Alice took a deep breath. “Maybe. Although I might be wrong. I know that something bad happened with Paul, but if I’m wrong about where the clinic is, then that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Do you understood me? Everything is fragmentary in my head right now, but I’m not making this up.”
“I’m with you,” he reassured her. “You were young, you can’t be expected to remember every detail. Where do you think it is?”
“I don’t know, not truly. But whenever I’ve got the train back from London, and it’s been the Dorking train, I’ve had this odd feeling. Before now I’ve never been able to properly explain it to myself, but the name Dorking and the fact that I’m heading in that direction has always made me feel really uncomfortable. Scared, even. As if I was heading back somewhere I didn’t want to go. It came to me at dawn this morning!” She swallowed hard. “I think Dorking is where it was. That’s where I think the Butterfly Clinic was. Where I spent that part of my childhood, where the boy Paul died.”
He fell silent, taking it in, but still stroked through her head to reassure her. “You can remember that? You can remember Dorking?”
“No, not Dorking itself.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t tell you anything about the town. It’s the name I remember. Like I saw it on a signpost once and the place we were going was that clinic.”
“But you said you spent your whole childhood in Kent. That you grew up around Fallowford and Gravesend. That’s what you told me.”
“It was only last night I remembered, Geoff. That dream was so vivid. Suddenly I could remember Paul and I could remember the clinic as well. I don’t know how, but I think I left Kent at some point and ended up all the way over in Surrey. At this moment, I’d swear that’s the truth. Right now it seems as real to me as any fact I’ve ever known.”
There was silence as the two of them stared at each other. “So what do you want to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She wept. “I have to find out what happened, but I really don’t know how.”
And the rest of the day was spent with her in that state of lost befuddlement. He held her, he cooked lunch for her, but they didn’t talk about it again, despite it being so clearly on her mind. She’d said all she wanted to say. Even though the dream was all she could think of, there was no more of it that she could put into words.
The horror of the accident was fading away. The only reality she had now was a vision of fog and a tragic little boy named Paul.
Chapter Four
That night she cracked out her pills. The so-called Mother’s Little Helpers, just to get her relaxed. She found they did a far better job of taking the edge off life than booze or pot. Or even sex.
Alice didn’t use them often, as she thought it weird to sleep so dreamlessly. But right then, peaceful nights were exactly what she needed.
Geoff stayed over for a few nights after she’d thrown open her heart for him, which obviously raised hackles with the other girls in the house. There were four of them, sharing a three bedroom terrace home. Those numbers meant they had to rotate, with one of them sleeping on the couch a couple of nights every fortnight. If there was a man staying over though, the agreement was that the lucky girl would get to keep the bedroom for a while. However, it was basically assumed that no man would stay over for a long period. That they’d go to his place to break up the routine. Now Alice was messing around with the arrangement and it pissed off the others.
It probably didn’t help that she didn’t tell them what she’d witnessed, and certainly not what she’d dreamt. (Geoff was there and, by the time he left, she really didn’t want to talk about it anymore.) So, they had no idea why peaceable little Alice was doing what she was doing.
Right then however, she didn’t care. She needed someone to hold her at night, strong arms she could fall asleep in. And he understood instinctively what she needed him there for. After that first evening he hadn’t mentioned the accident again, as she clearly had no interest in talking about it. Instead they talked about her dream. Even though she was doing all she could not to dream again, she was still fixated on it. And Geoff did his best to help prod her memory so she could work out just what had happened at the Butterfly Clinic.
But despite those promptings (which Geoff only attempted when he saw she was ready for them), she couldn’t provide more information.
Her hazy memory – the fragments of her dreams – told her it was a large house. Something like a Victorian schoolhouse. The building was constructed from red brick and you got to it along a winding drive through some woods. Inside it was all white, she thought, but then all hospitals were white so maybe she was imagining that. She still had no idea how she’d ended up there, or what she was doing while she was there. There was no clue as to Paul’s identity. It was frustrating that the only thing becoming clearer to her was the bloody building.
She thought about it until it hurt her head to think about it.
And she came to realise that as much as one part of her wanted to hold onto it, to understand what it all meant, there was another – much larger part – quite happy to forget about the whole thing. After the third night, when Geoff again gently asked her questions about what had happened, she straddled him with her hips and had him shag her instead. She didn’t want to be thinking about fog or buildings or mysterious little boys. Instead she wanted – needed – to feel something else. Alice was still a young woman, one who liked to have fun. So she made the resolution that, as painful as it was, she was going to try and forget all about it. She wanted to just work at the boutique, go out with her friends, have a good laugh and, as often as she could, fuck the bloke who was kind of her boyfriend.
But then, a week after the accident – and after a couple of those medicated, dreamless nights – she saw Paul again.
Only this time she was awake.
Rosemary’s Boutique was at the top end of Central Road, the main high street through Worcester Park. It catered to young women who wanted to get fashionable gear at a reasonable price. But because they were in the suburbs, rather than the West End of London, those fashions were always a season or two out of date. That didn’t seem to matter though as there were always enough young, slim and pretty girls coming in to keep the tills ringing. And when they came through the door, they were helped by young, slim and pretty girls just like them. That’s what Alice was there for: to act as a fashion conscious big sister to a thousand young women and make sure they knew how fabulous they looked in that skirt or blouse or belt they were umming and ahhing over.
It was a job which didn’t create a lot of stress, and she was able to drift through it all without too much thought. She’d enjoyed it. Right until her last day there – when she left suddenly and unexpectedly – Alice had always looked forward to going to work.
Richie Clement’s car crash was no longer all over the front pages, people didn’t seem to be talking about it and that was fine with Alice. That morning she was tidying up a display of scarves at the front of the shop – trying to make the variety of colours coordinate in some magical way – and thinking of maybe going to the cinema with Geoff later. Then she glanced up – that’s all it was, a glance – and there on the opposite side of the road, was Paul.
He stood in front of one of the houses. Still in his school uniform and even with the briefest of glimpses, she could tell that his chin was scraped and his knees were grubby. He seemed to be smirking at her. While wearing his perpetual pout, he was still smirking.
She almost shrieked. Her hand went quickly to her mouth, jamming the noise tight inside her at the last possible second.
Behind her, her colleague Daphne was telling two teenage girls – fifteen or so, probably – how good the bell-bottoms they were mulling over were going to make them look. Daphne’s tone was always bored and dismissive, which seemed to make the customers crave her approval. None of them noticed that Alice was now stood with her face right to the glass, her skin paler than usual and her hand clamped over her mouth. T
hat initial glance had turned into a full, wide-eyed stare across the road.
It was him. Certainly and stomach-churningly it was him. Not just in a dream this time, but on the other side of the street – staring at her as she was staring at him.
There was laughter from behind her. Daphne liked her dry witticisms and the customers – still craving her approval – always laughed. But right then, laughter seemed so out of place in the world for Alice that she nearly puked. There couldn’t be good humour at a moment like this, all there could be was fear and terror.
Alice’s other hand went to the clean glass of the shop window – pressing down hard, holding herself up. She’d thought she was moving slowly and silently, but she must have been much faster than she thought. So much so her hand actually smacked against the glass. Drawing all three sets of eyes to her, showing off how distressed she appeared. Behind her she could hear Daphne languidly ask if she was all right. She ignored her colleague. There was only her and Paul, she couldn’t engage with anyone else right then.
Instead, as if she was in a dream again, she staggered to the door, opened it and dashed forward. Knowing that she was moving quickly, but still feeling as if every step was weighed down with lead. No, that wasn’t quite correct – she felt both heavy and floating at the same time. So that it was hard for any of her thudding steps to get purchase, for her heavy limbs to do anything but flail in thin air. Even though she knew she was running, that a cry was finally escaping her lips, she still felt she was the jerky participant of some old silent film.
Paul was still the other side of the road, pouting at her. So amused. That’s the way he always looked when he’d done something naughty. It was the expression his face got when he knew he was about to hurt her.
Never taking her eyes off him, she dashed into the road. A yellow transit van slammed on its brakes, the driver not only hitting the horn, but also giving her a mouthful of abuse.
“Look where you’re going, you stupid tart!”
She barely heard him.
When she was halfway across, a council bin lorry roared in front of her, bringing her up with a start, making her scream again, and most dreadfully – for just a fraction of a second – making her lose sight of Paul.
She blinked and tried to steady herself – still in front of that van, whose driver thought she was “a common whore” now – she saw that he had gone. Paul wasn’t there. He had vanished as quickly as he had appeared.
Trying to hold herself together, she scarpered the rest of the way across the road to the opposite pavement.
“Paul!” she called. Even though she knew deep down that he’d take great pleasure in ignoring her, still she called his name. Undoubtedly he’d find her distress amusing. He’d hide just to watch her fret.
There was a side alley down between the two houses in front of her. She didn’t know where it led, but it seemed the only place he could have gone. Unless he had let himself into one of the houses, or he had disappeared into the mist again, the alley was all she had. So her working day forgotten, she dashed down it.
Behind was a courtyard for garages, a big open concrete space. The sun was high in the sky and she should have been able to see him. Two hundred yards in both directions she could see everything. But Paul was nowhere.
And yet she could hear his laughter. It echoed past her, from so close he must be able to see her. Spinning dizzily on her toes, she couldn’t lay eyes on him anywhere.
Alice’s hands reached out, hoping to grab something before she dropped woozy to the ground. Then she realised she was hearing something else. Below the laughter.
Another much more awful noise.
It was like breathing. But it wasn’t like any breathing she’d ever heard from man or animal. The sound was an unearthly rumble, trembling the ground itself.
Suddenly it was everywhere around her. Surrounding her, enveloping her.
There wasn’t fog this time, but it was like the belly of the beast all over again.
And Alice was inside it.
Chapter Five
The next thing Alice could properly recall, she was making her way down Central Road, in the direction of The Huntsman’s Hall.
Fortunately she’d worn trousers that morning and they had a crumpled ten pound note in the pocket. It meant that when the barman stared at her expectantly she was able to pay for the double vodka she’d ordered. The change he gave her allowed her to call Geoff’s work from the payphone.
Again, what he told them in the shop, she didn’t know, but he excused himself immediately and was with her in just over ten minutes.
His uniform was the same whether he was in work or not. Today, it seemed slightly faded. His Grateful Dead t-shirt not as psychedelic as it should have been. It was like she was looking at him through a personal fog. Still, his smile of greeting made her smile too, and she hadn’t been sure she was ever going to smile again.
This was of course the pub in which they’d met, and at one-thirty in the afternoon – half an hour before lunchtime opening finished – they had it all to themselves. It was like it was their private space and she needed that.
He’d bought himself a pint of bitter and put his arm around her.
“I think I’m cracking up,” she murmured to him. “I genuinely think I’m losing my mind.”
He stroked her hair. “What you saw was traumatic. It was obviously going to affect you, to awaken things inside you.”
“But it’s not just the dream anymore!” She was nearly weeping, only just holding it together. “It’s bigger than that now. An hour ago I saw him again. I saw Paul. It’s happening when I’m awake too. And I can’t just ignore it, I can’t just pretend it isn’t there.”
He nodded once. “I thought you were getting better.”
“I thought so too, but I can’t keep taking pills to block out my dreams. Just like I can’t keep getting high. And despite this” – she held up her glass and took a big gulp – “I can’t keep fucking drinking so much.” A smile came unbidden to her. “I suppose I can’t keep getting you to screw me all the time either.”
His chuckle wasn’t in any way mocking. He leant into her. “We could at least try that one.”
As half-hearted as it was, it was a moment of levity and she needed it.
“No. I’ve got to have some kind of control over myself. I’ve just walked out on my shift without explanation and that’s not going to go down well. Daphne is a bitch and would have been on the phone about that the first chance she got. And if I have lost my job, then I can’t just spin out, I have to pull myself together.”
“Okay,” Geoff said gently and kissed her brow. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t. I’ve no idea what I can do.”
“Well, there are options. You could go back to Fallowford.”
“What for?” she snapped. “It’s not like I have any people there. Here I have friends. I have” – she hesitated – “you.”
He squeezed her shoulder tighter.
“I know. I have you too. And I just want to find a way to help you.” He paused, thinking. “You could maybe see someone about it? I tried that primal scream therapy once and it chilled me the hell out. Gave me the courage to change my life.”
She shook her head. “No offence, but I don’t think mindlessly screaming my guts out is going to do much good. I need to be more focused than that if I’m going to work out what is happening to me, why I’m seeing these things, what it all means.”
Maybe he did take a little offence at that. Her head was resting on his shoulder, so she couldn’t see his face. His voice remained soothing though. “So what are your ideas?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
A silence hung awkwardly between them, and then he swallowed. “You could actually go to that Butterfly Clinic?”
She pulled back from him, staring into his eyes. “What?”
“I looked it up in the Yellow Pages at work. You were rig
ht, The Butterfly Clinic is near Dorking. It’s at the foot of Box Hill.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you seemed to be getting better. Because you didn’t seem to want to talk about it.”
She nodded. Of course he was right. This morning, before she saw Paul, would she really have wanted to listen?
His news took a while to sink in and left her with no idea what to say.
Geoff stepped in to fill the gap. “You could just go there. If you’re right and you were a patient, then they must have some record of it. Perhaps they can tell you why you were there and what happened to you while you were there. Perhaps they can explain to you who this Paul was.” He took a breath. “Maybe they can help you understand what these dreams – these visions – all mean.”
“But do we even know it’s still open?”
“If it’s there in the phone book with a working number, then it’s still open. I even noted down the address. It’s half an hour’s drive from here, no more than that, Alice.”
She stared at him. Rarely had she felt so nervous in her whole life, but she also knew that she’d never been more grateful to a man. To anyone she’d ever known, really.
There might have been a dread inside her, a sickness that stretched from her stomach upwards, but she knew she was certainly going to go there.
Chapter Six
Petrol was still expensive and Geoff’s old Countryman (which he had purchased in his days of more secure employment) struggled these days to climb hills. But she gave him the five pound note she had in change for some extra fuel, and he worked out a route which took them around Box Hill, rather than over it.
Their trip was mostly in silence. It was an irritation for such a devoted music fan as Geoff that he could never get the old car’s radio to work properly. Still, even though he didn’t really say anything to her, he glanced over and smiled at her regularly – letting her know that he was there for her should she want to speak.
Certain Danger Page 3
