Down to Earth. Melanie Rose
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one, while Abbey and I were helped into the rear seats of the second. DI Smith climbed into the front seat, the WPC took the wheel and the police cars nosed away from the kerb in tandem and out into the traffic.
All the way to the police station, Abbey stared fixedly out of the side window, her face turned away from me. I could feel the tension emanating from her thin frame. The residual sickly sweet smell of stale marijuana smoke seeped from her hair and clothing and I wondered if DI Smith would notice. When the cars drew up outside an ugly rectangular building, both Abbey and I faltered as we climbed out into the chill autumnal air.
I felt Abbey shiver and reached out to her but she threw me a murderous look and stepped out of my reach. The DI took my arm and guided me towards the glass cubicle which served as an entrance. Once inside she pressed a buzzer, a door opened and as it swung closed behind us I had the ominous sensation that I was a prisoner.
We were taken down a long corridor, lit by overhead fluorescent lighting. Doors opened off on each side and as we passed one which was ajar, I glanced inside and almost gave an exclamation of recognition, because in that fleeting glimpse I saw Matt sitting slumped at an interview table, his head in his hands. I paused in mid stride, but the WPC whisked me quickly past and I heard the door slam behind me.
The sound rang in my ears like the clanging shut of a prison gate and my stomach gave a lurch of unease. Perhaps if I closed my eyes, I thought, this would all go away. I would wake up in my own bed; the double bed I shared with Calum, and it would be yesterday morning again and I would decide not to do the stupid parachute jump after all. I would call in sick like my other colleagues had done, and I’d take Abbey to school like a proper step-mum and then spend the day with Calum or visiting my parents; a nice normal day in which the world wouldn’t suddenly turn upside down so I didn’t know which way was up.
An hour later I found myself sitting on a squishy sofa in a deceivingly comfortable room, nursing a colourful mug of hot, sweet tea. I had been taken from the police station by a second WPC and driven to what looked from the outside to be a small residential house where I had been issued with a disposable all-in-one suit while my clothes were sent to foren-sics for checking. There was a watercolour picture of a group of shells on the wall, which my eyes kept straying to; pink and beige spirals that interlinked and overlapped. I remembered reading about the Fibonacci sequence and how everything on the planet was designed to the exact specifications of the golden rule: phi or 1.6181. The pattern made by sunflower seeds, the measurements of a dolphin from snout to tail, and those spiral shells were just a tiny example. I was glad to have something other than my present dilemma to occupy my mind and fell to thinking that if there was a grand designer of that pattern, then what else could they be responsible for?
The shell painting, I was sure, had been specifically designed to put traumatised young women using the rape suite at ease, but my mind was far from easy. By what great design had I possibly lost six years of my life in the space of a day? Was it design, I wondered, or an accident?
I wanted to go home, but with my parents gone and Calum believing that I had abandoned him, I wasn’t sure where home might be for me now. It was a sobering thought to add to the rest of my problems but I refused to allow it to overwhelm me. I had to try and keep some semblance of control or I might go mad.
To keep my mind from dissolving into self pity I looked at the shells again and remembered the holiday Calum and I had taken the summer before, when we’d first been dating. He had been a keen body-boarder and had wanted me to experience the adrenalin rush and the powerful feel of conquering the might of the sea. I had loved the idea and we had taken Abbey with us to Cornwall, and watched her build sandcastles on the beach as we paddled out on our boards through the bracingly cold water.
The first couple of runs had gone well and we had whooped for joy as our boards flew towards the beach, turning and hurrying back out with each successful run to catch the next big wave. But then the sea had become choppy. A few of the bigger waves ran into each other and I felt myself caught in one of the undertows for which the area was renowned. No matter how hard I paddled my board, the sea was stronger. I was soon swallowing salt water, gasping for breath and tiring quickly in the cold water, despite my wet suit.
And then Calum had been at my side. ‘Just keep your head above the water,’ he’d told me as my limbs began to numb with cold. ‘You have to fight until the lifeguards come and rescue us.’ And I realised he’d risked his own life by coming to my aid. We trod water, spitting salt, concentrating on keeping our heads above the breaking waves, while the current bore us irrevocably further from the beach.
Eventually the rescue dinghy came for us and we were hauled aboard by two strong life guards, shivering, exhausted and grateful to be alive. When we got to the beach I could barely stand, but I was aware of the crowd that had gathered to watch, and Abbey crying inconsolably.
Calum, Abbey and I had clung shakily together. Looking back, I wondered if almost dying together was what had cemented our fledgling relationship into something more solid so quickly after our first meeting. Within two months I had moved in with him and we became a couple, but it was the last time we had gone body-boarding; the last time Calum and I had taken any sort of risk – until I had done the parachute jump. And look where that had got me.
The door opened and DI Smith walked in followed by a woman of Asian descent, wearing a skirt suit very similar in design to the DI’s but in a pale lilac colour, which flattered her dark complexion. I had intended to remain aloof and distant, knowing that no one was going to believe what I had to say anyway, but when the DI introduced me to Dr Soram Patel I warmed to her immediately, with her soft compassionate eyes and gentle smile.
Dr Patel was a police doctor and SOTO officer, which apparently stood for Sexual Offences Trained Officer. I wasn’t sure why they were treating me as a possible rape victim, when I’d made no comment or complaint that I had been abused by anyone. I’d tried telling DI Smith that several times, but she’d merely smiled patiently and told me it was best to get me properly checked out so they knew what they were dealing with. ‘We would like you to tell us everything you remember about the last six and a half years,’ DI Smith said shortly.
‘In your own time,’ Dr Patel added with an encouraging smile.
So I told them mostly what I remembered from the moment I left Calum’s house on the day of the jump, to the time DI Smith had come banging on his front door, discreetly leaving out the bit about my having spent the night in Matt’s bed. ‘So you see, neither Matt, nor Calum had anything to do with it,’ I finished, settling back into the softness of the sofa, relieved that for better or for worse, my story had been told.
‘How did you come by the cut on your hand?’
‘I told you, I nicked it on something when I climbed into the plane just before the jump.’
The two women exchanged glances.
‘Have you heard of hostage dependency syndrome?’ Dr Patel asked softly.
‘You mean when a person who has been held against their will, becomes emotionally fixated on their captor?’ I felt the first tug of the underlying current snatching at me.
The two women nodded in unison.
‘One would have had to be kidnapped for that to happen,’ I replied, eyeing them both with suspicion. ‘I’ve just told you I wasn’t kidnapped, held anywhere against my will or even beamed up by a spaceship. I don’t know what happened to me.’
‘We have to allow for the possibility that your perceptions of recent events have somehow been altered.’ DI Smith said shortly.
‘The human mind is complex and works at more than the one level of consciousness,’ Soram Patel explained more gently.
Icy waves began to wash over my head. What were they getting at?
‘You mean I could have been brainwashed?’
‘Not