by John Marrs
He clutched the patch on his arm, subconsciously rubbing it. “You feel too much,” an acquaintance had once advised him. He’d wanted to protest but she was right. Perhaps it was good to feel nervous about what was inside that building.
The lure of a second chance became too great for Charlie to walk away from.
CHAPTER 8
SINÉAD, BRISTOL
He will grind you down to nothing.
Joanna’s words followed Sinéad like her own footprints in the snow. She wasn’t a person Sinéad knew well; in fact they had only met on a handful of occasions over the years. But she had got the measure of Sinéad and Daniel’s relationship. And she recognised something inside Sinéad that she was too reluctant to see for herself. For each day she spent with Daniel, another tiny piece of her former self was eroding.
The suggestion that she yearned for something more than the life Daniel allowed her played on her mind days later. Yet through misguided loyalty, a part of Sinéad still wanted to defend him. For a long time, she’d reasoned that his placing of her inside a gilded cage meant that he’d wanted to protect her, to shape her into a better version of herself. But Joanna’s warning was encouraging Sinéad to view their relationship from someone else’s perspective. And it was far less blinkered than her own.
There is a life to be had away from your husband, Joanna advised. But was there really? There had been before they met, Sinéad recalled, but it hadn’t been a notable one. Daniel was supposed to be the answer to her prayers. But what if there was something better for her beyond their marriage, something she’d been too shortsighted to have seen earlier?
She ran a fingertip along the double row of her false eyelashes to check that they were still in place. Daniel hated it when she was without them, yet he had been partially responsible for her need to wear them. Then she picked at the lunch he had packed for her in a Tupperware box as she sat alone in the office staff room. Today’s selection included a red apple, a plain yoghurt, a chicken sandwich, and a low-calorie granola bar. On the lid, a blue Post-it note read, No cheating—no chocolate! with a heart instead of a dot under the exclamation mark. It was his way of reminding her that he loved her enough to care about what she ate. Wasn’t it?
A pop-up advertisement appeared on her screen.
Click here to start your life again. Less than one percent of the British population can solve this puzzle. Can you?
Sinéad took a bite from her sandwich and absent-mindedly moved around random words, shapes, and letters until the puzzle made sense. It was complete in less than half a minute.
She recalled how she’d always hoped to replicate her late parents’ happy, loving marriage. Soon after she and Daniel had met, he’d convinced her that he was the one to save her from a lifetime of unhappiness following a string of bad relationship choices. She had been too willing to believe in love to realise she didn’t need someone else to make her happy.
Their attraction was immediate. His eyes were the lightest brown she had ever seen and his lips were plumper than hers. He was tanned and lean and next to him even then, she felt pale and shapeless. Yet for some reason, this beautiful, intelligent man had chosen her. It didn’t make sense that he hadn’t been snapped up already. And despite her friends’ warnings about the speed at which their relationship was developing, they were married within two months.
Sinéad glanced at their wedding photograph, the screensaver Daniel had put on her phone. She recalled the moment he saw her walking up the aisle. After choosing the dress, all she had wanted was to witness her husband-to-be’s reaction as he waited at the altar. Only when he turned his head, it wasn’t the grin she’d hoped for. If anything, he appeared a little disappointed. It was later in the day that he admitted he’d have picked something that suited her better.
An empty-battery symbol appeared and turned the device’s screen black. Instead of immediately putting it on charge, she was too preoccupied with reflecting on their early months of marriage. What began as Daniel’s suggestions of ways in which they could grow together became proposals only directed at her. They ranged from her taste in clothes and makeup to her attention to detail with housework, the books she read, the music she listened to, and the friends she chose. “This is what couples do,” Daniel assured her. “They try to better one another.”
Joanna’s voice echoed again. You don’t have to put up with this shit.
Sinéad complied with Daniel’s wishes because above all else, she wanted to make him happy. And when he was in control, he was just that. Occasionally, he might throw her off kilter with sudden praise following a well-cooked meal or a new outfit that pleased him. But gradually she recognised that he only offered her praise if it served his needs.
Her biggest sacrifice in the name of love had been her career. In her job as a space environment coordinator, she assisted in locating orbiting waste from used rockets and broken satellites that was at risk of colliding with working orbital technology. She determined what debris to recycle in space foundries and what to direct to burn up in the earth’s atmosphere. It was high-pressured and skilled and she loved it, but the three-hour round-trip commute into London had been impacting the time she spent with Daniel. Only now could she see what a mistake she’d made to have given it up on his suggestion and taken a more menial job closer to home so they could spend more time together.
There is more to you than what he allows you to have.
The only thing she had fought her corner for was their child. In her one act of persistence, she insisted they start trying for a family. She fell pregnant almost immediately but miscarried after a month. Twice more, nature dealt her cruel blows before Daniel demanded they take a break, suggesting her body was hostile and unsuited to nurturing life. “Perhaps it’s a sign that motherhood isn’t something you’re cut out for,” he said.
Suddenly Sinéad felt a sharp pain in her left breast and she cupped it, holding it for a minute. A series of images erupted, so she shut her eyelids tightly until they disappeared. And with her appetite now all but gone, she slipped her uneaten food into the recycling bin and returned to her desk.
“Shit, Daniel,” she muttered when she realised that she’d forgotten to call him at the time he’d designated. She placed her phone on its charging pad and looked at the clock on the wall—she was now a quarter of an hour late. And when the phone came back to life, she panicked when she noticed his six missed calls.
Sinéad hurried back into the toilets to call him privately, her smart watch buzzing to warn her of her rising pulse. If she didn’t come up with a satisfactory explanation for the delay and convince him of how sorry she was, his bad mood might stretch for days.
He answered after one ring but said nothing. Sinéad opened her mouth but just as she was about to speak, she heard Joanna’s voice again.
There is a life to be had away from your husband.
There is a life to be had.
Away from your husband.
Away.
And for the first time in her marriage, Sinéad chose not to apologise to keep the peace and hung up instead. His name flashed on her screen almost immediately, but she rejected it again. Then she left the bathroom, made her way back to her desk, and grabbed her handbag.
“Everything okay, Sinéad?” asked Richard, her manager, from his desk in the corner of the room. Richard was an old friend of Daniel’s and another of her husband’s sycophants.
“Never been better,” she announced. “And now I’m going home.” She didn’t await his reply before exiting the building. It wouldn’t be long before Richard called Daniel to report her unusual behaviour. But it didn’t matter because Sinéad wouldn’t be returning. By the time she reached their apartment ten minutes later, Daniel had called another seven times.
There is a life to be had away from your husband.
And there is, she realised. It had taken someone else to lead the way
to the door, but now all she had to do was open it. Brimming with anticipation and fretfulness, Sinéad packed a suitcase with clothes and toiletries and considered where she might go. It had been too long since she’d emancipated herself from the friends who’d warned her about Daniel’s controlling behaviour. She was too ashamed of her conduct to simply turn up on their doorstep with an apology and a plea for a roof for the night.
Her phone vibrated and, assuming it was Daniel, she was going to ignore it. However, it was an email.
FAO: SINÉAD KELLY
Private and Confidential
Dear Mrs. Kelly, following your successful completion of our puzzle, we are offering you a unique opportunity to start your life afresh. Please contact us as soon as possible to discuss.
It’s a hoax, she told herself, shaking her head. Yet she found that her finger was hovering over the telephone number listed.
CHAPTER 9
EMILIA
For the second time in a handful of days, Emilia awoke to find herself lying in an unfamiliar room. Only unlike before, it didn’t panic her. With its off-white, yellowing walls, stiff sheets, and blue plastic chairs, she immediately knew this was a National Health Service building and not a private facility. She turned and squinted at a window looking out into the corridor. From between vertical blind slats she saw and heard nurses and patients going about their business.
Her head pounded sharp and heavy as the events of how she’d ended up there slotted together. She recalled escaping the last institution through corridors and a tunnel before reaching London’s streets. And she remembered losing her footing and being hit by an oncoming vehicle. But in trying to push her recollections back further, she remained unable to shed any more light on anything about her past, besides her name.
Emilia ran her hands across her head and found a tiny lump no wider than a few millimetres on the crown and a raised bump the size of a large marble along the hairline. Her left side and thigh were sore to the touch and likely bruised. To her relief, there were no debilitating plaster casts. She had escaped lightly. A drip had been inserted into a cannula in the back of her hand and a wireless heart monitor silently captured her rhythm. For a few moments, Emilia allowed herself to relax, before a chill ran through her when she recalled the cause of the accident—she had been trying to escape four blurred figures following her.
Who were they and what did they want from me? Were they following me from the first building? If so, what did I do to make them want to take me back? And who am I?
With no immediate answers, a frustrated Emilia distracted herself by taking in the rest of the room. A second external window offered a view across the hospital rooftops with sporadically scattered air-conditioning units and aerials. And on the sill was a vase of fresh pink flowers alongside a card. Someone must know I’m here! she thought. They can help me piece it all together!
But before she could read who it was from, the door to her room opened. Two casually attired female doctors, identifiable via lanyards hanging from their necks, appeared with a male uniformed nurse and somebody else typing notes into a tablet who read from a digital clipboard secured to the wall above her head.
“Good afternoon, Emilia. Is it okay if I call you that?” began the man whose name badge read Dr. Fazul Choudary, Senior Consultant.
“How do you know my name?” she replied.
“You gave it to the Resus team when you were admitted three days ago.”
“And where am I?”
“King William hospital in Dulwich, South London.”
“What else did I tell you when I was brought in?”
“That you couldn’t remember who you were but that you were being followed.”
Emilia nodded. For some reason, upon her admission she had held back from telling them she had only just escaped from somewhere else. And she was reluctant to rectify it now. “What’s wrong with me?”
Dr. Choudary consulted the notes before he continued. “Physically, very little aside from some minor cuts and bruising. There was a risk of brain swelling, which is why you were kept sedated until this morning. You were fortunate that the bodywork of an autonomous vehicle is designed to cause minimal impact in the event of an accident. However, mentally—and this is only according to your preliminary psychological evaluation and from what you told us on admission—you may be suffering from episodic memory loss. This means that while you know how to walk and talk and carry out bodily functions, your brain is struggling to encode and retrieve what you have done on a daily basis throughout your life. You can’t figuratively go back in time to a specific event and remember it.”
The diagnosis was no surprise, but it was welcome; there had been moments when she thought she might be losing her mind. However, it left her none the wiser as to how she might rediscover her identity.
“Will it return?”
“In most patients, it does, given time. But we would like to perform an MRI scan of your brain to rule out any underlying cause.”
“No,” Emilia said quickly. Her immediate refusal took both Dr. Choudary and his team by surprise. Something deep inside her was warning her not to allow anyone insight into the contents of her head.
“It’s a non-invasive procedure that I would strongly advise you to consider . . .” Dr. Choudary said, but Emilia was adamant and shook her head. “Okay,” he continued. “But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t tell you I’d like to discuss this with you again.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s not up for debate. Just tell me what I need to do to get my memory back so I know who I am.”
“There’s no one-fix solution, as it can vary from patient to patient. But after further tests, we will have a greater idea of what might work for you, such as hypnosis, acupuncture, neurofeedback, bilateral sounds . . . there’s a lot we can do, but none of it is an exact science.”
Emilia became tearful after their departure. The notion that she might never again know who she was terrified her. She turned to lie on her side but a sharp pain tore through her rib cage, stealing her breath. Slowly, she slid further down the mattress and brought her knees to her chest.
The pain medication must have eased her to sleep because she awoke with a start when she sensed that someone else was in the room with her. Without thinking, she clenched her fists, ready to lash out until she could see her visitor properly. He was a tall man, with dark, knotted eyebrows and thin lips. He had high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He wore no lanyard around his neck and held no medical device in his hand, suggesting he was not a staff member.
He offered an audible sigh of relief as he approached her bed and leaned over her.
“Thank God,” he began. He gently manoeuvred her hair to one side and planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. Emilia pushed herself backwards.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. His muddled expression suggested it wasn’t the response he had been expecting.
“I . . . I’m sorry,” he said, and edged away.
“Who are you?” Emilia asked.
“Do you not remember me?”
“Would I be asking if I did?”
“I’m Ted,” he said, and offered Emilia a nervous smile. “I’m your husband.”
CHAPTER 10
BRUNO, EXETER
The room was so silent; it was as if no world existed beyond theirs. Bruno lost all concept of time and wished they could remain in their own private universe forever.
He couldn’t lift his gaze from his son, who was sitting on the floor in the centre of the dimly lit room. He could just about make out Louie’s eyes, wide open and hypnotised by the twinkling lights as they danced across the ceiling and walls. Louie’s mouth formed an O shape, indicating that he was calm and relaxed. His father, however, was the opposite.
Bruno was grateful for the gloom, unwilling to display emotion ev
en if it was in front of a boy who didn’t recognise it in others. He slipped into the corridor outside just as the family’s support worker approached, flanked by a younger trainee.
“Good morning,” began Cally. “We were just coming to check on you guys.” She instinctively picked up on his upset and asked her student to keep an eye on Louie in the sensory area as she led Bruno away. Inside a staff classroom, a whiteboard fixed to the wall read Coping with Autism Tantrums and listed associated words like meltdown and self-harm. Bruno was experienced in them all.
“You think you’ve failed him, don’t you?” she asked.
Bruno nodded.
“I promise you, every parent feels the same when they walk through our doors.”
“I told myself that no matter how hard it gets, I’d never give up on my son. I wouldn’t abandon him. But that’s just what I’m doing.”
“You’re not, though. You are putting his needs above your own. Your circumstances mean you’re unable to look after him yourself but it doesn’t mean you’re abandoning him. This is Exeter’s best facility for young people on the autistic spectrum. Louie will be cared for and supervised twenty-four hours a day by staff who’ve spent their careers training to help kids like him. He will thrive here, I promise you.”
“But what happens when the money runs out? You know I can only afford six months of care.”
“Let’s worry about that further down the line when we need to. Now, shall we take him to his living quarters and settle him in properly?”
Returning to where he’d left Louie, Bruno placed an arm around his son’s shoulder and encouraged him out of the room and into one of a dozen modules that made up the centre. Two other under-eighteens would be sharing Louie’s living quarters alongside three live-in carers working round-the-clock shifts. At twelve years of age, Louie was the youngest resident but had the most needs.
