Forget Me Not. Claire Allan
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about Clare, questions – people I’d barely spoken to in years wanting all the juicy gossip. Facebook wasn’t much better. A grief fest. Everyone who’d ever seen Clare before making a claim on her and how much they’d miss her.
There were no new leads from the police. There’d be a press conference in the afternoon. I wondered if Ronan and his parents were preparing to make a statement, after all. Would they be like those poor families you saw on TV, blinking and crying in front of all the flashing lights and cameras. Stunned by their grief and this horrendous way of getting fifteen minutes of fame.
Michael hadn’t replied to my message. The one where I’d thanked him for the flowers but urged discretion. I didn’t like that. It made me nervous. I chewed on my thumbnail as I contemplated calling him to make sure everything was okay. But it was barely gone seven in the morning and it would be risky to have a phone conversation in the house at this time. What if the girls woke? Or Paul?
I thought of Michael’s words to me just after we’d slept together. How he’d asked me whether I thought I deserved to be happy. Had what happened with Clare not shown me how life was short and I should grab at happiness?
It wasn’t as simple as that though, was it? I had daughters. A house. A job. A reputation. A mortgage, for goodness’ sake. I deleted my messages to ‘Michelle’ – I’d been selfish for wanting him … for needing him. Other people relied on me to be there for them. To be strong and stable. Even when things weren’t always going well.
For better and for worse, that was how it went, wasn’t it? Had I been looking for an easy escape from the harder times – fooling myself with romantic notions for a man who hadn’t even messaged me back?
I slipped my phone into my bag, finished my coffee and wondered quite what the hell I was doing with my life. Wondered if I was just a stupid woman enduring a midlife crisis and justifying my selfish actions to myself in whatever way I could. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be. After so many years of marriage. So many years of raising children and being sensible. Maybe I was stupid to expect anything more than simply working together like a team, managing the house and the family we’d created together. Stupid and vain and desperate for male attention. Why couldn’t I just be content with what I had?
I’d had that nightmare again. The one where I was with Laura but not with her. I’m watching her go through the last hours and minutes of her life and it’s as if I’m watching from behind a screen. I keep trying to reach out to her, but my hand only ever gets close. I never make contact. I can only ever reach out with my bad arm – the one that doesn’t work properly. No matter how much I try to use my other arm, it won’t move.
I call to her to wait for me, but she disappears, or the scene changes, or it gets too dark. I’m watching her as she tries to phone me, reaches my voicemail but doesn’t leave a message. I’m shouting at her to speak. ‘Leave a message, Laura! Let me hear your voice one more time!’
Maybe if I’d got a message, things would have been different. I wouldn’t have ignored a message the same way I’d ignored a missed call. I’d promised myself I’d call her back later, but I never got the chance. In the dream, she doesn’t hear me shouting. I’m stomping my feet, and banging cupboard doors and shouting until my throat hurts and my stomach constricts with the effort of it. I’m throwing things – hoping if I don’t reach her, don’t touch her, they will. They’ll distract her. They’ll get through to her.
I’m begging and pleading and shouting as I watch her walk out of her house, away from her husband, away from her children, away from me. I’m praying to Paddy, imploring him in his heavenly seat to get through to her. Pleading with a dead man, as if that would ever work. ‘Please, Paddy. Stop her. Stop our girl. Let her know she can’t leave me. It’s bad enough you’re not here.’
I run to the door to follow her, but I can’t open it. It won’t open. The locks keep disappearing and changing and locking again, and all the time I’m screaming at her not to go.
That was how it usually went. It had been different this time, though. I’d crumpled to the floor, shouting and crying, and turned to see Clare Taylor sitting at the bottom of the stairs shaking her head. She was smiling – a weird, twisted kind of smile. It unnerved me. Her hand reached out to mine, just as I’d tried to reach out to Laura. I expected not to quite get close enough. I expected us just to miss each other, just as I always missed Laura’s hand. But I felt Clare’s hand, in my dream. It was holding mine, squeezing it. I looked in her eyes and she told me again to ‘Warn them’ – I just didn’t know who ‘they’ were.
I woke with a start, a cold sweat drenching me despite the heat. My breathing was laboured. I didn’t want Clare in my dreams. I wanted Laura. I wanted to hold her hand and feel her hand. Not this woman I didn’t know. I didn’t want the trauma of what I’d shared with her to take my daughter from my dreams – no matter how harrowing those dreams had been. At least it had been Laura in them. At least she’d been alive in my imagination.
I sat up, aware of the first signs of light in the sky outside. I hugged my knees to me, looked to the empty side of the bed. I’d never get used to it. Paddy being gone. It had been seven years and still I never allowed so much as my foot to slip over to the space where he once lay. This house had known too much loss and too much pain. I sat and rocked myself until my heartbeat settled.
I’d call that DI Bradley as soon as was appropriate and I’d ask him more questions. Ask him if he was warning anyone. Surely I had a right to know that? I shouldn’t have to carry that burden on my shoulders alone.
‘The investigation is at a very sensitive stage,’ Patricia had told me after I’d sat drinking tea with the Taylors – both of them too numb with shock to talk to me. ‘I know that our methods might seem a little strange, but please bear with us,’ she told me.
I’d nodded. Agreed. Because that was what I did. I nodded and agreed with people – did what I was told. Meanwhile, I was being haunted in my dreams by that poor woman and I’d never forgive myself – ever – if anyone else got hurt.
DI Bradley led me through a series of dull and uninspiring corridors until we reached a small and equally uninspiring office. It was tired-looking; dank and depressing. I saw he was tired, too. In fact, he looked exhausted – his shirt wrinkled. His face unshaven. The room had a musty smell to it – as if someone had slept there, grabbed a few hours when they could.
‘You look done in,’ I said as I sat down.
‘It’s been a busy forty-eight hours, Mrs O’Loughlin. Busy and frustrating.’
‘You’ll have to be careful not to burn yourself out,’ I said.
I’d seen it before, police officers chasing a case until they had nothing left to give.
‘I’ll be going home in a bit,’ he said. ‘Grab a couple of hours’ kip, get a shower. Be back here for the press conference. Now, what can I help you with? Have you remembered anything else?’
I shook my head. ‘No, it’s not that. I’m very grateful you’ve taken the time to see me. I just feel uneasy about it all. I know maybe I’ve no right to keep asking what’s happening, but that poor girl told me to warn people and I’ve made myself sick with worry that I’ve not been able to warn anyone. Patricia – Constable Hopkins – asked me not to say anything to the family.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sat back in his chair. ‘I know this must be very difficult for you. We’re asking you to stick with us. Just as it’s important that information gets out there, it’s important that some information is held back – for the sake of the investigation. I’m not at liberty to go into it all, but we have good operational reasons.’
Frustration