When Your Eyes Close
TANYA FARRELLY

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright

KillerReads

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Tanya Farrelly 2018

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Tanya Farrelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008280024

Version: 2018-08-08

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One: Nick

Chapter Two: Caitlin

Chapter Three: Michelle

Chapter Four: Nick

Chapter Five: Caitlin

Chapter Six: Michelle

Chapter Seven: Nick

Chapter Eight: Caitlin

Chapter Nine: Michelle

Chapter Ten: Nick

Chapter Eleven: Caitlin

Chapter Twelve: Michelle

Chapter Thirteen: Nick

Chapter Fourteen: Caitlin

Chapter Fifteen: Michelle

Chapter Sixteen: Nick

Chapter Seventeen: Caitlin

Chapter Eighteen: Michelle

Chapter Nineteen: Nick

Chapter Twenty: Caitlin

Chapter Twenty-One: Michelle

Chapter Twenty-Two: Nick

Chapter Twenty-Three: Caitlin

Chapter Twenty-Four: Michelle

Chapter Twenty-Five: Nick

Chapter Twenty-Six: Caitlin

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Michelle

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Nick

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Caitlin

Chapter Thirty: Michelle

Chapter Thirty-One: Nick

Chapter Thirty-Two: Caitlin

Chapter Thirty-Three: Michelle

Chapter Thirty-Four: Nick

Chapter Thirty-Five: Caitlin

Chapter Thirty-Six: Michelle

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Nick

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Caitlin

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Michelle

Chapter Forty: Nick

Chapter Forty-One: Caitlin

Chapter Forty-Two: Michelle

Chapter Forty-Three: Nick

Chapter Forty-Four: Caitlin

Chapter Forty-Five: Michelle

Chapter Forty-Six: Nick

Chapter Forty-Seven: Caitlin

Chapter Forty-Eight: Michelle

Chapter Forty-Nine: Nick

Chapter Fifty: Caitlin

Chapter Fifty-One: Michelle

Chapter Fifty-Two: Nick

Epilogue: Two Years Later …

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

Also by Tanya Farrelly

About the Author

About the Publisher

Dedication

For Dave, an extraordinary writer and husband, without whose laughter I’d be lost.

CHAPTER ONE
Nick

Nick Drake pulled up outside the house named The Arches and cut the engine. He was twenty minutes early and there was another car, a dark grey saloon, parked in front of his. He looked at the long white bungalow illuminated by the half dozen lamps that lined the winding drive, and wondered if it were, after all, a good idea to have come.

Shivering, Nick reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and his fingers closed round the pack of cigarettes that he kept there for emergencies. He noted that there were only two left. With trembling fingers, he placed one between his lips and held the lighter to the tip until it burned crimson. He lowered the window and inhaled deeply until the smoke filled his craving lungs, and he felt the rain blow in on the damp night air.

On the passenger seat his mobile phone began to ring. He looked at the screen and saw Michelle’s name flash up again. Rain drummed on the windscreen and the phone rang out, and then blipped to inform him that she’d left yet another voice message. It was her fifth call in three days. He knew that he should call her back, but he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Talking meant making things real. And he wasn’t ready for that.

A few minutes passed before the bungalow door opened and a security light clicked on. A figure stepped into the rain, pausing to pull up the hood of an anorak before hurriedly descending the driveway. With head down, the woman made a dash for the grey saloon car. The heels of her boots clicked on the tarmac, and the indicator lights flashed amber as she hurriedly unlocked the car and slipped inside.

Illuminated briefly by the interior light, Nick saw the woman pull the hood of her anorak down and run a hand through unruly dark hair. The engine started, and the grey saloon turned and reversed into the driveway, the headlights momentarily blinding Nick as the car turned and disappeared down the lane by which he’d come.

For a few minutes he sat and stared out the windscreen. He drew on his cigarette until there was nothing more between his fingers and the tip, and then he stubbed it in the ashtray, closed the window and stepped out into the rain.

The girl who opened the door was no more than seven years old. She looked at him with big brown eyes. Then a man’s voice came from a room within. ‘Kirsty, I told you not to answer the door.’ The owner of the voice appeared from what Nick imagined was the kitchen. ‘Go on in like a good girl.’ The man put an arm round the little girl’s shoulder to draw her inside. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.

Nick shrugged. ‘The name’s Nick Drake. I’ve an appointment for nine o’clock.’

‘Sure, come on in.’ The man stepped back and ushered Nick inside. The child stood behind the man and stared at Nick. He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back.

‘Take a seat in here. Tessa will be with you soon.’

Nick was shown into a room not dissimilar to the waiting room in the doctor’s surgery. A television played in the corner, the volume muted. He sat in a hard chair by the door and waited. The sound of children’s voices came from somewhere within the house.

‘Boys, quit messing around down there. Get to bed.’

There was laughter, followed by the sound of running feet and then silence. Nick stared at the television.

‘Nick?’

He turned to see a blonde woman in her fifties standing in the doorway.

‘I’m Tessa. Do you want to come this way?’

Nick stood and felt the pain in his abdomen as he did so. Tessa put out a hand to shake his, and he followed her across the hallway and into a small, darkened room.

‘Please, take a seat,’ Tessa told him. Nick sat, and she sat opposite him and picked up a pen. She reached towards a small device on her desk and pressed a button. ‘I generally record the sessions, Nick, and send you the file. It can help to do self-hypnosis between sessions. You don’t have any objections?’

‘No, no, that’s okay.’ Nick waited, putting his hands between his knees to hide the tremor that had crept into them. He longed desperately for the last cigarette in the pack inside his jacket, knew that that would be the final one. Another bad habit curbed. Outside, the rain continued to thunder down, beating against the window.

‘How long have you had a problem with alcohol, Nick?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see it as a problem.’

‘But now you do?’

He nodded. ‘The doctors say if I don’t stop drinking I could be dead in a year, eighteen months at the most. And I can’t get on the transplant list unless I’m six months clean.’

Tessa scribbled something on her notepad. ‘Have you ever tried to give up before?’

‘Yeah, but it didn’t take.’ Nick thought of the AA meetings his ex-wife, Susan, had made him go to – the room of men, most of whom were there only because their wives had insisted. He’d lasted about three months, and then he’d finished up in a bar across from the meeting hall with two of the other recruits drinking whiskey until closing. And he’d thought it was all such a laugh – until Susan had left.

‘Any ideas why you drink, Nick?’ Tessa’s eyes flitted from the page to rest on him, and he fidgeted in his seat.

‘Does there have to be a reason?’ He knew that he sounded defensive, but he hadn’t come here for counselling. He simply wanted help to detox.

‘There usually is. There are various reasons, of course; it can come from pressure at work, or at home … It starts as a means to relax, or to escape … then over time it becomes the problem itself …’

He didn’t answer right away; he tried to think back to when his drinking had got heavier. He’d always had a taste for it – had started when he was about sixteen. And as for escape, he’d felt like that for a long time too. He just wasn’t sure what it was he was trying to escape from. When things had got bad with Susan … then he had a reason. He guessed that that was when he’d really hit it hard.

‘I’m divorced. We fought a lot; I suppose it started then … or at least made it worse.’

Tessa nodded. She didn’t say anything, didn’t judge him, and he imagined he wasn’t the first messed-up alcoholic divorcee she’d dealt with.

‘Have you ever been hypnotized before?’

Her voice brought him back from his thoughts, back to the dim room and the sound of the rain outside.

‘No, never.’

‘Okay.’ She put down her pen and smiled. ‘If you’re ready, let’s get started.’

They both stood, and Nick moved towards the chair she gestured to.

‘Hypnosis is nothing more than a deepened state of relaxation, Nick. I’m going to ask you to simply lie back, close your eyes and relax. You’ll be aware of everything that’s going on around you.’

Nick lay back in the reclining leather chair and closed his eyes. Tessa placed a thin blanket over him. He didn’t feel relaxed. His body was tense, and he was aware as he lay still of the rapid beating of his heart and the discomfort in the right side of his abdomen. The hypnotist was standing near him. A strong woody fragrance that reminded him of his ex-wife permeated his senses as her soft rhythmic voice cut in on his thoughts.

‘Now I want you to completely relax your body. The more relaxed you become, the more susceptible your mind will be to suggestion. We’re going to start with your feet and work our way up to your head.’

Nick shifted in the chair. He opened his eyes slightly and saw Tessa standing over him, her silhouette dark against the dimmed light behind her. Step by step, she instructed him to relax each part of his body until his limbs felt heavy, the tension gradually subsiding as he sank deeper into the leather seat.

‘For a long time, you’ve been hurting, Nick. And you’ve been relying more and more on alcohol to deaden these feelings of pain; but it’s only by experiencing the negative things in life that you can also appreciate the highs. That’s why you’ve come here today, to reconnect with your emotions, to discover that in order to live again you have to feel.’

The woman’s voice was slow and methodical – practised so as not to jolt him out of his physical state of relaxation – but even as he listened to her words, he could feel himself fighting them. Did he really want to get in touch with his feelings about Susan, and the end of their marriage? Since meeting Michelle, he’d put all that behind him. He’d been feeling more positive than he had in years.

‘Focus now on an area of your life that gives you happiness. Something that makes you feel confident, that makes you feel proud. Notice how you feel inside, Nick: assured, happy and fulfilled and let these feelings grow.’

Michelle. They’re on their second date and he’s telling her about the time he got the call to design a house for a well-known rock star in south Dublin. His reputation as an architect is at its peak. A year ago, he landed the big contract to design the house which now stands on a clifftop proudly overlooking Killiney Bay. He’s taken Michelle up there to see it, has parked the car on the Vico Road and led her down the steps to the beach, where it’s possible to look back up at the house.

‘Did you meet him?’ she asks. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Sure, he doesn’t say much. You know the type.’ He reaches out then, cups her face with his hand and leans in to kiss her. The wind blows her blonde hair in her face, and she clings to him and tells him she’s freezing. It’s a cold night in February. He feels the spray from the sea blow in on the wind, and he kisses her again and tells her she’s beautiful.

‘What?’ she shouts, and laughs as his words are drowned by the roar of a train passing on the tracks above bound for Bray.

‘As you’re experiencing these good feelings, Nick, I want you to take a deep breath and squeeze your hand into a fist. Your subconscious mind will memorize these feelings of happiness and whenever you want to feel like this again, you’ll simply take a breath and make a fist again.’

They’re climbing the steps back up to the Vico Road to where the car is waiting. He tightens his arm around Michelle’s shoulders as she stumbles and steadies herself by putting both arms round him. Her laugh rings out in the cold night and he wants to protect her – to keep her safe in his arms. He squeezes his hand into a fist as the woman’s voice, coming from some place far away, tells him to do. He’s filled with an emotion – something akin to love – although he barely knows this girl. With her he feels elated.

‘Okay. Now, I want you to imagine yourself in a situation where you would normally reach for a drink. Take in your surroundings, Nick. Where are you? Who are you with? Try to visualize the scene in as much detail as possible.’

Friday night: the after-work crowd. They’re in a pub in Capel Street and the rounds keep appearing before the previous ones have even been drunk. He checks his phone and sees he’s got a message from Susan.

Where r u?

He texts back, tells her he’ll be home soon – but he doesn’t feel like going home. All they do lately is fight. It’s easier to stay here with the work crowd, but he knows if he stays too long it’ll be worse – that as soon as he walks in the door, the accusations will begin and that’ll be it – the whole weekend ruined.

‘You’re reaching for that drink, Nick. But when you pick it up, you realize that you don’t want it. You don’t want another drink. I want you to take that drink and pour it down the sink. As you do so, I want you to squeeze your hand into a fist and remember those good feelings, those feelings of fulfilment, those feelings of pride. You’re taking control of your life, Nick, free from the burden of addiction, from the need to blot out those painful memories with alcohol.’

Elation. He feels adrenalin course through his body. And he’s transported again. This time he’s in a house, a strange house – not the house he lives in now, or the one he’d shared with Susan. There’s a green suite and green and orange curtains. Everything is brightly coloured, gaudy. He’s different too. His hair falls to his shoulders, and he’s wearing a T-shirt with Black Sabbath across the front – but he’s about the same age as he is now. He goes into the hall. He’s got some good news and he can’t wait to tell her. He shouts up the stairs: ‘Rachel, are you home?’ Nobody answers, but he thinks he hears a noise from above. ‘Rach? Are you here?’ No answer still, but there’s a definite bump from one of the rooms upstairs. A feeling of panic rises in his chest. He looks round the room for a weapon, something to protect himself with. In the kitchen he takes a sharp knife from the drawer, and slowly climbs the stairs.

The door to his and Rachel’s bedroom is closed. It’s never closed, but maybe Rachel is in there after all. Maybe she’s sleeping. He glances into the other rooms – empty. He reaches for the handle, grabs it suddenly and pushes the door inwards. Rachel screams and pulls the bed covers up, hiding her naked body from him as though he’s a stranger. The man, buttoning up his shirt, jumps from the edge of the bed where he’s been sitting, puts his arms out instinctively for protection. Nick sees himself wield the knife. He hears Rachel scream in protest, but it’s too late. There’s blood on the man’s white shirt, on his hands and on the carpet. It’s pooling around his fallen body.

Nick squeezed both hands into fists. He tried to summon Michelle’s face, to wake from the nightmare. He heard Tessa’s voice and strained towards it like a drowning man.

‘I’m going to count from one to five and when I reach five, you’re going to wake, Nick. One, two, three …’

On the count of five Nick opened his eyes. He attempted to sit up. His skin was damp with sweat and his whole body was trembling.

‘It’s okay. You’re okay, Nick. You’re in control. Nothing can happen to you now.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ he said.

‘What do you mean? What happened?’

‘I was in this house, but it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t my place. I was different – the way I looked. I was there to see Rachel. She … she was my wife. But I don’t know her. I have no idea who she is. It was like I was someone else … like it was someone else’s life. I went upstairs, and she was with someone – a man. Jesus … it was awful.’

Tessa was quiet. ‘What happened, Nick?’

‘I had a knife. To protect myself. I heard a noise upstairs, and I thought there was an intruder. And then I saw him in the room with her, and I went crazy. There was blood, so much blood. I know it wasn’t real, but, Jesus, what was it … some kind of nightmare?’

Tessa hesitated. ‘Your appearance, Nick. You said you looked different?’

Nick nodded. ‘My hair was long. I was wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt. I’ve never worn my hair long. I don’t understand … I mean does this normally happen to people under hypnosis?’

Tessa hesitated again. ‘Not to any of my clients, no. But there is something called confabulation. It’s when the mind creates false memories, and to the individual it can seem extraordinarily real. Some people who experience this believe that they’re experiencing remnants of a previous life.’

‘A previous life?’

‘Yes, but there’s no scientific evidence to suggest there’s any truth in that theory. It’s much more likely – and certainly it’s my belief – that the mind distorts memories in the same way as it does in dreams. I hope this hasn’t put you off, Nick. It’s extremely rare that something like this should happen. And if it happens again, well maybe it’s something that needs to be dealt with: a residual fear.’

Nick nodded, but he didn’t know what to think. He could still feel the knife in his hand, hear the woman screaming.

Tessa reached for her diary on the desk. ‘Do you want to make another appointment?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps Wednesday?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll give you a call,’ he said. He took his wallet from inside his jacket and paid. Tessa didn’t mention anything about forwarding the recording; maybe she’d decided it was better if he didn’t listen back – either way, he didn’t ask.

Outside, it was still raining. Nick rushed towards the car. His hands were still shaking as he took the last cigarette from the box, lit it and let the car window down. He put the radio on to try to distract himself from what had just happened. What the hell had that been? Remnants of a previous life … he didn’t believe in any of that mumbo jumbo, and he was glad that the hypnotist didn’t either. Michelle was into all that hippy stuff, she’d be intrigued, but not him. It was a nightmare, that’s all it was … it had to be.

On the radio, Black Sabbath were playing ‘Paranoid’ – Ozzy Osbourne screaming into the night. Fingers trembling, he turned down the volume and inhaled the nicotine deep into his lungs. Then he closed his eyes and squeezed his hand into a fist. Anything to try to distract himself from the nightmare that kept replaying in his head. He thought of Michelle, and how she made him feel, let the emotions wash over him. He couldn’t talk to her, not now, not after what he’d just experienced. Instead, he took the phone from his inside pocket and sent a quick text.

Call you tomorrow. N x.

CHAPTER TWO
Caitlin

Caitlin Davis closed the door behind her with a mixture of anxiety and relief. She knew what the evening held, but getting through the day until she’d arrived at this moment had been hard. Several times during the afternoon she’d found herself drifting despite the mayhem of the office and the decisions that needed to be made as to what should appear in the next issue of New Woman, the magazine she’d founded almost six years before – the same year she’d met David.

Caitlin threw her handbag down on the bed, sat down and kicked off her shoes. In her stockinged feet she stood on the edge of the bed and removed a box from the top shelf of the wardrobe. Carefully, she climbed down, took the lid off and took out the bundle of photos that lay at the top. David. It was a year today since she’d last seen him. A year since that terrible night when she’d called their friend, Andy, frantic, to tell him he hadn’t come home.

Walking through Dublin city centre that afternoon, everything had reminded her of their time together. She’d passed restaurants where they’d eaten, pubs where they’d gone with friends – places that she’d found it impossible to enter since he’d disappeared. In the days, weeks and months of the last year, every man of his height and build had drawn her attention. Every corner she’d turned she’d expected to see him, and each evening when she’d put her key in the lock it was with a sense of dread at the emptiness ahead.

Caitlin picked up a framed photo and allowed herself to feel the ache that his absence had caused – an ache that she tried to quell by keeping busy, but there was nothing that would make her forget. The void that David had left would always be there – and it was only today – on the anniversary of his disappearance, that she would allow herself to be consumed by the total agony of that absence.

She stared at the picture, taking in his smile, the creases at the corners of his grey eyes, the way he had her wrapped tight, both arms around her. God, they’d been so happy together. She’d loved him so much. There was no way she would ever have let something come between them. What happened had been unprecedented. Another person might have collapsed under it. But she’d experienced pain before and had survived. So instead, she’d done the only thing she could do; summoned all her strength and carried on. No matter what it cost her.

She put the picture to her lips, stood it on the bedside locker and lay back on the bed. For the millionth time, she thought of all that had happened that night, of how dismissive the guards had been when she and Andy had gone to the station to report David missing. They’d buzzed the bell at the desk, waited a good ten minutes before the garda on duty appeared. He’d then taken them through to one of the interview rooms, sat there and, disinterestedly, taken notes. He’d told them that nobody was officially a missing person until the mandatory twenty-four-hour period had elapsed. ‘You don’t understand, David would never do this …’ she’d said. She’d broken down in tears then as Andy explained how David was supposed to meet him that evening and had failed to turn up. He tried to impress on the garda how completely out of character that was for his friend.

They’d taken it more seriously in the days that followed. They’d questioned Caitlin in detail, asked her about David’s behaviour leading up to his disappearance. Had he been acting in any way strange? Had he ever done this type of thing before? How had his mood been in recent weeks? She’d told them that no, there had been no warning, nothing that would have set off alarm bells. As far as she had been concerned everything was fine.

And how was the marriage, they wanted to know: had they been experiencing any difficulties? Perhaps they’d argued? She’d thought of the years they’d been together; they’d hardly ever argued. And, on the rare occasion when she got annoyed, he’d make some joke to make her come around. David was like that; quick-witted and hard to resist. He was also the most stable person she’d known, a foil to her own sudden moods.

She’d gone through the details with them again and again, told them that he’d left for work that morning as normal. He was a music teacher at a secondary school for boys. The school principal had verified that David had turned up for work at 8.30 a.m. as usual and that he’d left at 4 p.m. that afternoon. CCTV footage showed him putting his violin case in the boot of the car before getting in and exiting the school car park.

The police had carried out door-to-door enquiries, establishing that nobody had seen David return to the house that afternoon. His car had been located clamped in a backstreet in the city centre. A place where, unfortunately, there were no cameras. A ticket in the windscreen showed that he’d paid to park until 5.30 p.m., and an assistant in a music shop in George’s Street said that David had been in the store at about 5 p.m. and had bought violin strings. His violin had still been in the boot – one string broken, explaining his purchase. The information given by the music shop assistant had been the last reported sighting.

David’s picture had gone up all over the city, on billboards, in DART and bus stations. It had almost destroyed Caitlin to see his smiling face everywhere she went. And still the guards had found no leads. As the months passed and they began to lose interest, Gillian, David’s mother, had suggested that they hire a private detective. He’d worked on the case for six months until eventually he told Caitlin he didn’t believe he could help her – that sometimes people just didn’t want to be found. For Caitlin that was like a slap to the face. David would never have walked out on their life. It was obvious, she’d told him, that something had happened to prevent his return. A few months later, when she’d met the detective in the street, he suggested that it was time she tried to move on, that it didn’t look as if David were coming back. He’d asked her out for a drink then, and the only emotion she’d felt was a deep sense of revulsion.

She hadn’t got close to anyone since David’s disappearance. It was the last thing she wanted. Recently, she’d even found herself the object of a well-meaning matchmaking scheme by a friend who’d been urging her to get on with her life. This endeavour had simply led to her refusing dinner invitations from such friends who clearly had no understanding of how much David meant to her.

Instead she’d sought to fill the void in other ways. She began running, and soon found herself jogging five kilometres each evening in the local park. Recently she’d pushed herself to seven. She’d lost weight, but that wasn’t her objective. She’d always been slim. She began running to escape the emptiness of the house in David’s absence – and then she found it was the one thing that lessened the stress and helped her to sleep at night. Exhausted, she’d sometimes shower and fall asleep with the TV on, one arm stretched across David’s side of the bed. There were mornings still when she opened her eyes expecting to find him next to her.

David had taught her to play the violin. She still practised most evenings and had joined a group of musicians who did a jam session in a wine bar every Wednesday night. Their friend, Andy, was the cellist and he’d invited her to join. Music was a passion that she and David had shared, and when she played she summoned feelings, not of loss, but of the elation she felt when they were together. Often, she’d sit with Andy over a glass of wine and they’d talk of the past. He was one of the only people she felt truly understood her; the only one who felt David’s loss as keenly as she did.

The phone rang, and Caitlin put the box of photos to the side. She knew that it would be David’s mum. They spoke often, and she knew she’d call on the anniversary of his disappearance. Caitlin had lost her own mother when she was five years old, and Gillian was as warm and compassionate as she imagined a mother should be – unlike the woman who’d brought Caitlin up. During her relationship with David, she’d grown close to his mother and since his disappearance they’d become closer still – each woman seeking a part of him in those he loved.

Caitlin picked up the phone and waited to hear Gillian’s soothing voice. Instead the voice that spoke was male.

‘David’s alive … but don’t try to find him. It could be dangerous for both of you.’

Caitlin tightened her grip on the receiver. ‘Who is this? What do you—?’

Before she could finish speaking, the caller had hung up, and all she heard was the constant blip of the disconnected line. Trembling, she put down the receiver, then picked it up again. What should she do; call Andy, or Gillian? Surely, they’d advise her to call the guards, but what if it was dangerous as the caller had said? Maybe she ought not to tell anyone. She replaced the receiver and tried to clear her mind. Was it a hoax call? If this man knew something, why had he chosen to call now and not before – and why on the anniversary of David’s disappearance?

Caitlin was trying to make sense of the thoughts that collided inside her mind when the phone rang again. After a second’s hesitation, she snatched up the receiver. She didn’t speak but waited for the man to say something first. If he could play games, then so could she, but this time it was the voice of David’s mother that greeted her.

CHAPTER THREE
Michelle

Michelle took a long drink from her water bottle and dabbed the perspiration from her face with a towel as the girls filed past her with smiles and words of thanks for another great Zumba class. She smiled back and said goodnight to each of them by name, but she didn’t feel the buzz that she usually got from the workout. Tonight it had been an effort. Unable to concentrate solely on the music, she’d made some mistakes and slipped into the wrong moves at the wrong time. Not that the women had noticed; it was only three weeks into the course and they’d not yet mastered the choreography that accompanied each song.

Michelle shoved the towel into her sports bag and searched in the pocket for her mobile. Three days and still she’d heard nothing from Nick. She looked at the screen in frustration. Every time she received a text message she opened it expecting it to be from him. The last time they’d spoken everything was fine. She was sure that nothing had happened between them that might have led to this. There had been no argument, no cross words, which made his silence simply incomprehensible. She’d tried calling him again before she began the class. The phone had rung out and she’d left a message saying that she hoped that everything was okay.

Throwing on a fleece, Michelle zipped up her sports bag and prepared to go home. She turned off the lights in the sports hall, said goodnight to the security man at the front desk and walked out of the community centre into the dark rain-filled streets. Already damp with perspiration, her hair clung to her forehead. She pushed it out of her eyes and hurried down the street. Outside the car park a homeless man sat, paper cup in hand, the hood of his jumper pulled up ineffectively against the rain. Michelle dug a few coins out of her pocket and dropped them in giving the man a brief smile. He mumbled words of thanks and wished her a good night as she walked inside. She knew his face. She’d talked to him once, some months before when she’d begun volunteering on the soup run with the Simon Community. He’d told her about being made redundant, and about a messy divorce in which his wife had got everything. He swore he didn’t touch drugs or alcohol, but most of them said that – it wasn’t her job to believe or to judge them. She hadn’t seen him in a while, had hoped that maybe his luck had changed, but the same faces always returned to the streets. Some of them she knew by name now – the ones who were glad to chat. This man had stood out because he sounded educated. He’d once, he said, held a senior position in a logistics company, and she wondered again about the circumstances that had led to him being in the street that night.

In the car park, she took the stairs two steps at a time until she’d reached the fifth floor. She hated these places at night – eerily lit by florescent lights – cars packed together, a predator could easily lie undetected waiting on a lone female to return to her car. Keys in hand, she unlocked the car from several metres away, and walked briskly, head held high until hurriedly she pulled open the driver’s door and climbed inside. When she turned the key in the ignition the radio came on and the gravellish tones of Tom Waits sang ‘Closing Time’ into the night.

Nick. She couldn’t get him out of her mind. It had been like that from the beginning, but whereas then her thoughts were pleasant and giddy, now they brought fear and uncertainty. She tried to reassure herself. Nick was crazy about her, he’d told her that. Only two weeks before he’d invited her out for dinner to meet his sister and her husband – a step that she believed he hadn’t taken with anyone else since divorcing his wife. Afterwards, he’d told her that his sister had been mad about her, and that Rowdy the dog was too, so he reckoned he’d have to keep her. And now a whole weekend had passed without so much as a call.

Michelle spiralled down the ramps and exited the car park. The rain had started to come down heavier, and she turned the wipers on to clear the windscreen. The homeless man had gone – she hoped he’d managed to find shelter for the night. The city streets were almost deserted. A woman struggled with an umbrella blown inside out in the wind and driving rain. Tom Waits’s melancholic tones were replaced by the unmistakable sound of Pearl Jam as Michelle found herself turning in the opposite direction of home and driving instead towards Nick’s house. She had to find out what had happened to prevent him from calling her. Perhaps he was ill, or worse still had had an accident. Whatever the reason, her fears would not abate until she’d satisfied herself that he was all right – that there was a reasonable explanation for, what felt by now, his interminable silence.

Michelle felt her heart quicken as she turned onto Nick’s road. She slowed as she approached the house, terrified that she might see Nick’s ex-wife’s car in the driveway – or worse. Surrounded by trees, it wasn’t possible to see the house until she’d pulled up at the gate. Outside the front door the light was on. It shone onto the wet tarmac revealing the absence of Nick’s car. Michelle looked at the clock that showed it was after nine. It was unusual for Nick to be out on a Monday evening. He’d normally have just finished walking Rowdy round the block. She’d learned his routine in the time they’d been together. Though she figured he wouldn’t have even ventured out with the dog on a night like this. She was sitting there wondering what to do when her phone blipped. She opened the text, immediately saw Nick’s name and read the brief message:

Call you tomorrow. N x.

At least she knew that he was all right. She read the short message several times as though the words might change or give her some clue as to what was going on in his mind. She wondered briefly why he’d signed off with his initial. It wasn’t something he normally did. Nor was the single kiss characteristic of his usual effusive messages, punctuated with kisses after almost every sentence. But then the message itself was a mere one line.

Michelle closed the message, put the phone on the seat next to her and started the engine. Wherever Nick was and whatever he was doing he clearly couldn’t or didn’t want to speak to her. His message had been of little consolation, save the fact that it confirmed he was alive, but that came with its own anxieties – namely that his feelings for her might have changed.

Michelle took a deep breath and tried to still the chaotic thoughts that raced and circled in her mind. She would go home, take a shower and try to concentrate on a book or a movie, anything that might distract her from the negative feelings that Nick’s absence had caused her. She knew that to dwell too long on a fear was to fulfil the prophecy – whatever was going on with Nick right now, she told herself it probably had nothing to do with her. He would talk to her when he was ready. The last thing she wanted to do was to push him into anything he wasn’t ready for. She had to prove that she was the antithesis of everything his ex-wife had been.

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