The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two)

by Irvine, Ian C. P.

  “They what?”

  “They locked me up in a ward full of crazy people. And I lived there for a whole year until one day, I just stopped crying. And then I started writing. I wrote to you and Hannah every day, and once a week the doctors would post my letters. And once a week your father would send the letter back. Return to sender, is what he scribbled on the envelope.”

  I glance briefly back at the large brown box full of my mother’s letters.

  “Eventually my sister insisted that they should transfer me down to England to be near where she lived so that she could look after me better. She just couldn’t keep making the journey up to Edinburgh…”

  “You left Edinburgh?”

  “I didn’t have much choice about it, Andrew. All my decisions were being made for me. And most of the time I was so depressed and drugged up that I didn’t know what was going on.”

  “But dad never told us anything about this…”

  “I’m sorry. I always imagined that you knew. I just thought that you and Hannah had abandoned me too. And why not? What sort of mother was I? Why would you want to know me? But all the time, I kept writing to you both, as regular as clockwork. One letter ever week. And then one day I got a letter from someone at the address I was writing to you at, and they said that you had sold the house and had moved. They didn’t have a forwarding address either. You had all just vanished, which is what I think your father had planned. But I kept writing to you both, although after a while I think the doctors stopped posting them because the new owner asked the post office to block them.”

  “After that I used to lie in bed, or stand staring out of the hospital windows trying to imagine what you were doing, what you were like, where you were? Sometimes I wondered if maybe you had a new mother…?”

  She looks at me, and I shake my head.

  “…I stopped eating. I almost died. But then somehow the doctors persuaded me that I had to stop writing to you both, and that I had to put the past behind me. It was the past that was killing me. Perhaps I couldn’t be a good mother. But I could be a good person. A good sister to my brother and my sister….In a way they succeeded, and I slowly started to pull my life together again and eventually I went to live with my sister Claire in Mitcham. But I never stopped thinking about you, or hoping that one day, maybe one day,…”she reaches across and cups my hand in hers. This time I do not pull away or shake away her attention. “… that maybe one day you and Hannah would come and rescue me…”

  “Rescue you?” I exclaim. “ Oh dear, oh no, oh no…”and suddenly my arms are around her, holding her close to me, rocking my mother in my arms, trying to protect her, trying to protect her from her past.

  Trying to rescue her.

  And hoping, that in return, she will rescue me.

  Chapter Fifty Seven

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  .

  It is late on Saturday night before I make it back to Clapham Junction in London. A day like none other I have ever spent in my life. A day of destruction, as my old life and everything I have ever believed in, crumbled before my eyes.

  Though, in the wake of this destruction there also dawned the first rays of light belonging to a new beginning.

  Guy and Sal are already in bed when I let myself into the flat, and he is not there to protest when I seek out his special hidden reserve of whisky, which once more falls prey to one of my covert raids on the kitchen cabinet. Retrieving it from the back of the cupboard I start to pour myself a small measure, one which in itself won’t be missed, but then decide, ‘Sod it!’ and take the whole bottle to my room.

  I am going to get drunk.

  Probably, very drunk.

  Sitting back upon my bed I survey the wreck my life has become.

  But first, a sip of my whisky. Or rather, Guy’s whisky.

  Back to my life: I have a job that is under threat (although maybe I am exaggerating), Slávka and I are finished, my father has apparently been lying to me and Hannah my entire life, and, it would seem that I owe a massive,…a MASSIVE apology to every female on the planet.

  For twenty odd years I have blamed, subconsciously detested and judged almost every female I met, convinced that they could not be trusted.

  A sip of my whisky. A large sip. And then another.

  I had believed that females were the destroyers of all relationships: they were the adulterers and the whores, out only to satisfy their own pleasures with no consideration for the feelings of men, or the devastation or destruction their actions would have on others.

  And now…?, -another sip, or two, of the whisky-, it would seem that woman are the victims, not the perpetrators. Men, -a sip-, are the bastards. Men are the whores. Men are the vandals of hearts, the slayers of affection, the destroyers of homes and families.

  And it was a man who destroyed my family.

  My father destroyed my family.

  My father is to blame for losing Slávka.

  I finish the rather large glass.

  My father…

  A liar, a bastard, a cheat, a cruel, selfish cunt.

  What am I meant to feel about him now…?

  I still love him, but…

  Another sip.

  I am so confused…

  .

  I lie back on my bed, the room starting to ride a wave before my eyes. I close my eyes and blink.

  Perhaps, if it had been earlier on in the day, I may have been my usual pathetic self and cried, but to be honest, I am all cried out. There are no more tears left inside me. I suppose tears are a sign that a person cares about something, but now, I think I am beyond caring.

  I have lost it all.

  Everything.

  There is only one thing that is worth looking forward to in my life: as part of the rescue package I have promised my mother, and that she has promised me and Hannah in return, I am going to take my mother back to Edinburgh, and next weekend, she and I, and hopefully Hannah too, are going to get up at four o’clock in the morning and go for a walk.

  We will walk together through a field of rabbits, skipping, jumping and darting about all around us. We will laugh. We will smile. Then, when the sun comes up, we will be a family again.

  .

  My thoughts return to my father, and I struggle back up from the bed to pour myself another big glass of whisky.

  I drink half of it.

  Hate is a strong word. I do not hate my father. I know I should. Bastard and cunt that he is.

  Pedestals are objects that people always fall off. Some people have higher to fall than others. My father is one bastard that has fallen a long, long way.

  What do I think of him now? ..another drink….

  Dunno.

  Too early to tell what I think of him. Bastard and cunt that he bastard is.

  .

  Then a thought hits me, and I start to laugh. I can’t stop laughing. In fact, I become fucking hysterical.

  What I just thought is the most funny thing in the world.

  I’m laughing, because I just remembered something my bastard of a dad once told me when I was a little kid.

  “Andrew…” is what he said, “Andrew…Always tell the truth. Never lie, my son. Because if there is one thing I’ve learnt in my life,…my son,…it’s that ‘the truth will always out!’

  I laugh so hard that I drop the open bottle on the bed, and my empty glass rolls onto the floor.

  That’s how Guy finds me the next morning. Caught. Red-handed with the stolen bottle of whisky, the one which I had always denied taking the odd wee dram from, now and again…

  Like my dad always said, ‘The truth will always out!’

  .

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  .

  “So, how are you going to tell Hannah?” Guy asks, when I tell him the truth later on that evening, just after my fifth cup of strong coffee that day.

  “I will just tell her the truth. It’s the simplest thing to do.”

  I call Hannah an hour later. I tell her wha
t happened and the truth about our lives. The truth about our father. And I tell her all about our mother. She cries. She hangs up. Then an hour later she calls back.

  “When are we going to see the rabbits?”

  “Next weekend.”

  “And our mother…mum…what do we call her? Is she really coming?”

  “Yes. I’m bringing her myself.”

  .

  I have one more thing to do before I can relax on Sunday evening. I need to make a phone call and an apology. To talk to someone who I should have called a long time ago.

  The phone rings. At first I think that no one is going to pick up, but then I hear her voice, answering the phone bright and cheerfully. Initially when she hears my voice, she is shocked and is speechless. But she doesn’t hang up.

  “Kate,” I say. “I owe you an apology. A big apology. A huge apology. I hurt you… and I am sorry, more than I can tell.”

  “Andrew...”

  “I took your advice. You were right. You were always right. I needed help. I needed to learn how to trust…Kate, I found my mother.”

  “You found her?” she asks, excitedly.

  “I did. I found her. And I learned a lot about myself and my family that I never knew before. Which leads me to a question that I have to ask you. I’ll understand if you decide to say no, but I hope that you will find it within yourself to say ‘yes.’ “

  There is more silence at the other end of the phone. I can hear her breathing hard down the receiver, and I know she is thinking hard.

  “Andrew, what do you want to ask me?”

  It’s a simple question, one that I should have asked long, long ago.

  “Kate, please, …will you forgive me?”

  Chapter Fifty Eight

  Three Weeks Later

  .

  .

  I am flying high above the Tatras, and as I look down I can see the forest that Slávka and I once walked through so happily together, in what seems like another lifetime, so long ago.

  I look for the runway, and I see it not so far ahead. Swooping down to land, the large SkyEurope airplane touches down and taxies to the small terminal building where we all disembark.

  As we all stand around the small conveyor belt inside the building, I look around my fellow passengers and study their faces, listening to what they are saying to each other and trying to pick out some of the words that I have learned from my recent course at the Slovak Institute in London. A two-week intensive course, every evening and all day one Saturday, sufficient not to make me fluent in any way, but enough to help me say ‘Hello, Thank you, How are you?’, and how to ask for a pint of beer and directions to the nearest toilet. Which, according to my mother, is perhaps the most important question you need to learn in any foreign language. Of course, you have to understand the reply too. Or you will never find the loo…

  It’s almost two months since I was last standing here in much different circumstances, but as I look around the room I could swear that there were already more English men here than before, each with a Slovak girlfriend or wife in tow, or the other way around.

  I am the odd man out here. But then again, mine has not been the average story. I am perhaps the only Scottish man in the whole of Slovakia that came here without a girlfriend, gained a girlfriend, then lost one, and am now standing here alone, looking for my lost love.

  Thirty minutes later I am driving away from the airport in the smallest car I could rent. Not for me the free upgrade because of someone who knows my parents. In this small but beautiful country, I am a nobody.

  Following the map I bought in London, I manage to navigate myself successfully from Poprad down to Bardejov, 90 minutes away. As I begin to approach the outskirts of the town, I start to become incredibly nervous. What if Slávka sees me in the car? And even though she is the person I have come to find, the idea that she might see me and be pre-warned of my coming really scares me.

  I have a plan, and I want to stick to it. At least that way, I may stand some chance of success. Any deviation from the plan, and I will lose her forever.

  In spite of my plan as I finally drive into Bardejov and see the city-centre for the first time, I start to ask myself, very seriously, if I have gone mad.

  What on earth am I doing here?

  .

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  .

  I think back to the sequence of events that brought me to enact upon this hair-brained scheme for getting Slávka back, and I smile when I think of the part Guy played in it all.

  He played the greatest part of all, insisting that it was the least he could do to repay me for the help I had given him and Sal.

  When I had explained to him what had happened and how Linda, Slávka’s flatmate had refused to give me any telephone number or address for Slávka in Slovakia, Guy had asked me to leave it with him. He would get it for me. And he did.

  The next day he called Linda up and pretended to be from the hospital.

  “Hi, Can I speak to Slávka Malikova please? …Oh…she’s not there?...When will she be back? ….She’s moved abroad? Oh dear…Please, I am calling on behalf of the Royal London Hospital. I have a P45 here for Slávka Malikova that I need to send to her, but I need a home address. Can you give me her address please so that I can send it to her?...No, I’m sorry, we can’t send it to you for you to forward it to her. Last year’s European Regulation on Data Privacy strictly forbids that. By law, we can only send it to the owner personally…If it’s a problem to give me the address, then could you please call Miss Malikova and tell her that she has to come to the hospital to pick it up personally? …She can’t?... Oh, but, that means that if she has gone back to Slovakia, her tax bill for this year will be twice as high as it should be, because the Inland Revenue …oh, it’s complicated. The thing is our systems just don’t know how to deal with the new wave of EU workers…I know, it’s ridiculous, but that’s the law…Well, there’s nothing else I can do then. I’m sorry. We’ll just have to keep it here for her... Can you please tell Miss Malikova that we’ll keep it for her here and she must come and pick it up….oh, sorry, what was that you said? You will give us the address? Oh, that would be very helpful. Thank you. If you do that, then I can pop her P45 in the post today…”

  Which is how Guy got me her address, and how I managed to complete Part One of the plan: getting here.

  .

  I park the car at the back of the hotel, Hotel Artin, the best business hotel in town, or rather, the only business hotel in town, and I check in.

  It’s only three o’clock. I shower, I shave again, then go for a quick walk around the town to get the lay of the land, and to find a restaurant for Part Three of ‘The Plan’.

  Walking from the hotel and following the signs pointing to ‘Centrum Mesta’-town centre, and Radnica- town hall-, I walk along past the impressive remnants of a large town wall, which still rings the old city and as I walk I am captivated by the sight of the city cathedral which now dominates the skyline, towering above everything around it and acting as the perfect sign-post to the centre of the old town.

  I leave the road and start to walk up a wide cobbled road, and very soon emerge into a large, beautiful town square. All of the old buildings face forward onto the square, each painted brightly in either yellow or brown or orange or pink or blue, a veritable rainbow of ancient medieval shops and homes that have survived the ages and have now been impeccably renovated, look stunningly elegant and beautiful. In the centre of the expansive cobbled square there is a large well, and a large medieval town hall, but pride of place, statuesque, grand and very, very imposing, is the massive 15th Century cathedral that dominates the south side of the square.

  The visual effect of it all is very impressive, and I wonder for a moment how such a place has been kept secret? Why is this place not in every single tourist book on the planet?

  How many other places are there like this in Slovakia? Or Eastern Europe?

  The marketing side o
f my brain kicks in, and I imagine a promotional tagline….‘Slovakia: Be the first to visit Europe’s Undiscovered Country!’

  Suddenly the sound of chiming bells booms out across the square and I turn to look up at the Cathedral tower, immediately drawn to the clock and realising how late it is becoming. Remembering that I will have plenty of time for sight-seeing later on, I get back to my plan and the task of finding a romantic restaurant.

  I don’t have to look far. On the left hand side of the square, an attractive sign draws my attention to a flight of steps which disappears downwards from the main square’s cobbled courtyard to an atmospheric restaurant cuddled away in the medieval cellars of the impressive buildings above.

  Having successfully found a restaurant, I next find a florist and proceed to buy the biggest bouquet of flowers I can carry.

  Now for Part Two of ‘The Plan’.

  Returning to the hotel, I dress, check that I have everything I need, and drive through the city to the road where the map tells me Slávka’s house is. Shaking, but also very excited, I park the car about fifty metres from the house, check I have everything and get out of the car. I am parked outside of number 48. I mentally count the house numbers off and see where number 62 is, Slávka’s house.

  Ouch, this is it…

  Taking a deep breath, I start to walk towards the house.

  At the gate to her house, I check my watch. It’s 7.15 pm. Of all the times of the day, I reckon I have the greatest chance of catching Slávka home just now,…that is assuming of course, that she is still staying with her parents.

  As I open the gate and start to walk down the path towards her parents’ modern three storey house, I wonder why I had not thought of that before? What happens if she isn’t living here anymore?

  In front of the door, I stop and check my jacket and my tie, trying to look as respectable as I can.