The Redeemed

CHAPTER 8




Jenny sped along the three miles of winding lanes, careered down the narrow dirt track through the woods and juddered to a halt in Steve's yard. The stone farmhouse, still rented out to the weekenders from London, stood in darkness. Steve's ancient Land Rover was parked outside the barn in which he'd improvised a flat in the upper storey, but there was no light at the window. She groped for the torch she kept in the glove box. It glowed dully for a second, then died. Jenny flung it over her shoulder. Too frightened to leave the safety of her car to stumble across the yard and pick her way through the blackness of the barn, she leaned on the horn.

No response.

She pressed it again, its ugly sound splitting the night.

Wake up! Wake up!

Maybe he had someone else up there with him? One of the admiring girls from the office he occasionally mentioned. The bastard. She fired up the engine, rammed into reverse and sped round in a backwards semi-circle. Shoving the stick into first, she shot forward, kicking up dirt and gravel, tore through the gate and slewed around the tight left bend. Two bright green eyes stared into the headlights from the centre of the track. It was Alfie, Steve's sheepdog, with Steve right behind him. She stamped on the brakes. Steve and Alfie dived into the neck-high cow parsley on the verge as she slid past and skidded to a stop.





Untroubled by his brush with death, Alfie rested his head on her lap as she sat on the corner of the dusty old sofa, gazing at her with needy eyes. The boarded-out barn loft was more of a den than a flat. There was a bed, a draughtsman's drawing board, a few items of ancient furniture and a makeshift kitchen. A solar panel rigged up on the roof provided an occasional trickle of tepid water to the sink. It smelled of straw, dog and tobacco smoke.

Steve brought her some camomile tea and sat next to her. At least his cups were clean.

'How are you feeling?' he said.

'I don't know,' Jenny whispered.

'Are you going to tell me what's going on?'

Alfie nuzzled her, demanding a stroke. She put a hand on his soft head and scratched gently behind his ears. He closed his eyes in bliss.

'I'm not sure I can explain. You'll think I'm stupid.'

'Try me.'

Jenny struggled against a feeling of unreality. She felt foolish, humiliated.

Steve put a hand on her knee. 'What's frightened you, Jenny? It's not work this time, is it?'

She shook her head. 'How can you tell?'

He shrugged. 'I guess I must know you.'

'Those people you saw waiting outside my house the other day, what did they look like?'

'The guy was a bit older than me, the girl was very little. Blonde hair, two little pigtails at the back.'

'I know this is going to sound strange —’

'Go on.'

'The man . . .' Jenny faltered, scarcely believing she was asking the question. 'Did he look to you like he belonged in the past?'

'What do you mean? I only saw him for a moment.'

'What about the girl? What was she wearing?'

'Something pale blue, as far as I remember. A sort of knitted cardigan thing. Why? Who are they? Hey, careful—'

He grabbed the cup from Jenny's shaking hand, slopping tea onto the floor.

'Come on,' Steve said. 'Let's have it.'

'You won't think I'm crazy? I need to trust you.'

'You know you can. I keep telling you.'

She nodded, and edged a little closer to the precipice. Once over she knew there was no going back. She stepped out.

'You know my psychiatrist is convinced I've got some buried memory, some trauma —’

'Uh huh.' He took her hand and stroked it, gently urging her on.

'I'd been having dreams about this little girl. In one of our sessions a name came up, Katy. Just the name. No memory, but it was connected to my childhood. I was about five or six. He kept pestering me to research my past, family records, anything that might stir up memories. I don't have much of that sort of stuff. I couldn't find anything except a few old pictures. My mother's dead, I've no brothers or sisters. The only person left is my father. Physically he's OK, mentally he's completely shot.'

'I remember. You went to see him.'

Jenny drew in a long breath. It was too late to stop now.

'I was showing him some old pictures. I had no idea whether he recognized them or not, and I slipped in the name, Katy, and asked him if he remembered who she was . . .'

Jenny's fingers tightened around Steve's hand.

'What did he say?'

She screwed up her eyes. 'What does it matter? He's got Alzheimer's.'

'Tell me what he said,' Steve demanded, a sudden and unexpected hardness in his voice that shocked her. 'Please, Jenny,' he said, more softly.

'He said she was my Uncle Jim and Aunty Penny's little girl. Jim was his older brother. I said, they didn't have a daughter. He said, "You remember, Smiler -", that's what he used to call me.' Jenny swallowed. ' "You remember, Smiler. You killed her." That was it. That's all he said. Then he was gone again.'

Jenny looked at Steve for his reaction and saw that he was trying hard not to appear shocked.

'I don't expect you to say anything. I don't even know what to think myself.'

'Do you remember this girl?'

'No, only their son, Chris. He must be ten years younger than me. We lived in the same part of town but didn't see much of each other.'

'There's an easy way to find out. I can look it up on the internet right now.'

'You think he might be telling the truth?'

'No. I just thought—'

'Go on. Do it.'

'Really, I didn't mean to—'

'Do it.'

Steve stood up from the sofa and fetched a laptop from a battered canvas briefcase.

'Don't you want to know what happened tonight - before you get all wrapped up in your computer?' Jenny asked.

'Of course.' He set the laptop aside as it booted up.

'I know you and Ross and my ex-husband and God knows who else think I'm mad, but I don't hallucinate. I don't see things. Imagine them, yes, but not actually see them.'

'What was it?'

'On the front path. There were chalk marks. Pink and yellow chalk. Hopscotch squares like we used to mark out as kids. Someone had drawn them today. And you know when you see something and it takes you back? I was standing in the street outside my house when I was a child. I could see the little buckled shoes on my feet, the white socks, everything.'

Steve looked puzzled. 'You think someone's trying to tell you something?'

'The girl you saw outside my house . . . what if it was her? The man could have been my uncle . . .'

'Right. You're telling me I've been seeing ghosts?'

'My grandmother used to. She'd hear a knock at the window when anyone in the family was about to die. We used to joke about it, but she was never wrong.'

'She sounds quite a character.'

He picked up the laptop and brought up a selection of websites that would trace your family history for a fee. Five pounds bought him access to the government register of births, deaths and marriages. Jenny gave him the details of her aunt and uncle. He typed in their names and hit the key that would bring up details of their offspring.

'What is it?' Jenny said.

He was staring intently at the screen. 'It looks as if they did have two children.'

He angled the laptop so she could read with him. The first entry read: Katherine Anne Chilcott. Date of birth: 16 June 1967. The second recorded Christopher's birth in 1976.

For the second time that evening the world spun around her.

'Do you want me to click on her name?' Steve said.

Jenny nodded and looked away.

'Died 19 October 1972.'





Jenny lay curled up in bed in one of Steve's T-shirts with Alfie lying on the floor next to her while Steve drove back to her house to fetch her handbag, some clothes and sleeping pills. It was no longer anxiety she felt, but the leadenness that closely follows the shock of bereavement; and the dread of having to face a dark and buried past she had almost convinced herself was a fiction. Exhaustion dragged her from consciousness and she sank into a dreamless sleep.

She woke, disorientated, to the touch of Steve's hand on her shoulder. Blinking against the sharp sunlight beating through the undraped skylight, she tried to remember where she was.

'It's all right. It's still early. You can go back to sleep,' Steve said.

The previous night's events came back at her in a rush. She groaned and pulled the sheet over her head.

'Hey. You're OK. I got your bag. And there was nothing on the path. I walked up and down it ten times with a torch. Not a mark. You imagined it.'

'I didn't imagine a birth certificate.'

'No. I paid to download a copy, and one of the death certificate too.'

Jenny threw back the sheet and swung out of bed. 'Show me.'

He retrieved a piece of paper from the floor. It was a printout of a scanned copy of a death certificate issued by the North Somerset District Registry. Beneath the section containing her uncle and aunt's names, the informant was cited as C. R. Benedict, North Somerset District Coroner. In the box titled 'cause of death' was the single typewritten word, 'accident'.

'Her death was accidental,' Steve said. 'You can forget what your father said.'

'That could mean anything. I just returned an open verdict in a case where the man clearly killed himself.'

Steve said, 'We know the coroner dealt with it. There must be files there somewhere.'

'I can hardly ask for them, can I?'

'I could.'

'No. Someone will find out.'

'There must have been something in the local papers. I'll look them up. There's no danger in that.'

Jenny snatched her handbag from the sofa and tipped it upside down. 'Where are my pills? What have you done with them?'

'In the car. I'll fetch them in a minute, but first we're going to make a deal.'

'What are you, my mother?'

'Jenny, stop it.'

She turned, ready to bite his head off. Steve got in first.

'You came to me when you were in trouble. You know how I feel about you, now how about some trust?'





'Does your father have lucid moments?'

'Rarely.'

'And the rest of the time?'

'He's like a child. He has tantrums, strange outbursts, throws things at the TV.'

'And are there periods when he is wholly unresponsive?'

'Yes. The nurses say he'll stare at the same spot on the wall all afternoon.'

Dr Allen nodded calmly, noting this down. If he resented giving up his Saturday afternoon he was hiding it well. He seemed more at home here in his consulting room in the Whitchurch Hospital in Cardiff than in the borrowed room in Chepstow. His other-worldliness fitted perfectly with the grand Edwardian building surrounded by parkland. Jenny found it intimidating. Making her way along vast corridors, passing semi-catatonic women drifting aimlessly in their nightdresses, she was struck with the fear that she could become one of them. She had wanted to turn and run, but Steve had gripped her arm and steered her to their destination, insisting she do it for Ross if not for herself.

'A patient with Alzheimer's as advanced as your father's is not a reliable witness of anything, Jenny,' Dr Allen said. 'The brain is disintegrating. The connections it makes are broken and nonsensical. I appreciate it's difficult, but you must treat his accusation as nonsense.'

'But now I know she existed. We were virtually the same age. No one ever mentioned her.'

'It's not unusual for families to draw a veil of silence over a tragic event.'

'They weren't silent about much else.'

The young psychiatrist put his notebook aside and looked up with a bright, optimistic expression. 'The good news is that we've been pursuing exactly the right course. There is an event in your past which I'm sure we can now expose, and that opens the way to recovery.'

'I can sense a "but" on the way.'

'It's like any medical treatment. There's always a likelihood of short-term pain.'

'How much?'

'I couldn't predict, exactly.'

'I can't stop work, not now.'

'A week or two, surely—'

'And what would it say on my sick note? How many times do I have to tell you? When I'm working, I'm fine.'

'It's up to you, of course, but if you're hallucinating, even mildly-'

'It was a trick of the light.'

Dr Allen sat back in his chair and frowned. 'Let me put it this way. When a patient starts to see things, it tells me that we may have crossed the threshold from anxiety neurosis into something a little more serious.'

'It was one minor incident. It was late. I was exhausted.'

'There are other signs: delusional beliefs, difficulties in social interaction — '

Jenny gave a dismissive shrug. 'I don't have any of those.'

He gave her a searching look. 'You told me you genuinely believed the man and child your partner saw outside your house were ghosts.'

'I was frightened they might be. There's a difference. They were probably just a father and daughter out for a walk. Perhaps he's related to the old woman who used to live in my house; people are always doing that, going back to look at a place—'

Dr Allen held up his hand. 'Calm down. Of course there will be a logical explanation, but think objectively for a moment. You're dealing with a number of cases all at once; how would the parties feel about your involvement if they knew of your state of mind?'

Jenny thought of Paul Craven and Father Starr, and of the worshippers spread-eagled in ecstasy on the floor of the Mission Church of God. Compared with them, she was relatively sane. 'I think they'd take their chances.'

'If you insist. But you do understand that I am obliged to record my advice on your notes.'

In his quiet way he was telling her that this was a point of no return. If she came unstuck, if for any reason the Ministry of Justice ever requested a report on her mental health, the record would state that she had willingly ignored doctor's orders. Her dismissal would be a formality: inability in the discharge of duty.

Jenny said, 'Of course. Are we going to do the regression now?'





As Dr Allen talked her down she sank with little resistance into a state of near-unconscious torpor, neither sleeping nor waking. His voice grew steadily more distant as Jenny descended deeper into the caverns of her subconscious. She found herself in a warm, dark space and followed a pinprick of light that slowly widened into a street scene. Neat rows of pre-war semi-detached houses in a seaside town.

'Tell me where you are, Jenny.' Dr Allen's voice came to her as if from the far distance.

'In the street where we lived when I was a child, in Weston. I can see the houses, the sun shining on them. One of them is painted white with a green roof. I can smell a bonfire, leaves burning.'

'Good. And how are you feeling?'

Jenny tried to isolate the sensation she was experiencing. 'Odd.'

'In what way?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Do you know how old are you?'

'Small. I'm wearing the buckled shoes, the blue ones that Nan bought me.'

'What's happening?'

Jenny drifted for a moment. 'They sent me out. There are men in the house . . . their car's parked outside.'

'Who are these men?'

'I don't know.'

'Did you see them?'

Jenny flinched, balling up her fingers into fists.

'What? What is it?'

'The shouting again. It's my mother. I can't bear it.'

'Stay with it, Jenny, stay there. What's she shouting?'

Her chin lolled from one side of her chest to the other, her face creasing with pain.

'Tell me, Jenny. Tell me what's she saying.'

'"Don't take him! Don't take him!" There are people coming out of their doors. The woman from next door, she's pulling me to her, not letting me see.'

'See what?'

'It's my fault. It is. It's my fault.'

'What's your fault, Jenny?'

'What they're doing to Dad, what's happening to him. The policemen are taking him away.'





Steve turned off the main road and threaded through single- track lanes. Overgrown hedgerows brushed the sides of the car. The dipping sun danced off the wings of a million insects. Jenny closed her eyes and felt the warm evening air playing over her face, neither of them saying a word. He pulled up at the entrance to a forestry track and led her along a winding path through thickets of birch and hazel, emerging into a meadow that wrapped around an oxbow bend in the River Usk. They waded through the long grass and sat at the edge of the water, where fat turquoise dragonflies, more brilliant than peacocks, came to sip in the shallows.

In no hurry, he waited for her to speak first, happy to smoke a cigarette and gaze at the two swans on the opposite bank elegantly preening themselves after a lazy afternoon swim.

When the heaviness of the hospital began to lift, Jenny found her voice and told him what had happened in Dr Allen's consulting room. She had regressed before, retrieved many snatches of buried memory, but nothing had been as vivid as today. There was sharp detail: the gaudy orange flowers on the neighbour's dress, the click of the detectives' shoes on the pavement, the raw fear in her mother's voice.

Steve said, 'And that was it, just that scene?'

'It's like that. It's as if I can only bear to take so much at once.' Jenny wiped her eyes, the tears stinging her cheeks. 'Maybe I'm making it up, putting together pieces that don't belong together.'

'What did the doctor say?'

'He seemed pleased. I'm seeing him again next week.'

Steve tossed aside the blade of grass he'd been picking at and tenderly touched her face. 'This is good, Jenny. You've started to open the door. You're going to get free of all this.'

She looked at him dubiously. 'I don't know why you're still here. Your last crazy girlfriend cost you ten years.'

He let his hand drop down to hold hers and kissed both her eyelids in turn. 'You know why.'

'You're betting a lot on me. I hope you know what you're doing.'

'What do you mean?'

'You don't believe I did it, do you?'

'You were just a witness to something upsetting, that's all. A very long time ago.' He drew her closer. 'Don't let it poison your whole life, Jenny. Try thinking about where you are now.'

He kissed her lightly, and with no demand, in a way that took her back to more innocent times. She wished she could stay there for ever.