Come Back For Me

by Heidi Perks

  He asks me to work backwards as best I can and I name the doctors I remember, though my time frames are vague. As Killner makes notes, I catch Walton looking at a photo on the shelf in the corner of the room. ‘That’s my mum. She died ten years ago in a car accident.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Harvey.’

  I watch his eyes take in the many other photos that line the mantelpiece. All but one are pictures from years back. When we were young. When we lived on the island. Walton’s eyebrows furrow into the glimmer of a frown. What must he make of so many pictures taken so close to his crime scene adorning my shelves? I’m comforted he can’t see the rest of them hanging in my bedroom.

  ‘Will you be speaking to the rest of my family?’ I ask, bringing his gaze back to me as he reaches for a frame and holds it up.

  ‘We will.’

  ‘My dad’s—’ I start, but he interrupts me as he peers closer at the photo.

  ‘This is your sister?’

  ‘It is.’ I shuffle to the edge of the chair again.

  He taps his finger against the glass of the frame and turns to Killner who gets up to join him. ‘This bracelet she’s wearing,’ he goes on as I stand too and take the photo from him. ‘Do you remember it?’

  ‘Yes. I made it,’ I say.

  His head snaps towards me.

  ‘It’s a friendship bracelet. I made a few of them the summer we left. I sold them.’

  ‘Can you remember who to?’

  ‘God, no, I mean, just some of the girls.’

  ‘Could you write me a list of who you recall having one?’ he asks.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose,’ I say.

  He smiles again but it no longer feels genuine and this time, when he tells me once more these really are just routine questions and there’s nothing for me to worry about, I no longer believe him. ‘Thank you for your time,’ Walton says, handing me a card and asking me to get in touch when I’ve written my list.

  Once they’ve left, I watch them through my living-room window as they chat to each other by their car, PC Walton laughing at something his colleague says. My hands tremble as I call Bonnie and I consider the thought that, deep down, there might be a tiny part of me that relishes being drawn into what has happened because it links me to the island again.

  But as Walton looks up at my window, it vanishes as quickly as it came, and I’m left with an unnerving dread that one of my bracelets could be in any way involved.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ I ask as Bonnie picks up, static fuzzing in my ear. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Tesco. And I’ve got hardly any reception. Hold on.’ I wait for a moment until she comes back on the line. ‘Is that better?’

  ‘A little. I’ve just had the police round.’

  ‘Luke said they’ve called at ours. What do they want?’

  I relay their questions as she drops things into her trolley.

  ‘So they’re making sure no one’s lying,’ she says. ‘Why do you sound so worried?’

  ‘Lying about what?’ I ask, ignoring her question.

  ‘Who was or wasn’t on the island, I suppose.’

  I finally hear them drive off and I retreat from the window. ‘I don’t like this,’ I admit. ‘Bon, I think – I don’t know, I get the feeling we might have been there when it happened.’

  ‘They’re just asking questions,’ she says, sighing. ‘They’re probably speaking to everyone who’s ever been there. Why are you panicking?’

  ‘They were interested in the friendship bracelet I made. You were wearing it in a photo. They asked me to write them a list of everyone who had one.’ Come to think of it, I don’t recall Bonnie ever wearing it, but I pick up the photo again to see it for myself, tied around her wrist.

  Bonnie doesn’t speak.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ I say.

  ‘Yes. I heard you. Why do they want that?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it means—’ What does it mean? We know who the body is? We know the person who killed her?

  ‘It means nothing. They’re probably looking into loads of things right now,’ she snaps, but there is no conviction in her words.

  ‘I don’t like not knowing what’s going on. I feel so …’ I pause, searching for the right words – like I should be there instead.

  ‘Stop obsessing over it,’ Bonnie says. ‘Every conversation we’ve had this weekend is about the bloody island. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it.’

  Her reaction doesn’t surprise me, but the news has tipped me off kilter and, while Bonnie might want to shut out her thoughts, I haven’t been able to. I can’t stop my mind from going to places I’ve always avoided and now all the boxes I’d once locked away are rising to the surface. There have always been many questions I’ve wanted answers to but have never been brave enough to pursue.

  ‘Bon,’ I start, cautiously, ‘the way we left, those last few days—’ I break off, not knowing how to finish the sentence. Still not knowing if I’m sure I want to.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just – is there anything you remember about it that I don’t?’

  ‘Of course there isn’t. What the hell would I know?’

  A lot more than me, I think. She was six years older, more aware. ‘We never really spoke about anything …’

  ‘Because there’s nothing to speak of,’ she says. ‘And don’t go bringing up why we left again. They told us they needed the money that Dad’s new job would bring in. Clearly the ferry was making a pittance. I don’t know why you can’t accept that.’

  I don’t believe you can, either, I think as Bonnie reels off the facts like she’s learnt them by heart. I know this means she is holding back on me. But then, aren’t I holding back on her too?

  When I hang up, I pick up the photo that had caught the policeman’s attention. It’s one of the five of us, taken that last summer. I look at it closely, at Mum and Dad’s smiling faces, his arm slung over her shoulder, her hand clasping his.

  What happened to us all?

  As much as I need to have that conversation with Bonnie, there’s a greater part of me that doesn’t want to. Because then I would have to admit I’ve lied about what happened before we left. And the reason I lied was because I’d thought, if I did, it would keep us all together.

  Chapter Five

  That night, while Evergreen is no longer a headline, my own personal interest has heightened. I pore over the internet searching photos, names, anything that relates to it. The more I find out, the more I have to know. It has become a drug. How I managed to keep myself away for all these years, I’m no longer sure.

  A couple of weeks into my own counselling sessions, I was asked, ‘How often do you think of your old island?’ I thought the way the counsellor said ‘your old island’ made it sound like a fictional land rather than the only place I’ve ever called home.

  ‘Not often.’ I cocked my head, mirroring hers. We were both as inquisitive as the other to know what was really going on inside each other’s heads. For my part I wanted to know what she was getting at and why she kept coming back to Evergreen. Something in our first meeting had fuelled her therapist’s interests.

  When the ensuing silence got to her, she went on, ‘You clearly wish your parents had never taken you away from it. Do you think you’ve given yourself the chance to settle anywhere else?’

  It was an interesting question, and not one I’d really considered. ‘I don’t know. I guess.’

  ‘You’re thirty-two. You’re having a change of career. You live in a rented flat. You want to devote your time to helping others and you also spend a lot of effort on your sister. Who you still live less than ten minutes from,’ she stated, as if this wasn’t a good thing.

  The heat spread up my neck and across my face. ‘You make it sound like I’m a failure,’ I blurted.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Not at all. Or rather I’m sorry if I do – I applaud your decision to train in a new vocation. I
just get the impression you spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about Bonnie and …’ she paused and I caught a flash of pink colouring her own cheeks ‘… living in the past. Seeing it as all rosy is common, but maybe not too healthy for someone at your life stage. Planning for the future is—’

  ‘I thought that’s what I was doing,’ I snapped, blinking as my eyes watered. ‘Retraining. And I can’t help worrying about Bonnie when she’s the only family I have.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking like she wanted to add more. Maybe about why I always brushed over my feelings around losing every other family member.

  ‘And in answer to your question,’ I went on before she could continue, ‘I very rarely think about the island.’

  This was, of course, a lie, and she knew it. I had become like Bonnie in the way she used to hide evidence of her drinking. My scrapbook was squeezed in between magazines; I had shoeboxes at the bottom of my wardrobe stuffed full of Mum’s old photos.

  I had been fighting a yearning to return for years and I’d thought I’d overcome it. But ever since Friday night, I feel like I’m losing the fight. And since the visit from the police I no longer think I can stay away. I should be back there, helping to find out why someone buried a body on the edge of my old garden and what my bracelets have to do with it. I should be back among the people I used to love because I actually can’t bear the thought of not being with them. And I should be back because I want to know why we left when it was clear we would never be happier anywhere else.

  My pulse flutters as I carefully compile a list of the girls who had one of my bracelets. When I’m done I look over the names before emailing them to the police. My eyes rest on the name at the top, and I know I’m not going to get any answers sitting in my flat.

  Monday morning I try to focus my thoughts on a new family – a couple and their fourteen-year-old son who, in the mother’s words, has trouble committing to school.

  She talks quickly, outlining her worries as if she’s ticking off a shopping list, and it’s clear how nervous she is. Every time she relays a situation she reminds me she doesn’t agree with her son’s behaviours. However, I don’t get the impression she wants to belittle him; rather, I think she needs me to know that she’s just a good mother, trying hard.

  I feel for her. She comes across as guilty for letting it get to the point that her son’s hardly in school and they are all in therapy. I can imagine she feels the same way I did yesterday with the policemen in my living room.

  I nod as I listen, every so often turning my attention to her husband and child. The boy fiddles with the balled-up coat in his lap and looks as if he wants to be anywhere but here. His face is blotchy with patches of red, and as his gestures become more frantic I can sense he’s had enough. As soon as his mum pauses for a breath, I ask him to tell me what a good day looks like to him.

  He grunts and shrugs, but for the first time since he sat in my office he looks up and catches my eye.

  By the end of the session I’ve garnered his parents’ misaligned priorities but I still feel there’s much more to glean and I suggest I spend half an hour alone with him at the start of our next session.

  As I watch them leave, my mind drifts to Bonnie and the woman our parents took her to see on the mainland. Not for the first time I wish I had Mum here to ask what her intentions were. There have been many times when clients have left and I’ve thought about how I’d do anything to have both of my parents in front of me, talking.

  I’d ask Mum how she could have let Danny go and Dad what he was looking for when he met Olivia and if he ever found it. Whether he realised she was Mum’s polar opposite, or if that was his intention.

  Now he is living in a house that’s as stark as his relationship, where there is no drama, no cross words, no raised voices. No laughter, no holding of hands or secret kisses when they think I’m not watching. That was what he’d always had with Mum.

  Secretly I thought he deserved Olivia when he first moved in, but then once Danny left I began to wonder whether any part of it was Mum’s fault. Certainly that was the way Bonnie saw it.

  Outside in reception, I casually run the idea past Tanya that I’ve been considering visiting the crime scene. She pushes her glasses up her nose by habit and, as I wait for her to answer, I realise I’m hoping she’ll tell me it’s a good idea.

  ‘FOMO, they call it,’ she says. ‘Fear of missing out.’

  ‘You make me sound like a voyeur,’ I reply. ‘Just say if you think it’s an awful idea.’

  ‘I think it’s an awful idea. Personally, I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near it, but then I have no interest in returning to the town where I grew up.’ She shudders. ‘What does Bonnie think?’

  I shake my head. My sister would only deter me.

  ‘She doesn’t know?’

  ‘No. And anyway, it’s just a thought,’ I say, brushing off the idea like it is only that. I look up as my couple from last week arrives, and direct them through to my room.

  ‘Look,’ Tanya goes on when they are out of earshot. ‘I just think if you want to play detective you need to be careful. The police won’t thank you for sticking your nose in.’

  ‘That’s not what I want to do. I just want to see some of my old friends again.’

  I do also want to find Jill and ask why she never once wrote to me. I’ve never revealed to anyone how much I tore myself apart searching for clues for what seemed utterly inexplicable. I’d been desperate to cling to our friendship. The pain of being forgotten and so easily discarded had ripped through me, though I’d never let on how much when my family was already taping over cracks and trying to form some semblance of a normal life in a new city.

  But it’s only one of the many boxes whose lids are starting to flip open. Now there are voices in my head I haven’t listened to in years and I can’t get them to shut up.

  ‘Have you spoken to your dad about it?’ Tanya is asking.

  I snap my head up, pull myself out of my thoughts. ‘Not yet,’ I say, turning towards my office. The fact is, I don’t want to open up a conversation about the island with him, because while he’s the only one who could tell me why he made us leave, I’m not entirely sure I trust him any longer.

  I have barely asked my clients how they are when she blurts out, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him. All I can see every night is him with her.’ The words catch in her throat and she looks into the corner of the room to hide her face from her husband. As it is, he is studying his hands, folded in his lap.

  ‘I don’t think he should have told me,’ she says. ‘I think he only did it to ease his own conscience. He thought he’d feel better for it.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he murmurs and I ask him if he can explain what he means. Really I just want him to talk.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re asking,’ he says.

  ‘She means why did you tell me,’ his wife spits.

  He glances over at her. ‘Because you kept asking. You begged me to tell you. I thought it’s what you wanted.’

  ‘What I wanted?’ she cries. ‘What I wanted was for you not to sleep with another woman.’

  The colour drains from his face and he hangs his head again. There’s little he can say to make amends, but at the same time I must coax him to try. Meanwhile she is continuing to talk but keeps coming back to the same thing – that she wishes she didn’t know.

  ‘Would you do it differently if you had the chance?’ I ask her.

  ‘What?’ She screws her eyes up at me.

  ‘I mean, if you went back to the point when you begged your husband to tell you the truth. Would you ignore what you thought you wanted to know?’

  She continues to regard me and I realise it’s an odd question, but I’m interested in her answer. I lean forward in my chair, ignoring the voice telling me I shouldn’t use my clients for my own purposes.

  ‘I don’t …’ She shakes her head and in that moment looks so confused that I lay my palm flat on th
e table between us and tell her it doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to catch her out.

  ‘There’s no right or wrong answer,’ I say, though my minor slip means I need to backtrack and make her feel comfortable again.

  I move the conversation on, but at the end of our session, once her husband has left the room, she pauses and says, ‘I think I always would have asked him.’

  She looks so sad and I touch her arm lightly. ‘I think any of us would do the same,’ I assure her. ‘Despite the outcome, we’d always beg for honesty.’

  Because isn’t the torment of wondering worse than the truth? I have gone back and forth in my head playing out too many scenarios, trying to bury my own questions that would have burnt through my skull if I’d let them, and now I fear they will. In my own training, I learnt that we are better equipped when we know what we’re up against.

  I follow them out, and once they’ve disappeared at the end of the road I hold my face up to the grey sky, my hand circling my wrist where my own friendship bracelet once was.

  There were secrets that summer. We all had them, though I don’t understand how we got to that point where it all went so terribly wrong. And the more I try to separate everything, the more it blends together until it becomes one large tangled mess, leaving me thinking if I can pick apart one piece the rest might unravel.

  The body; our departure; Jill’s silence – what if it’s all linked somehow? The thought tears through me as the sky closes in and I can’t bear the foreboding sense that it could be. All I know is that I have to find out and I can’t do that here.

  I go back into reception and wait for Tanya to finish a call. When she hangs up I tell her I’m rearranging my clients for the next few days. ‘I don’t have many and I can fit them in next week,’ I say.