Can she leave it at that? She should, except she finds she doesn’t want to.
‘I keep finding things that aren’t how I left them,’ she says. ‘Things in the wrong place. Sometimes it’s little things like car keys not being on the right hook, but the other week, someone emptied all my kitchen cupboards and put everything back in different places.’
‘Someone?’ he prompts.
‘Exactly. It can only have been me. I’m doing all these things and I can’t remember them happening.’
He is writing again. She should stop now. But she finds she can’t. She has opened a flood gate and can no longer hold back the flow.
‘I’m finding cigarette butts,’ she says. ‘I’ve never smoked. But I find them in the garden near the back door several times a week. This is going to sound mad. I know its mad, but I can’t help thinking that someone is sleeping in my spare bedroom.’
That’s it. That’s enough. Stop now.
‘More than once, I’ve gone past the door and seen it open, which is not how I keep it. I’m pretty tidy around the house. And when I look inside, the bed is all rumpled, as though someone has just got out and not bothered to make it. And the curtains are drawn too. I hate drawn curtains during the day.’
‘This must be very confusing.’
‘It is. I’ll tell you the worst thing, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You know you suggested keeping a diary?’
Joe inclines his head.
‘I went to start it that night. I thought it was a good idea. Only I’d already done it. I’d started a diary, but it was full of really horrible stuff.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘Abusive, horrible things about me. It was written by someone who really hates me. Except, I wrote it myself.’
She is starting to cry. She cannot believe how quickly this has gone wrong, and how incapable she is of turning it back around.
Joe leans back in his chair. ‘Felicity, I don’t want to scare you, but is it possible someone has keys to your house? An old lodger, maybe? A cleaner?’
She shakes her head. ‘No. I changed the locks when I moved in and had two sets of keys made. One set is in the safe. I checked. I’ve never had a cleaner.’
Joe seems at a loss.
‘I know it’s me,’ she goes on. ‘I know I’m doing these things and not remembering them. But some of them are so out of character. It really is like someone else – someone invisible – is living in my house.’
26
Joe
The punt glides under the bridge at St John’s College and cold water trickles down Joe’s forearms. At the front of the boat, Torquil relaxes into the padded cushions and sips from his bottle of Becks.
In common with many members of his profession, including those who have their own practice, Joe has a professional supervisor, someone with whom he talks on a regular basis to discuss client care. Not all are as fortunate as Joe has been, because not only is Dr Torquil Bane a wise and insightful man, he has become, over the years, a good friend.
He is, though, a huge man and his end of the punt is several inches lower in the water than the end Joe is standing on.
‘Nicely done,’ Torquil says as they slip out the other side of the bridge. ‘You’re getting better.’
‘Any time you want to show me how it’s done,’ Joe offers.
‘Once I’m sitting, I can’t get up. So, the reluctant patient decides to open up. Must have felt like a big step forward.’
‘I thought I’d have to tease it out of her, session by session. Turns out all I had to do was ask about her private life.’
‘And these memory lapses presented suddenly and recently?’
‘So she says. Within the last few weeks, coinciding with nothing that she can think of.’
‘And are they affecting her at work too?’
‘She insists not. And given the glowing report her company gave her GP, she’s probably telling the truth about that.’
‘Acute symptoms that only happen at home?’
‘Exactly.’
They are approaching the second of St John’s bridges, the Bridge of Sighs. Joe bends low. Torquil reaches up, touches the roof and pushes them on. ‘Did you ask about head injuries?’ he says.
‘I did. She says there’s been nothing. She doesn’t even get headaches.’
‘Sleeping well?’
‘So she says.’
‘Amnesia often has a physical cause. Alzheimer’s isn’t unknown in people her age. Are you organising the various tests?’
‘All in hand.’
‘That’s twice now you’ve said, “so she says”. Do you think she’s lying to you?’
‘I think she’s holding a lot back. Tell me something, Torq, does her suspicion that someone else is living in her house sound delusional to you?’
Torquil thinks about it. ‘Not sure. It sounds as though she knows this can’t be the case, that somehow she’s responsible for the fag ends, and the unmade beds and the mysterious diary. That suggests the opposite of delusional to me.’
Joe’s arms are aching. Thank God, they are almost back at Magdalene Bridge and the punt dock.
Torquil asks, ‘Do you still suspect her of being a self-harmer?’
‘Hard to say. Her medical notes weren’t specific about where her scars are. Or whether they could have been self-inflicted. I haven’t felt there’s been the right time to ask.’
Their punt nudges up against the jetty. The boatman takes the pole from Joe and waits for them to climb out.
‘So, that’s all your patients sorted,’ Torquil says, as he wobbles to his feet. ‘How are you doing?’
Joe has been waiting for this. ‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘It’s good to be back at work. Good to be busy again. Two months of convalescence was sending me stir-crazy.’
‘Any news on our roller-skating friend?’
Joe tries, and fails, to stop the shudder. ‘Nothing,’ he mumbles, as he climbs onto the bank. ‘Mum would tell me right away if she’d been seen.’
She would, wouldn’t she? She would tell him? Joe has a sudden flashback to a spring evening, to his mother spreading crime scene photographs over his hospital bed. He’d looked, trying to feel something other than numb, at a picture of the river bank just outside the city, and a rucksack containing a homeless girl’s entire belongings, including a pair of roller skates, lying in the mud. There had been no trace of the owner. After several weeks and an extensive police search, the young woman called Ezzy Sheeran had been declared missing, presumed dead.
‘Not everyone who goes in the river comes out again,’ Joe says. ‘The police think she was washed into the Ouse and then out into the North Sea.’
‘A body would be good, though,’ Torquil says. ‘Just to make it official.’
Joe cannot bring himself to agree with this. Not out loud, at any rate.
‘This time last year, wasn’t it?’ Torquil says. ‘That she first turned up, I mean.’
‘Last Friday in June.’