The Final Minute (2 page)

‘What?’

My insides tightened. This was why I hadn’t wanted to talk to him about it, but I ploughed on regardless. ‘Fear. She’s looking at me and she’s frightened. But it’s more than that. She’s absolutely terrified. I can see it in her eyes. And it’s me she’s terrified of, even though I don’t know why.’ I took another deep breath. ‘Then I turn away from her and I catch my reflection in a full-length mirror. I look different. It’s me, but at the same time it’s not me. My face is thinner, and my cheekbones are more pronounced. My hair’s shorter too. But it’s the expression I’m wearing that I really notice. It’s cold. Hard. There’s no humanity there. And yet inside I’m feeling all these emotions.’

‘What kind of emotions?’

‘I’m not sure exactly. I know I feel angry for some reason. And panicky too, like I’m caught up in something running out of control. But it’s not just that.’ I took a moment to think hard, trying to take myself back into the dream. I pictured the blonde girl again. Her deep blue eyes, the gentle curve of her lips. And immediately I knew what it was. ‘Infatuation,’ I told him, a certainty in my words. ‘I’m in love with this woman. And not just in the dream. I’ve met her before. I know her.’ I emphasized the last three words, almost spat them out.

‘Try to think, Matt,’ said Bronson soothingly. ‘Where do you know her from?’

Once again I concentrated, summoning up every ounce of willpower as I tried to squeeze out anything important that might be drifting on the misty edges of my subconscious. But nothing happened, and the effort tired me. I shook my head, picked up the glass of water on the table next to me and took a big gulp. ‘Right now, that’s all I can tell you.’

‘We often find with amnesiacs that dreams take on a very realistic quality precisely because real memories are so scarce,’ said Dr Bronson.

‘It felt real.’

‘Were there any differences between the two dreams? Any details that were in one but not in the other? You see, Matt, it’s very rare to have exactly the same dream twice.’

‘It was exactly the same one,’ I said emphatically. ‘Down to the last detail. I told you, I’ve never had a recurring dream before and I don’t even dream that much. I mean, what is there to dream about? My subconscious is a pretty empty space so it’s not like I’ve got a great deal of available material. But this was different. Very different.’

‘Well, we know that at some point before your accident you were a police officer in London,’ Dr Bronson ventured. ‘Could the dream have something to do with anything you worked on?’

‘I really don’t know,’ I said, because I didn’t. I had no memory at all of being a police officer. According to Jane, my sister, on whom I relied for most of my information about my past, I worked in uniform in London for approximately five years, having had a career change from being a teacher. I was unmarried, had no steady girlfriend, and no one knew where I was going, where I’d just been, or why I was carrying no ID when the car I was driving careered off the road on that fateful night five months earlier.

Wiping out everything I’d ever known.

‘This is where the hypnotherapy really helps us,’ said Dr Bronson, leaning forward. ‘Let’s put you under and see if we can extract some more from this dream. See where it leads us.’

Part of the way through each of our sessions, Dr Bronson engaged in hypnotherapy with me. In other words, he put me into a trance. I never remembered anything about this part of the session; it remained a blank space, like my memory. I knew it was meant to be a way of pulling up memories from deep in my subconscious because Dr Bronson always told me so. Except he’d turned up nothing, other than some images from my childhood that were so vague I wasn’t even sure they were real.

Part of me wanted to cooperate, to find out what this dream related to, but I was scared of where it might lead. Because if it was based on real events, then I was somehow involved – either directly or indirectly – in a murder. But my caution ran deeper than that. I was feeling less and less comfortable allowing Dr Bronson to put me in a position where I was completely vulnerable.

‘I’m sorry, Doc, I don’t think I can handle it today,’ I said, suppressing a fake yawn. ‘I don’t feel too good, to be honest. I could do with lying down.’

‘It would really help if you could stay awake for the next half an hour, Matt. This is all for your own good.’

He was eyeing me with suspicion now. I didn’t want to upset him because it was possible I was wrong, and right then he was still the best hope of getting my old life back.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a real opportunity here, and you know one of the things I like about you is how determined you always are to cooperate. This could be a real opening for us.’ He leaned across and turned me gently so I was facing him. He was looking into my eyes now, his own eyes magnified by the lenses in his glasses, and suddenly an insistent voice coming from somewhere inside told me to get out of there.

I relied on my instincts. These days I had nothing else.

‘I’m sorry, Doc,’ I said, breaking free from his gaze and putting some distance between the two of us. ‘I honestly feel really sick.’

‘You’ll feel better once I get you under.’

His voice was more insistent now, and I didn’t like the expression on his face. It was no longer comforting and avuncular. Although he was attempting to hide it behind a tight smile, there was an almost desperate eagerness there.

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head and trying to look as ill as possible. ‘I don’t think I will.’

Dr Bronson’s eager expression disappeared and was replaced with a disapproving one which I guessed he reserved for his most uncooperative patients. ‘Are you still taking your medication?’ he asked.

‘Of course I am,’ I told him, which strictly speaking was true. As it happened, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Because of the seriousness of my memory loss, Jane had brought in a live-in male nurse called Tom who was there to help look after me, and it was Tom who gave me the medication. He always watched me put the pills in my mouth and waited while I swallowed them with a glass of water. He then checked inside my mouth just to make sure they’d gone down. He always did it in a friendly way, with a few laughs, like we were mates rather than patient and carer, but lately I’d been watching him more closely – subtly of course, because I didn’t want to raise any suspicion – and the more I saw of him, the less he convinced me in his role. He was a big guy, early to mid-thirties, with a hard, lived-in face, the chiselled jaw of the naturally fit, and a scar on his chin. He reminded me of one of those buff actors they use in the war movies I watched a lot these days. Plus he’d taken up with my sister – I heard them humping at night occasionally – which couldn’t be that ethical, and wasn’t the behaviour I’d necessarily expect from a nurse. Although what the hell did I know any more? Anyway, in the past week I’d decided that I had to find a way to keep the pills out of my system, because that same gut instinct that was at work in this room was telling me in very loud words that they were hindering, not helping, my condition.

It wasn’t a decision I’d come to easily. I’d been totally reliant on Jane, Tom and Dr Bronson. They were my crutch, my defence against a dark, foreboding outside world in which I was a complete stranger. Put bluntly, they were all I’d got.

But were they really helping me? I just didn’t know.

So I formulated a plan. I knew I couldn’t get out of taking the medication, not with Tom standing over me, but whenever I could, I’d let the tablets lodge in the space between my cheek and gum and get rid of them afterwards. This was no easy feat though, so in the majority of instances I had to swallow and then, when Tom had gone, slip out to the toilet, make sure no one was within earshot, and make myself throw up as quietly as possible. Then I’d clear up after myself, spray a bit of air freshener around and return to my room, leaving no one any the wiser.

So far my memories hadn’t started to come back, but I had experienced flashes of déjà vu. Visions of childhood – of kissing a girl; of riding a bike – flitted across my consciousness like wraiths, barely showing themselves before fading once again into the darkness. But they’d been getting more frequent.

And now the dreams had started, and I was beginning to think there was a connection in there somewhere.

Dr Bronson was talking about the importance of taking my medication, but I was no longer listening. I needed to get out of this room. It was suddenly oppressive.

I got unsteadily to my feet, deliberately swallowing hard. ‘Jesus, I think I might throw up.’

For a big man, Dr Bronson moved fast, shoving his chair backwards so he was out of range of anything I sent his way. Turning away, I made a pretence of staggering from the room and out into the hallway.

I could hear Jane and Tom talking quietly in the kitchen. They must have heard me because Jane popped her head round the open door and gave me a puzzled smile.

‘Everything all right, Matt?’ she asked.

I told her what I’d just told Dr Bronson and hurried up the stairs in the direction of the bathroom and my bedroom.

‘Oh dear,’ she said as I went. ‘Let me get Tom to make something up that’ll calm you down.’

‘It’s OK,’ I called back over my shoulder. ‘I just need a lie down.’ And, as I spoke the words, I thought two things. One: my sister looks absolutely nothing like me. She has red hair where mine’s dark; pale, freckled skin where mine’s touching olive; a short, petite build compared to my much taller, more solid frame. No obvious similarities at all. That was the first thing. The second was more worrying. I fancied her. I really did. I’d felt that way almost from the first time I clapped eyes on her after waking from my coma. When she’d told me who she was, I’d been shocked. Honestly. I’d thought the feeling might go away, but it hadn’t. In fact, in the absence of any other women in my life, it had got stronger. I didn’t even like to look at her any more. And as for Tom, I was jealous as hell of him.

When I got to my room, I opened the door and shut it loudly again, but without going inside. Then I waited a minute before creeping back to the top of the stairs and listening to the whispering voices downstairs in the hall. The three of them were talking quietly but I could hear only snatched phrases uttered in tense, businesslike terms. ‘How much longer?’ I heard my sister hiss, just a little too loudly, and there was an irritation in her tone that was a marked contrast to her usual friendly, caring manner around me. It was pretty obvious she was talking about how much longer she was going to have to look after me, and it made me flinch because I’d grown used to relying on her, and it wasn’t nice to hear what she really thought.

I thought I heard the doc say something about being close, then the voices faded away as they went into the kitchen.

I stood stock-still, wondering what the hell I thought I was doing skulking there in the shadows. It made me feel like a naughty child, listening in on something I shouldn’t.

And in that moment I experienced a sudden, perfectly clear vision of me as a young boy standing behind a half-open door listening to my parents shout at each other. And there’s someone standing next to me, older and bigger, and as I turn to him I can’t make out his face but that doesn’t matter because in that moment I know without a shadow of a doubt that it’s my brother.

And of course there was only one problem with that. I wasn’t meant to have a brother.

Two

My sister’s house was a big, rambling place built some time round the turn of the last century, when things were built to last, and set on an isolated stretch of peninsula on the mid-Wales coast. My bedroom was tucked away at the back of the house, about as far away from Jane’s room as it was possible to get, which I’d assumed was so I wouldn’t be able to hear her and Tom at night. Unfortunately it hadn’t worked. It was a sparsely furnished space, and had probably been a kid’s room once, with a single bed, a couple of pictures on the wall, and an old photo of my parents on the bedside table. They were both dead now: my father of a heart attack in 1997, my mother of breast cancer five years later. Dr Bronson told me that I should look at the photo every day because it might jog a memory at any time – he’d even made me bring it into some of the sessions – but all I’d ever seen was two strangers staring back at me.

Until now. As I sat down on the bed, the vision of my brother already fading, and stared at the photo, there was just a flicker of familiarity about them – that sense that I’d seen them somewhere before. It was vague, but it was something.

There was a knock on the door. It was Jane.

I lay down on the bed, putting on a suitably unwell expression, and told her to come in.

She stepped inside, bearing a cup of tea and a sympathetic smile. ‘Are you OK?’

I sat up, and gave her a weak smile. ‘I’m a little better now.’ I was about to tell her I could do with some fresh air but I held back. If I told her I wanted to go for a walk she’d insist on either she or Tom accompanying me in case I got lost in the woods that seemed to stretch for miles around this place, and couldn’t find my way back. That was what they always said, as if I was some helpless kid.

‘I brought you this.’ She put the tea on the bedside table next to the photo of our parents, and I breathed in the faint scent of her perfume. My sister was an attractive woman. At thirty-six, she was three years younger than me, but she could easily have passed for thirty. With her clear, porcelain skin and petite build, she had a fragile, almost doll-like look, but there was also a confidence about her, a sense of quiet strength, that I imagined appealed to a lot of men. I know it appealed to me.

She also looked absolutely nothing like either of my parents.

I thanked her and picked up the photo. ‘Tell me about Mum and Dad.’

So she told me. About how they met at a dance; how they married after a whirlwind romance; how Dad worked long hours running a small print business and Mum looked after the two of us; how we spent our holidays camping down in Cornwall, and occasionally in France. And as she talked the smile on her face looked both pretty and genuine. It felt like she was recounting real experiences, and yet I remembered none of them. I asked her to describe our old house in Sutton, and she did. In detail too. I tried to picture it, but couldn’t. I’d asked her a couple of weeks ago whether she could take me there and show me the street we used to live on in case it jogged some long-forgotten memories. She’d seemed to think it was a good idea, as had Dr Bronson, but we’d never actually gone, and neither of them had mentioned it in the past few days.