‘You’re crazy.’
My heart has stopped its violent thudding, but I am still short of breath and wired up on adrenaline. My nerves feel like needles.
Drew is crazy.
Ever since he burst into Laura’s office, where I’d been trying to hide from him, he’s been telling me stuff. Crazy stuff. He says he knows everything there is to know about The Meadows. He says people don’t notice him because he’s unobtrusive and they say things they might not otherwise have said.
Also, he’s set up tiny videocams in the communal rooms that film continuously, though, obviously, none of the footage can be used without permission. He started going through the film from the art room yesterday. And though you couldn’t see into Laura’s office, you could still pick up voices.
You could hear the things Laura said to Sofia, when she was still alive. And to Charlie.
And to me.
‘It’s the hypnosis. First she makes you feel calm and comfortable. Then she takes you deeper. Then she talks about how there’s a wonderful, peaceful place where all is light and love. You’re all so special, she tells you. You deserve a safe place when the world gets too dark. Then, when you are completely relaxed and zoned out, she tells you how to get there.’
‘Where?’
I am standing behind the armchair where I normally sit, putting it between me and Drew. My fingers pick at the tartan throw like they are tapping out a message in code.
‘To the safe place. To the place you all want to be. To the light. With Charlie, it was by cutting herself. Except Laura didn’t put it like that. She told her it was rubbing a massage point on her wrist, to release endorphins. Using something sharp. The sharper the better, she said. Charlie would know when she found something. Pain was release, she told her. She would find the most unimaginable peace, she said. With Sofia, it was different. She told Sofia she could fly.’
That’s when I say it.
‘You’re crazy.’
But Drew acts as if I haven’t spoken. ‘She told Sofia she would find this beautiful place once she was weightless. That she only had to believe she could fly in order for it to be true. And with you, it was headlights. The lights would guide you home, she said. Follow the light.’
He is in front of the door, blocking my exit. The windowless room feels like it is closing in on me.
‘She gave you triggers,’ he continues. ‘Certain things that would set you off in search of the safe place. A sense of being overwhelmed. Feeling claustrophobic or hemmed in. Too many demands being placed on you. Fear of the future. Dry mouth. Sweaty palms. Trigger, trigger, trigger.’
I have a flashback to standing on the side of the road in the drizzle with Stella. And that moment of painful clarity where I’d wondered for the first time how much it would end up costing me to stay with a husband who’d never fully acknowledged his own culpability. Right after that is when I’d looked at the lorry. Follow the light.
‘Your visit to Laura yesterday was on the tape too,’ Drew says.
There is not air enough in the room for the two of us. I feel light-headed, breathing in his exhaled breath. And violated. Drew is like a thief, rubbing grubby hands through things he has no right to. Those one-to-one sessions with Laura are where I have been most honest, laid myself most bare. And to know that Drew has listened to everything feels horribly exposing.
‘She was talking to you about water, Hannah. Not like the first sessions, which were about traffic and how car headlights could guide you home. This time she told you your safe place was deep under the water. Deep. Deep. Deep. She must have said the word about a hundred times.’
Something darts like an eel through the murk of my mind, a memory that slips from my grasp as soon as I touch it. Drew sees something in my face.
‘You remember, don’t you? You know I’m telling the truth.’
But now the door opens, flooding the dimly lit room suddenly with light.
‘Greetings,’ says Laura.
She is smiling, but there is an alertness about her that makes me wonder just how long she has been standing behind the door and how much she has heard.
‘Sorry.’ Drew’s voice is hardly more than a mutter. ‘I’ll be off now.’
He pushes past Laura without looking at either of us, and I should be relieved that he has gone, yet fear is tattooing itself in tiny pricks across my skin.
What is it I am not remembering? I curse last night’s sleeping pill, with its morning-after fog.
‘Is everything all right, Hannah?’
This is where I should tell her what Drew said, give her the chance to explain, to deny, to label him a fantasist.
‘It’s fine, Laura. We were just chatting. We came in here because it was quiet. You don’t mind, do you?’
The words come from some part of me that seems separate from the rest. As I’m speaking, I’m edging round the chair towards the open door.
Suddenly, two things happen at once. Laura steps towards me just as Odelle appears in the doorway.
‘Here you are, Laura. Did you forget you said you’d help me with my clay head? The mouth is all wrong.’
She glares at me as if I am intruding. Gratefully, I push past her. ‘I’ll leave you two to it.’
My heart feels as if it has come loose from its moorings and is ricocheting off the inside of my ribs, and my head is full of questions I can’t answer.
In the hallway I hesitate for a moment under the shimmering glass chandelier. The earl eyes me coldly from the oil painting on the far wall. Then I press the exit button by the front entrance, yank open the door and begin to run.