Forget Her Name

by Jane Holland

  Does he think I’m crazy?

  ‘I probably imagined hearing a cat,’ I add.

  ‘Right,’ Dominic says, but doesn’t pursue it. He leans forward and kisses me hungrily on the lips instead. ‘You know the best bit about me not being at work tonight?’

  I raise my eyebrows, smiling.

  ‘I get to take my wife to bed early,’ he whispers in my ear, ‘and make as much damn noise as I like, because everyone else is at that party next door.’

  Chapter Forty-One

  On Boxing Day morning, still smiling about Dominic’s unexpected gift, I have a lazy breakfast of fruit and yoghurt, then politely decline to go out shopping with my mum and dad.

  ‘But, darling, the sales will be on,’ my mother says.

  ‘All the more reason to stay home,’ I say firmly. ‘I can’t afford to spend money on anything. Even reduced stuff. Honestly, you know Dom and I are saving for a deposit on a place of our own.’

  ‘Your father will help you out with a deposit. Won’t you, Robert?’ Mum smiles at him.

  Dad has been reading The Times over breakfast, but lowers it now to nod at me. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And that’s very generous of you, Dad. But you know how Dominic feels about that. He’s proud, he doesn’t want charity.’

  ‘It’s not charity when it’s your own parents,’ Mum says.

  ‘Well, he doesn’t like the idea.’ I flash her a brittle smile. She means well but she doesn’t understand. ‘Maybe I’ll shop online instead. There are always great bargains this time of year.’

  ‘It’s so much more fun in the shops though. And we could have lunch somewhere nice afterwards. You always used to enjoy that.’

  I hate having to keep saying no like this. I can see the disappointment in her face. But it’s important that I stay home today. And it’s not something I can share with her.

  I avoid Dad’s searching gaze.

  ‘Someone has to look after the kitty,’ I remind them. ‘I’m going to call him Panther. Where is he, by the way?’

  There’s a silence.

  ‘We made a little bed for him in the utility room,’ Mum says hesitantly. ‘But I’m sure he won’t need much attention. Probably best if you avoid disturbing him for now. Let him get used to a new house.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  A horn sounds outside. Their cab has arrived. Dad lays aside his newspaper, and Mum fetches her handbag. I follow them into the hall to wave them off at the door. Dad hates shopping, which probably explains why he looks so grim.

  ‘Look, you two have a great time,’ I say as they climb into the taxi together. ‘I’ll be fine here with Jasmine and Panther. Don’t spend all your money, okay?’

  ‘Now you’re being silly, darling,’ Mum says, but I can see she’s relieved by my cheerful mood this morning.

  Once their cab has pulled away, I hurry inside and head straight upstairs to check on Jasmine. To my delight, she’s still asleep, the room dark when I knock gently and stick my head round the door.

  I climb the stairs to my own little flat, and shut the bedroom door. Then I sit down on the edge of the bed and open my laptop.

  Jason Wainwright, I type into the Google search box. Private Investigator, London.

  The main website is not very exciting. A few pages of testimony from former clients, Jason Wainwright’s CV, and some discussion of prices for various different services, including investigatory work like ‘tailing’ and ‘staking out’ individuals and addresses.

  Nothing surprising there.

  But when I widen my search beyond the website, glancing down the list of other results, I find a news report that leaves me stunned. Then several more, all on the same topic. The same name.

  Jason Wainwright.

  I gasp, my eyes widening as I read.

  Man Dies After Being Hit By Tube Train

  I scan the sparse details, feeling sick. A recent widower, after thirty years of marriage, Jason Wainwright ran a private investigation service, and was described as ‘reclusive’ and even ‘depressed’ by neighbours. Nobody seems to have expressed surprise at his death. Not even the police, though they were reported as ‘investigating’ the circumstances of his sudden death at Embankment tube station on the Circle and District lines.

  The word ‘suicide’ is not mentioned in any of the reports I find.

  But what else could it have been?

  His late wife’s name was Joyce. I wonder how she died. The report doesn’t say.

  What on earth was Dad doing with this guy’s business card in his pocket, and how is the dead man connected to me? Because he has to be connected in some way, surely? It seems too much of a coincidence for Jason Wainwright to have died only a few feet away from me at the same time as Dad was in contact with his firm. Especially after the way he looked at me, his gaze so intense.

  But why contact an investigator in the first place? Is something wrong? Something Dad can’t handle through his usual Foreign and Commonwealth Office contacts?

  Perhaps he hasn’t even heard about Wainwright’s death yet. We told him about the suicide at the tube station, of course. But it never occurred to me that Dad might know the man who died. How can I ask though, without revealing that I’ve been going through his pockets?

  I get down on my knees and retrieve the black notebook from under the bed. Dad hasn’t mentioned it’s missing. Either he hasn’t noticed or has decided not to say anything.

  The cover is a little dusty. I wipe it with my sleeve, then climb into bed, still in my pyjamas, and put pillows against the headboard so I can read comfortably. As an afterthought, I lean over and grab a magazine from the floor, then open it to a random page and set it in front of me. That way, if Jasmine comes in and surprises me, I can hide the notebook behind the magazine.

  I open the notebook to the first page. It seems to be written in code. But when I look more closely, trying to decipher the tiny squiggles, I realise it’s shorthand. I didn’t notice that in the cellar.

  Luckily, ten pages into the notebook, shorthand gradually turns to longhand. Whole words emerge first. Then full sentences, with the rare incomprehensible squiggle. So the first ten pages are completely indecipherable.

  Frustrated, I turn back to the first page that isn’t all in shorthand, and start to read. Slowly, frowning, struggling to work out the sporadic shorthand squiggles from the context. Not entirely without success.

  ‘Rachel’ is only occasionally written in full. Sometimes it’s ‘Rach’. Most times it’s merely a capital ‘R’. Written with a flourish, and sometimes circled for emphasis. Just as I find instances of ‘Catherine’ and ‘Cat’, but also ‘C’.

  My name is always underlined in red.

  Rachel getting worse. Several episodes of mania last weekend. She had to be . . . restrained . . . harming herself. I wish we could find a cure for this. If there is a cure, which the specialists seem to doubt.

  I run my finger along the handwritten text.

  Tuesday evening, we gave up and had to call Dr H out again. I begged, but he refused to increase meds. Too dangerous, he said. She’s already on the maximum recommended dosage. After the doctor left, R. had what looked like an epileptic fit. I ran for the phone, but while I was gone, she climbed out of the window.

  I can’t make out the next words, but press on,

  . . . back at midnight, in a police car. She was spitting and scratching by then. More like a wild animal than a girl.

  I glance up at the door but it’s still closed. I can hardly believe what I’m reading. I mean, I knew Rachel was a total headcase. But involving the police?

  It sounds like she was lucky not to be arrested.

  We took her to hospital but they could find nothing seriously wrong. Transferred to the psychiatric ward though, just in case. We were there most of the day, waiting to see if she would be committed this time. Doctor H came in later to examine her. He said the fit was most probably faked. That she did it to distract us, perhaps so she could . . .r />
  Some determined crossing out at the bottom of that page. Heavy and black. I turn it over, but can’t make out anything on the other side of the paper. Whatever was written at the end of that paragraph, Dad must have decided it wasn’t fit to be recorded.

  So she could . . . what?

  Pack a bag? Phone a friend? Run away?

  Dr H.

  Doctor Holbern. He used to see me in my teens occasionally. Depression, etc. But it was nothing like this shit, thank God.

  I continue reading.

  Eventually discharged with a follow-up appointment next week. But a committal can’t be far off if she keeps this up. I told Dr H we couldn’t bear the thought of her in a secure unit. Not long-term.

  A secure unit?

  A few pages later, this:

  She’s gone too far this time. Nearly killed herself. A total nightmare. It was all I could do to keep our name out of the papers.

  Some more heavy crossing out. As though he was worried who might read this, which doesn’t surprise me. It sounds like a really serious incident. Though I don’t remember anything about it. I would have been quite young at the time, and I doubt my parents would have shared such dramatic news with me. Not where Rachel was concerned, at any rate.

  Dr H gave me the website of a specialist clinic in Switzerland. Unorthodox procedures but has helped a few stubborn cases. Am going to contact the director tomorrow. For all our sakes. This can’t go on.

  Switzerland.

  I suck in my breath, reading that page over again. Presumably that’s why we went on that family holiday to Switzerland. So Rachel could be assessed by a specialist in childhood psychosis. Perhaps she was given some dangerous and unorthodox new treatment, and died because of it. And my parents have been living with the guilt ever since, maybe hiding the true cause of her death behind this elaborate fiction of a family skiing accident.

  Is this the secret they’ve been keeping from me all these years?

  It would certainly explain why I can’t remember actually skiing on that holiday, or seeing Rachel die in an accident, or anything to do with that terrible day except Dad coming in to tell me she was dead. The rest is a kind of white, senseless blur.

  Because we weren’t there to ski, we were there to cure Rachel.

  And we failed.

  ‘Poor Rachel.’

  I close my eyes. I didn’t like my sister much, she was a Class A bitch at times. But she didn’t deserve to die, and then for the truth of what happened to be hushed up forever.

  ‘What the hell did they do to you, Rachel?’

  Flicking on five pages, I find a list of medications Rachel was prescribed and study it. It goes on for over half a page, incredibly. The medical names mean nothing to me.

  Dominic would know precisely what these meds are for, of course. He would know how and why they’re prescribed, and their various side effects.

  But I can’t show him the list. He mustn’t know I’ve stolen the notebook. He wouldn’t understand my compulsion to know about Rachel. I’m not even sure I understand it myself. But I do know he would call it an unhealthy obsession, and tell me to give the notebook back to Dad. They all think I’m incapable of making my own decisions.

  I’ll have to look up these drugs on the Internet. Though I can hazard a guess right now that they’re mostly antipsychotics.

  Doctor Holbern prescribed antidepressants for me once. Some hormonal surge in my early teens, triggered by a boy I’d met who wasn’t interested in me. Typical teenage angst. The phase only lasted a few months, I’m sure. Perhaps I was trying to compete in some sad way with my dead sister, to be as much trouble to my parents as Rachel had been. But who could ever be as much trouble as Rachel?

  There’s a new fear bubbling up inside me now.

  I’m trying hard to ignore it.

  Now that I’m married, I haven’t been as careful taking the pill as I used to be. In time, I could end up with my own child, my own daughter. What if she turns out to be anything like Rachel? I don’t know how I’d cope with a kid like that.

  I can only hope her madness – I hate that word, it feels so judgemental, but Rachel’s behaviour had to stem from some serious mental health issue – isn’t hereditary. But what if it is, and I have a child who starts behaving like Rachel as she grows up?

  I need to know this stuff. They shouldn’t be hiding it from me.

  I start reading Dad’s notes again, skipping frantically back and forth between medication lists and routine hospital trips, looking for more information about that specialist clinic in Switzerland.

  Then I come to something that almost stops my heart.

  Switzerland is definitely the way to go, even if it changes all our lives forever. But it’s so unfair. What did we do to deserve Rachel? It’s as if we’re being punished for something, only we have no idea what. I just wish we could have our lovely Cat back.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The bedroom is dark when I hear someone creeping in. For a moment, I feel confused and disoriented.

  I remember having lunch with Jasmine in the kitchen, then we watched a Boxing Day film with her until my parents came home from the shops. Then I told them I had another headache and came up to bed. Mum tried to offer me some medication, but all I would take upstairs with me was a cup of soothing camomile tea.

  Obviously it worked, as I must have fallen asleep quite quickly.

  But how late is it?

  I listen to Dominic fumbling about, trying to undress in the dark without waking me. His trainers, thumping quietly one after the other, under the bed. The slither of his scrubs hitting the wash basket.

  ‘What’s the time?’ I whisper.

  ‘I thought you were asleep.’ A slight pause. ‘A bit after nine. Your mum said you weren’t feeling well or I would have come up earlier.’

  ‘What’s everyone doing?’

  ‘They’re in the kitchen, playing Scrabble.’

  I push up on one elbow, watching his shadowy form in the dark. ‘Oh, I love Scrabble. You should have come and told me.’

  ‘What?’ He switches on the bedside lamp, looking down at me with an ironic smile. He’s wearing nothing but his underpants, and I study his body thoughtfully. ‘Are you being funny? You hate Scrabble.’

  ‘Do I?’

  He sits on the edge of the bed, and touches the back of his hand to my forehead. ‘No fever. So I’m guessing this is just your sense of humour resurfacing.’ His mouth twists wryly. ‘You haven’t missed much, anyway. Robert’s dominating the field as usual.’

  ‘I can beat him any day.’

  ‘Now I know you’re kidding.’

  I reach for him hungrily. ‘Come to bed,’ I whisper, stroking his bare chest, then I throw back the duvet to show that I’m naked, too. ‘Join me.’

  He looks startled. ‘Right now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He hesitates, glancing back at the fresh clothes he’s gathered together. ‘I was going to shower and then head back downstairs. To fix myself a light supper.’

  ‘You can do that later,’ I say softly. ‘Afterwards.’

  He raises his eyebrows, studying my face. He’s still smiling, but it’s a different kind of smile now. ‘Afterwards?’

  ‘Why not?’ I take his hand and place it on my breast. I must have failed to turn the radiator up earlier, because my nipples are erect from the cold. Either that or from my growing excitement. ‘Unless you’re too tired after work?’

  For an answer, he leans forward slowly and sucks on my nipple. Hard and deliberate. The physical contact is like an electric shock running through me. Sheer voltage. My back arches and I jerk upwards, groaning. He clamps that breast with his hand, squeezing it, and then bends his head to the other one, teasing me, circling my nipple with his tongue before licking it.

  ‘Suck it,’ I order him.

  His gaze flicks to my face, a little surprised, but he obeys.

  ‘Yes,’ I say hoarsely, and grip the sheet so ha
rd I feel one edge lift free of the mattress. ‘Yes, like that.’

  He laughs under his breath. ‘You’re eager.’

  ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘But not for food, apparently.’

  I lean back and part my thighs invitingly. ‘There are better things than food. Though if you’re so hungry, darling, I’ve got something here you can eat.’

  Now his surprise is undisguised. ‘Cat?’

  ‘Dom?’

  ‘But you don’t like it when I—’

  ‘Hush.’ I slip my hands up his spine, and draw him close, moulding him against me. ‘A girl can change her mind, can’t she? I like it now,’ I whisper in his ear, and then lick his throat for good measure. ‘Come on, baby. I need your tongue inside me. How much longer are you going to keep me waiting?’

  ‘My God,’ he begins, laughing as he pulls away, and I sit up, raking my nails down his bare back. He jerks back at once, angry. ‘Shit, that hurt.’

  ‘Then stop talking and fuck me.’

  ‘Hey, watch it!’

  ‘Jesus, you’re so boring these days.’ I pretend to yawn. ‘Come on, be a good boy and share. What does it take to get you excited? Seriously, when are you planning to live up to your name?’

  He stares down at me, his eyes glittering with baffled rage. ‘My . . . what?’

  ‘Dom.’

  There’s a stillness about him.

  Then he snaps me back on the bed, his hands hard. ‘Oh, I see what you’re driving at. You want to be dominated, do you?’

  ‘Well, it would be nice for a change. So far, this is like watching paint dry. Actually, no, I’ve had more fun watching paint dry.’

  ‘Bitch.’

  Hoisting my legs in the air, Dominic hooks them roughly over his shoulders and sinks his mouth between my thighs. I growl in approval. For all of five seconds. Because he’s not there to please me, I realise, suddenly aware that I’ve been outmanoeuvred. I shriek in pain as I feel sharp teeth make contact with my tender flesh there.

  ‘No!’

  He only bites me harder though, and I thrash about wildly beneath him, trying in vain to dislodge his weight.

  ‘You . . . total . . . fuck!’