Remember Me

by Sarah Diamond

Genres: Women's Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

At twenty-six, Rachel's got a beautiful flat, an outstanding career, the man of her dreams - and life's only getting better. But even those closest to her don't know how much she's overcome to get to where she is now. Something almost destroyed her life, something she has told no one. But Rachel can't forget the long, hot summer fifteen years ago that sent her into a spiral of self-destruction. A summer filled with secrets known to only one other person - her childhood best friend Sophie. When Sophie comes back into her life unexpectedly, everything starts to slip. And long-hidden events from the past threaten to destroy all Rachel's struggled to achieve...

Release date: June 11, 2020

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 368

Sample

She woke up abruptly. For a second or two, though she couldn’t remember the dream she’d just had, it was still oddly strong in her mind – a taste she couldn’t put any immediate name to, an echo that could have been caused by anything at all.

She reached out to touch the sleeping man beside her – turned, rested her chin on one hand as she looked down at him. Saw a roundish, blunt-featured face peaceful in sleep, tousled sandy-blond hair against the pillow. She felt a sudden, intense rise of tenderness, and shook him gently, with a half-recognised urge to banish the misty remnants of the dream.

‘Andrew. Andrew.’

She watched him slowly surface from sleep, eyes opening – grey-blue eyes, weary, humorous, slightly naive. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ She felt embarrassed at having woken him, even as part of her was reassured. ‘I’ll have to get up in a minute.’

‘Half six already?’ He reached out for her, drew her into a sleepy and asexual cuddle which she melted into gratefully. ‘How come you always manage to wake up before the alarm?’

‘Just a natural talent, I guess.’ They lay together in peaceful half-lit silence for long minutes before she spoke again. ‘Better start getting ready. I’ll be late for work.’

‘Surely they’d let you get away with that today? The star of the Fanta pitch?’ She laughed. He pulled her closer to him. ‘Come on, sweetheart, stay in here a bit longer. No rush.’

‘You know I want to. I just can’t.’ She disengaged her flesh from his with genuine regret. ‘I’ve got that lunch with the boss later, and for all I know, she’s going to keep me for hours – I’ll have to get a lot of work out of the way this morning.’

‘You’re too responsible for your own good sometimes,’ Andrew grinned. ‘Puts me to shame.’ And she smiled too, getting out of bed, barefooting her way across the stripped-pinewood floor, heading into the bathroom, where she washed and brushed herself ready to face the day. A bright May morning showed through the half-open blinds, and the light was dazzling.

Back in the bedroom, Andrew was still in bed. Rachel went over to the wardrobe to get dressed and dropped the towel she’d wrapped round herself, prompting a slow, appreciative wolf-whistle from behind her. She laughed, turned. ‘Hadn’t you better get a move on?’ she asked, buttoning up her blouse. ‘You’ll be late for work yourself, one of these days.’

‘Never happens. You must know that by now.’

He spoke airily – it was true, she knew, he never seemed to go out of his way to get things done, but it all fell into place for him just the same. She often had a sense that she was older than him, even though she was nearly two years his junior. ‘Just born lucky,’ she retorted, pulling the curtains wide open to let the sun in.

She was putting on her make-up at the dressing table when she heard him padding into the bathroom, showering, starting to sing. An involuntary smile touched the edges of her lips. ‘Do you do encores?’ she called, but couldn’t tell whether he’d heard her over the running water. She applied a second coat of mascara, and made the bed with a chambermaid’s precision.

In the kitchen, she poured herself black coffee, which was all the breakfast she ever had, and noticed the open jar of Nutella on the side, the telltale crumbs that told her Andrew had succumbed to an attack of the munchies while she was asleep. A familiar blend of exasperation and deep affection took hold of her as she screwed the lid back on the jar and replaced it in the cupboard, cleaned the crumbs off carefully, wiped down the marble so it gleamed. ‘Andrew,’ she called, with half-genuine, half-joking irritation. ‘Will you ever learn?’

He appeared in the door dressing-gowned, vigorously towelling his shower-damp hair. ‘Will you ever learn to relax?’ he complained, taking the cloth from her hand. ‘They’re crumbs. They don’t bite.’

She couldn’t help laughing – he had that effect on her, made her take things less seriously. ‘I suppose they might run wild, if you let them get out of control,’ he continued gravely. ‘We’d come back one night to find them rampaging through the flat.’

‘I know, I know. It’s just a shame to make a mess. It’s such a beautiful flat.’ Her gaze swept the kitchen with a pleasure that was more than houseproud, before she felt his mocking eyes on her and grinned. ‘Anyway, duty calls. I’d better make tracks.’

‘See you later,’ he said, and pulled her in for a kiss on her way out of the kitchen. She returned it for long seconds, enjoying the Badedas-and-toothpaste taste of him before the ticking clock in her head became impossible to ignore. ‘Have a nice day,’ she said at last, pulling away.

‘You too, sweetheart. And enjoy your lunch with the boss.’

The apartment block they lived in was a private development, and the neat curves of her year-old black MG gleamed in the crowded forecourt. She got in, started the engine and set off.

Her prowess behind the wheel tended to reflect her mood: under stress, she was probably the nerviest and most erratic driver in the capital; this morning, almost as laid-back as Andrew himself. She was cruising out of Camden and humming along to chart music on the radio when the double-decker bus pulled out in front of her without warning, and she’d squealed to a hair’s-breadth halt before she was a hundred per cent certain she wasn’t dead.

Sophie was sitting towards the back of the bottom deck and looking out of the window when the bus came to a bone-jolting stop. Horns blared furiously, and she craned to see what they’d almost smashed into. She had a moment’s glimpse of something shiny and sporty and black driving away, before the bus set off again, the moment over.

Suddenly, she was on edge. She took a long, deep breath, trying to distract herself from subtle fears. The window showed a clean, crisp spring morning, tree-lined streets, empty parks – people waiting at bus stops, hurrying into tube stations, beginning the day. I’m one of them now, she thought. I live here now.

It surprised her to realise it was true; she’d only been in the capital for two days. She’d been shown round the shared house yesterday afternoon, would move in properly within the next hour. The single suitcase she’d brought with her was the only one in the luggage rack by the bus doors. She kept forgetting about it, then remembering sharply, her eyes darting over to it with a small-town girl’s paranoia as she remembered there were thieves in London.

But those moments of panic weren’t just about the suitcase. They expressed something far bigger, that she’d never really known before; half exhilarating, half terrifying, a sense of her life as something portable.

Think of the good things, she told herself: freedom, opportunity. Around her, she saw life on a different scale from the town she’d grown up in: taller buildings, wider streets and an atmosphere that was hard to put a name to. It was in the eyes and faces and movement of the people she observed – the harassed-looking young man in the baggy suit, the grey-haired woman trailing an ebullient mongrel – an urban look, anonymous. The streets in Underlyme had felt like an extension of home; those around her belonged to nobody.

There’s a future here, she told herself, you can feel alive again; but deep inside, she was aware that she was keeping her thoughts away from the For Sale sign in front of the house on Acacia Avenue, the memories of twenty-five years rinsed out as carelessly as coffee dregs.

Then the bus was pulling up outside Camden station and she was getting her suitcase, heading out into the morning.

BHN Advertising was based in Farringdon, a half-dream, half-nightmare of modern architecture and dark-blue glass. The sunlight reflected off it with a savage glitter as Rachel walked towards it from her now-parked car, still jittery from her brush with death fifteen minutes ago. It was almost half past eight.

Up the curving white-stone steps and through the revolving doors, the building’s glamour faded slightly – the fake marble walls and flooring, the suspiciously opulent banks of greenery all trying a little too hard to sustain the façade of elegance. Rachel nodded and smiled at the girl behind the reception desk, before heading over to the lifts.

Out at the fifth floor, striplights buzzed endlessly, merging with the steady hum of the air-con. Rachel crossed the empty open-plan office to her desk, and turned her computer on. Beside it, a leather-framed photograph of herself and Andrew smiled out, caught for posterity at his parents’ house last Christmas.

It caught her attention this morning, as it did surprisingly often. She took a mental step back to look at it through a stranger’s eyes. The tall, sandy-blond young man with the infinitely reassuring smile, one arm round the thin, attractive young woman with the straight dark hair in a shoulder-length bob. The glint of lavish garlands behind them, the merest suggestion of slanting oak beams…

Then she heard the door opening across the office, and tore her gaze away as if afraid it might betray something.

‘Morning, Rach,’ said Kate, as she approached. ‘Still on a high about the Fanta pitch?’

‘Well, ish.’ Rachel smiled, shrugging, embarrassed by her own pride. ‘No more than anyone else.’

‘You should be. From what I’ve heard, you had a hell of a lot to do with us winning it.’ The big, untidy redhead perched on the edge of Rachel’s desk. ‘You take Andrew out to celebrate last night?’

‘God, no. He thinks I’m obsessed with work as it is. I just told him we’d won Fanta. We stayed in and cooked together.’

‘That sounds nice.’ Kate looked at her closely. ‘Must feel more couply now you’re living together – how long’s it been now?’

‘A month and two weeks.’ Rachel’s gaze strayed to the photo again, to Andrew’s face. ‘Feels like years, in a funny sort of way.’

‘Is that good or bad?’ A brief pause as Rachel laughed an affirmative, then Kate’s cosy, big-sisterly expression turned to one of frank curiosity. ‘By the way, I’m not being nosy, but what was Diane saying to you yesterday afternoon? You guys were talking for yonks.’

‘Oh, just chewing the fat. Doing a little post-mortem on the pitch.’ She didn’t want to mention the rest to Kate – only the euphoria of yesterday evening had made her mention it to Andrew – but suddenly she found she couldn’t help herself. ‘She’s invited me to lunch.’

‘Jesus H. That sounds promising,’ said Kate amiably. ‘Well, good luck.’

When Kate had gone to her own desk across the room, Rachel checked through her e-mail, wondering over and over what Diane wanted to say to her. A wild optimism trembled in her mind. Beyond the windows, the morning was beautiful.

Eleven-thirty in the morning, and Sophie was sitting in a pleasant little café that smelt reassuringly of soup, drinking a Diet Coke by the window, watching people come and go. It had taken her next to no time to unpack, and all but one of her new housemates had been at work. The exception, a small, mousy girl named Leila, was off work with a bad cold, and had welcomed her red-nosed and dressing-gowned, keeping an apologetic distance before shuffling back off to bed. Wandering round the quiet house after unpacking, Sophie had been gripped by a sudden urge to explore the area. She’d walked and walked, enthralled by novelty on all sides before realising how far she’d come; she was tired, her feet hurt a little, the café across the road had beckoned invitingly.

Now, she sat and sipped while time slipped past around her, feeling like a sports car revving up at a red light, intent on the future.

I’ll start going round the recruitment agencies tomorrow, she thought. Even though she hadn’t consciously been looking, she seemed to have passed dozens of them in the course of her walk here – windows promising secretarial and PA work with good rates of pay. More than ever, the city around her felt alive with opportunity. It was what had brought her here, a premonition of this feeling; with the end of home, she’d had a mounting, ultimately irresistible longing to make a fresh start, to reinvent herself in a place where the past could be forgotten.

She could never have been free of it in Underlyme, Dorset – that deceptively large seaside town with its summer tourists, amusement arcades and crowded town centre, its prejudices and certainties and familiarity. In Underlyme, she saw the same faces everywhere she looked, walking past Next, behind a till in the local newsagent, on the bus home from work. She supposed it wasn’t surprising that she knew so many people, when she’d lived in the same place all her life. Still, as the last few months had unwound, she’d found herself longing for anonymity like fresh air; found herself thinking there was nothing left to keep her there.

And now, here she was. In Camden …

Sitting by the window, she remembered her mother’s voice in the kitchen back home, last April. I saw Nina in town. We stopped for a chat, she’d said. I hear Rachel’s doing well, she’s living in Camden now. At the time, it hadn’t meant anything much, had just been a source of vague and fleeting interest. But when she’d been flicking through the Accommodation section of London Loot the day before yesterday, the place-name had come back to her out of the blue. Shared house in Camden, she’d read, and the last word had got bigger second by second; she’d experienced a nameless fascination, maddening as an unreachable itch.

To think Rachel was alive in the world at this exact moment; Sophie had been driven towards the particular house by a disinterested longing to run into her again, to know what had happened to her and how she was. Doing well answered none of the questions that gnawed away in her mind, and as she’d thought about them, she’d experienced something like a physical hunger for answers.

But now she was here, the area seemed vast. Even walking to this café, she’d seemed to see a thousand doors behind which Rachel could be living; a million different routes she could take to the tube station; an infinity of ways they could co-exist in this area for ten years and never see each other once. The idea of a chance encounter had begun to look flimsy and implausible, and it embarrassed her that she’d been so convinced it would happen here.

Still, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t why she’d come to this city. Finding a job would be easier here, she thought; everything would be easier. As she sat and looked out of the window, the sun appeared from behind a cloud. The sudden glint of light on the glass obscured the view for a second, and she glimpsed her own reflection: dark-blonde hair, slight build, hazel eyes untouched by experience – a woman of twenty-five who looked seventeen, impatient for life to begin.

Diane Robinson was a small, plump, glamorous blonde in her mid-forties, with inch-long French-manicured nails, and the voice and manner of a soap-opera barmaid. Rumour had it that she was a world-class bitch, but Rachel thought that was mostly jealous bullshit; she hadn’t had much to do with the Senior Account Director thus far in her career, but so far, Diane seemed okay.

They were sitting at a window table in an elegant, modern little restaurant near the office, and the waiter was taking their order. ‘The Caesar salad looks good,’ said Rachel. ‘Think I’ll go for that. Forget the diet today.’

Diane laughed; a harsh, bawdy echo of the Queen Vic rang out sharply against the background noise, the clink of cutlery on plates, the steady murmur of other people’s lunchtime conversations. ‘Think I’ll go for the same,’ she said, then leaned closer to Rachel across the table. ‘But seriously, well done on that Fanta pitch, Rach. You had a hell of a lot to do with us getting it. I know that.’

Rachel couldn’t think of anything to say; it was true, but the last thing she wanted was to sound cocky. ‘I loved working on it,’ she said at last. ‘I’m just glad it went so well.’

‘It’s the first major pitch you’ve worked on with us, isn’t it?’

Rachel nodded, watched Diane watching her over the table. Diane’s eyes were pale and piercing, as out of place with her brash façade as a Roedean education would have been. ‘How long you been in this industry now?’ she asked. ‘Four years?’

‘Five. I was at Markson Vickery for two, as a graduate trainee. Then I moved here.’

‘Making you how old?’

The signs were getting better and better – Diane spoke with frank interest, as if she wanted to get to know her. They’d never talked about anything that wasn’t work before. ‘Twenty-six,’ said Rachel. ‘Last month.’

‘Well, you’re doing dead well for your age.’ Diane was matey, expansive, encouraging. ‘Here comes the bloke again – fancy a glass of wine?’

‘Oh – no thanks,’ said Rachel quickly. ‘This water’s fine.’

‘Well – if you’re sure.’ Diane stopped the waiter. ‘I’ll have a glass of Chardonnay,’ she said brusquely, before returning her full attention to Rachel. ‘I’m going to be puttin. . .