In a Dark, Dark Wood(51)

‘Listen,’ I try to sit up against the sliding shifting pillows. ‘Listen, the police outside the door – are they here for me?’

She looks uncomfortable and her gaze slides off to the small square of glass as she sets out Rice Crispies in a little carton, a jug of milk and a single clementine. ‘They’re investigating the accident,’ she says at last. ‘I’m sure they’ll want tae speak to you, but the doctor has to sign you off. I’ve told them, they’re not barging into a hospital ward at this hour. They’ll have tae wait.’

‘I heard …’ I swallow, hard, my throat hurting as if something is trying to escape – a sob or a scream. ‘I heard them say something about a d-death …’

‘Och!’ She looks annoyed, banging the locker drawer shut with unnecessary force. ‘They shouldna be worriting you, with your poor head.’

‘But it’s true? Someone died?’

‘I can’t say about that. I cannae discuss other patients.’

‘Is it true?’

‘I’ll have tae ask you tae calm down,’ she says, and spreads out her hands in a professionally soothing gesture that makes me want to scream. ‘It’s not good for your head to be getting upset like this.’

‘Upset? One of my friends is probably dead, and you’re telling me I shouldn’t be upset? Who? For God’s sake, who? And why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember what happened before the accident?’

‘It’s quite common,’ she says, her voice still in that strange soothing cadence, as if she’s speaking to a small child, or someone hard of understanding. ‘Following a head injury. It’s tae do with the way the brain transfers short-term to long-term memory. If something interrupts the process you can lose a bit of time.’

Oh God, I must remember. I must remember what happened because someone is dead, and the police are outside, they are going to come and ask me, and how can I know, how can I know what I’m saying, what I’m revealing, if I don’t know what happened?

I see myself, running, running through the forest with the blood on my hands and on my face and on my clothes …

‘Please,’ I say, and my voice is close to cracking, close to pleading, and I hate myself for being so weak and needy. ‘Please tell me, please help me, what’s happened? What’s happened to my friends? Why was I covered in such a lot of blood? My head wound wasn’t that bad. Where did all the blood come from?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says softly, and there’s real compassion in her voice this time. ‘I don’t know, pet. Let me get the doctor and perhaps he can tell you more. In the meantime, I want you to eat some breakfast, you’ve got to keep your strength up and the doctor will want to see an appetite.’

And then she backs out of the door with the trolley in front of her, and the door swings shut, and I am alone with my plastic bowl of Rice Crispies popping and clicking away as they soak into sugary mush.

I should get up. I should force my weak, woolly limbs to do their duty, and I should swing them out of bed and march into the corridor and demand answers from those police officers outside. But I don’t. I just sit there, and tears roll down my face, and drip off my chin into the Rice Crispies, and the smell of the clementine is heady and overripe, reminding me of something I cannot remember, and cannot forget.

Please, I think, please. Pull yourself together, you stupid bitch. Get up. Find out what happened. Find out who’s dead.

But I don’t move. And not just because my head hurts, and my legs hurt, and my muscles feel like wet tissue.

I don’t move because I am afraid. Because I don’t want to hear the name the police are going to say.

And because I am afraid they are here for me.





20


THE BRAIN DOESN’T remember well. It tells stories. It fills in the gaps, and implants those fantasies as memories.

I have to try to get the facts.

But I don’t know if I’m remembering what happened, or what I want to have happened. I am a writer. I’m a professional liar. It’s hard to know when to stop, you know? You see a gap in the narrative, you want to fill it with a reason, a motive, a plausible explanation.

And the harder I push, the more the facts dissolve beneath my fingers …

I know that I woke with a jump. I don’t know what time it was, but it was still dark. Beside me Nina was sitting up in bed, her dark eyes wide and glittering.

‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered.

I nodded. Footsteps on the landing. A door opening very softly.

My heart was beating in my throat as I pushed back the duvet and grabbed my dressing gown. I remembered the kitchen door swung wide, the footsteps in the snow.

We should have checked the rest of the house.

At the door I stood listening for a second, and then opened it with infinite caution. Clare and Flo were standing outside, their eyes wide, faces bleached pale with fear. Flo was holding the gun.

‘Did you hear something?’ I whispered, as low as I could. Clare gave a single, sharp nod, and pointed to the stairs, her finger stabbing downwards. I listened hard, trying to still my shaky breathing and thudding heart. There was a scratching sound, and then a clear, definite thunk, as of a door being softly closed. There was someone down there.