Stolen

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Not really, only the very last bit as I felt the shingle scraping me. But I can remember you speaking to me and putting something warm around me. Even that’s cloudy, like a dream. I think I only became really aware of what was going on around me once I got here.’

  ‘Have you recovered any memories yet?’ he asked. ‘I read in the papers you were a hairdresser and you worked on a cruise ship. Did you have a boyfriend?’

  ‘I have remembered some things, like the place I used to work in Brighton and the people I knew there. But everything since then is still all a blank.’

  ‘I suppose if you had a boyfriend he would’ve claimed you by now,’ David said.

  Lotte smiled shyly. ‘Not if I was mean to him! Or worse still, he may be responsible for me being in the sea!’

  ‘I can’t imagine any man even thinking about hurting you,’ David said.

  ‘Well, that one who came in here earlier hadn’t come to bring me a bunch of grapes,’ she said with a sigh. She looked at him hard, almost as if she was trying to decide if she could trust him with a confidence.

  ‘I wish I knew what this is all about. It’s been a horrible day. First the doctor told me I’d had a baby in the last couple of months. How can I not remember that?’ she blurted out. ‘I’m so worried about it being all alone and hurt, and now there is someone trying to kill me. Why? What can I have done?’

  The baby added another even more horrifying dimension to her ordeal and David wished he dared scoop her up in his arms and hug her, but he was afraid that would frighten her further.

  ‘I’m so sorry, it must be awful for you,’ he said lamely, very aware that a missing baby was just about the most serious problem any mother could face, but unable to find the words to express that. ‘But I’m sure the police will sort it all out, and the doctors here will get your memory back for you.’

  A nurse opened the door and told him his visit was up.

  ‘Can I come back again to see you?’ he asked Lotte.

  ‘Of course you can,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Can I bring you anything? Food, shampoo or anything?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, I have a couple of friends from Brighton who have got that covered,’ she said. ‘Just bring yourself.’

  As David left, he glanced back and she gave him a little wave of her hand. He knew right then that he’d be gutted if a boyfriend did turn up.

  Lotte was violently sick during the night. She only just managed to get out of bed and into the bathroom attached to her room before the retching began.

  Frightened by it, she pressed the bell to call a nurse.

  ‘It’ll be shock that’s brought it on,’ the nurse who answered said in sympathy, as she wiped Lotte’s sweaty brow. ‘You’d have to be made of steel not to react to someone trying to kill you. But you can rest assured it won’t happen again. The policeman outside has been given orders he can’t leave for any reason until he is replaced by someone else.’

  Even after the sickness had stopped, Lotte was still shivering one minute, then overheating the next, and as she lay in the dark feeling wretched, tears rolled down her cheeks because she felt so terribly alone.

  Almost everything she had remembered about her life so far had proved it to be a miserable one, and although Simon, Adam, Dale and Scott had all claimed she was liked and loved by many, she had still ended up half drowned on a beach. That suggested there must be something deeply repellent about her that had made her a target for hate.

  Her parents didn’t like her, there was no boyfriend. And someone wanted her dead.

  But far, far worse to her was that she’d had a baby, yet until the doctor told her, she hadn’t the faintest inkling about it. While she could accept without any guilt that she couldn’t remember anything else in the past few years, she had a terrible sense of shame at not having some fine-tuned undeletable memory of her child.

  She’d always been told that mothers had a sixth sense where their babies were concerned, so why wasn’t hers working? Just a couple of months old but she’d already failed it.

  Supposing it turned out she’d run away and left the baby alone? A baby couldn’t live long without milk, and it could die before the police managed to find it. That would be murder, surely?

  Not to know the sex of her baby, who the father was, or anything about it at all, was so frustrating that she felt like screaming and battering her head against a wall.

  At ten the next morning one of the nurses popped in to tell Lotte they’d just had a phone call from Simon. ‘He said he’d like to come over this afternoon and tidy up your hair. I said I thought you’d be fine about it. Was I right?’

  Lotte nodded weakly. A couple of police had already been in to see her this morning, asking her more questions about the attack the previous evening. The attack and then the sickness during the night had left her feeling really rough, and she certainly didn’t care what her hair looked like, but she desperately needed to talk to someone who knew her well. And Sundays were really the only time Simon was free to visit. When he’d come earlier in the week he’d had to cancel several of his clients’ appointments.

  While Lotte was having a bath earlier, she had noticed her stomach was flabby and there were some stretch marks too, which was proof she really had given birth. But who had hacked off her hair, and why? It didn’t make any sense to do that if they had planned to kill her. Unless of course they just wanted to humiliate her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ the nurse asked, perhaps sensing her anxiety. ‘I heard what happened yesterday – it must have been awful.’

  ‘I’m fine now,’ Lotte lied. ‘I’ll be even better with my hair cut properly.’

  Simon arrived at two carrying a large red holdall. ‘I’ve got all the stuff to make you gorgeous again,’ he said, giving her a hug.

  Putting the holdall on the bed, he got out a present wrapped in silver paper and trimmed with a purple bow. ‘This is from everyone at the salon.’

  Lotte opened it to find two pairs of silky pyjamas, one pink, one turquoise. ‘That’s wonderful,’ she said with an appreciative smile. ‘I feel hideous in this hospital gown.’

  Simon dug further into the holdall and pulled out a small carrier bag. ‘This is from Adam and me, just some things we knew you’d need.’

  Lotte peeped in and saw a pair of slippers, a packet of three pairs of knickers, face cream and various cosmetics. Suddenly she couldn’t hold back her tears.

  ‘What on earth is it?’ Simon asked in alarm. ‘Was I overstepping the mark getting personal stuff? I’m sorry, I was just getting what I thought you’d need.’

  ‘It was so very kind of you,’ Lotte sobbed out. ‘Just like you to be so thoughtful. You haven’t overstepped the mark, it was just that after all the bad things that have happened, I didn’t expect anything lovely ever again.’

  Simon hugged her tightly to his chest and let her cry until she was ready to tell him what had been going on.

  She began with the previous night’s attempt on her life, telling the story baldly with hiccuping sobs. From there she went on to say that she felt whoever hacked off her hair was trying to humiliate her, and finally she told him that the doctor said she’d had a baby.

  Simon’s jaw dropped. ‘Hell, babe! That’s too much for anyone to take in all at once,’ he gasped. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  He was silent for what seemed a very long time to Lotte, sitting on the bed looking blankly ahead. ‘I’m OK, Simon,’ she ventured. ‘I remembered about you and Adam, so I’ll remember everything else before long.’

  ‘Your amnesia isn’t as worrying as this man trying to hurt you,’ he said. ‘Have they caught him?’

  Lotte shook her head and then explained about David Mitchell turning up in the nick of time and going after the man. ‘Thank heavens for him! A few more minutes and I think he would’ve throttled me.’

  ‘No wonder that policeman outside questioned me and searched my bag like I was a suspected Jack the Ripper!’ S
imon said.

  ‘I’m so scared, Simon,’ she admitted. ‘Not so much of the man who tried to kill me, I believe the police will protect me, but about the baby. I can’t bear the thought I don’t remember the birth, who the father was, but most of all I’m terrified there’s no one looking after the baby now.’

  ‘But surely there’s a record of his or her birth?’ Simon exclaimed, dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief.

  ‘The police can’t find any. The policeman who came in earlier today said they thought the birth may have been in France, and that I was coming back to England in the boat, and either I jumped or was pushed out. They’ve sent some men over there to investigate.’

  ‘You poor love,’ Simon said, and put his arms around her again and rocked her. ‘This is nightmarish stuff, but the police will leave no stone unturned. Are they going to put it in the papers?’

  ‘I think it may be in the Sunday papers already, and on the news tonight,’ she said. ‘Certainly all the nationals tomorrow.’

  ‘People will respond to a missing baby,’ he said firmly. ‘I bet the police will be inundated with information. And you’ve recovered so much memory already, I’m sure the rest will come back pretty soon.’

  ‘Dr Percival, the neurologist, will be coming round a bit later to see me again,’ she said.

  ‘Then I’d better finish making you gorgeous so he falls in love with you like everyone else does,’ Simon said, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Then he’ll go the extra mile for you.’

  Half an hour later, with her hair washed and conditioned, Simon had her sitting on a chair, a gown around her shoulders and another on the floor beneath her to catch the hair he was snipping off. He had been unusually silent while washing her hair and Lotte guessed he felt as helpless as she did.

  ‘Why on earth would anyone hack off such lovely hair?’ he said suddenly, proving that he had been mulling it over. ‘It was half-way down your back when you left Kutz’s, so sleek and shiny everyone admired it.’

  ‘It seemed to me it might have been a punishment,’ Lotte said.

  ‘I can’t imagine you doing anything bad enough to justify such a punishment,’ he said as he ran a little hair gel through it with his fingers. ‘But at least it will be easy to look after now, and it looks great.’

  Lotte thought she looked like an elf with the feathery cut all around her face, but she liked it.

  ‘It makes you look even younger,’ Simon said, looking at her intently as he whipped the gown from her shoulders. ‘Now, off into the bathroom and put on the new pjs and some face cream, and you’ll feel like a new woman. I’ll just collect up all this hair.’

  Five minutes later Lotte came out of the bathroom wearing the pink pyjamas. Her face looked far less flaky as she’d rubbed cream into it. She’d added a little blusher, mascara and lipstick too.

  ‘Wow, babe, that’s more like the old Lotte!’ Simon exclaimed.

  ‘I feel much better,’ she said shyly. ‘The marks on my wrists and ankles are fading now, but look how bruised my neck is!’ She held up her chin and Simon could see thumbprints on her windpipe and three finger imprints on each side of her neck.

  ‘They’ll fade very quickly,’ Simon said. He was really shocked by the marks, but he’d purposely played it down as he didn’t want her to sense his alarm. ‘Now, hop back into bed because I’ve got some photos for you to look at. I thought they might help jog the old memory.’

  Simon was a photography enthusiast. He took his camera to every party, to every major event, he even snapped his clients if he did a style he thought was really good. He was equally diligent in putting the pictures in albums, all dated with a caption under each one.

  Lotte put aside her worries in the joy of seeing so many familiar faces and occasions she’d been part of. There were various staff parties – birthdays, Christmas, engagements and leaving ones. Some were just staff nights out, with everyone dressed to kill. She giggled at Simon in a white tuxedo, and another picture of Adam roller skating along the promenade wearing only Speedo swimming trunks and carrying an umbrella. She remembered he did it for charity.

  There was the Space Age party when Adam was Spock from Star Trek and Simon was Captain Kirk. Lotte was dressed as Princess Leia from Star Wars. She was in so many of the pictures, and she was sure she’d never seen all of them before: at a dinner party, riding a carousel at the fair and lying on the sofa at Simon’s flat.

  ‘And what about this one?’ Simon asked as he turned the page, and there she was again, this time in turquoise hot pants and a white camisole top. It looked as if she were in a night club or restaurant.

  Lotte stared at it. She was very suntanned in the picture, and although she had no memory of seeing it before, all at once she remembered. It had been taken on her twentieth birthday in June 2000. She’d had a week’s holiday and the weather had been so good she spent it all lying on the beach. She could almost feel the sultry heat in the club that night, hear Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera’s record ‘Nobody Wants to Be Lonely’. She knew she looked good, and felt anything could happen that night.

  ‘Well?’ Simon asked, his expression fearful, but also determined. ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed. She understood why he looked that way. That night was a major milestone in her life, but Simon was afraid that remembering it would prove too painful for her.

  She remembered another song from that night, ‘Whole Again’ by Atomic Kitten. It had been ‘their’ song, and just as the events of that night had made her feel whole again, she knew she must recall everything again now to help the healing.

  She could see Mark as she saw him for the very first time. Lean-faced with short-cropped dark hair, sleepy dark eyes looking right at her, deeply tanned skin that had a gloss as if he’d rubbed himself in cocoa butter. Slim and muscular in a black tee-shirt and jeans.

  They smiled at each other, and then he was gone. Then suddenly he was right behind her. ‘You’re gorgeous,’ he whispered right into her ear.

  Every hair on her body jumped to attention and she felt a churning sensation in her stomach which was quite different from having too much to drink.

  ‘I hope the memory isn’t too painful,’ Simon said, taking her hand and squeezing it. ‘But I kinda thought if we got that one out, maybe others would follow. All of us in the salon who were there that night remember it so clearly. You and that guy just moved together like you were two magnets attracted to each other. I wish I’d taken a picture of him too.’

  ‘I don’t need one, I can remember everything about him,’ Lotte said.

  Simon went on turning pages of his albums. There were pictures taken at hair shows and exhibitions, many of the models sporting totally outrageous styles. One picture showed Lotte receiving the trophy for the best wedding style, and another coming third in the whole of the south of England for a cut she did. She remembered those evenings, the delight of knowing she was a really good hairdresser, the pleasure of hearing people’s praise, the smells of the products heavy in the air, that chatter and laughter and the underlying tension as the competitors waited to be judged. Yet after Mark none of that touched her as deeply, it was never as important again. She really only entered the competitions for the sake of the salon, not for herself.

  ‘You look tired now,’ Simon said later, perhaps noticing she hadn’t spoken for a while. ‘I’d better go, I’ve been here longer than I intended. Are you OK?’

  ‘It’s been good to look at your pictures,’ she said truthfully. ‘But I could do with a snooze before the doctor comes.’

  He gathered up his things, stuffed them into the red holdall and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Bye, babe,’ he said, bending to kiss her. ‘I’m going to try and find the doctor before I go and see what he thinks about you coming to stay with Adam and me. I guess the police will be concerned about your safety, but we can make it really secure there, can’t we?’

  Lotte smiled up at him, touched by his kindness and de
sire to get her back on her feet. ‘I’m sure we can. As long as I keep the door locked, who could get in?’

  Lovely as it had been to have Simon visit, Lotte was glad to be alone again, for she could hear ‘Whole Again’ playing in her head, and she wanted to return to the memories of that night.

  Mark led her out among the dancers but they didn’t really dance, just held on to each other and smiled. There were coloured lights spinning, it was too noisy to hear each other speak and people kept jostling them, but none of that mattered. His hands were on her waist, hers were on his shoulders, and they moved together like one person.

  She didn’t care what he did for a job, where he lived or anything much else about him. For the first time in her life she knew what it was to want a man. And she knew just by the way he looked at her that he wanted her. That was enough.

  Mark bought a bottle of Cava later and they went down on to the beach to drink it. It was a hot, sultry night with no wind and the moon cast a silver path on the sea. There were many other couples doing just the same as them, and as they sat on the shingle passing the bottle between them they could hear the noise of the town behind them. But none of this intruded on them; all they heard was the gentle sound of waves breaking on the beach.

  Mark told her then that he was in the navy, home on leave for two weeks. He was twenty-four, and the street where his family lived was just a few away from her parents.

  No one had ever kissed her like he did. Sensual, deep kisses that made her stomach churn and all sense of reality vanish. If he had tried to take her there on the beach surrounded by other couples, she doubted she would have stopped him. She just wanted him.

  Later they went back to her flat. Fortunately Simon and Adam were out. There in her single bed they made love.

  It was so hot they had no covers over them, and with the windows open wide the Saturday night sounds of Brighton – music, traffic and shouting drunks – wafted in.

  She was embarrassed because he wanted her to put the condom on him and she didn’t really know how to do it, and when he penetrated her it hurt more than she’d expected. But even if it wasn’t quite as wonderful as all the petting and kissing before had been, Lotte felt she’d moved up a level in maturity.