I remember wondering how many of Maud’s visits were my fault. Maybe I made it too difficult for Mum to raise me alone. Perhaps I was the one who had pushed my parents apart. If they were still together, there would be no need for this stranger to intrude on our lives.
Now, in the supermarket aisle, my hallucinations of Mum and the boy are turning their heads as one, the attention of both fixed on me. They open their mouths. The boy’s is still a black hole, and hers emits a puff of white smoke through the gaps in her teeth.
‘Oodis,’ he says. ‘Oodis,’ she repeats.
I’m about to ask them what this means when a customer distracts me with an inquiry about where to find cleaning products, and I point him to the correct shelves. Mum and the boy are gone by the time I return my attention to them.
Soon after my shift finishes, I’m driving towards the fertility clinic and hoping the next time I die I can carry more of her back to the present. Melissa is already there, waiting for me. There’s a tension between us which is understandable after what I have twisted her arm to agree to do. Neither of us mentions it now. The counselling session that follows goes much better than last time – the boy is absent – and I’m told, there and then, that there are no concerns, so I undergo the first in a series of blood tests.
Ninety minutes later, I say goodbye to Melissa, and it’s when I’m making my way back to the car park that I sense him following me again. The dead boy. I take an outdoor set of stairs to the sixth floor instead of the lift, as I don’t want to be trapped in a confined space with him. It’s only when I approach my car that I spot him ahead of me, yet I can still hear steps behind me. Is it Mum?
But before I can turn around, something pushes me head first into a wall and I drop to the floor in a daze.
Chapter 28
Damon
I don’t have the chance to gather my thoughts before a powerful pair of hands grabs me by the shoulders and yanks me up to my feet. A forearm slips under my neck and sets about choking me, while my own arm is twisted behind me so sharply I fear it might snap. I don’t know who is hurting me but it’s definitely not a hallucination. I open my mouth to yell in pain but before I can, I’m thrust forward until my chest slams into something metal and cylindrical. Only then do I realise where I’ve been frogmarched to.
The wall that separates the edge of the car park from the seventy-foot drop below.
Using all my strength, I wriggle and squirm and try to shake myself free, but I’m no match for the force of whoever has me in their grasp.
‘Let go!’ I yell.
Their response comes in the form of a thunderous blow to the kidneys. I’ve never felt such crippling pain, followed by an overwhelming urge to be sick.
I’m still dazed from colliding with the wall, but my vision returns to functionality as I’m lifted off the ground. Now my bodyis almost parallel to the top of the horizontal safety bar attached to the wall. My attacker’s arms are around my chest and my thighs, like I’m a roll of carpet he’s prepared to pitch into space.
Below me, all I can see are the tops of trees and shop roofs. The wind brushes against my face.
‘What do youwant?’ I cry out in what sounds like a terrified child’s voice.
The voice coming from my assailant is deep and unfamiliar. ‘Finish what you started,’ he snarls. ‘You play until theend.’
I feel myself being held further and further over the railing. If he lets go, I’m a dead man.
‘Do you understand?’ he continues.
‘Yes!’ I say, but I really don’t.
He holds me there for a moment longer until I shout ‘Yes!’ again, then he yanks me backwards and hurls me to the floor, face first.
‘And if you tell anyone about this, my next visit will be to your ex. And Melissa won’t be as lucky as you.’
I catch only the briefest glimpse of a black bomber jacket and heavy boots before he disappears behind a line of parked cars. I can hear him talking to someone on the phone, saying something like ‘job done’, before his boots begin to clomp down the staircase.
I’m dazed, my body is trembling and, a few metres away, the dead boy is silently laughing at me.
Chapter 29
Damon
I turn on the tap, sit on the toilet seat and let my eyes glaze over as cold water thunders into the bath. I absent-mindedly rub an Elastoplast on my forearm through my long-sleeved top. I feel like a pin cushion after all the blood the fertility clinic took.
For much of the day, I’ve kept myself hidden behind a locked door, puffing vape after vape, curtains closed, only peering through a crack to see if I’m being watched from outside. I’ve yet to catch sight of anyone behaving suspiciously. It hasn’t stopped my paranoia though. I’ve been through my phone, smartwatch and tablet many times, checking they haven’t been compromised and that tracking devices haven’t been embedded in them. To put my mind at ease, I even restored them to factory settings. But the reality is that if the man who attacked me knows who I am, then he is already aware of where I live.
I glance at the mirror on the bathroom cabinet, take a ball of cotton wool, and dab antiseptic on the red graze covering my cheek and eyebrow. What happened yesterday has left me a nervous wreck. It’s also thrown up so many questions. Who was he? What’she after, and what game does he think I’m playing? And how does he know about Melissa?
