Meg Winter stood naked and still in front of the long bathroom mirror.
Its glass reflected the white enamel fittings, the sickly mint green walls and her own changed shape.
She took her new glasses off and put them on a shelf.
It was May, five months since she had been admitted to Musgrave Rehabilitation Centre.
Her memory was not returning but her strength was beginning to. She was learning to do things unaided, a little more each day. By now she could bathe and shower by herself and she was using the wheelchair less. But she got tired easily.
She looked at her reflection. It was not that she did not recognise herself exactly but every now and then it threw her when she saw how much she had changed. There were soft curves at her cheek bones where once she might have worried about looking a little chubby and the thinness of her face made her mouth seem ridiculously wide.
She stepped closer to the mirror and looked into her eyes, almost as if she expected them to be different, too, but they were the same soft grey. Yet she felt uncertain of what lay behind them. Somewhere in there, in her mind, things were hidden away. Things that she could not even guess at.
She had been very drunk. That had come as a bit of a shock.
The rest was worse. She had been in a car crash with a man she’d never heard of before, a man called Everett, who had then been murdered. By whom, she did not know, or why.
She was in the midst of a nightmare. Instead of waking to a new dawn she had emerged into something frightening and incomprehensible.
She stared. Her hair, long and straight, made her face seem narrower. She pulled it back and tied it up behind her head, seeing the faint scars at the edge of her scalp where glass fragments had been embedded. She felt the spot with her fingertips, then she moved the hand to her torn eyebrow, touching it gently, as if it would break off.
She tried to picture what she must have looked like when they found her that night, her skin slashed and bleeding, her body broken. But like everything else it was impossible to imagine.
She looked at her body. In the past months, she had graduated from being painfully thin to being slim and sinewy although her shape would never again be as full as it used to be. But that was the least of her worries.
As a matter of fact, it was not a worry at all.
Back in her room there were photographs which she had asked her father to bring. She looked at them frequently, thinking about the past, wondering about the future. There were two that highlighted the physical change. They showed a full-bodied young woman in a low-cut evening dress, then in jeans and a t-shirt that accentuated her curves.
She stepped into the shower and turned the water on. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to it, letting the warm spray beat against her skin.
Tomorrow the police were coming to see her.
They had been patient but they knew she was not going anywhere. Liam Maginnis and her father had held them at bay for as long as they could but her progress to recovery, at first ponderous, had picked up pace which meant that it was unreasonable to keep them away any longer.
Several times she had insisted that she did not mind.
‘Really,’ she had told her father and Maginnis, ‘it’s all right. I don’t know what you’re so afraid of. Do you think they want to charge me with something? I can’t imagine what.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Sam Winter had said, ‘I think I’d like to sit in on this. I’ll ask my solicitor to come along too. You never know.’
‘And I’d better be there as well,’ Maginnis had said. ‘We can use my office.’
‘Honestly,’ Meg had told them, ‘you’re being ridiculous. I just want to get this thing out of the way. The fact is that I can’t help them because I can’t remember anything. Nothing they say to me or ask me is going to change that. And that’s the truth.’
It was not the truth.
The truth was that she was afraid. Afraid of the unknown.
They had left it that Maginnis alone would sit in on the discussion and she had said she was happy enough with that.
The warm water brought a glow to her body.
She was alive but she was incomplete. A part of her was missing. It was not a physical loss, although perhaps in a symbolic way it did manifest itself in her less substantial form.
Paul Everett.
The first time she had heard the name was when her parents and Maginnis decided she was well enough to be told what had happened. Then her father had shown her cuttings from newspapers. Some of them were four years old, others were recent and dealt with Meg’s recovery and the re-opening of the case.
She lathered her body, then stood and let the water flow over her. She bent her head and as she watched the suds course down her legs and drain away across the floor of the shower she had the feeling once more that she did not know exactly who she was, never mind this Paul Everett.
It was later, during one of her sessions with Dr Sands, the psychologist, that she had learned about being drunk. Her parents must have known but they had not mentioned it. Embarrassment, perhaps. Insult added to injury.
She turned the water off, stepped out of the shower and began to dry herself.
Some things had not left her.
A couple of weeks ago she had asked her father to bring her some of her old medical textbooks and she had been pleased to discover that she could remember titles specifically. She had been equally happy when she found their contents familiar, eventhe very smell and feel of the books, like a reassuring old friend.
But the hospital where she had worked was a blank page. She could remember nothing about it: what she did, the staff – nothing. She wouldn’t even be able to try to jog her memory by visiting it when she got out of here. Two years ago it had been closed down and amalgamated with two other hospitals on a fresh site, becoming New Central Hospital.
The staff from the old days were all over the place, many of them out of the country. She had been shown photographs and she thought she knew some of the faces but she wasn’t sure. She wanted to remember, that was the problem, so she told herself that she did.
But it wasn’t the truth.
She slipped into pyjamas and a dressing gown as a ward auxiliary rapped on the door.
‘All finished yet, dear?’
‘All finished.’
The wheelchair stood outside and she folded herself into it gratefully, yet annoyed that she was so tired. The slightest exertion took a lot out of her but she wondered if the fatigue also stemmed from the anxiety that often kept her awake at nights.
She could doze on and off during the day but at night it was different.
Crazy, that.
She had been asleep for four years and now she sometimes couldn’t sleep at all. They had offered her pills to help but she had turned them down flat. No way. She would just put up with it.
The auxiliary reached over to the shelf. ‘Glasses, love. Don’t forget your glasses.’
‘Thanks. I’m always doing that, aren’t I?’
They headed down the corridor. Her bed was in a private room just outside a main ward and there she could be on her own. Some of the other patients were all right, others were just nosy. They knew all about her. The Musgrave grapevine was a healthy plant and the stuff that had been in the papers helped it flourish.
The episodic memory. That’s what Dr Sands had told her it was.
An entire part of her life was a mystery and she found herself no nearer to recovering it. It was as if every time she turned a corner she ran into a brick wall.
She felt awkward and uncertain, ill at ease with her own personality.
For an attractive, young single woman with a good job, her past seemed curiously empty. There were no traces of a recent social life of any kind. Her photographs were all at least five years old. Any letters her parents had been able to dig out were just bank and credit card statements and a few bills which her father had long since settled. There was no correspondence of a more personal nature and even her old diary contained nothing except her hospital rota pattern.
The diary.
When she had got her hands on that she had gone straight to the day it happened, turning the flimsy little pages hurriedly.
June 5. There it was. An early shift, finishing at three.
She looked at June 6.
A day off. She gave herself a bitter smile. Well over a thousand days off after that.
The sight of her own writing on the page, the italic scrawl in blue ballpoint, did nothing at all. It could have been a stranger’s diary, a stranger’s hand.
She tried her address book; her father had brought that, too.
It did not yield anything. No Paul Everett, no cryptic initials, or even any kind of a code that might have been him.
What names it did contain were either family – her mother, her father, an aunt who lived in New Zealand – or else longstanding friends and acquaintances. People from way back. From the part that she remembered.
She settled herself in the bed and lifted a magazine.
People were not exactly beating a path to the door of the Musgrave Centre to see her, were they?
Her parents sometimes brought messages of good wishes from whoever they met but no one wanted to become involved. There was something kind of seedy about all this, that was the thing.
She thought of some of the bizarre headlines she had read. She reckoned ‘Drug Murder Coma Girl’ said it all. Although she had liked the ‘girl’ part.
Girl, indeed. She was thirty now. Good God.
They all wanted to get the first interview. Her father got letters and faxes all the time. Some had arrived here, too. Newspapers, television programmes – they wanted to feed on her story for their circulations and their ratings.
She could not blame them. Northern Ireland had changed; she was finding that out. There was a kind of peace now with the result that a media which had been accustomed to a constant diet of stories about terrorism was grasping at anything new and different. And hers was one hell of a mystery.
But she passed all this over to her father to deal with. The answer, every time, was no. No interview.
The only one of the old faces who had kept in contact was Elizabeth.
She really wanted to see her again. Was it possible she could help in some way, fill in any of the gaps?
They had been friends almost all their lives, first at school, then sharing a flat while they were both at university. But those weeks before it happened, months may be –where had Elizabeth been then? She closed her eyes and tried to see but there was nothing.
She yawned and put the magazine down, then lay back in the bed. She had made the mistake of mentioning this tiredness to her mother.
Gloria had nodded knowingly, with that smug smile.
‘The Bible teaches us that we must have a very positive attitude to suffering,’ she had said.
‘Well, that’s nice to know,’ Meg had responded and then they had lapsed into a tense, fidgety silence.
Thinking of her parents did not bring her any comfort.
Why couldn’t I have forgotten all that?
But even if she had, their hostility to each other would have been an instant reminder.
Her father had changed. He seemed weary, older than he should be. She could only guess at the extent of his suffering, as well as the enormous financial expense involved in keeping her in comfortable care in a private hospital. It had all taken its toll.
She found it hard to picture him as the man her mother still treated with such bitterness: the philanderer who had ruined their marriage with his reckless affairs.
A knock on the door interrupted the thought.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, sitting up. ‘Come in.’
It was Liam Maginnis. ‘I’m not disturbing you, I hope?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I was just lying here thinking.’
‘Abouttomorrow?’
‘No, not really. About the past.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘What there is of it.’
He pulled out a chair. ‘May I?’
‘Of course. Make yourself at home.’
Before he sat, he moved to close the door.
‘Leave it open a little,’ she said. ‘Would you mind?’
‘Sure. Too warm in here?’
‘No, it’s just – I feel a bit enclosed sometimes.’ He nodded as if he understood.
There was something. It wasn’t him, it was her, she was certain of that, but for some reason she felt uneasy about being in a closed room with him.
As he sat down, she got a whiff of his aftershave, always a little over the top. He was a good-looking man and she could detect that some of the nurses had an eye for him but she found him just a bit too conscious of his own appeal.
‘Everything will be all right tomorrow,’ he said. ‘They just want to have a talk. I’ll explain all about the amnesia. I’m sure they’ll leave you alone afterwards.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ she said, although she doubted it.
He changed the subject. ‘Have you thought about what will happen, what you’ll do when you leave here?’
The idea surprised her. ‘Well, no, not really. When’s that likely to be?’
‘Sooner rather than later, I would say, the way things are progressing. You’ve done remarkably well so I think we might aim for August. How do you feel about that?’
‘Not sure,’ she said, a bit vaguely, then shook her head. ‘No, that’s not true. To be honest, now that you mention it, it frightens the life out of me.’
Maginnis smiled. ‘Only to be expected.’ He looked round the room. ‘This place, it’s like a nest. You feel safe here, well looked-after – at least I hope you do?’
‘Very,’ she acknowledged. It was true. She felt secure and protected. Outside would be different.
‘But there’ll come a time when you’ll have to be on your own again,’ Maginnis said.
‘I know that. I just didn’t think it would be so soon.’
‘Don’t worry. We won’t throw you out on the street. When you first came here I said that to your mother and father. Your recovery is all that matters, I told them. I said you wouldn’t leave here until we all agreed you were ready. I include you in that decision now.’
She smiled at him and he returned it. He had lovely skin, perfectly pink and smooth. She thought of her father’s drained features.
‘What do you make of my parents?’ she said. The question took Maginnis unawares.
‘What do I make of them? I think they’re both very – nice – people. Very honourable. They both adore you.’ He stopped and looked at her. ‘That wasn’t exactly what you meant, was it?’
She shook her head.
‘OK. Well then, I guess – it’s not fair of me to be critical – but to be honest I guess I’ve found it a bit difficult dealing with them. They – they don’t like each other very much. That can happen – relationships. Sometimes they go bad. But the thing that does unite them is their concern for you.’
She could see he was awkward with this and did not want to say any more.
She said: ‘My mother seems to be even more steeped in religion than I remembered.’
‘They’ve reacted to the crisis in different ways. Your father’s carried the emotional and financial burden for both of them. Your mother’s had her faith, an unshakeable belief that everything would turn out all right. Now, you may not consider that a very practical way of handling things but it has certainly lightened her load.’
‘My father’s got old. But she seems to look just the same.’
‘She’s a very striking woman,’ he said. ‘Very strong.’
‘She wants me to move in with her for a while when I leave here. She’s worried about me being on my own. But I’ve got my own house. I want to see it. Do you know, I can hardly remember living there.’
‘We should take you for a drive soon. A day out. Go there perhaps.’
She pointed to the window. ‘It’s just along the Lisburn Road. You could walk from here. Truesdale Street. I only bought it about six months before this happened. My father tells me it’s now worth £30,000 more than I paid for it. Incredible.’
‘Your father’s taken good care of everything.’
‘My mother doesn’t give him much credit for that. But you’re right, he has. He didn’t get rid of the house. I’m glad of that.’
‘You’d have been upset if he had.’
‘Probably. I’d have felt disposed of. He did sell my old car, though, but that’s all right. I don’t mind that.’
‘If you think the price of property has gone up, wait until you go looking for a new one.’
She had not thought of that. ‘Yes, of course, I suppose so. It’s going to be a bit expensive out there. It’ll be quite a shock to the system. Thank God I’m not broke. My dad took over my mortgage payments for me and the house is rented out at the moment. He’s investing the income in an account in my name.’
‘Well then, that’s a demonstration of his belief, isn’t it? His faith. Perhaps not the same as your mother’s but pretty impressive nevertheless.’
Meg nodded. ‘He also invested my salary. Did you know that?’
‘He mentioned something, yes.’
‘The old Central kept me on the books for the first six months but then they stopped. No choice, really.’ She considered. ‘I suppose there’ll be tax on the income from my investments.’
‘I’m sure your father and his accountants will sort something out. And if they come up with any useful new financial wheezes, maybe you’d let me know.’
She smiled. ‘I’m sure you don’t need much assistance.’ She looked at the soft grey suit and how well it sat on him. How much did he earn in today’s money – £150,000? £200,000? More, maybe, with all his consultancy work.
‘You know,’ Maginnis said, ‘it’s not up to me to decide but maybe it’s not a bad idea for you to move in with your mother for a while, just until you get on your feet a bit more and get used to the outside world. My plan is that before you actually leave here, you should sort of go home on a day release basis once a week or so, coming back here in the evening. It’s better to do it gradually. That way we’ll all know how ready you are. But you can’t go home to a house on your own. That’s not on.’
‘Especially since some other people are still living in it,’ she told him. ‘Their lease isn’t up for a couple of months.’
‘Well, then, there you are. Your mother’d be happy to look after you.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t know. My childhood with her wasn’t a very carefree one. Maybe there’d be too many memories.’ She gave a little laugh when she realised what she had said. ‘Now, that would be something, wouldn’t it?’
‘Do you remember living with both your parents?’
‘Not really. They split up when I was very young.’
Dr Sands had asked her about this, too. When talking to him, she had had the strangest feeling that she was opening up more than was normal for her. The second time round it was even easier.
‘My father left home. My mother turned to religion. For me that meant lots of Sunday School and Bible classes. I hated it. It was all God this, God that and colouring in pictures of bearded men with sheep. You were taught to believe that enjoying yourself was sinful. I went elsewhere for my fun – and my friends – but my mother didn’t like any of them. And some of them were even Catholic as well. My, my. Outrageous. Big black mark there. We bickered a lot, especially when I hit adolescence. Boys – you know. She didn’t approve of anyone who wasn’t from our church.’
‘And you didn’t approve of anyone who was?’
She smiled. ‘That’s about the size of it. I knew my own mind – just like she knew hers. She was certain her way was the only one. I fought against her all the time. I even changed my name to get back at her. She christened me Margaret after her mother, my granny. I hated it. So I started calling myself Meg when I was about fourteen.’ She shook her head. ‘It all seems a bit silly, doesn’t it?’
‘That was a long time ago.’ There were grapes in a bowl and he plucked a couple. ‘Strange that they never got divorced.’
‘My mother – I asked her once. She said she didn’t believe in it. She’d made her marriage vows and she was sticking to them. Not that that meant much, if you ask me. They were divorced in everything but name. My father, well, he kind of played the field, you know. That was why they broke up. She’d had enough of it. But neither of them ever wanted to remarry, definitely not my mother, and if my father did he certainly didn’t push it. No, they’ve simply lived apart for all these years with my father providing for my mother’s financial needs. And mine. He supported me through university, helped me get a flat. That was another row. My mother thought he was trying to drive a wedge between us.’
She reached into a drawer in her bedside table. ‘My friend Elizabeth Maguire,’ she said, taking out a letter. ‘Have I mentioned her before?’
‘Yes,’ Maginnis said. ‘I think you might have.’
‘She’s coming to see me sometime. I don’t know when. We shared the flat when we were students together. We had some good times then, that much I do remember. She’s an accountant, worked for Price Waterhouse. Only she’s not Maguire any more – I must remember that. She’s Elizabeth O’Malley now. While I’ve been in a coma, she’s been getting married. A guy who works for a merchant bank. And she’s got a two-year-old daughter. And she’s been living in Malaysia for the past eighteen months. But she’s coming home.’ She shuffled the pages in the letter. ‘She doesn’t say for how long. I wonder why.’
She folded it into its envelope and put it in the drawer again.
‘I’m sure she’ll tell you,’ he said.
She looked towards the window. ‘Why was I with him that night?’ she asked, almost in a whisper, a question directed to herself more than to Maginnis.
He gave her a sad smile. ‘I’m afraid we just don’t know.’
Outside there was the blue sky of early summer. Little puffs of cloud like smoke signals cast blotchy shadows on the slope of the Black Mountain.
Her eyes misted over.
‘I feel as if we’ve both been away for a long time, Elizabeth and I. Except that I haven’t been away anywhere. Nowhere at all.’
He stood and patted her on the arm. ‘You’re tired,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you get some rest.’
She closed her eyes when he had gone but she felt hot in the cotton pyjamas. The central heating seemed to take no account of the seasons. She got out of bed and stripped. There was a nightdress on a shelf in the wardrobe. Naked, she leaned in and got it.
As she pulled the thin garment over her head, she thought she saw a shape reflected in the mirror behind her wash basin.
She started and tugged the nightdress down quickly.
Her door was not quite closed. Was there someone in the corridor, watching?
She grabbed her glasses and her robe and stepped outside the room.
The corridor was empty.
But she thought she scented the faint, lingering presence of Liam Maginnis’s aftershave.