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When I mention Rachel’s name I see Storm’s body stiffen from the corner of my eye. He doesn’t want me to mention Rachel’s death. He is worried it will make India too hysterical to question.
I don’t know how I am supposed to jog her memory without mentioning Rachel, so I carry on. “You invited me, remember? But I couldn’t come. You remember being at the bar, right?”
She nods. “It was Rachel’s birthday.”
She is wide-eyed, tired, docile. She reminds me of a frightened child, not the cheery confident girl who sashayed into Grimshaw’s a few days ago. I don’t reach for her hand because I worry she will flinch away. If I had thought it might spark a vision, even the merest glimpse of what happened to her that night, I would have risked it. But I have to rely on mere words.
“Did Rachel like the presents you picked for her?” I ask.
Her face brightens. “Yes. She loved them. She was excited. She used that glow-up makeup potion that you picked for her. I think it must have worked because all of Charlie’s friends were all over her. I think she liked the attention.”
“It sounds like you guys had fun!”
She smiles, but her eyes are still wide and slightly worried-looking. “We had fun. The guys brought us loads of cocktails we’d never tried before. We were drinking and dancing. It was good.” She frowns and looks around the room. “Where’s Charlie? Why isn’t he here?”
“He’s at work,” Leo tells her.
“Oh,” she says, seeming disappointed, and still refusing to look at Leo. “Yeah. He’s been really busy with a project.”
“Is everything alright between you and Charlie?” I ask.
“Really good. He asked me to move in with him.” She says this proudly, smiling with excitement as she remembers.
“Did you say yes?”
“Of course!”
“So there were no arguments?” says Leo.
“Everything was fine. We were happy.” Then she looks upset. “Where’s Rachel? I want to see Rachel.”
She looks around the room as if Rachel might be here, and then she looks at the door. The heart rate monitor beside her starts beeping rapidly in warning.
“Your doctor said you need to rest,” I say. “No visitors. We only came because she said that you might be able to talk to us for a few minutes first.”
My words seem to reassure her a bit. The monitor’s rapid beeping stops.
“Do you remember leaving the party at the end of the night?” asks Leo.
India frowns. “No. I don’t know.”
“You and Rachel left without telling anyone why you were leaving. Do you remember why?”
“I don’t know.” She sounds frustrated and whiny. “Maybe we wanted a smoke. Maybe we felt sick. I can’t remember.”
“You walked up an alley with Rachel,” says Leo. “Not towards the main road. Which means you weren’t going home. Why did you walk up the alley?”
“I don’t remember!” she says with a greater degree of confusion and distress. She looks Leo right in the eyes and then she looks away quickly as if it hurt. She begins crying. “I don’t remember. Where is Rachel? Where is she? Why won’t you tell me?”
The tone in her voice makes me feel sick in my stomach. She looks at me pleadingly, and that haunted look on her face brings back a sudden memory that I didn’t expect. Of me sitting in a hospital bed like this. Aged fifteen. Pleading with a doctor to tell me what happened. My memory a black hole. Filled with a sense of dread and emptiness. And the doctor had said it was all going to be okay. He said to take my time. That my memory would come back eventually.
I shudder, and push those thoughts away. So many years later and I still cannot remember what had happened in the car crash that killed my adoptive mother and took my memory of my entire early years of life away.
Suddenly I am filled with the conviction that if only they had told me what had happened back then I might have remembered. I might not have this black hole in my mind.
It crippled me for life, the not knowing. It cripples me even now.
“She’s dead,” I say. “Rachel is dead.”
