Lake Child

by Isabel Ashdown

Genres: Domestic Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Mystery

Synopsis

When a young Norwegian woman wakes from an accident robbed of her most recent memories, she trusts her parents' advice that she must stay confined to her attic bedroom while she recuperates. But when Eva decides the time has come to break free of their caring incarceration, she discovers a world of secrets and lies, and a journey to discover her true identity begins.

Could she really be the missing baby Lorna of British newspaper headlines? Are the people she calls Mum and Dad actually her abductors? And why did they choose to conceal the arrival of her new baby brother, born while Eva was locked away? While the present day story unfolds, clear slices of Eva's idyllic childhood are revealed as she tries to piece together the mysteries of her past - and those of her increasingly untrustworthy parents.

Release date: September 19, 2019

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 336

Sample

I’m in the passenger seat of a stranger’s truck, on the snowy road between the forest and town, when the fox appears on the path ahead, her breath rising in the dark night, the white of her fur merging with the snow. Feet planted, eyes fixed; I know her. Beside me, the driver is a hazy figure, as indistinct as the fox is clear, a static fuzz, blurring into the snowstorm that sprays vicious slants of ice against the windscreen. There’s a slow-motion quality about the way in which the vehicle moves along the road, and I’m wondering if I’m dreaming, when, with a distant shriek of tyres, we come to an abrupt halt and all but the fox disappears from the landscape. I lean in, pressing close to the windscreen, my gaze locked with that of the animal, some ancient communication connecting us in thought.

Just as I believe I might decode the creature’s meaning, I turn to look at the driver. He opens his mouth to speak, but the piercing night-scream of the Arctic fox fills my head, and the scene disappears to a cool white blank. Blank, just like the space inside my mind, the space where my memories are meant to live.

I wake in the middle of the night, empty. In the space where waking dreams usually linger, there is nothing, and in the darkness I dwell on this thought for long minutes, wondering how it is that I’ve never experienced the sensation before. Fleetingly, it is liberating; I feel almost nothing, aware only that I am Eva, that I am sixteen, that I live with my parents in a forest by a lake. In my mind’s eye I can picture the landscape beyond the shuttered windows of our red wooden lake house: the dense woodland to the front of us, a canopy of pine leading out to the water’s edge, indigo-deep in winter, sparkling crystal in the spring. To the rear are snow-cloaked mountains, dazzling white peaks rising up to the heavens, a panorama of waterfall and heather and rock. Other than these clear images, anchoring me to my bed, my mind is a peaceful blank.

But this serenity is short-lived, because in a breathtaking rush my body catches up with my thoughts and pain rips through me, sharp as a knife, causing me to gasp into the darkness as my fingers clutch at the bedsheets in shock.

The room is silent and cold, black as the grave, and I am gripped by the sudden and irrational thought that perhaps I am dead. Yes, we are used to the quiet, we live remotely – and yet, this silence is disturbing. There is no creak of heating pipes, no murmuring snore of Pappa on the other side of the wall, no regular tap-tap of the willow branch as it brushes my bedroom window in the night breeze. Something is wrong; something is very, very wrong.

Summoning up every effort to lift my arm from my side, I reach out for my bedside table. Slices of pain scream through me, from my ankles to the top of my head, slowing me down, confusing my movements. Where is my bedside lamp? My fingers fumble, not finding the switch where it should be, and I ease my legs from the bed. The surface beneath my feet is wooden. This is not my bedroom floor. I feel along the edges of the bedframe, not recognising the metal slats of its structure, the creak of its springs. Slowly, sluggish like my body, panic begins to creep through my mind; it connects with my heart rate and my blood begins to pump faster than I can stand. Fighting the swell of nausea, I rise, staggering across an empty space, my arms held out before me until my fingers make contact with the slatted surface of a wood-panelled wall. Where is this? Where are my parents?

Blindly, I feel my way along the contours of the wall, until at last I stumble down a single step and my palms connect with a door. Thank God! I breathe with relief, shards of agony punctuating my every movement. A way out! But when I curl my hand around the handle and turn it, the door remains shut. It’s locked from the outside.

I have no control over what happens next, because fear overcomes me, and there is only one thing I can do. I scream. And the scream goes on and on, taking on a life of its own, until at last a crack of light appears beneath the door, and rapid footsteps make their way up the stairs on the other side.

‘Eva?’ a voice says, a low whisper as she draws back the bolt. It’s Mamma. Oh, thank you, God, it’s Mamma. ‘Eva, darling, keep it down!’

When I open my eyes, I know it is morning, because the snow-reflected light makes its way through the shutters, casting white bars across the attic wall. Mamma is exactly where she was when I drifted back to sleep last night, curled around me, my head nestled into the crook of her neck. I can smell the scent of her favourite perfume, am comforted by the familiarity of her body, the soft brush of her hair against my cheek. It is warm beneath the covers, but the air of the room is cool, my breath a white mist.

‘We’ll have to get you an extra heater up here,’ she says, alerting me that she’s awake. ‘I think the radiator must be on the blink. No wonder you woke up last night.’

I hold my breath as my mind leaps around, searching for explanations as to what’s going on. Beyond the window a fox screeches, its cry childlike as the sound drifts and trails away. ‘Why am I—’ I start to say, but Mamma pulls me closer, her warm hands covering my ears as she kisses the top of my head.

‘How are you feeling this morning?’ she asks, releasing me and slipping out of bed, tucking the covers around my shoulders. She crosses the room, flipping on the desk lamp as she goes, and places her hand on the radiator, holding it there for a second or two. She’s wearing a cream cable-knit sweater and flannel jogging pants, and her strawberry-blonde hair hangs down her back, fuzzy after a night’s sleep. She bends to fiddle with the dial.

I blink, captivated by her casual movements, and try to find the right words.

‘Why am I here, Mamma? Why am I in the attic?’

She turns to me and smiles, but I see sadness there and I know she’s working hard to hold it together. ‘We’ve talked about this, haven’t we, darling? Remember?’

‘Have we?’ I reply as I stare at her, terrified by the fact I have no idea what she is talking about. ‘I don’t – I don’t remember.’ And then I recall that blank impression I’d woken with last night, the sense that I’d been wiped clean, that my mind had been returned to factory settings … that I was completely and utterly empty.

‘Yes, we’ve been over it several times now – but you’re still struggling to retain information. It’s not uncommon after this kind of trauma, you know? You mustn’t be afraid – it’s temporary, we’re sure.’

‘Trauma?’ I ask, and I try to sit up, but a stabbing sensation pierces my ribs and I swallow a yelp. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I push back the sheets, my hands shaking now.

Mamma comes to me and unfastens the last two buttons of my pyjama top, and that’s when I see it for the first time. A criss-crossing of scars which starts at my sternum and runs down past my ribcage, to disappear into my pyjama bottoms. I glimpse the damage, and turn my head away, wide-eyed, horrified at the sight of my own mutilated skin.

‘Oh, God – oh, no. Mamma? What is this? What happened to me?’ I push her hands away, panicked, tugging at the sheets and wanting to cover myself up. Wanting to make it all go away.

‘It looks fine,’ she murmurs. ‘The scars are tightening up a bit, that’s all. We must keep using that special cream, to keep the skin soft – it’ll help with the healing.’

I’m crying now, but I barely feel the tears, and when Mamma looks up my eyes seek out hers, silently pleading with her for some answers I can make sense of. This confusion feels like madness; I’m both inside and outside of myself, looking in and looking out.

Again, she sweeps me into her embrace, and, despite the physical pain it causes me, it’s where I want to be. ‘Please, Mamma,’ I cry into her shoulder. ‘Tell me.’

Before she is able to reply, we’re interrupted by the tread of footsteps on the wooden staircase beyond the door, and Pappa’s bearded face appears, smiling and bright. He’s already dressed for work, in his thick plaid shirt and cargo trousers. I find I can replay a scene, like frames from a movie I’ve watched a hundred times. In it, we’re in the kitchen, preparing supper, and it’s dark beyond the window, and warm inside. Pappa comes in through the back, kicking off his snow-dusted work boots before padding across the flagstones to kiss Mamma on the cheek. I look up from chopping onions and tell him he looks like a lumberjack; he says he only dresses like that to please Mamma; Mamma says she wouldn’t change a thing. It’s a love scene, I think now, and it makes me happy, except I have to leave it, because someone’s saying my name.

‘Eva?’ Mamma says, giving my shoulder a little shake, and I’m aware that she’s said it a few times now. ‘Pappa’s here.’

Slowly, my mind returns from the past to the present, to me sitting in this strange bed with my mother at my side, and my father standing in the low doorway, the desk lamp casting his shadow huge across the ceiling. His expression is – what? Expectant? Hopeful? It’s hard to tell.

‘Hello, sweetheart!’ he says, and for a moment I feel as though I’m looking at a stranger. ‘How are you doing this morning? You gave us quite a fright last night.’

I open my mouth to speak, but Mamma answers for me. ‘She’s feeling much better now, aren’t you, Eva? I think it must have been another bad dream – you know, you’ve been plagued by them since we got you home.’

‘Where’ve I been?’ I ask.

Pappa’s smile remains, fixed, and I sense the change in Mamma instantly, the shift from soft and yielding to crisp and business-like. This is a thing I do remember: the way Mamma operates on two different levels. There’s the gentle, funny, young-spirited Ingrid, the one who devotes her every spare moment to her husband and her only child, the one who dreams of off-grid living and world harmony, of a simple life. And then there’s professional Ingrid, the neurosurgeon, the no-nonsense team leader and all-round grown-up. This is the one who’s just materialised in the room, now brought into being, I suspect, by the expression on Pappa’s face. It’s only now that I recognise his smile is forced, tense.

‘Is everything alright, Tobias?’ Mamma asks.

Pappa looks over his shoulder, then back to Mamma. ‘Oh, yes,’ he replies, ‘fine. Except the chief just phoned to say he and Bern are on their way over.’

‘Now?’ Mamma stands and crosses the room, to open up the windows and fold back the shutters, filling the room with the bright reflection of a snow-covered landscape. ‘Couldn’t you put them off?’

Pappa picks up the empty water glass from my bedside table and leans in to kiss my hair. ‘He asked if Eva was up and about, and I told him no, but still he insisted. He says it’s been over a week now and he really needs to talk to her.’

‘What’s been over a week?’ I ask.

‘Since you came home from the hospital, sweetheart. Ingrid, he said he’ll be here by nine-thirty – he wants to interview Eva properly.’

‘She’s not going to be able to help them. She’s forgotten everything we told her,’ Mamma says, her voice flat.

‘Forgotten what?’ I cry out, slamming my hands against my forehead. A crashing pain floods my temple.

‘Whoa, careful!’ Mamma soothes, lifting my fringe to inspect my forehead. ‘This one’s still quite sore, darling.’ She sits again, takes my hands in hers, and in a matter-of-fact tone tells me, ‘You were involved in a car crash, Eva. You broke several bones and sustained some internal injuries and a serious head trauma.’

Is this how she is with her own patients? Calm, controlled, factual.

‘Have I got brain damage?’ I ask. The answer must be yes, because that would explain the blank spaces of my waking mind, the confusion and weakness I now feel.

‘Well – yes and no. Yes, in that your short-term memory is still affected, but no, in that we anticipate a full recovery. I see this sort of injury a lot in my line of work, darling – you’re going to be fine.’

I shake my head, wanting to believe her; not believing her.

Pappa approaches, squatting down to my level. ‘You’ve been home for a week, and we go over this with you most mornings,’ he says. ‘But honestly, Eva, every day you seem a little clearer. You’re definitely getting stronger.’

‘What about my birthday?’ I ask, knowing the answer before she even gives it. ‘My seventeenth?’

‘You missed it, I’m afraid, darling. You were still in intensive care at the end of February.’ Mamma releases my hands, checks her watch and fetches me a hairbrush.

‘What does Mac want?’ I say, unable to articulate much more, only knowing that the prospect of seeing anyone right now fills me with fear. Why would Chief Mac want to interview me? Hearing I’ve been in hospital is shock enough, but how can I have been in this attic room for a week and not even know about it? What the hell is going on around here? My mouth is dry, my pulse racing again.

‘We’d better get a move on,’ she tells Pappa, shooting an irritable glance in his direction, and before I know it he’s ushered out and it’s just the two of us again.

‘I don’t want to see Mac and Bern—’ I say, but she waves a hand through the air.

‘Look, Eva, I’m no happier about this than you are. Let’s get them out of the way. You’ll have to give a statement sooner or later.’

I nod, my eyes falling to the hairbrush in my hand. ‘I’m cold,’ I mutter, though it’s not what I mean to say. I mean to say, No, Mamma! I won’t see them! I won’t answer their questions – not until you tell me more! But I’m suddenly so tired, so worn out that right now I’ll go along with anything.

For a moment Mamma gazes at me, as though I’m a puzzle to decipher, before she strips off her sweater in one fluid movement and drops it in a warm pile on my lap, indicating for me to put it on. She stands beside my bed, hands on hips, the skin of her slender arms pale against her dark vest. ‘I would have put him off if I’d taken the call. But Mac’s got a job to do, I suppose. And he probably wants to see how you’re doing – to wish you well. Everyone’s been so worried, Eva.’

I’m looking at her as she says these things, and it strikes me that she’s talking to herself as much as she’s talking to me. ‘Why?’ I ask, though it’s barely a whisper.

‘Because you nearly died,’ she replies plainly, and the truth of it is like a slap. She bends to scoop up a few pieces of clothing from the floor. ‘I’ll bring you up a bit of breakfast before Mac arrives,’ she says, ‘so you can take your painkillers. And I’ll make sure he doesn’t stay too long, OK? I promise.’

‘Mamma?’ I call after her as she retreats towards the door.

She pauses, turning back to me. ‘Uh-huh?’

‘What will I say to him?’ I ask.

She looks at me blankly. ‘Well, the truth, of course! That’s all he wants to hear.’

The attic door shuts with a wooden rattle, followed by the hollow thud of the bolt sliding into place. The truth? God only knows I’d love to give it to him, but I have absolutely no idea what that is – or what I’m doing locked up here in my family’s attic. I raise the hairbrush to my head, noticing only now that my previously thick dark hair is several inches shorter, and uneven, as though cut by an amateur. I run the brush through it, obediently, the lump in my throat growing as I feel myself waking fully to the horror of my situation.

Am I a prisoner in my own home?

Still reeling from the shock of my botched hair when Mamma returns, I try to refuse breakfast, pushing aside a bowl of oats, only agreeing to a few bites of pastry so that I can line my stomach for the cocktail of drugs she counts out into my palm. It’s clear that I need painkillers, but there are six tablets here, and I’m not so groggy that I can’t work out that some of them must do something else.

‘Six?’ I ask, swallowing them one after another, desperate to relieve this pain.

‘You’ll be off them in no time,’ she says in reply.

‘But what are they?’

The question goes unanswered. There’s an impatient quality to Mamma’s movements as she busies about the room, plumping up my pillows, straightening the sheets. When I realise I’ll get no sense from her until the police have been and gone, I decide to drop the subject, and fall quiet too, silently listing questions to save till later, when I have her full attention.

Outside, the sound of tyres on gravel alerts us to Chief Mac’s arrival in his jeep, and Mamma crosses to the window, wiping it clear of condensation with the sleeve of her shirt, turning back to me with a decisive nod.

‘Ready?’ she asks.

I don’t reply.

‘I’ll tell Pappa to bring them up.’ To my shock, she leans over my headboard, and I hear the soft click of static as she fiddles with something back there and speaks. ‘Tobias? Eva’s ready when you are. You can bring Mac and Bern up now.’

‘What’s that—?’ I begin, but there’s no time to object, because within seconds Pappa’s here, with Chief Mac and his son Deputy Bern following close behind, sucking up the air in the room, making me feel like a freakish exhibit beneath their scrutiny.

Pappa places a stool beside my bed, and ushers the police officers in. I feel utterly exposed; ashamed. I detest this helpless feeling, and I can’t stand to think of others looking on me as an invalid.

‘Ah! Here’s our little hero!’ Mac says as he steps forward, stooping to avoid the sloping eaves. Bern follows behind.

Defensively, my hands fly to my head, pulling at what’s left of my hair as I try to disguise the mess of it. I’ve known Mac since I was a baby, and over the years he’s become a close friend of the family. He’s Lars and Rosa’s uncle, I remember that much. In fact, the everyday stuff, the larger elements of my life seem increasingly clear to me as the morning goes on. It’s just the recent bits I have no concept of.

‘Hero? ’ I reply. My voice is still hoarse with sleep. ‘Hardly.’

Bern raises his hand to give me a small wave, and I notice how grown-up he seems in his uniform, how confident. In a small town like ours, everyone knows everyone else, and Bern has always been there in the background, a few years older than me and his cousins, the sensible son who followed his pappa into the police force. I’d never taken much notice of him, but now I see how altered he is, his black hair a little longer around his ears, his sideburns fully formed. He looks like an advert for the perfect policeman: tall, strong, trustworthy.

‘Hey, Eva,’ he says, just as he would if he passed me in the street, and I feel grateful to him for treating me as though nothing has changed. ‘How’s the head?’

I widen my eyes, to let him know it’s a stupid question, and he stifles a smile and looks for somewhere to sit. Mamma and Pappa stand awkwardly, unsure how to arrange all these people in so small a space.

‘It’s good to see you back home where you belong,’ Mac says, glancing around the attic room with interest.

‘Eva still sleeps a lot,’ Pappa says, gesturing towards me in the bed. ‘It’s one of the symptoms of the head injury. It’s quieter up here – more peaceful than downstairs.’

Mac nods, his expression saying, yes, that all makes sense, and I wonder whether he noticed the bolt on the outside of my door.

My mother settles on the edge of my mattress and Pappa moves to the foot of the bed to stand with his back to the window. The desk beneath the eaves faces me, and Bern perches on the corner of it, notebook in hand, as Chief Mac takes another sweeping glance of the room before pulling out the desk chair, sitting with his elbows on his knees, so that we’re level. Four sets of eyes are on me, the girl in the bed.

‘So, Eva …’ Mac begins. His hair is as grey as Bern’s is black. ‘We were hoping to ask you a few questions, now you’re awake.’

Downstairs, in the main house, I hear a woman’s voice, singing ‘This Little Love of Mine’, and I look at my mother in surprise.

There’s a brief, silent exchange between my parents, before she says, ‘Oh, it’s just Nettie.’

‘Why is she here?’ I ask, wondering what our old housekeeper is doing here at this time of day. Maybe she’s come to pay me a visit? Part of me hopes so; I love old Nettie.

‘She—’ Chief Mac starts to say, but Mamma jumps in before he can continue, and he looks confused – and I’m completely perplexed by the weird atmosphere in the room, and by the strange expressions passing between them all.

‘She popped in for a cup of tea, sweetheart, asking after you. I told her we’d only be a few minutes.’

Mac clears his throat; Mamma nods pleasantly; Nettie continues to sing downstairs. Without a word, Pappa crosses the room and pulls the door shut with a soft click. The singing fades to a faint murmur.

‘So, Eva,’ Mac says again. ‘I expect your parents have filled in a few of the blanks for you?’

Mamma sits quite still at the end of my bed, her face impassive.

‘A few,’ I reply.

‘You know you’ve been in a road traffic accident?’

I nod.

‘And you know that the truck you were in was stolen?’

Now Mamma does react, and a pained expression crosses her features.

‘Stolen?’ I repeat. ‘Who was driving? Was anyone else hurt?’

‘We don’t think so,’ Mac replies, sitting upright, frowning. His focus shifts to Pappa, to Bern, then back to Mamma. ‘We traced the truck back to a pest control company in Valden, who’d reported it missing a week earlier, so whoever took it had probably been driving around in it since then. Forensics crawled all over it, and picked up a whole lot of fibres and prints, but nothing useful. With no firm suspects, and no print matches on our database, we’re a bit stumped.’

I stare at Mac, unable to answer, watching as the crease between his eyebrows deepens.

‘Ingrid, what exactly does Eva know?’ he asks.

She sighs. ‘We’ve told her just about everything we know, Mac, but she’s not retaining it.’

Mac nods in a way that suggests he understands the code.

‘We’ve had this every day for the past week,’ Mamma continues. ‘You’re going to have to tell her from the start.’

The way they’re talking over me is crushing. Am I so slow-witted, so damaged that I’ve really heard this all before? When Mac starts to talk, however, I somehow know that it’s true: the information seeps into me like an echo of the past. He reaches inside his jacket pocket and brings out a newspaper cutting, which he unfolds and passes to me. The headline reads, ‘Local girl escapes death: dangerous driver faces prosecution’. The photograph has been taken at night, and shows the image of a pickup truck, nose-deep in a snow bank, its front end entirely obscured. Surrounding the van are police cars, an ambulance and several people who appear to be emergency crew.

Mac reaches out and points at the front end of the truck.

‘When this picture was taken, you were still inside,’ he says. ‘It took more than two hours to cut you free. In those sub-zero conditions, and with the injuries you sustained, you’re lucky to be alive, you know?’

As I look up from the article, I have to fight the heat at the back of my eyes, and Bern meets my gaze. ‘You’re made of strong stuff,’ he says, and I can’t contain the tears any longer.

Pappa steps away from the window to sit between Mamma and me. ‘Can we speed this along a bit, Chief?’ he asks. ‘Eva’s exhausted.’

‘Sure thing, Tobias,’ Mac replies, and he opens his notebook and turns to a page of handwritten questions. ‘I’m just going to fire away, Eva, OK? If you don’t know or can’t remember, just say, and we’ll move on.’

I nod again, and Mamma rubs my foot through the fabric of my covers. There, there, she’s saying, let’s just get this over with.

‘Do you remember what you were doing in this truck, Eva?’

I shake my head. ‘No.’

‘You see here, it’s green, with a pest control logo on the side. Ring any bells?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know where you were before getting in the truck?’

‘How can I, when I don’t even remember b. . .