The Split

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘Understood. Thanks, Mum.’

  Joe is smiling, as Felicity walks in through the door.

  41

  Felicity

  This time, Felicity is determined not to be hypnotised. ‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ she says. ‘While I’m myself.’

  ‘Whatever you want,’ Joe agrees. ‘What would you like to talk about?’

  She takes a deep breath. She has decided and she will not back out now. ‘That time on the common,’ she says. ‘When I ended up in hospital. It wasn’t the first.’

  Several seconds of silence and then, ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I lose time,’ she says.

  His brows contract a little but the half-smile remains. ‘Can you explain what you mean by that?’

  ‘When it happens, it’s as though I’ve been lifted out of my life and kept somewhere in suspended animation for hours, then dropped back. Time has moved on, and I have no memory of what I did or of what happened to me during those hours.’

  ‘And are you usually in the same place when you come back to yourself?’

  ‘No. It wouldn’t be too bad if I was. I could tell myself I’d fallen asleep or something. I’m always somewhere different, with no idea of how I got there.’

  Joe takes up his notebook. ‘Felicity, I’d like you to tell me about each of these incidents. Start with the first that you can remember, please.’

  ‘I think the first time was back in March. I was down by the Backs, in the middle of the night. I’d climbed over the wall and was on the lawn at the back of Clare College. It was as though I’d been carried there in my sleep and suddenly woke up.’

  ‘And you have no idea how you got there?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’d gone to bed, same as normal.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I ran home. I was frightened and freezing. It’s quite a way from Clare College to where I live.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone?’

  ‘There was no one to tell. I assumed I’d been sleepwalking, although I’d never done it before. It was pretty scary. I started hiding my keys before I went to bed and putting obstacles by the doors so I’d wake myself up.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘No, it happened in the daytime next.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A week or so after that, on a Saturday, I found myself in the shopping centre with no idea how I got there.’

  ‘And was that the last? Before the incident on the common, I mean?’

  ‘No. On the twenty-fifth of April – I made a note of the date that time – I was suddenly in the office at two o’clock in the morning. I’d driven there and let myself in. And then, last Saturday – do you remember you phoned me in the evening? – well, it had happened then as well. I lost about six hours of the day.’

  Joe finishes writing. ‘Right, to make sure I’ve understood everything, beginning in March this year, you started experiencing episodes of what we call a fugue-like state, periods of time that slipped out of your memory. There have been six such episodes, is that right?’

  ‘Six that I can remember.’

  ‘And have you ever experienced anything like this before? Before March I mean?’

  She cannot tell him about Freddie. Not yet at any rate. One serious mental health problem at a time. ‘No, never.’

  ‘Did anything happen in March?’ Joe asks. ‘Anything out of the ordinary at all?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘A sudden change to one’s mental wellbeing can be sparked by a difficult or traumatic occurrence. Being in a car accident, even witnessing an accident.’

  ‘I can’t remember anything like that.’

  She can’t, but maybe she has forgotten that too. She is starting to wonder if she can rely on her own memories any more.

  Joe watches her carefully as he says, ‘The death of a loved one, a friend or close relative falling ill, these things can also be a trigger. Maybe a break-up of a long-term relationship?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘Do you feel able to talk about the voices you hear?’ he asks her.

  ‘I thought I was dreaming at first. I still could be. Mostly they happen when I’m half asleep but a couple of times, I’ve been awake and I hear them clear as day. It’s like someone’s in the room with me, I can actually feel their presence. It happened when you were in my house.’

  ‘Maybe it was me.’

  ‘No, it was a woman’s voice.’ She stops. ‘I never realised that before. That it was a woman talking to me, I mean.’

  ‘Is it always a woman?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘A woman you know?’

  She shakes her head. ‘No, but a familiar voice for all that. Like someone from the television. Or maybe someone I knew years ago, if that makes any sense.’

  ‘And when you hear her, does she sound as though she’s in your head, speaking to you, or in the room?’

  ‘The room. Not in my head. She sounds real. Am I schizophrenic?’

  He smiles. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s a possible diagnosis but there’s a lot that doesn’t fit. What does this woman say to you?’

  ‘She taunts me. She’s trying to frighten me.’

  ‘How does she do that exactly?’

  Felicity drops her eyes. ‘I can’t remember exactly what she says, just that she’s mean.’

  He’s coming, the woman in her head says. You can’t get away from him. He’ll always find you. She cannot tell Joe this without telling him who she suspects the ‘he’ is, and that she is not ready to do.

  Joe waits for her to say more. In the end, he breaks the silence. ‘So, we have three groups of symptoms. First, the random occurrence of fugue states, which last several hours. Second, the disorder in your home, and third, the voices. And all this began in mid-March. Have I missed anything?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Right, what I’d like to do, with your permission, is to continue hypnotherapy to unlock what happened during your various fugue states. That might give us a clue to what’s triggering them.’

  More hypnotherapy? More opportunities for her to give too much away. Joe will be suspicious, though, if she refuses and so reluctantly, she agrees.

  On Joe’s doorstep, she stops to collect her thoughts. Schizophrenia sounds bad, but she thinks it might be a relief, in a way, to have a definite diagnosis. Except … There’s a lot that doesn’t fit, Joe said. Like Freddie. How does a real Freddie, possibly in town, fit in with her mental health problems?

  She is on the point of walking back to her car when, once again, she gets the feeling that she is being watched. Her eyes flit up and down the street. Lots of people about. Lots of tourists milling around King’s College opposite. So many windows on her side of the street. She is surrounded by a hundred or more hiding places and she has no idea whether this sudden fear is real, or entirely in her own twisted imagination.

  42

  Joe

  The day of Bella Barnes’ funeral dawns bright and clear and Joe is awake to see the sun come up. He pulls the dry-cleaning ticket off his suit and polishes shoes that are already gleaming. At the agreed time he collects his passengers and tries not to show surprise that they are all punctual. He lets Dora hug him and hands her into the front seat like a queen but he breathes through his mouth all the way to the crematorium on the Huntington Road. When Torquil, also with a full car, pulls up beside him, Joe sees that his friend has been less tactful. Torquil has driven over with every window open.

  ‘Well, you can put that down.’ Dora glares at the can of cheap lager in Michael’s hand. ‘It’s not respectful.’

  Michael drains the can, tossing it into a nearby waste bin. ‘Fucking rozzers,’ he belches. ‘You never said the Old Bill was gonna be here.’

  Following his eyeline, Joe sees a couple of police cars and recognises his mother’s Toyota. ‘Bella was murdered,’ he says. ‘Of course the polic
e will be here.’

  Apart from Dora, who marches to the front and puts her shopping trolley on the seat beside her, the rough sleepers slide into the back row. Joe and Torquil take their seats next to Delilah.

  An old photograph of Bella has been found from somewhere. In it, she looks even younger than Joe remembers her. Her blonde hair waves past her shoulders and her face is full and glowing with health.

  ‘Any progress?’ Torquil asks.

  Delilah scowls and shakes her head.

  She smells a little like the homeless, Joe realises with a jolt. She is sweating inside a suit that is too tight and that needs cleaning, and a haze of stale alcohol hovers around her.

  The service begins, but the words wash over Joe. He is thinking of the Bella he knew, whose pretty young face always looked anxious, and whose spindly body shook and flinched, as though in the constant expectation of violence. He thinks of how grateful she always seemed for his attention, and how guilty he felt that he had so little to give. As he sees more than one of his mother’s colleagues watching him, he wonders whether the little he gave was actually too much.

  It is soon over, and the day is already warming up by the time they leave the chapel. Joe breathes in the scent of midsummer roses and wonders what burning-Bella will smell like. He wants to be well away before there is a chance of finding out.

  ‘Dad called,’ he says and sees his mother’s face tense. ‘Gran fell out of bed and wasn’t found for a couple of hours. I’ll try to get over there in the next couple of weeks.’

  ‘Long drive on your own,’ Delilah says. ‘Let me know and I’ll come with you. I can sit in the car.’

  Joe opens her car door for her and bends to kiss her cheek. As he straightens up, he sees Dora and the others in a huddle near the covered walkway where the flowers are laid for mourners to admire. Kirk, the old soldier, beckons him over.

  ‘What’s up, guys?’ he says, when he’s close enough.

  ‘I didn’t see her,’ Michael replies. ‘No good asking me.’

  ‘OK.’ Joe looks from one face to the next.

  ‘I not see her,’ the woman from the Middle East with the young baby says.

  ‘See who?’

  ‘Whom,’ Dora corrects.

  ‘It could be nothing, Joe.’ Even Torquil looks worried. ‘It could have been one of the local kids.’

  A pulse is starting to tick in Joe’s temples. ‘Guys, who did you see?’

  Torquil sighs. ‘They think they saw a girl, young woman, whatever, at the end of the drive as we were all coming out.’

  Joe looks down the crematorium drive that stretches nearly a quarter of a mile towards the main road. His mother’s car is about to reach the end.

  ‘Too far away to know for sure,’ Torquil says. ‘It could have been anyone.’

  Joe looks from one face to the next. He knows what’s coming.

  ‘A young woman in a blue hoody,’ Torquil says. ‘On roller skates.’

  43

  Felicity

  ‘Felicity, we’ve had South Georgia on the phone.’

  After a weekend in which each hour stretched interminably, when she had been afraid to leave her home and afraid to stay in it, Felicity arrives at work on Monday morning close to exhausted. She is conscious of a sinking feeling as she looks back at Penny, her boss. ‘Is there a problem?’

  She’d had no idea, until now, how much she’d been relying on the South Georgia job. One of the most remote, inhospitable places on the planet. Somewhere difficult to visit in summer, impossible in winter. In South Georgia, no one will find her, and to have it pulled away will feel like standing on the deck of the Titanic watching the last lifeboat row away.

  ‘The opposite, actually,’ Penny says. ‘They’ve secured additional funding for the glacier project. And the BBC are definitely interested in the iceberg series.’

  ‘All sounds good.’

  ‘It is,’ Penny agrees.

  There’s a but coming, thinks Felicity.

  ‘But they need a commitment from you more or less straightaway.’

  ‘They said I had a couple of weeks to think it over.’

  Joe will never sign her off fit to take up a new job if he learns about Freddie. She’s been a fool to be as confiding as she has been.

  ‘That was before,’ Penny says. ‘And they want you to leave at the end of the month, first few days of August at the latest.’

  The end of the month is just over two weeks away. She has five more sessions scheduled with Joe, including the extra Friday slots. Can she convince him, in that time, that she has made sufficient progress? On the other hand, what might she give away?

  ‘Opportunity of a lifetime, Felicity,’ Penny says. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that.’

  Joe thinks she’ll be in Cambridge until the end of August. She doesn’t need to tell him her departure has been brought forward. And she can cancel a session, maybe two, claiming pressure of work.

  ‘It’s what we sign up for,’ her boss says. ‘And it’s not as though you have any family ties.’

  Apart from her newly found husband.

  ‘Can I tell you tomorrow?’ Felicity asks.

  Penny nods. ‘That should be fine.’

  * * *

  She wakes in darkness, with a sour taste in her mouth, a clamp-like pain in the back of her skull, and the knowledge that she is not alone in the bed. The man beside her is snoring gently. For a split second she thinks Joe, but no sooner has the thought crossed her mind than she knows it cannot be Joe. This man is tall, like Joe, but much bigger built. He seems like a massive presence in the bed. She can feel the length of his naked body pressing against hers. Her face is pressed into the back of his neck and he smells nothing like Joe.

  Freddie? Can it possibly be Freddie?

  The bed smells of sweat and sex and stale beer. What the actual f—?

  She catches herself in time. Felicity does not swear, not even to herself. Swearing is for – others.

  She cannot move without disturbing him because they are squeezed into a single bed and she is between him and the wall.

  His snoring stops. He grunts, pushes back the duvet and gets up. In the dim light she can see he is as tall and broad as she had pictured him. He doesn’t look back as he crosses the room in three strides and pulls open a door. An internal light flicks on and a second later she hears the sound of him urinating.

  She springs out of bed, ignoring the pain in her head and her rising nausea. There is barely enough light to see clothes scattered around the floor. She recognises none of them, but sees a pair of ripped jeans and a brightly coloured top that are in her size. There is underwear too and this does look familiar.

  She dresses quickly, spotting her handbag on a desk by the window. She has seen enough by now to know that she is in a student’s bedroom in one of the more modern residence blocks. In the adjoining bathroom, the lavatory flushes. In the bedroom, she cannot find her shoes.

  ‘Going somewhere?’

  She jumps around to see the boy – he cannot be much more than twenty – in the doorway to the bathroom and her first thought is relief. Whatever absurd situation she has got herself into, this dark-haired boy is definitely not Freddie. She drops her eyes – he is still naked – and looks frantically for her shoes. She spots them by the door.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mutters. ‘I’ve got to be – I have to go.’

  He doesn’t move.

  ‘You married?’ he says.

  She shoots a startled look at his face. ‘Why would you say that?’

  He looks down, uncomfortable. ‘I know Ben Styles,’ he says. ‘We’re on the same course.’

  She has no idea who he is talking about.

  ‘Who’s Ben Styles?’

  He gives her a look that suggests disappointment, and then reaches back into the bathroom for a towel that he wraps around his waist. She is dressed by this stage and wants nothing more than to be out of the room.

  ‘Ben is the dude you were with la
st week,’ he tells her.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  He presses the light switch and the sudden brightness throws her. He is a good-looking boy, she sees, but so young.

  He holds up a hand as though to fend her off. ‘Look, don’t get any ideas about claiming lack of consent.’ She sees now that he is scared too. They are like two frightened wild animals that have encountered each other in the dark.

  ‘All my mates were in the bar tonight,’ he says. ‘They all saw you coming on to me. Most of them saw you with Ben last week.’

  He sits down on the bed and now he looks sad rather than scared.

  ‘I’m not judging,’ he says. ‘I thought we had a good time. But running off in the middle of the night like you’ve done something to be ashamed of?’ He shakes his head. ‘That’s not cool.’

  There is nothing else she can say to him. She grabs her bag and leaves the room. When she is outside again in the cool night air, she doesn’t think. Acting entirely on instinct, she runs through the quads of Emmanuel College, out through the porters’ gate and across the city towards Joe’s house.

  44

  Joe

  Joe is dreaming of Ezzy again, but although the figure pursuing him through the streets of Cambridge is wearing Ezzy’s clothes, has Ezzy’s green hair and is demonstrating her unique skill on roller skates, the face in the lamplight has become Bella’s. The knife clenched in her hand is the same, though, and it is dripping with red liquid that he feels sure is his own blood. He runs, hot and breathless, through medieval streets but no matter how many corners he turns, the safety of his own front door eludes him.

  He wakes in the early hours of Tuesday morning with a painful thudding in his chest and his skin prickling. This is not at all unusual for him and so he lies still, waiting for his heartbeat to calm and his breathing to slow. In a few seconds, the bad dream will seem more ridiculous than real. He will remind himself of all the security features his mother has installed in and around his flat and conclude, again, that he is better guarded than the crown jewels.