The First Time Lauren Pailing Died

by Alyson Rudd

  Miriam laughed. ‘I’ve lost the plot, I think,’ she said. ‘I have a patient who believes she has landed in a new life, boom, and, because I think I believe her, I’ve been double checking her story.’

  ‘And?’ Samantha said.

  ‘And it still rings true.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And, yes, “and” is a good point to raise because I don’t know if it is best to let her know there is evidence she is telling the truth or to try to guide her away from dwelling on it.’

  ‘I thought you thought that all patients should face up to the truth and that your job was to help them through the difficulties of that because once they had unshackled themselves of the guilt or the pain or whatever they could live properly.’

  Miriam felt a surge of love for a sister who had not only listened for all these years but also understood.

  ‘You’re right, of course, but if I believe her then she doesn’t need me, she needs a detective or a scientist or a hybrid scientist-PI.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Samantha said. ‘It doesn’t matter what the problem is, your role is the same; to make the journey to sanity or happiness smoother. You got room for a maple syrup pancake?’

  ‘No, you have room and I say I don’t and then I order a banana and chocolate sauce one at the last minute.’

  They toasted tradition and smiled and Miriam produced the glossy postcard from Golden Square.

  ‘She thinks she was married to him, the one in the blue tie.’

  Samantha took out her reading glasses and, to Miriam’s bemusement, groaned.

  ‘I’m representing him in his divorce,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘And his wife definitely doesn’t live up North.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’ Miriam said.

  ‘Oh, I’ve conquered the advertising world,’ Samantha said. ‘They all come to my firm now.’

  * * *

  ‘I really like this room,’ Lauren said. ‘It’s incredibly peaceful and elegant.’

  ‘And it reminds you of somewhere,’ Miriam said.

  ‘I have lots of that in my life right now,’ Lauren sighed, ‘the things I should know well are strange and the strange things are familiar.’

  Miriam felt sick with nerves. Under her A4 pad was the shiny postcard and the letter addressed to Luke.

  ‘Officially, Lauren,’ she said, ‘our sessions come to an end today.’

  Lauren’s eyes widened.

  ‘Don’t worry, they have hardly been run-of-the-mill sessions, but I’d like us to see each other as friends, or at least for you to see me as someone who can help you through this, so I need to officially sign you off.’

  Lauren was deeply touched.

  ‘I would like that enormously,’ she said.

  ‘Good, good,’ Miriam said, playing for time.

  Lauren smiled, waiting for Miriam to ask how she had been. Miriam fiddled with her papers.

  ‘I went to London last week to see my sister and I– ’ she coughed ‘and I tried to track down bits of your London life.’

  Lauren frowned.

  ‘I don’t understand, it doesn’t exist here,’ she said.

  ‘But it does, my dear,’ Miriam said and she pulled out the letter addressed to Luke.

  ‘He doesn’t live there any more, but he did live there and he left behind this letter. I thought it might help. I might be wrong.’

  Lauren ran her finger across the address and remembered, hazily, how frustrated Luke had been about the way his mother wrote to him about his father.

  ‘I won’t open it,’ she said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Of course,’ Miriam said, ‘but the postmark is almost four years ago so there’s no harm if you do.’

  Lauren breathed in deeply. ‘Did you find anything else?’

  Miriam slid the postcard out from under her notepad, unable to prevent her cheeks from flushing pink.

  ‘I didn’t speak to Tim but I think I found his office and this tiny picture of him.’

  Lauren gasped and devoured the images on the card.

  ‘Yes, that looks like him, the one in the blue tie,’ she said. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means I believe you,’ Miriam said.

  * * *

  The next morning her pillow was wet. She had wept in her sleep, dreaming of the baby she had not met. She was glad Miriam believed her but the letter and the postcard had acted like a spoon stirring up her memories, mixing them, confusing her.

  Simon had woken in the night and felt the tears silently seeping into his wife’s pillow and felt helpless and unable to broach the subject the next morning.

  On her way home from the college where she did find some respite as she enjoyed the teaching so much, she called in to her father’s office.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ Bob said. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I was just wondering about your work, Dad, and if this is still the head office?’

  ‘Yes, although we have a presence, as the directors like to put it, in most cities now.’

  ‘And does George have an office here?’

  ‘Of course, it’s in the new annexe, very plush.’

  ‘Can I see the new annexe?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Bob said, ‘although it really isn’t all that interesting.’

  Bob used his passkey to gain entrance, and a woman, clearly more significant than a receptionist, beamed at them both.

  ‘Just showing my daughter the new building, Miranda,’ he said.

  ‘Is George in?’ Lauren asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  ‘Actually, he is – which is a rare thing these days,’ Miranda said.

  ‘Do you think I could just pop in? For one minute?’

  Both Bob and Miranda were puzzled but she knew how much George valued Bob so she nodded.

  ‘Let me just check,’ she said, and she did that light knowing tap the best assistants know how to execute and opened the door to George’s office.

  ‘Go straight in,’ she said.

  George stood immediately and decided to kiss Lauren’s cheek before indicating that she sit in the chair the other side of his desk.

  She sat down tentatively.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘This is hard for me, and possibly rude of me, but I have to say something just in case you can help. I’m not holding out much hope but…’

  George smiled. ‘Fire away,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been having a tough time of late, feeling like I don’t belong here, and for some reason you and your family and what you have been through are the settled parts of my memory. And I wondered if you had any idea why that might be?’

  George blinked.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting that,’ he said. He looked at the clock above her head. ‘Do you think you could explain more within the next ten minutes?’

  ‘Only if you promise not to tell anyone.’

  ‘Deal,’ he said, half amused, half perturbed.

  Lauren had practised what she would say if allowed and so she calmly told him about waking up disorientated, the eventual acceptance of another life, and the fact that she felt no memory lag or confusion when it came to George and his father.

  ‘And I feel there is something important I should tell you that isn’t about all this and I wasn’t going to speak to you until I had worked out what it was but then I thought maybe if we do speak it will trigger the reason.’

  George tapped his fingers together.

  ‘I have to make a few calls I can’t put off but, look, I’m here on Friday. Do you fancy lunch?’

  She would have to lie to the college about a doctor’s appointment but she didn’t care.

  ‘Would you really do that for me?’ she asked.

  He smiled.

  ‘Miranda let you into my office and she has never yet made the wrong call.’

  Bob had gone back to his own desk.

  ‘What was all that about?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’ll fill you in later, Dad,’ she sai
d, with not a clue how she would manage to do that.

  Vera

  True to his nasty nature, Colin Talbot sought to sue the Pailings for contributory negligence. True to the hypocrisy in his soul he was, at the same time, content to allow Bob and Vera to care for Daisy. The social worker was aghast and agitated but astute enough to see that living alongside Hope was the best place for a young girl who really ought to have been more morose but somehow summoned a sweet smile each time they met.

  Vera was kind and attentive around the girls but withdrawn the rest of the time.

  ‘How could I not see what was coming?’ she pleaded with Bob every evening, and her thoughts were clogged by attempting to interpret Mrs Talbot’s logic. Hope had saved Vera so why had Daisy not saved Mrs Talbot? Grief, it seemed, had many guises.

  Struggling to sleep, Vera sat in front of Lauren’s box of drawings. It occurred to her that if there was a place in Lauren’s mind for a life in which they had owned a dog then perhaps there was a place where David had not owned a motorbike. Mrs Talbot thought she was meeting David in heaven but perhaps she was meeting him right here but not quite here. A here where her son was alive and well. It was a fleeting thought and the next morning she had forgotten it altogether.

  One thing that was clear to Vera was that Mrs Talbot had believed Daisy to be safe with her and so she decided she would fight to make sure Daisy could become a member of their family.

  Vera had the sycamore felled and a cherry tree planted in its stead. One day she would tell Daisy about everything. One day she expected Daisy to ask her why her mother did not love her enough, why her mother chose to be with David, but Daisy, it seemed, had accepted she was less important a long time ago and it helped that she knew first hand just how adorable and adored her brother had been.

  Mr Talbot had banned the Pailings from his wife’s funeral but they had held a small service in their garden, which Daisy pronounced the more beautiful of the two events. Their home was altogether sunnier for the addition of Daisy, whose flair for the arts complemented Hope’s mathematical strengths and they each urged the other towards better grades in their weaker subjects at GCSE.

  Not once did Mr Talbot visit Daisy in her new home, not once did Daisy seek to discuss the fact her father had a new wife and a new baby and had given her up without even a hint of the fight Bob and Vera had feared from him. Bob preferred to think of Mr Talbot as irreparably damaged by the death of his son but Vera had made up her mind the first time she had heard about him that he was ‘a nasty piece of work’.

  The years passed. So fond did they all become of Daisy that when George and Felicity’s son was born, they gave him the name Oliver Peter David Stanning. His christening was the only time any of them had seen Daisy properly and completely sob and upon being told why, the vicar felt a surge in the goodness still abounding in the world and that his church still had a place for selfless love.

  And then one day the two girls appeared together in the still slightly too formal living room and announced they wanted to attend boarding school together for their A level years and Vera and Bob both gawped in astonishment and slight terror but neither shifted the blame to Daisy nor lamented her influence on Hope. They dropped them off, fees paid for both by Bob, at the grand granite edifice that would be their home from home and Vera was almost too disbelieving to weep, but weep she did as they drove home, and she was amused to discover that some of the tears were shed for how much she would miss Daisy.

  She turned to her husband and was surprised to see that he was smiling.

  ‘Bob?’ she said.

  ‘I know how you feel about Connie’s death,’ he said ‘but, my love, just think what you’ve given Daisy.’

  Vera pushed her head back into the car seat and closed her eyes. She had given Daisy a sister, which meant she had given Hope a sister.

  She opened her eyes and gazed at the sky ahead and, instead of feeling she had let Lauren down, she felt she had honoured her and a small swathe of what had been a steady grief was, in that moment, swept away.

  She turned again to Bob and this time it was her turn to smile.

  Tim

  He found a rhythm to life. He worked long hours but was amenable to a drink before heading home. He spent all Saturday with Amber, and Sundays would find him invited to family meals with Bea or at his father’s house, where Lottie could be relied upon to dote upon his daughter.

  Vera and Bob still travelled down but usually stayed just the one night and, as all they had in common, apart from Amber, was the tragedy of Lauren, there was little in the way of revelry when they sat down for some food after Amber was in bed.

  ‘Your boss was in my office the other day, Bob,’ Tim said. ‘He was looking at Lauren’s display and it made me think, I’m not sure you’ve ever seen it, have you?’

  It was all he could do to stop Vera and Bob leaping into a taxi there and then but they turned up at noon the next day with Emily and Amber.

  ‘Do people ever just come in to look at this display?’ Vera asked Bella. ‘I mean, people who have no meetings here.’

  ‘One or two, not too many because it’s a bit obvious we are a business and not a gallery, but it is an amazing display, isn’t it?’

  ‘What a nice girl,’ Vera said as they travelled back up North. ‘Do you think Tim will ever remarry? Do you think we would cope if he did?’

  Bob mulled it over. ‘I think we would see more of Amber if he did. It’s the way these things work, I’m sure.’

  Lauren

  To her surprise, George said they should meet at the newly opened American Diner. Even more surprising was the delight he took in explaining the menu and how delicious the various relishes were to accompany burgers that could be cooked to order.

  ‘You can even have a medium-rare one,’ he said. ‘And the milkshakes are amazing.’

  Men, she thought, no matter how successful, are still boys, and she noted how he gazed at the giant juke box and she guessed he was imagining a world in which he was an American college boy at Harvard, bunking off class, about to drive off in a cherry-red Chevrolet.

  ‘You are so nice to spare me some time, George,’ she said.

  ‘It’s good to get a break, chat to someone different,’ he said.

  ‘You might wish you hadn’t bothered,’ she said. ‘This feels like when you see someone off the telly in the street and you think you know them and stupidly smile at them and say hi and then realise they have never seen you before. I feel I know you or ought to know you and I also feel safe in your company. And that must sound very awkward. But I want to be honest.’

  ‘OK,’ George mumbled. ‘Fire away.’

  The waitress took their order, which cheered up George, and then she leaned back, aware that to lean forward was to act conspiratorially. Leaning forward was what weirdos did in film about ghosts.

  ‘I’ve slipped into this world after dying in another one and everything is supposed to be so similar that I don’t notice but everything is different so I do notice and it’s really, really, confusing and upsetting and draining, actually, but your father’s disappearance is exactly the same and you seem exactly the same. Except I knew you a bit better before. You came to see me in London. I worked in London. I can’t recall what we talked about though. I’m hoping by sitting here I do remember.’

  The milkshakes arrived. George took a slurp.

  ‘Did you work for me in London?’ he asked so placidly that Lauren chuckled.

  ‘No, I worked in advertising. With a man I ended up marrying.’

  ‘Not Simon, then.’

  ‘No, not Simon.’ She took the postcard out of her bag.

  ‘I married him,’ she said. ‘The one in the blue tie.’

  ‘So he exists, here?’

  ‘It looks that way,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe you did some advertising for me?’ George said.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  Their burgers arrived along with a tray of multi-coloured relishes
.

  It was a relief that George was so calm – and worrying. She wondered if he was humouring her as a favour to her father. Or, possibly, he was bored.

  George chewed thoughtfully.

  ‘If I came to see you in London there but not here, then not everything is the same about me, is it?’ he said.

  ‘True,’ she said, ‘but it feels the same. I’m not conflicted with you.’

  ‘Well, it’s an interesting puzzle,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I’m picking my brother up from the station.’ George suddenly froze then frowned. ‘Do you know Harry, my brother?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know what he does?’

  ‘Nope, although Dad has mentioned that he’s extremely bright, a scientist, I think he said.’

  ‘A physicist,’ George said. ‘Was at Cambridge, now at Imperial College. He stopped studying for a bit when Dad went missing and I made a promise to, well, to Dad, I suppose, to make sure he didn’t go off the rails. Sometimes I think I went too far. All he does is research. He’s obsessed.’

  ‘OK,’ Lauren said.

  ‘You should come with me to the station.’

  ‘I should?’

  ‘Yes, I think you should.’

  She followed in her car and waited in it while George collected his brother. Once Harry was in the passenger seat, George tapped on her window.

  ‘Follow us to The Hare,’ he said.

  The pub was a five-minute drive away and had a pretty beer garden overflowing with dahlias even more colourful than the diner’s relishes. While George bought some shandy for himself, lemonade for her and a pint of bitter for his brother, Harry looked intently at Lauren.

  ‘George says you’ve had an experience of another world,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Yes,’ she said defiantly. ‘Why does he think we should meet?’

  ‘It’s an area of interest to me,’ he said, ‘although not in the terms George explained.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

  ‘Well, there is a many-worlds interpretation that helps to explain the randomness of our universe. People tend to think of this in terms of parallel universes. You can, for example, be alive in one and dead in another. At least, George says that’s what you think has happened to you.’