PROLOGUE
Rain lashes the shop windows, long since closed for the evening. In her miniskirt, she feels every icy sting. Her makeup, so carefully applied, will no doubt run, leaking ivory and crimson into the puddle at her feet. They are both veneers—one hiding her fear, the other draping the world in moonlit crystals, obscuring the ugly parts.
The black 4X4 arrives with a whisper of tires. The door clicks open, a maw of darkness.
She can’t see the man inside but knows he is there. Can sense him watching her.
Everything in her screams, Run.
She glances back only once, then takes a breath and climbs inside.
1
I wake with a scream on my lips, the feel of hands groping my flesh.
The phantom of a face hovers over me, its features distorted, indistinguishable. Inhuman.
In the fractured umbra, I’m momentarily disoriented, but then I catch sight of my bedside clock glowing orange like a doomsday eclipse and the room sinks into normality once more: 3:33 a.m. Even through my fading fear and the whump-whump-whump of my heart in my ears, I appreciate the symmetry.
Four hours before I have to head out, but there’s no chance of more sleep. I’ve never been one to nap, or to languish in bed with a book. Siesta is a foreign concept, terra incognita; even the taste of the word sours in the corners of my mouth. Tempus fugit, Mum always used to say, clapping her hands as she hustled me up for school. So I guess I took one thing from her. Time is a commodity, after all, and we’re destitute, every one of us.
I slip from bed in the silent darkness, wincing at the coolness of the floor, and walk the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine steps to the en suite. My foot lands wrong on five and I have to go back to the bed and do it all over again.
Three squirts of hand wash for my ablutions, three minutes brushing my teeth, followed by a hot shower that lasts thirty minutes and thirty seconds. Afterward I use three capfuls of bleach to wash the walls, scrubbing all 393 six-by-six-inch tiles—I had one removed and replaced with a steel plate, affixed with nine dots of cement—in my forty-eight-square-foot space with a spare toothbrush set aside for just this purpose. By the time I am finished, my skin is itching and my nostrils are aflame with the tang of sodium hypochlorite.
Clean.
Moisturizer containing extracts of verbena is applied from the left side of my body to the right, except for my face, which is applied right to left. The apartment is cool and still, the chill of autumn seeping under doorframes and windowpanes. I shrug on a woolen jumper and switch on the gas fire in my open plan living room. It’s not the rustic inglenook I grew up with, but the fire still soothes me.
While I wait for the space to defrost, I switch on the kettle and reach for the glass container of Welsh verbena-and-nettle tea, scooping more into the cup than normal, still shaken by a dream I can no longer remember. It lingers like an almost-scent. I keep trying to catch hold of it to no avail, but it is the embryo of new obsession. If I don’t stop thinking about it, picking at it like a hangnail, it will become a new tic. A new chaos I can’t control.
I drink the bitter brew in my window seat, looking out on the nothing of the world outside, shadows of a semblance of shape and form beyond the glass. My breath fogs it up and fades, over and over, fleeting evidence that I am here.
I am, I am, I am.
After the tea, I pull on my running uniform: black leggings and a light, long-sleeve Lycra top with a high collar. I secure my hair in a French twist while damp, check to make sure my neck is covered and grab a Lucozade Sport drink from the fridge before heading out for my run. If I’m not moving, life gets away from me. Sinks into a big Nothing that I have panic attacks over. Worse as I get older. Tempus fugit, Mina.
Kensington is pleasant this early. The sun won’t rise for another hour, but the sky is already ripening like a juicy grapefruit. For the next forty-two minutes—four and two is six is three twice—I pound the pavement, hearing nothing but my increasingly labored breath and the smack-smack-smack of my trainers on the road. A man setting out his morning papers calls a greeting and I lift a friendly hand, even though I’m annoyed that he pulled me from my rhythm and have to go around the block and start again.
The dream’s hangover lingers in my body. The details are obscured—I only remember feeling cold and helpless. Trapped. Even now, as I try to pound out the feeling, I’m still on edge.
There are other terrors too. This is life.
I fear men walking, heads bowed beneath hoodies, even if they are innocently avoiding the rain. When I cross the street I pull out my phone, 999 ready to go, help only a green button away.
I have my keys firmly
wedged between index and fuck-you finger, hooked and crooked with my thumb. Still. I measure his stride, his heft, his length from shoulder to shoulder. Brawn, speed. What chance would I have against that? And all of this in the split second as we pass. He doesn’t look up, but I still walk faster, hoping he can’t keep apace. The amygdala, hard at work.
When I get back to my flat, it’s twelve minutes past six, and my alarm is blaring from the bedroom. I shut it off and repeat my bathroom routine, this time donning my work uniform when done: a black turtleneck jumper of thin merino wool and straight-legged, wool-mix black trousers. I zip on my boots, left, right, and redo the simple French twist, wet again, secured with a smarter comb. This is me, Mina Murray. This is my life. Over and over. Safe. Known. Predictable.
I control the chaos. I tame the fear.
I prepare freshly ground coffee in the kitchen and clean out the filter while two eggs cook. I eat them in the center of a square white plate, biting from one and then the next, left to right, in an orderly fashion, putting the plate in the dishwasher when finished.
A perfunctory check of my person, then I grab my briefcase and leave the flat, remembering to lock the door once, twice, thrice for luck and balance. It is a good day and I only check it twice.
2
Brookfields is a government-funded psychiatric facility and I have been called in to assess cases that fit my remit for the last year. Women with extreme trauma. The money isn’t as good as my earnings from private Harley Street clientele, but this feeds my passion rather than just my bank account.
“Need to update your ID fob,” the man at reception tells me.
“Update it?”
“New photo.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“Been a year,” he says, his tone dismissive, bored. “Look here.”
He points to the small black webcam to my left. I hold still and try not to fidget.
He faffs about with his computer and the printer whirrs to life.
“Right you are, Doc,” he says, handing me a new pass.
I check the photo and cringe. Fawn-like eyes, unruly brown hair, and a small mouth with lips that are too short and too thin give me a perpetually startled expression. A cartoon character made real. I glance at my reflection in the glass behind him, reminding myself to lower my eyelids in order to shake that impression, but, as always, I only manage to look languid.
Get it together, Bambi.
“Strange one today,” the registrar tells me when I arrive at intakes. Ron Wexler is a short man with a balding spot on the back of his round head, but he has kind eyes and I know he treats the patients well.
They are always strange ones if they’ve called me, but I don’t tell him that. Women manifest trauma in unusual ways. What I discuss with the clients assigned to me here, or the ones I take on out there, is entirely privileged. Unless, of course, they are a danger to society or themselves. And yet, all too often women’s traumas are treated as a kind of madness, something that takes a life of its own, thereby exonerating the society that made them that way. Watched you break me, now you blame me. Faouzia’s lyrics blasting in my head.
“A young Jane Doe,” Ron continues. “Found wandering the docklands raving about the walking dead and a coming apocalypse. She was brought in with no identifying documents and with no clothing.”
“She was found naked?”
“Yep.” Ron shuffles from foot to foot. “Maybe you ought to begin when she’s sedated? Dr. Seward might be in later to assist.”
My hackles rise. Dr. John Seward is, in my opinion, the least qualified doctor to deal with female trauma, despite his barrage of bestselling books that say otherwise. For him, it’s a parlor trick, not a vocation.
The titles of his books alone make me cringe. To Walk Alone: Female Delusions of the Mind; The Tower Hamlet Killer: When Women Go Mad; and Murder by Numbers: Count It Betty—bestsellers all.
I smile faintly. “That would defeat the purpose. But thank you for your concern, Ron.”
Ron furrows his brow. I have always inspired two distinct things in men: a protective instinct, or a perverse lust that seems never to be sated. I steer clear of it all. Love is something I preach but never practice. For Ron, I might as well be his five-year-old daughter. I can see the pigtails he imagines me wearing in his puffy, kindly face. The way he bites his lip, eyes shadowed as we walk the anemic hallway.
At the security gate, I hold out my hand for Jane Doe’s folder. “I’ll take it from here.”
I have to suppress the urge to laugh when he hesitates. If he could be witness to some of my more intense intrusive thoughts...
At last, he hands it over.
“Be careful.”
I don’t dignify that with a response. Instead, I turn and let myself into the gate and march down the pristine hall, my boot heels clicking across the floor like a ticking clock.
No one would know I am counting every step.
***
Jane Doe is slumped in a corner of the small triage personal safety room, facing away from the door and viewing pane. Milky light from a dreary day seeps in through the single window, casting meager patches across the floor, splashes of it barely reaching the walls. The rest of the room, draped in veils of shadow, stands sickly and sad. The overhead light is off, and when I check my notes, I see she is photosensitive. A muggy red glow from the CCTV camera lends the scene a lurid air.
I observe for a long time, noting the twitches, the murmurs, and trying to catch any distinct words. I make out “orchid,” “help,” and “master.” I note everything in my journal.
I’ve always been good at watching. At eleven, watching the village boys rip off the corner shop, so smug about their pocketfuls of penny sweets. At thirteen, watching the sunrise on Tylluan beach while kids snogged or shagged behind grassy knolls. At fifteen, looking for my father’s tell when we’d play cards—a crease near the corner of his lazy eye. “The mind of a man, you’ve got there, Mins,” he’d always say after my victory. His highest compliment.
After a few minutes, I ask the orderly to allow me access. He does so but gives me a handheld buzzer for emergencies, which will send him back quick-time. I pocket it without comment.
The orderly eyes me warily, just like Dr. Ron, but leaves me to it.
I sit down across from Jane Doe and fold my legs. The shadows looming from the corners unsettle me; my imagination conjures threats where there are none. I focus on the girl instead. I sit quietly for some minutes. I forget to count. This is the only time, when I am absorbed in another person, when I am helping a woman heal, that I can fully slough off that persistent tic. When I can leave myself behind. Eventually Jane Doe turns in my direction, revealing a startlingly young face and bloodshot eyes. Her ample lips are cracked, skin peeling away like melted plastic or chipped paint.
“Why are you watching me?” The voice too is very young. No more than eighteen or nineteen, I would guess.
“I want to get to know you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Mina. What’s yours?”
She hesitates, and a fat tear leaks out of her left eye. She whispers, “Renée.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Renée. How are you feeling today?”
Renée frowns and withdraws into herself, but I am patient. I know that she has no idea how or what she is feeling. She is, to me, a giant question mark covered in bruises. She is pulsing with pain so fierce I can almost feel it. She licks her lips, eyes glancing left and right, then over to the window behind me. I resist the impulse to turn.
“Would you like some orange juice?”
That gets Renée’s attention. She stares at me, evaluating, and eventually nods, the strands of her dingy, wheat-colored hair wobbling like greasy rat tails. She smells like old sweat and menstruation, but I’ve smelled worse.
I press the buzzer in my hand and the door swings violently open.
“Can we both have a
cup of orange juice, please?”
The orderly, a big man, stares at me. “The buzzer ain’t for deliveries.”
“That will be all for now,” I say, smiling. I stare until, uncomfortable with my wide-eyed scrutiny, he sighs, shakes his head, and saunters out, locking the door behind him.
“How did you do that?” Renée whispers.
“What?”
“How did you...get him to listen?”
“Have they not been listening to you?”
Renée shakes her head and I note with horror that lice are crawling through her hair. I sit still. Very still. I am in control.
“I’ve been asking for water.” She draws invisible pictures on the padded floor with cracked nails.
“And they refused?”
Her finger moves from the floor to the air, swirling around and around. Renée leans forward as though to tell me a secret. “No one listens. But Master is coming and he will make them pay.” Her voice drops an octave. “In blood.”
I suppress a sudden urge to laugh. “I see. Well, they should have brought you food and water, and I’ll make certain they do so in the future.”
“I have food,” Renée says, smiling like a child.
“You do? Can you show me?”
She shakes her head and curls in on herself. “No! No-no-no-no-no-no-no.”
She’s like a four-year-old hiding stolen crayons.
“Please?”
She considers, her eyes roaming my face, my hair, my hands, and my crossed legs. At last, she nods and crawls closer. The stench of rot and old blood grows. Slowly, she removes a clenched fist from the pocket of her hospital gown, grinning. “Look,” she whispers, and I have to force myself not to flinch at the sewage of her breath.
She uncurls her fist, revealing the broken bodies of several flies, spiders, and beetles. Then, as I watch, she stuffs them into her mouth and crunches on them with an expression of such ecstasy that I almost lose my composure.
Renée pauses, staring at me, and then spits some of the half-masticated bug-feast into her palm and hesitantly offers it like a gift.
“You’re very kind.”
I must establish trust. It is vital, or everything I’ve built with this girl in the last few minutes will crumble. With my heart hammering in my throat, and a fever like acid rising up my neck, I reach for the slimy mess and pluck out a fly. A string of mucilaginous saliva glistens between the bug and Renée’s palm.
The orderly opens the door and plonks two plastic cups of orange juice on the floor and then retreats.
“I have to go now, Renée,” I manage, getting to my feet. “You can have my orange juice, since you were so kind to share your...meal.”
Renée grins, black bits of bug in her teeth and tears on her cheek.
I wait until I’m on the other side of the door and hear its telltale click—safe—to drop the bug. My hand begins to shake and a terrible, familiar itching, burning, gnawing begins to rise, to spread from my fingertips into the palms of my hands.
I turn down the corridor and it judders like a Slinky. A nurse approaches, words falling from her lips, jumbled together.
I hurry past, bumping her accidentally, murmur, “Sorry,” and try not to run.
I rush into the nearest patient toilets, the door crashing into the wall as I stumble to the sink and turn on the hot tap, pumping harsh medical-grade hand soap into my desperate palm and starting to scrub. I wash. I scrub. I rinse. I wash. I scrub. I rinse. I wash, I scrub, I rinse. The flash of an infected insect burrowing through the flesh of my palm sends another shock wave through my mind, and I shut my eyes and scrub harder, letting the water scald me. Clean me. I count every bleached tile of the room in my mind until my racing heart quells.
“Get a grip, Murray,” I say, squeezing my red-raw hands into tight fists. “Get a bloody grip.”
I.
This.
This is what it was all for. The pulse of the music, the flash of the lights, the hum of life under her heels. The nightclub thrums with vibrations. She’s intoxicated with the dizzying newness of it. She feels free. Unshackled from the stifling control of her clinical world.
She walks—saunters—from the loud multicolored dance floor over to the quieter side of the pub. It’s a seedy place, and she delights in the filth of it. At the bar she orders a rum and Coke, holding a tenner folded between two fingers like she’s seen on TV. Drink in hand, she wanders back toward the pulsing dance floor.
On the way, a guy hits on her. He’s not the first. She laughs and walks past him. Power indeed.
Another man watches her from the shadows. He has been for some time. When he finally comes over, she’s not surprised.
“What’s your name?”
She has a reckless impulse to tell him the truth. “Jennifer,” she lies.
He smiles like he’s in on the secret. He watches her in that way again, and she almost feels a slink of unease climb her spinal column.
Then he hands her a black business card, held neatly between two fingers, a better impression of her at the bar. “It’s a job opportunity.” He smirks when she takes it. “If you want it.”
It’s blank, save for a glossy black logo on the back and a phone number on the front.
She frowns, turning back to him. “What do I say—”
But he is already gone.
Dear Dr. Murray,
I thought you might like to see this one. It came in via your website contact form.
Best,
Kerry Andrews
Secretary to Dr. Mina Murray
Harley Street, London
From: [email protected]
To: Mina Murray Contact Form
Subject: Please I need your help
Dear Bambi,
I promised myself I wouldn’t do this, but I’ve reached a point of desperation. I’ve become the saddo that googles the people who’ve snubbed her. I still think you’re a shit person, but I need your help. You’re a psychiatrist, you work with women—and I need your professional help. The doctors don’t know what this is. I don’t want to put too much in writing. My contact information is attached.
I hope to hear from you.
Sincerely,
Lucy Holmswood
3
I sit in the driver’s seat of my car in the parking bay outside Brookfields, staring at nothing. All thoughts of Renée Doe flee my head in the wake of Lucy Westenra’s—now, apparently Holmswood’s—email on my phone. And then I choke back a sob as a memory of Lucy rises in my mind, fresh and alive, her smile spread unselfconsciously across her face on so many of the afternoons we spent by the sea.
Lucy sweeping a lick of blond hair from her face and taking another drag on a cigarette, staring out at the incoming tide. Her eyes a steely sleet, the color of the Irish Sea in winter. Me, the skinny brunette beside her. The days were frigid, but neither of us had anywhere better to be. We daydreamed, mostly, and the topic was always the same: getting out of that dead-end town. Lucy was more earnest than I, even as she pretended nonchalance and flicked away her cig. Maybe that was because we both knew I had the better chance. I reassured her that we were both leaving, that neither of us would be pulled into the gravitational well of Tylluan, that no one would be left behind. She scoffed and asked if she could stay at my house, like she did so often, and I, of course, agreed. There was no need to ask, but she did anyway. She was my best friend, my closest self, and I knew we would escape together.
And then I ran away and left her there.
She texted me. Phoned me. Left voicemails begging me to come home, and then, later, to explain, and later still to never contact her again.
Twelve years went by in a flash of roaring silence.
I could never explain. Could never find the words to tell her, or anyone, the terrible thing that had happened to me that night on the beach. How could I find the words to describe what he did?
I shut my eyes and I push it all away.
Yet, Lucy’s face haunts my dreams, and other faces too. The faces of the people I left behind, the faces of the people I let down. I dream of Wales. Of home. Of Tylluan beach, staring over the fire at Cysgod Castle, Lucy’s hand warm in mine. The time she dared me to swim in the sea naked before the sun rose and, when I begged her to retract the dare, the most sacred of challenges, she had done it herself, stripping down in the half light and racing for the water with a look on her face like she wanted to challenge the ocean itself to try to stop her. Her piercing shriek as she hit the water and kept going. She went under and just when I began to panic that she’d drowned, she popped back up and waved, beckoning me to join her. I never did. Her girlfriend, Quincey, was always game. More times than not, I watched them gallivant around together, coaxing me to live a little. To dare a little. Too timid to run the gauntlet, I never joined Lucy in any of her wild, brilliant, harebrained schemes.
Twelve years safely inside my comfort zone. Twelve years free from the briny smell of the streets near the promenade, twelve years free from the slow people and the polite, abrasive smiles of happy locals. Twelve years free of friendship.
A tickle on my cheek alerts me to tears already fast-falling.
I broke so many hearts that day, including my own. I’m not certain I’ve ever really recovered. Not fully.
I reopen my phone, intending to get rid of the email, but my finger hovers, never actually pressing Delete.
I frown at her message. The doctors don’t know what this is.
Lucy is sick. Sick enough to put aside her pride. Sick enough that the risk of humiliation is smaller than what’s at stake.
I took an oath when I became a doctor, long before I chose to specialize in psychiatry. Doing nothing is paramount to doing harm. What Lucy’s asking me for is something I would give to any other woman who needed help. It’s what I do. The fact that it’s her shouldn’t matter. But, of course, it does.
I open Google and type in “Lucy Holmswood.” I quickly find a wedding announcement and a photo of her with her husband, Arthur. He has ginger hair, tired eyes, and a kind smile. Together with her glamorous features, they look like a postcard. But that’s not the most surprising thing about the photo. He’s British nobility—a baron.
I laugh through my tears even as a spark of some ugly, ...
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