After a while, she stopped waking him from the dreams, interested to let them run their course and see how far his night terrors would go unchecked.
She lay still as he loomed over her in the darkness. He reached softly down to touch her: her face, her cheeks, her hair; he even forced a finger into her mouth, though she found she could stop him without waking him by gently touching his arm. He would pull back from her tremulously, as if touched by a ghost.
After a week of her letting the night terrors run, he started calling her “Lissa” in them.
The name meant nothing to Anna.
Simon had mentioned old girlfriends, and she had names and faces to put to them; and while he’d told her about having his heart broken young, he’d never mentioned anyone called Lissa.
One morning, over breakfast, she considered asking him outright who Lissa was, but since talking about his nightmares had disturbed him so much, she rather selfishly did not want to have to reassure him, and he hadn’t said anything embarrassing or inappropriate, so she decided to stay quiet and listen more. After all, if Lissa had broken his heart, he’d hardly be keen on spilling his guts in the cold light of day, whereas he might in the soft, sleeping half-light.
So she waited and listened, and slowly a picture did emerge in the darkness of their bedroom.
Lissahadbroken his heart. He was sorry about what had happened. He would change it all if he could. He would go back.
He sounded different when he was speaking to Lissa, when he thought Anna’s prone body was hers.
He sounded weak, though Anna hated the word. He would beg, cry, as he pleaded with her. His distress, its intensity, was so affecting some nights that Anna felt her own tears bubbling up and shuddering from her.
She came to realize that Simon still loved this woman, that whatever had happened was very much part of him, a part Anna would never be able to touch.
Whoever Lissa was, she had broken Simon. Anna had often wondered how she herself had wound up with Simon, and now she knew: he, too, was broken.
Sometimes Anna would reach out through the dark and smooth his brow, as if she were Lissa forgiving him. She would kiss his forehead and tell him it was okay, and he would melt into her, forgiven.
She was jealous of Lissa, of course, of how deep and indelible the mark she had left on Simon was.
She might have never found out the truth. She might have lived and died feeling jealous of a woman she should never have felt those emotions for.
But she did find out.
Anna suggested they go on a walking holiday. She wanted to see the Lake District, to climb Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. If she could conquer that small summit, she might be able to conquer more, and maybe one day she might achieve all the things her mother had expected of her.
Simon liked the idea of a hiking trip, and they made some notional plans.
Simon then mentioned a three-day hike he had taken years before to the remotest part of Scotland. It had taken a slow two-day hike to reach Knoydart, with a one-day trek back. It had been hard, he told her. But worth it to get there, to be in nature so completely, just you in the world, just one foot in front of the other, until the rest of humanity, the past, the future disappeared.
It sounded beautiful, almost like space travel, so Anna looked up Knoydart online, then she wondered if there might be any tagged photos on Facebook: a young Simon halfway up a mountain, rosy-cheeked but triumphant.
Of course, nothing came up. There was no such photo. Frustrated, Anna wondered if there were no photos now because they had been deleted, perhaps someone else having been in them.
So Anna tried another search, hoping for a solo shot, or perhaps just to finally put a face to the name.
Lissa, Knoydart.
Search results filled Anna’s screen, articles going back twenty years.
Blurred photos of a clearing in a wood in Scotland, police tape cordoned. Other articles showing diagrams of blunt-force trauma. And finally, a school photo of a beautiful, eighteen-year-old, spiral-haired girl, in a school uniform, her head turning toward the camera, caught in the moment just before her smile turns into a laugh.
Melissa Craig.
Anna clicked on an appeal article from thirteen years ago.
Mum Begs Police to Review New Evidence in
Tragic Missing-Girl Case
The mother of Melissa Craig, the 18-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared without a trace on her way home from school just over five years ago, is begging local authorities to investigate a new witness statement that has emerged after a recent appeal.
