Forget Her Name

by Jane Holland

  I hurry to get inside, out of the cold.

  The large, skin-headed security guard, smoking a sneaky cigarette a short distance outside the back door, his peaked cap balanced on the low wall, barely glances at me as I pass. To be fair though, he must have seen me go through this entrance a dozen times with Dominic. Behind him, the sign says: Strictly No Smoking Anywhere In This Area.

  I push through the double doors, trainers squeaking on the yellow flooring. They swing shut behind me, and the stifling heat of the hospital hits me like a wall.

  I take the nearest flight of stairs, heading for the Garden Cafeteria where I sometimes grab a quick lunch with Dominic.

  Today, I am not here to see him.

  In fact, Dominic’s not even here. He’s on a half-day training course at St Mary’s Hospital, a few miles west of the smaller St Hilda’s. Something to do with managing hygiene and hospital superbug controls. I left him scrolling through an email circular with some dull and unwieldy subtitle like ‘The perennial problem of hand-cleaning between patients in A & E’. Dominic looked intent on it, barely registering my kiss goodbye.

  Louise is already there, head bent, reading something at a corner table. She’s one of Dominic’s colleagues at St Hilda’s – an RNMH, Registered Nurse Mental Health. Smiling, she looks up as I approach, then closes her novel, marking the page with a strip torn from a napkin.

  ‘Cat,’ she says, unaware that I hate the way Dominic sometimes abbreviates my name when we’re in company. ‘How are you? You look great. Looking forward to the wedding?’

  ‘God, don’t mention that bloody wedding.’

  Louise laughs and stands up to hug me. She isn’t in uniform, as her shift doesn’t start for a few hours. Instead she’s casual, in high-heeled boots, deliberately ripped jeans, and a fluffy pink jumper that belies the discipline of her life. Her make-up is immaculate as always, her mascara crisp, lipstick unsmudged. She has straight black hair that falls sharply to just beyond her shoulders and hangs there, seemingly motionless. Never untidy, not a strand out of place. At work she wears her hair up in an old-fashioned bun, held in place with clips and pins.

  I envy that impression of total control, even though I know it wouldn’t suit me. It’s also a little disconcerting. I prefer people who aren’t quite perfect, perhaps because it makes me feel better about my own imperfections.

  Louise tips her head to one side. ‘So what’s all this top-secret business about?’

  ‘You didn’t tell Dominic I wanted to meet you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  I open my mouth, then shut it again. A sudden internal wobble. ‘Let’s get something to eat first, then we can talk. I’m starving.’

  I’m not starving at all. But I feel uncomfortable under Louise’s steady gaze.

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  Louise grabs her purse, and we move to the counter. The queue is short, thankfully, and the place offers pre-packaged sandwiches, which is easiest for both of us. Armed with coffee in paper cups and a sandwich apiece, we head back to the corner table.

  ‘You’re not having second thoughts, are you?’ Louise asks, frowning as she sits down. ‘About marrying Dom, I mean.’

  Now it’s my turn to say, ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But?’

  I pretend to be preoccupied with my sandwich packaging. Though it’s pointless trying to hide my nervousness, the way my hands are trembling. Louise is one of Dominic’s closest work colleagues, and she’s both intelligent and highly observant. Too bloody observant, frankly.

  Perhaps I ought not to have asked someone so close to Dominic for advice about this. But ever since he introduced us in a nightclub, soon after I started dating him, I’ve felt a certain affinity with Louise, a natural connection between the two of us. Like I could tell her anything and she wouldn’t judge me for it.

  I just hope that proves to be true.

  ‘But . . . I do have a problem.’ I look up to find Louise watching me intently, and feel a sudden bloom of heat in my cheeks. ‘Oh, not with Dominic. He’s the love of my life. We’re perfect together.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  I have to smile. There was the tiniest hint of warning in that one word, as if to say, ‘Don’t mess with my friend’s heart.’

  Louise is not jealous, of course. She’s gay and happily in a relationship with Amita, a radiographer a few years older than her. But she looks after her friends.

  ‘No, this is something totally different.’

  I go to take a sip of coffee, but it’s too hot to drink.

  Louise unwraps her sandwich. ‘Go on.’

  I look about the half-empty café. Lunch is almost over now. I guess most staff have eaten and gone, because it’s mainly visitors and the occasional dressing-gowned patient at the tables around us.

  ‘The thing is,’ I say quietly, ‘someone sent me something odd in the post, and I’d like your opinion on it.’

  ‘Sent you something? What, like a wedding gift?’

  ‘No.’ I pause, frowning. ‘Actually, I don’t know. Maybe it was meant as a wedding gift. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Pretty sick gift though.’

  ‘Sick?’ Now she’s looking bemused.

  ‘I’m going to have to give you some background first,’ I tell her. ‘Otherwise it won’t make any sense.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘First, you need to promise you won’t repeat any of this to Dominic.’

  Louise, about to take a bite of her prawn mayonnaise sandwich, puts it down again. Her finely etched brows rise steeply. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I know that probably sounds ridiculous. But I don’t want Dom to know.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s personal.’

  ‘No way.’ Louise shakes her head. ‘I can’t agree to lie to Dominic. I mean, he’s my friend. I don’t want to pull rank, but I’ve known him longer than you. Not much longer, agreed. But it counts.’

  ‘Please, this is important.’

  Louise looks at me closely. ‘Jesus. Whatever this is about, it’s really upset you, hasn’t it?’

  I nod, not trusting myself to reply.

  ‘Okay.’ Louise takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. ‘I promise not to tell Dom. But only if I think, after hearing what you have to say, that he doesn’t need to know.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like much of a promise.’

  ‘Take it or leave it.’

  I consider for a moment, then nod. Though only because it’s either confide in Louise or nobody. And right now I desperately need a second opinion. Otherwise I’m going to crack.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I say drily. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’

  Smiling, Louise raises her coffee in a mock toast. ‘Never play me at cards. So, what is it I mustn’t tell your husband-to-be?’

  I reach into my coat pocket. The cold plastic of the bag in which I placed the eyeball rubs against my fingers. No backing out now; I have to tell someone.

  ‘I had a sister,’ I begin haltingly, and my chest tightens with just those words. ‘Her name was Rachel.’

  Chapter Five

  ‘Had a sister?’

  I nod and look away. Much to my embarrassment, my eyes fill with tears.

  ‘Oh God,’ Louise says at once, and puts her hand out across the table, brushing my arm. ‘You poor thing, you’re in pieces.’

  ‘No, it’s . . . it’s okay.’

  I breathe in deeply through my nose, then out again. Count to five in my head. The wave of panic begins to recede. But slowly, very slowly.

  ‘I had a sister called Rachel,’ I repeat. ‘She died years ago, when we were kids. On a family holiday in the Swiss Alps.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Dominic knows that much. But there’s more.’ It’s hard, but I force myself to go on. ‘Far more.’

  ‘Go on.’

  I take a tentative sip of coffee, my gaze on the blank, cream-coloured wall opposite. The coffee is still hot bu
t no longer scalding. ‘I wasn’t with her that day, so I don’t know exactly how she . . . Anyway, Rachel died on that holiday and life was never the same again.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It must have been traumatic.’

  Blinking back tears, I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say with some difficulty. ‘You still don’t understand.’

  Louise looks at me, frowning.

  How on earth could she understand? Louise did not know Rachel, and has no idea what life has been like for our family; of the way that holiday in Switzerland split everything into ‘before’ and ‘after’ her death.

  ‘Rachel had a snow globe,’ I start again, not looking at her. ‘There was this pretty Swiss village inside, a goat, you know the sort of thing. All that twee tourist stuff. My dad bought it for her on a diplomatic trip to Switzerland a few years before she died. She loved that snow globe. She used to shake it really hard, and then watch the snow slowly settle.’ I swallow. My voice is hoarse and uneven, but I need to get this out. ‘After Rachel died, I never saw the snow globe again. I thought Dad must have thrown it away. Because he couldn’t bear to see it and remember, you know?’

  Louise watches me with concern in her eyes. ‘You okay, Cat?’

  ‘Yeah, just about.’ I nod, then take another sip before pushing away my coffee cup. It tastes bitter. ‘Anyway, a few days ago, this parcel arrived for me at the food bank. Addressed to me by name. I thought it was just another donation. But when I opened the parcel, the snow globe was inside.’ I pause. ‘Rachel’s snow globe.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Louise looks shocked. ‘You’re sure it was hers?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘So who sent it to you?’ She frowns. ‘Your parents?’

  ‘No, impossible. They would never have done something like that. There was no note with it either. But there was . . . there was something inside it.’

  ‘What?’

  Feeling sickened, I pull the plastic bag from my pocket and throw it across the table towards Louise.

  ‘That was inside the snow globe.’ I watch as Louise picks up the bag and stares at the contents. ‘I had to drain the globe to . . . to get it out.’

  ‘Is that . . . an eyeball?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘That’s why I wanted to see you today. Because I need you to check if that’s a human eye or an animal’s. If it’s even a real eyeball at all.’

  ‘Looks real enough to me.’ She studies it closely, frowning. ‘Though I’d say it’s too large to be human.’

  ‘But could you find out for sure?’

  ‘I can do that, yes.’

  ‘Thank you, I really appreciate it.’ I pause, guessing from her expression that some further explanation is needed. ‘I could have asked Dominic to check for me, of course. But I don’t want him to know the truth about Rachel.’

  ‘But why?’ She looks puzzled. ‘I mean, it’s none of my business. But the two of you are getting married soon, for God’s sake. I’m sure Dominic would understand.’

  ‘I’m not sure he would. It’s rather complicated, you see.’

  ‘Families are always complicated.’

  ‘Not like this.’

  She studies me. ‘It can’t be that bad, surely?’

  ‘Confidentially?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Rachel was my older sister,’ I say. ‘Older by just over one year. But she was also an evil bitch and I wasn’t sorry when she died.’

  I can’t believe I’m admitting the truth at last. I’ve never discussed Rachel’s condition with anyone outside the family except a therapist when I was younger, and even he avoided using her name. As if it was unlucky. But now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop. Not until Louise understands.

  ‘I know that sounds awful,’ I continue breathlessly, avoiding her shocked stare. ‘But Rachel made my life a living hell from the moment I was born. She made my parents’ lives hell too. She was . . . Rachel was like the devil.’ My hands harden into fists, nails digging into my flesh. ‘Total, stone-cold evil.’

  Louise is staring at me in astonishment.

  ‘You probably think I’m exaggerating. That it was just typical sibling rivalry between us. Tit for tat, some childish feud. But you’d be wrong. Completely, horribly wrong.’ My voice starts to shake. ‘The sort of things Rachel did would turn your stomach. I can barely bring myself to talk about it. I mean, she was sick. She must have been. No normal person would have done things like that.’

  Louise takes my hand and squeezes it. ‘Bloody hell, you poor thing. Please, you don’t need to go on.’

  ‘No, I do. There’s . . . there’s more.’

  She waits.

  ‘A few months before she died, Rachel trapped a stray cat in the shed. A young cat. More of a kitten, really. I wanted to run and tell our mum, but Rachel wouldn’t let me. She made me stand there and watch. Watch while she tortured the poor little thing until it died.’

  Louise is shaking her head in horror. As a mental health specialist, she must have heard some nasty stories in her time. But this is particularly gruesome.

  ‘After it was dead, Rachel pulled its eyes out. It was so horrible. She slipped one into my water glass at bedtime. So when I went to take a drink . . .’

  Louise puts a hand to her mouth, unable to speak.

  I understand precisely how she is feeling, that creeping sense of horror, and decide not to finish the story. It speaks for itself anyway. Instead, I gesture to the bag containing the eyeball. ‘That,’ I tell her, ‘is pure Rachel. Only it can’t be Rachel who sent it to me. Because my sister is long dead.’

  I meet Louise’s eyes deliberately. No more hiding. No more lying to myself.

  ‘And nobody’s happier about that than me.’

  Chapter Six

  After work on Tuesday I head for the bus stop opposite the food bank to begin the laborious trek across London to my parents’ house in Kensington. It’s been another difficult day and I’m dog-tired, my feet aching.

  I’m also upset.

  I know some of the people who come to the food bank are in terrible circumstances, but it still shakes me to learn exactly how they’re living, often hand to mouth, in appalling housing conditions. There was a woman today who couldn’t stop crying while I fetched her food. We had to stop while she took a breather. She was recently widowed and living out of a suitcase, with four young kids and only two damp rooms in a North London high-rise. One of her kids was a toddler, a girl who trailed round after her mum with a lost look in her eyes, constantly sucking her thumb.

  Sharon had to take over in the end because I didn’t know how to deal with my own distress. The worst stories have a tendency to reduce me to misty-eyed sympathy, and then I’m next to useless, forgetting even the basics of my training.

  Sharon came to see me afterwards, saying, ‘Don’t worry, love. You’ll get used to it.’

  She’s right, of course. I need to be more professional, not keep dissolving. The problem is, I’m not sure I want to ‘get used to it’. To become so hardened to such tales of suffering that I no longer feel like crying.

  A man sitting opposite me on the bus keeps staring and mouthing at me. I’m not sure what he’s trying to say, but it looks like he’s high on something.

  I tug on the hem of my suede skirt, which is below the knee and hardly a come-on. I’m careful to look past him with no change of expression, but am secretly relieved when the man gets off five stops later, still glancing my way.

  I’ve always been shy, and still have trouble with people who are noisy or aggressive, especially in cramped, crowded spaces like buses and tubes at rush hour. Brushing against people is one of my pet hates, and having to walk home alone in the late evening is another. But working at the food bank has made me more relaxed in certain situations. For instance, I no longer clutch my bag quite so rabidly on the bus, or stare rigidly ahead when walking down the street as though terrified someone will speak to me.

&n
bsp; ‘But you said you were brought up in London,’ Sharon exclaimed the first time I confessed one of my stupid little phobias to her and Petra.

  ‘I was rarely here though, and when we were, we tended to take taxis everywhere.’ I struggled to explain my unusual upbringing, aware that Sharon was brought up in a vast, sprawling family in the East End, with cousins and half-siblings on every corner. ‘I was homeschooled, and we stayed in the house most days. Then later, after—’ I caught myself. ‘That is, when I was older, I got sent off into the country with a nanny.’

  ‘You’re so posh,’ Petra said, smiling at me over the pallet of donated tins she was putting on the shelves. She’s always smiling. A naturally sunny personality – surprising to me, given that Petra is an amputee whose right arm was severed at the elbow in a cycling accident years ago. But she doesn’t seem to let it bother her. ‘I wish I’d had a nanny.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not as nice as it sounds,’ I told her quickly. It wasn’t entirely true – but the truth wouldn’t be appropriate. That’s what my mother would say. ‘Anyway, I never really spent much time in the city until I finished my education. And then I found a job within walking distance of my parents’ house, so I never had a chance to get used to . . . well, how big London is.’

  Sharon grinned. ‘Bloody enormous, isn’t it? And it gets bigger whenever there’s a tube strike on, you ever notice that?’ She handed over a stack of forms. ‘Here, my eyesight’s crap. Can you sort through these for me?’ Sharon hates reading and form-filling. ‘Sorry to ask again. But you can sit in my office if you like. Out of the draught.’

  I readily agreed, even though it was the third time this month that Sharon had asked me to fill out the forms. But I prefer the office with its two-bar heater to the chilly open floor of the food bank. Admin suits me better, too. Besides, Sharon is so good with people, it’s a shame for her to be cooped up with paperwork when she could be talking to ‘clients’, as she calls the people who come wandering in every day, desperate not to look like they need a handout.

  I have to change bus at the next stop. I sway to the exit as the driver corners at speed with brutal precision. Then I hop off in the cold, soon crossing the road at the lights and heading downhill towards a more familiar area.