Down to Earth. Melanie Rose

Calum’s hobby of body boarding, and the stubbornness with which I had pursued my aim to complete the charity jump, despite Calum’s pleadings. Perhaps there was some daredevil streak in me which shunned the ‘safe option’ as Dr Patel put it. I wanted comfort and security, but that security had to be tempered with a bit of mild adventure or I’d go mad.

      I decided I’d had enough of the doctor’s probing and began to lever myself out of the pillow-like sofa. ‘Am I free to go now?’

      Dr Patel shook her head. ‘I would like to perform a series of psychological tests on you. It will help us to understand your state of mind and give us more of an insight as to whether you are suppressing certain memories.’

      I hesitated. I didn’t much like the idea of the tests, but if they helped in any way to find out where the last six and a half years of my life might have gone, they had to be worth a try. I nodded reluctantly and DI Smith took her leave as I followed Dr Patel into a small office and seated myself at a desk while she opened a second file. She held up the first of a sheaf of papers printed with abstract drawings.

      She took a deep breath as I made myself as comfortable as possible on the upright chair. ‘What do you see when you look at this, Michaela?’

      Two hours later I leaned back in the hard chair and rubbed my eyes. My mind was swimming with images, all of which had been completely open to interpretation. By the end of the session I had realised that nothing Dr Patel had shown me could possibly help me in any way.

      ‘Am I free to leave?’ I asked as the doctor finished scribbling her findings.

      ‘We would rather wait until the lab test results have come through.’ She glanced up at me. ‘Do you have anywhere to go?’

      I mulled over my options once more. The only things I’d taken to the airfield were the car I’d been driving, my fleece and my handbag, everything else had been in Calum’s house in Leatherhead. At present I had no money, no clothes, no identification – and nowhere to go.

      ‘What happened to the things I left at the airfield, my jeep for example?’

      She frowned and pushed a strand of silky, black hair from her face. ‘They would have been impounded as evidence. As the case was officially left open, they are probably still in police possession.’

      ‘Can I have them back?’

      ‘I doubt they will be released to you until the case is closed.’

      ‘But no crime has been committed! I’m here and I’m unharmed. What case is there?’

      ‘You may be physically unharmed …’

      ‘Have you finished with my T-shirt and jeans at least?’ I cut her short. All I wanted was to get out of there and have my life back.

      ‘I will see what I can do.’

      ‘Could I make a phone call? I need to speak to Calum and find out if he still has all my other things.’

      Dr Patel nodded. ‘You may use the telephone here while I go and locate your clothing.’ She got up and headed for the door before pausing and glancing back. ‘I am on your side you know, Michaela. I know you think all this is a waste of time, but something has happened to you whether you want to accept it or not and it is our job to find out exactly what that something is.’

      As soon as she closed the door behind her, I dialled Calum’s number. He answered on the second ring and I felt my eyes tearing up at the sound of his voice. I swallowed and tried to make my voice sound matter-of-fact. ‘Calum, it’s me, Michaela.’

      ‘What do you want?’ I could hear the weariness in his voice.

      ‘I wanted to say sorry for what happened today. I told them you hadn’t done anything wrong.’

      ‘Well, we’re home now and Abbey’s sleeping. Where are you?’

      ‘I’m still at this house they’ve taken me to. I was wondering what you did with all my things. I don’t have any clothes or anything.’

      There was a long silence at the end of the line and for a moment I thought we’d been cut off. ‘Calum?’

      ‘Yes, I’m here. I packed everything up and took it to your parents about a year after you vanished … when it became obvious you weren’t coming back.’

      ‘Everything?’

      ‘Yes.’

      So he’d given up on me after a year. I felt a chill run through me. When I’d moved into his home six months ago his wife had been dead less than two years, but there had been no possessions of hers lying about, no photos or mementoes of any kind, no forgotten clothes lying hidden at the back of the wardrobe. It was as if he had erased her memory completely from his and Abbey’s lives.

      We had never talked about her much. After him initially telling me he was a widower, Grace’s name had hardly been mentioned again and I realised that I had been grateful for that. Now it suddenly seemed like a betrayal. It was as if the years they had spent together meant nothing to him, not even worth an occasional thought. I realised with a shudder that to Calum it was as if she had never existed. Now he was doing the same to me.

      I gave myself a mental shake. He wasn’t going to get away with sidelining me that easily. ‘Do you know what happened to my things when Mum went into the home?’

      ‘I’m afraid not.’

      ‘Thanks a lot, Calum.’

      ‘Well, what did you expect?’ His voice was suddenly angry. ‘You weren’t here, Michaela. You weren’t here to see Abbey grow up, you left her motherless and grieving. And you left me to cope on my own!’

      I wondered if it was me he was angry with, or Grace, or both.

      ‘I told you I didn’t leave you on purpose. I wouldn’t have hurt you or Abbey for the world.’

      ‘That’s what Grace said during those few hours when she was in the emergency room after the accident,’ he said bitterly. ‘She said she didn’t want to leave us, but she did. And so did you!’

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘So am I, Michaela. I had hoped we’d grow old together, but it was not to be, was it? Look, I hope you find your things. I hope everything works out for you, really.’

      It was a dismissal; he wasn’t going to help me. I felt bereft. Yesterday morning we had been a happy couple chugging along with our daily lives, today we were strangers. ‘At least tell me where my mother is. Which nursing home is she in?’

      He gave me the address and I scribbled it down on a notepad on the doctor’s desk. ‘Thanks,’ I paused but he said nothing more. ‘Goodbye then, Calum.’

      ‘Goodbye, Michaela.’

      It was another full hour before I was able to leave the police house. Dr Patel had returned my clothes and boots, for some reason minus the socks, given me the address of a women’s refuge where I might stay and enough money to catch a bus and train back to Leatherhead, where my mother was apparently ensconced in a secure nursing home called ‘AcornLodge’.

      As I stood at the bus stop shivering in the dull light of a chilly late autumn afternoon, I had the strangest, fleeting feeling of freedom. It could have been scary, standing there owning only the clothes on my back, with no bag, no possessions, no money or identification and my bare feet stuffed into hard brown boots. Cars sped by, their occupants intent on the journey ahead of them, like shoals of fish in an endless silver stream. I felt strangely out of sync with everything, outside of it all. I wanted to run wildly up and down the grass verge screaming my frustration to the sky, but I had the strangest sensation that if I did no one would even see me.

Chapter Fourteen

      A