Читать книгу After She Fell: A haunting psychological thriller with a shocking twist - Mary-Jane Riley - Страница 8

May

Despite the heat of the day, the window of the room was closed tight. Alex Devlin’s sister sat in her chair, staring through the glass. Outside, trusted patients were standing around smoking or sitting on the benches at the edges of the grass. One woman was talking animatedly to her nurse, who nodded, looking into the middle distance. The garden was lovely at this time of year – the lawn lush and green, roses blooming in the sunshine, the silver birches coming into full leaf, and Alex could almost smell the honeysuckle that climbed through the hedge of bamboo at one end of the garden. Birds chattered and hopped from branch to bird table and back to branch again. She badly wanted to be out there, away from the stifling air and atmosphere of Sasha’s room.

‘Sash? Would you like me to take you into the garden? It’s a beautiful day.’

Alex had been in the room for fifteen minutes and so far her sister hadn’t said a word. She damped down a sigh. It was really hard going to keep on chatting when the person you were talking to didn’t respond in any way at all. Not a sign she’d heard anything Alex had said. Not a flicker of expression.

She looked around the room. It was, considering the circumstances, a homely place, decorated in soft pastels. The bed had her sister’s own patchwork bedspread thrown over it. There were two pictures on the walls, both with the glass removed, of course: the first, a scene of beach huts and seagulls; the second, a small photograph of Sasha’s twins forever caught in a time of sunshine and ice creams. The shelves were full of Sasha’s favourite books, from Enid Blyton to Kate Atkinson. Did her sister need anything? The soap she’d bought last time was still in its wrapping. Not that, anyway.

She tried again. ‘Love, it’s gorgeous out there and really, really warm, even for late May. You remember how you love the summer?’

‘Harry and Millie loved the summer.’ A tear trickled down Sasha’s face.

Alex’s heart twisted, pain blooming in her chest. Words, at last, but words that contained so much hurt. She went to hug her sister, but Sasha pushed her away.

‘I want you to go now,’ she snarled.

She had to try. ‘Sasha, please, let’s go outside. Have a walk. Feel the sun on our faces. Enjoy being together, if only for a few minutes.’

‘Enjoy?’ Sasha’s voice was low; she didn’t move from her position at the window. ‘I can’t enjoy anything, Alex. You know that. I’ve got nothing left. Millie. Harry. Jez. Nothing.’ She gave a sigh that shook her whole body. ‘Please go.’ Her voice was the merest whisper.

‘Haven’t you punished yourself enough, Sasha?’ pleaded Alex. ‘Let’s go outside. Just this once.’

Silence. Sasha kept staring through the window, her shoulders tense. Alex knew there would be nothing more from her today. She bent down and kissed her sister’s cold cheek. ‘Bye, Sash. I’ll come again as soon as I can.’

Nothing.

Alex shut the door quietly and leaned against it. Was this a better visit than last time? At least, Sasha had spoken to her. Most of the time when she came to see her, Sasha didn’t say anything, so she supposed even a few bitter words were progress of a sort. But she could hardly bear the pain that was almost tattooed on Sasha’s eyes. Alex couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live inside her sister’s head, to know that you had killed your own children. She thought of her own boy – eighteen years old but still her boy – and how he had coped with the last few years. She was proud of him. She couldn’t even contemplate life without him.

‘Ah, Alex, I wanted to catch you before you left.’ Heather McNulty, the matron of the unit, bustled along the corridor towards her. A well-groomed woman a little older than Alex, Heather always had a cheerful expression on her face even though she was surrounded by unresponsive or troublesome patients. She didn’t wear a uniform, and today had a long skirt made of some sort of floaty material festooned with printed roses, teamed with a crisp white shirt. Alex liked the fact the staff wore their own clothes; it made it less of an institution, and made her feel better about Sasha being incarcerated there on the orders of the judge. Two years before, the judge, old and wrinkled but with a kind-looking face, had decreed that Sasha had suffered enough: for more than fifteen years she had lived with the knowledge that she had been responsible for drowning her own 4-year-old twins. But she would have to have treatment in a secure unit. Jez, Sasha’s police officer husband, hadn’t been so lucky to escape the wrath of the judge. He was jailed for weaving a tissue of lies and misinformation about what had happened on the fateful night, and for being responsible for the imprisonment of two people who had been wrongly convicted of murder. So, yes, Alex was grateful for Leacher’s House. A secure unit it might be, but it could have been such a lot worse.

Alex frowned and rubbed her forehead. ‘Is everything all right with Sasha? She hasn’t started to self-harm again has she?’

‘Not exactly. I only need to have a chat. Come with me to the office.’

Alex followed Heather down the corridor, transported back more than a quarter of a century to when she was a schoolgirl following the straight back and sharp shoulders of her head teacher to the office for a telling-off. She felt that same degree of apprehension now: stomach knotted, wanting to drag her feet, wanting to get it over with.

‘So, sit down, Alex.’

Alex sat.

Heather went round to the other side of her desk and neatly lowered herself into the chair, folding her hands in front of her. She took a deep breath. Fear rose in Alex’s throat.

‘Is Sasha ill?’ She laughed nervously. Shut up Alex. ‘I mean, more ill than normal?’

Heather clasped her hands together. ‘Sasha has not been responding to treatment as well as we would like.’

‘What do you mean?’

A small frown crossed Heather’s face before the sympathetic smile was in place once more. ‘Sasha has been suffering from, um, delusions, lately.’

Alex blinked. ‘Delusions?’

‘Sasha believes she murdered Jackie Wood.’ Heather’s voice was kind.

Alex caught her breath. Jackie Wood was the woman who had been imprisoned for fifteen years for what was then thought to have been her involvement in the murder of Sasha’s children. It was only after she was let out on a technicality that the truth about the children’s deaths began to unfold, and Sasha finally confessed. But before Jackie Wood could be exonerated she was murdered, and the murderer had never been found. There had been a time when Alex had wondered whether her sister had killed Jackie Wood, but now she refused to entertain that thought.

Heather was still talking. ‘And obviously, we don’t want her to regress further, so we feel – that is, her team feel – she needs a different regime.’

‘Regime? What does that mean? And what sort of treatment? She can stay here in Leacher’s House, can’t she?’ Alex heard her voice rise. Oh God, oh God. She had visions of her sister being force-fed drugs by a Nurse Ratched figure or being forced to undergo ECT and Sasha becoming a shell, losing her personality, any sense of identity and—

‘Alex.’ Heather’s voice was firm. ‘I can see the panic in your face. Sasha is in good hands.’

‘But she will get better, won’t she?’

‘As I say, she is in good hands. The best possible. Please don’t worry; this sort of review is part of an ongoing process, and this is the twenty-first century, you know.’ Her face was kind. ‘Things are very different now.’ Heather stood. The meeting was clearly over. ‘You will be kept informed every step of the way.’

Alex stood. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Though for what, she wasn’t quite sure.

Review. Ongoing process. Regime. Jackie Wood. The words went round and round in Alex’s head as she pushed open the door and went out into the fresh, warm air, trying to shake off the chemical floral smell of Leacher’s House. She took a few deep breaths to steady herself. The sun was bright and the sky was blue, like a children’s painting. A perfect day. It was at times like these Alex found herself thinking of Harry: drowned by Sasha, brought to the shore by Jez. She thought of Millie who’d been taken away by the North Sea, and wondered if her body would ever be found. She still looked for Millie in crowds of young people, just in case.

Walking to the car park, she glanced back to see Sasha still sitting, still in the same position, still looking. She had always known her sister was not right and had needed proper help, but over the years she had been so blinded by her grief over the twins and the guilt she carried around at having an affair with the man who was imprisoned for killing Harry and Millie that she hadn’t been able to see beyond her own feelings. She had let Sasha down. Now she was trying to make up for it.

Alex raised her hand and waved, and was rewarded by the tiniest of finger movements. The nearest she had come to a wave for a very long time. Love for her poor broken sister swelled in her chest. She couldn’t let Sasha down again.