Did my father send Matthew? Could he still be alive, really?
Could he somehow have sent me Matthew to tell me something? To give me a message? An explanation? Or, perhaps, simply to tell me where that godforsaken money went?
Don’t go down that road, Marn. That way madness lies.
I look up and watch the snow drifting slowly through the air outside; funny that looking up doesn’t make me dizzy, only looking down. The muffled sounds of hospital life and death play out behind me. But how can I know if Matthew has something to do with my father? I can’t just ask him. I’m his doctor—more than that, I’m his psychiatrist. I can’t introduce my own delusions into his burgeoning memories. No, that really would be crazy. The only thing I can do is wait. I’d need to wait and see if he brings it up. If he gives any indication at all. But until then I need to put it from my mind. I need to forget it. I take a deep shuddering breath and try to clear my head.
Rhoda is on the ward to greet me; she gives me a soft look of concern and then she eyes my bandaged hands.
“Broken window,” I say blithely, and hope that’s the end of it. Everyone in the hospital must have heard the news by now. Everyone here knows about my past. My family history. God knows what they think. I give her a faint smile and drop the subject.
“Okay. Matthew’s made his list,” she says brightly, then adds, when I frown, “The list you asked him to make, places he should visit to jog his memory. He seems keen. And perhaps a day away from the hospital might do you both some good?” she suggests carefully.
It’s not a bad idea. We’d have a police chaperone, we could slip out the back and do it today. And if there is something Matthew needs to tell me, now might be the best chance.
When I enter Matthew’s room he rises from the chair by the window and heads straight over to meet me. To my surprise he pulls me close into a hug. “Are you okay?”
I pull back gently. “Yes, I’m fine. Um, thank you, Matthew.” He must have heard the news; he’s allowed online now, after all. Everyone in the hospital must be talking about it too.
I step back from him, wary of the growing intimacy. He notices my hands and I shake my head. Don’t ask. He nods.
I don’t think I’ve ever had this level of connection with a patient before. It’s strange. It’s not that I don’t like it—the problem is that I do, and that is entirely inappropriate.
He clears his throat and turns to grab a folded sheet of notepaper. His list. “This is the best I could come up with, I’m afraid.”
I unfold the list, which is short and carefully written.
Train station?
Beach
Local harbor?
Forest
“Why the harbor? I get the train station, that was my suggestion. And the beach and forest. You have fractured memories of those places, but why the harbor?”
He shrugs. “I overheard someone saying the police should have checked the harbor for unattended boats. I just thought, maybe I have a boat? Maybe that’s how I got here? I don’t know, it sounded as plausible as anything else.”
I feel myself smile as I fold up the list. The simplicity of his reasoning is disarming. “Yeah, it does. Shall we do this then? Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” He moves to the bed and grabs his jacket. “Is it just you and me?” he asks, a subtle brightness in his tone.
It throws me for a second. He wants time alone with me. I feel that slippery thought from earlier skimming across my mind: Does he have a message for me? I push the thought away. “Er, no. We’ll have a police officer chaperoning us. It’s only a precaution, of course—we’ll try to avoid the crowd,” I say off his frown. “It’ll be the three of us. But I don’t want you to feel inhibited or on show in any way; they’ll only be there to ward off any unwanted attention.”
He holds my gaze and gives a quick tight smile. “Great.”
I need to get my stuff from the office and let Graceford know what the plan is, so I arrange to have Rhoda escort Matthew down to the service entrance to meet me in fifteen minutes. We’ll meet Graceford at the car and head out together.
I run through our destinations in my head as I get the lift upstairs. We can try the harbor in Wells-next-the-Sea first, it’s the closest harbor to Holkham Beach, and if that doesn’t trigger anything then we can try Brancaster harbor maybe. In terms of his forest, I’m hoping the woodland backing Holkham Beach will suffice as a starting point. A forest is a forest; it should trigger something.
When I get to my office there is a photocopied sheet on the desk. It’s the list of names I asked Chris for the other day. The names of everyone who worked at Waltham during the years I was a student there. He did it. I run my eyes over the names. Some I recognize; others are a mystery. But I don’t have time to investigate fully now and I’m not sure how useful the list really is at this stage. Whoever Matthew is, I don’t think he worked at Waltham House. I quickly pick up the office phone and press Trevor’s extension at the security front desk and ask him to have Officer Graceford meet us outside the service entrance in ten minutes.
I trot down the hospital back stairs as lightly as I can on my still-tender feet, and my mind flashes to Chris. I think of my kiss with him last night, the warm flush of it. Of how it didn’t feel awkward being with him this morning, it didn’t feel wrong. How Chris took me in his arms. And then I think of Matthew, of that same desperate hungry kiss but with Matthew. Even the thought sends a hot blush straight up the back of my neck.
I don’t notice the footsteps on the staircase above me at first. Not until they pick up in pace, tapping out behind me. The tempo changing suddenly to the clatter of an emergency. I pause mid-step and look up through the central stairwell, my vertigo making the perspective swirl and my stomach clench. Several flights above, a male hand, moving quickly, the sleeve of an outdoor jacket. A male nurse heading outside for a sneaky cigarette break? But why so fast? Then a voice, aggressive and coarse, echoes loud down the stairwell.
“Where’d the money go? Eh?”
Adrenaline crashes through me. He’s talking to me. Oh my God, this can’t be happening. No, no, no. My heart rate kicks up a gear, and I burst into a run, taking two steps down at a time. My bandaged hands cling for dear life to the banister as I spin around to the next flight, his pace relentless behind me. How the hell did he get past security? I pound on as I hear the footsteps behind me speed up, scrabbling and skidding around the stairwell above me.
“That’s right. You’d better run, you fucking bitch.”
My blood runs cold—he’s going to hurt me, I can hear it in his voice. I suddenly realize just how vulnerable I am and momentarily lose my footing on the smooth concrete steps. I manage to grab the handrail again before my ankle twists beneath me and a flash of memory from fourteen years ago blazes through my mind. A fully grown man running at me from across a road, his arm raised, his face contorted, his words loud and filled with hate. And then, out of nowhere, Joe pushing me out of the way. I’d hit the ground hard but Joe had taken the brunt of the man’s impact. The anger people had toward us back then, the family who stole their money. All the events like it in the days and weeks that followed, the fear, the hatred, until we finally left our home. Until the police finally had to move us for our own safety. I foolishly thought it couldn’t be as bad this time around. But here we are. I guess I was wrong.