Michelle. Susan. Rachel. Everything rewound at speed. Tessa hadn’t changed her technique; she hadn’t needed to. Within minutes, he was catapulted back to the past.
‘Where are you, Nick?’
‘The house. There are lots of people. They’ve come to pay their respects.’
‘To who?’
‘To Rachel. And to me too, I suppose. They shake my hand, but they’re embarrassed … And Rachel won’t look at me.’
Tessa’s voice was gentle. ‘Who’s died, Nick?’
A pain in his chest, like he was experiencing it now. He breathed deep to quell it. ‘Daniel. He’s just a child, a toddler … it’s so small – the coffin. He’s laid out, but I can’t bear to look at him. Caitlin’s come into the room. I don’t think she should see him like that, but Rachel says she should, that it’s better that she understands what’s happened. I don’t think she does though. She’s too young. The adults waylay her, making a fuss, and she giggles. She pays no attention to the coffin. The guests avoid me. They’ve come for Rachel, not for me, and that makes me feel even more out of place. I have this awful feeling, like whatever’s happened to put Daniel in that box is my fault. But I don’t know why … I don’t know how I’ve come to this place.’
‘What’s happening now, Nick?’
‘More mourners. A hand on my arm, a woman … I shrug her off. I don’t want to speak to her. I don’t want to speak to anyone. I break away from her and she calls after me, but I need to get away, get out of this room.’
When Tessa brought him to, his heart was beating fast. He was glad to be out of the room, away from that little coffin and the accusing eyes of the mourners. What had happened to that child – his son? Tessa was looking at him, waiting for him to speak.
‘The way they looked at me,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t pity, it was contempt.’
‘Why do you think that is, Nick?’
‘I don’t know, but I have this terrible feeling, like maybe it had something to do with me.’ He looked at Tessa. ‘What if I did something? I mean … I don’t know anything about Johnny Davis. Look, what he … I … did to Rachel … what if I?… I wish I knew what was happening. When I’m under, I get one small piece of the jigsaw, never enough to put a proper picture together. And then there are things I haven’t seen under hypnosis, but that I suspect … For example, that day, the day that I walked in on Rachel and that man … he was someone I knew. I could feel it. I think I’d suspected that Rachel was having an affair, but not with him. He was a friend. I think that’s why I lost it. Johnny and Rachel were happy before. Something must have gone really wrong for it to end the way it did. And the boy, our son, I don’t know but maybe that was the catalyst. His death, particularly if it was my fault, maybe that’s what drove them, us, apart.’
Tessa didn’t say anything immediately. Then she put her pen down and looked up. ‘Remember, not everything you’re seeing is necessarily true. From what you’ve told me, the visions may be a manifestation of the guilt you’ve been harbouring since your wife’s miscarriage.’
‘A confabulation?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So, how can we know what’s real and what’s not?’
‘It might be that we never will. But in terms of your treatment, that doesn’t matter. What you see under hypnosis, whether from a previous life or not, will still be an expression of your feelings, of the things that you’ve repressed. Don’t forget our aim here, Nick. The only reason we’re doing this is to uncover the reasons for your alcohol abuse to help you stay sober in the future.’
He nodded, imagining what the hypnotist would say if she knew he and Michelle were planning on meeting Caitlin. She would discharge him, of that he was sure. And so he had to make sure that no matter what happened over the coming weeks in terms of Johnny Davis’s daughter, he didn’t reveal anything under hypnosis.
Nick called Michelle as soon as he was in the car, relieved to hear her cheery voice. For a moment, it was like it had been a month ago – before the doctor had delivered her grim prognosis, and Michelle’s voice alone was enough to make him smile like he hadn’t done in a long time, not since his divorce. Now she asked him how the session had gone, and he took a breath and told her the whole story. He’d have preferred to do it face-to-face, but she was on the soup run that evening, and he wouldn’t see her.
‘What did Tessa say about it?’ she asked.
‘The usual, that it mightn’t have happened, that whole thing about false memory.’ Suddenly, he had a thought. ‘You mentioned that Johnny’s father, the doctor, had died, right?’
‘Yes, in 2010. He’s buried in Castleknock.’
‘Okay. So if there was a child, maybe he’s buried out there, in the family plot…’
There was a pause on the line. ‘Nick, are you sure you want to know?’
‘I have to. At least if there’s no evidence of this child, I can forget about it, accept Tessa’s theory…’
‘And if there is?’
‘Then I’ve got to find out what happened to him.’
‘I don’t know, Nick. Are you sure it’s a good idea? You’ve got enough to deal with …’
‘If it were you, you’d want to know, wouldn’t you?’
Another pause, before Michelle breathed ‘yes’ down the line.
‘I know you’re worried – but never knowing, that would be just as bad … now that I’ve come this far, I have to know the rest. I have to know just what kind of man I was and do whatever I can to make up for it now.’
He rang off, promising Michelle that he’d text her if he discovered anything. He knew she was worried that the whole thing would send him back on the drink again, but it was like he said, not knowing would be no better.
He tapped the search engine on his phone, typed in the obituary details for Maurice Davis, and checked the name and location of the small cemetery in Castleknock. When he closed the app, he sat staring at the photo on the screen, a snap of himself and Michelle, windswept and grinning crazily on a weekend away in Galway. It made him wish for the millionth time that he could press rewind and erase the last few weeks. He sighed and started the car, the sooner he got to that cemetery, the sooner he would know.