The Disappeared

'We're going to try regression.'

'Again?' Jenny said, failing to conceal her cynicism.

'Please, go with me,' he insisted urgently. 'It's for your own good.'

She was taken aback. In eight months of consultations he'd maintained an unbroken mask of passivity. This was something new.

'Close your eyes, feel yourself sinking into the chair . . .'

She forced her eyes shut and unwillingly submitted to the well-worn routine. He talked her down through the gradual stages of physical relaxation. Feet, ankles and legs grew heavy, hands, arms, head, chest, then abdomen, and lastly internal organs. As she sank deeper, Dr Allen's voice became fainter, more remote, until it was little more than a distant echo in the comforting darkness that was her envelope of safety between sleeping and waking.

She wanted to slip quietly under.

'Stay with me, Jenny,' Dr Allen said. 'You're perfectly safe. Nothing can happen to you here. I want you to go back to where we've been before. You're a child upstairs in your bedroom, playing by yourself. You hear the banging on the front door, the raised voices - it's your grandfather. He's shouting, screaming.'

Jenny's body gave an involuntary twitch.

'Tell me what he's shouting.'

'I can't... I can't hear.'

'You can't hear the words?' 'No.'

'Are there other voices?'

A pause. Jenny's eyes moved sideways under their closed lids.

'It's a woman . . . sobbing, wailing . . . my mother.'

'Is she saying anything?'

'She's crying out, "No, no —." She keeps saying it. . . over and over.'

'Then what?'

Jenny shook her head. 'It just goes on and on.'

'What about the men? What are they saying?'

'They've gone quiet. It's just my mother . . . It's just her crying. Her voice carrying up the stairs.'

'How are you feeling about this? What are you doing?'

'I just want to get away ... I want to go, get out of there.'

'Why?'

'I don't know ... I just want to go.'

'What are you frightened of?'

Tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes. 'I can't . . . It's nothing to do with me. It's not my fault.'

'What's not your fault?'

'The screaming ... I can't stand it.'

'Why would it be your fault?'

'I don't want this ... I hate it here ... I hate it. I just want to go.'

'Where do want to go, Jenny? Tell me where you'd go.'

'There isn't anywhere . . . They'd see me . . . There's nowhere ... I can't even go to . . .' Her body convulsed as violently as if she touched an electric wire. She bolted back to consciousness, staring into space with wide, blank eyes.

Dr Allen gave her a moment. 'You couldn't even go where?'

Jenny blinked. 'Katy's,' she said, with a rising inflection, as if the name was unfamiliar.

Dr Allen tugged a Kleenex from the box on his desk and handed it to her. Jenny dried her eyes feeling oddly empty, neither calm nor anxious.

'Who's Katy?'

'I've no idea.' She sniffed back the tears and shivered.

'A sister, relation, friend?'

Jenny glanced upwards. 'God, I don't know. Not a sister . . .' Dr Allen was staring intently at her face. 'What?'

'Your grandfather came with bad news that made your mother wail. You said it wasn't your fault. Were you referring to whatever it was he told her?'

'I can't say . . .' She shook her head. 'The moment I'm awake it hardly seems real ... I could even be making it up.'

'You've got a name: Katy. I want you to find out what that means.'

'I told you—'

'Please, do what I say. I'm going to make it a condition of you coming back here. You're going to do something positive for yourself. Next time I want to hear about your research.' He turned to his notebook and wrote the instruction down.

'You're getting impatient with me, aren't you?' Jenny said.

'Not at all. You're just in need of a push. You're also going to stick to the medication this time.' He reached for his prescription pad. 'I don't suppose there's any chance of you easing off at work?'

'Not unless you section me.'

'When you're abrasive it suggests to me you're feeling delicate. If you must carry on as normal, just be on your guard. Try to avoid emotional responses.' He tapped his temple with his finger. 'You'll always make your best judgements up here.'

She collected the drugs from the dispensary and swallowed her first dose in the ladies' room. They were both new brands to her: one blue, one red, like jelly beans. The world they led her to was less colourful. They took away her excitement and any sense of danger. Her attention was held by the immediate and the mundane: the instruments on the dashboard of her car, the squeak when she touched the brakes. She was aware of her emotions, but they were pale reflections of what she'd experienced during the last two days. She turned her thoughts to her inquest and without any conscious effort they lined up in logical order as a neat list of tasks waiting to be performed: jurors to be telephoned, witnesses to be summoned, law to be researched. Dr Allen had given her the mind of a bureaucrat.

The sensation was short-lived. She wasn't yet halfway home when her phone beeped, signalling a message. She glanced at the lit-up screen: Call me. Urgent. Alec.

A jolt went through her. Dr Allen's parting words rang like a warning bell in her head. She should ignore him, see him only once: in the witness box. Her finger hovered over the call button but reception faded and vanished, saving her from the decision. She had the ten minutes until she arrived home to sober up and get a grip.

As she pulled into the cart track at the side of the house she had worked out a strategy: call Alison and tell her to take any message from McAvoy. Tell him the inquest would resume on Wednesday morning and request that he attend to give evidence. Keep it all businesslike and at arm's length. She could deal with the feelings he had stirred in her afterwards. She would have something by which to judge him then, a clearer insight into his motivations.

She reached over to the glove box to get the torch she used to navigate the ten yards along the path to the front door. She found it and was searching for the switch when the car lit up. Startled, she looked up to see a tall, male figure beneath the halogen lamp that automatically triggered on approaching the porch. He was featureless with the bright light behind him, but the silhouette was unmistakable: the long dark coat, the scarf, the unruly wisps of hair. He raised a hand in a tentative wave that acknowledged her alarm. Arrested by the drugs her heart held steady, but a fierce heat spread across her chest and neck and prickled across her lips as fear blazed another pathway to the surface.

'It's only me,' he called out. 'It's Alec. It's OK.'

She thought about driving off and hoping he'd vanish, but she knew he wouldn't. He was the kind who'd walk all night and go days without sleep; he had a prisoner's patience and a madman's will.

She left her keys in the ignition and stepped out into the biting air, holding the torch defensively in front of her as she stepped around the car.

She stopped by the passenger door, still some twenty feet between them. 'What are you doing here?'

'I've got some information.'

She swept the torch beam over him. He was in a suit and tie, clean shoes.

'I meant what are you doing here?'

'My car packed up. I caught a cab.'

'Are you going to stand there talking bullshit or answer my question?'

Jenny aimed the beam of light at his face. McAvoy shielded his eyes.

'I didn't want to speak to you on the phone ... I found out who Tathum was working for when those two boys disappeared.'

'You spent forty quid on a cab to tell me that?'