorry.’

  ‘Adam – the same boy – also rents this space as an art studio.’ I throw over my shoulder, waiting for her to catch me up.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she says in disbelief, stepping into the cavernous room and starting to walk around it in wonder, rubbing her arms against the cold. ‘It’s enormous! This place goes on forever!’

  ‘Yes, it does a bit.’ I look around me and try to remember how I felt the first time I viewed the house, as she is now. I’d been enchanted by the barn. It had been going to be my studio – even, and this makes me want to laugh now, gallery – but as soon as I started teaching full-time up at the school, I stopped wanting to paint for pleasure.

  I watch Claire glance at the large, French windows set into the heavy stone walls – rotten as anything; I hope to God she isn’t going to touch them. Luckily, a distracting shaft of sunlight breaks through the cloud and illuminates Adam’s easel, with his work in progress set upon it, right in the centre of the room.

  It’s another of his disturbing seascapes, which is unfortunate, not helped by the mad scatter of half-squeezed tubes of oils he’s left littered on the floor. Only the upturned box next to the painting – covered in an old, stained towel – lays claim to some sort of ordered mind at work. His neat selection of brushes and palette knifes are clean and ready to start again.

  Stepping to the rear of the room, however, I jump to see an enormous oil canvas of a sheep’s skull I haven’t previously noticed, propped up at an angle against the saggy, faded old sofa on the back wall. Two gnarly horns curl up around the edge of the picture like they belong to Lucifer himself. I roll my eyes and sigh. Throw me a bone, here, Adam. You’re really not helping.

  ‘My goodness.’ Claire catches sight of it too. ‘That’s – arresting.’ But then she walks around to the other side of the sofa, frowns, bends down and peers closely at a much smaller canvas, at the front of several more stacked prints. ‘That’s lovely though.’

  I walk across to join her, removing my glasses to clean them on my apron for a better look.

  It’s a portrait of Izzie, copied from the photograph that has been carelessly tossed on the floor next to the painting. She is sat on this very sofa – only when it was new and the once-vibrant purple cushions plump – looking out of the windows. One leg is drawn up to her chest, long, red hair spilling loosely over her shoulders and the other hand propping up her head, tiredly; capturing her forever apparently on the verge of the release of sleep. Claire is right, it’s exquisite.

  ‘He should call that Day-dreaming,’ Claire remarks, obviously pleased with her pedestrian title suggestion. ‘How does he paint in here, it’s freezing.’

  ‘He has a small plug-in heater. He manages.’ I pick the photograph up, silently put it in my apron pocket and turn away, waiting by the door until Claire has finished looking. The painting has completely unsettled me and I have an overwhelming desire to get the rest of the viewing over and done with, so she’ll leave.

  ‘Where do those stairs lead to?’ She points at the open flight right along the left-hand wall, and the tiny hatch at the top.

  ‘Nowhere,’ I say tiredly. ‘Behind the door is a small mezzanine. You could just about squeeze into it, but that’s all. I wouldn’t though, I’m not sure the floor is sound – it’s the shed space below, where I keep the lawnmower and garden things. I wouldn’t want you to fall through.’

  She is looking at me, concerned. ‘Are you all right? You look a little pale.’ She reaches out and puts a steadying hand on my arm.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you. I think, after all, perhaps we’ll do the upstairs before the garden.’ I keep my own hand in my apron pocket, holding the picture of Izzie, my voice brusque with the guilt of having established any sort of rapport with this girl when my daughter is the one I ought to be thinking of. ‘Brace yourself.’

  ‘So every bedroom has got separate sinks and fitted wardrobes built into them?’ Claire says in astonishment, as we re-emerge back out onto the landing in the middle section of the house. ‘All seven of them?’

  ‘Back then it was the vogue,’ I explain. ‘Washing facilities in every room. I know it’s very old-fashioned now and the fixtures are all horribly dated, but at the time they were cutting edge, I can assure you. The only room that has an en suite is the master bedroom, which now belongs to my daughter.’ I force my tone to sound matter-of-fact. ‘It’s over here.’ I walk across the hall and pause outside the closed door. ‘Would you mind if I just check that she has gone out? I think she has, I just… don’t want to surprise her if not?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Claire waits politely as I knock softly. ‘Isobel? Can I come in?’

  There’s no answer. ‘I think we’re safe,’ I push the door slowly open.

  As the room is revealed, Claire gasps and steps past me.

  ‘This is so beautiful!’ She turns around on the spot in the elongated triangular eaves room. Clouds are rolling across the large, slightly open skylight that I had installed, at great expense, ten years ago now. I can hear our resident robin singing in the back garden, and the five-foot cherry blossom tree that I painted across the sloping
walls looks like it is dancing in the breeze, shedding pale pink petals in clouds of confetti, as birds of paradise take flight from the branches. ‘It’s like an enchanted tree house!’ Claire exclaims.

  I half smile. ‘Thank you. That’s the effect I was going for. It used to be a shut off, unused loft space over the kitchen and I had it converted. There’s a bathroom through there.’ I gesture at the closed door to our left. ‘Sometimes when it’s particularly windy outside, you can almost feel the room rocking you. But in a good way,’ I add hurriedly. ‘It’s just a very old house. The walls breathe in a way new properties don’t; the roof lifts slightly when there are gusts in the right direction. It’s all very normal and it’s stood for hundreds of years.’

  ‘You did this though? It’s stunning! Rosie would love it!’ Claire looks at the tree in wonder, then at the white sleigh bed, frilly pink duvet tucked in, cushions carefully arranged on top. I watch her eyes alight on the old-fashioned doll’s house, front neatly closed. On top of the full bookcase are the assorted cuddly toys, mermaids and unicorns, and when finally she notices the white built-in wardrobe in the right-hand corner on the back wall, she laughs, pointing at it. ‘There you go. No escape.’

  I shrug tiredly. ‘What can I tell you? As I said, it could use a little updating.’

  ‘Oh not at all! It’s the perfect dream bedroom for a little girl.’

  She smiles at me, and then I see the confusion flit across her face as it suddenly dawns on her that I am far too old to have a daughter the same age as her Rosie. I see her remember Adam’s adult belongings downstairs, the person I described as my daughter’s boyfriend. She hesitates and looks around her again.

  ‘I’m just going to close this now.’ I gesture at the skylight. ‘It’s getting a bit cold in here.’ I walk past her, reach under the bed and pull out the pole, pushing the skylight tightly shut with one practised movement, cutting off the birdsong, before I replace it back out of sight and straighten up. Claire is watching me carefully. I can see she has questions about Izzie, but isn’t quite brave enough to ask.