Tell the Truth: Or they’ll tell it for you…. Amanda Brittany
on to the overhead handle, knuckles turning white.
She always drove too fast, and was taking the car to seventy mph along dark, narrow roads. Twigs, like bony fingers, scraped the window as she raced past the hedgerow, barely missing oncoming traffic. Despite the harrowing journey, I was looking forward to the evening ahead with my friend. It would be good to unwind, and I loved being with Zoe. She was the tonic to my gin.
It had been a long two months since Lawrence left. At first I was grieving, I supposed – well, I’d certainly wanted him dead. But after an initial love affair with gin and chocolate – a useless attempt to shave off the sharp edges of my crap life – I’d almost accepted we were over, and my sadness was now fully focused on my mum.
I still hadn’t come to terms with her early onset dementia, and wasn’t sure I ever would. In fact, sometimes, on bad days, it was as though I’d already lost her, and yet she was still here, reminding me of the life we’d once had together.
I’d first noticed the signs a year ago, just before her fiftieth birthday. The confusion and forgetfulness I’d witnessed back then would later be attributed to Alzheimer’s. It hadn’t seemed possible, and her rapid decline had made it even crueller.
Zoe reached over and turned up the radio, as she sang along to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. It was as though she’d forgotten I was there. Zoned in to her singing, she continued to swing her red Clio along the spiralling country roads towards the spa, seeming oblivious to the frosty February evening – the chance of ice on the road. A sprinkling of snow had coated the pavement earlier, and the forecast promised snowstorms heading from Siberia. Slow down! Please.
I stared her way, and as though sensing my eyes on her, she turned, and stopped mid-Galileo.
‘You OK, Rachel?’ she said, tucking her chestnut-brown hair behind her ears with both hands.
‘Hands on the wheel, Zoe, for Christ’s sake,’ I yelled.
‘Jeez, you don’t have to shout,’ she said, doing as I asked. ‘Are you OK?’ she repeated.
‘Of course.’ I smiled. Tonight I was determined to purge thoughts of Mum’s illness from my head and de-stress. Enjoy myself. Lawrence had Grace for the weekend, and the care home had my mobile number. I could relax. It was Friday night. Surely I was allowed to chill every so often, uncoil my tension.
‘Almost there,’ Zoe said, slowing down. ‘I’ve booked us both in for a facial and a head massage, and maybe we could swim too.’ She didn’t wait for a response. She knew what she’d said. ‘Oh God.’ She covered her mouth. ‘I’m such an idiot.’
‘It’s OK. It’s no big deal.’ I smiled, and patted her arm, wishing I hadn’t told her about my fear of water – I didn’t like to make a fuss about it. ‘Actually, I fancy a long read on a hotbed. I’ve brought my Kindle.’
Her eyes were glued on me as I spoke, and her car veered to the right. ‘Keep your eyes on the road or you’ll kill something,’ I cried, although I felt sure it would be us if we didn’t reach our destination soon.
I was relieved when she indicated and pulled onto a sweeping drive, lit by white lights. She manoeuvred into a space in front of Mulberry Hall. I hadn’t been here since it became a spa.
As she pulled on the handbrake, I picked up my bag from the car well, unzipped it, and rummaged for my phone. I found myself constantly checking for missed calls from the care home. My mum had nobody but me. She’d never been one for making friends – a bit of a recluse in many ways – and my grandparents had died before I was born in a car accident. She’d never been close with them anyway, she told me once.
There were no missed calls, only a notification on Facebook. I clicked on the app. ‘Ooh, I’ve got a friend request.’
Zoe glanced over. ‘Well it can wait, can’t it?’ she said, getting out. ‘We totally need pampering.’
I slipped my phone back in my bag, and jumped from the car, eyes scanning the prestigious Victorian building. Both the spa and the luxury apartments had once been an insane asylum, and later a psychiatric hospital.
‘I fancied buying one of those apartments when I moved this way,’ Zoe said, nodding towards Mulberry Hall. ‘But allegedly it’s haunted by old patients.’ She wiggled her fingers and made a howling, ghost-like sound.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Zoe.’ She looked amazing in a red three-quarter-length coat with a fur trim, over tight-fitting leggings and expensive trainers. She was tall, slim, elegant; whereas I was small, and a whisker away from chubby when I’d been on a chocolate binge. A flash of memory came and went – Lawrence telling me that ‘with a bit of effort’ I could look as good as Zoe.
I zipped up my hoodie and hunched my shoulders against the cold, my teeth chattering.
‘They used to do awful things here in the late 1800s,’ she said, her eyes skittering over the building. ‘What a terrible time to have lived if you showed any signs of not fitting the mould.’
‘Mmm.’ I glanced at the towering building. ‘Put in asylums for no good reason half the time.’
‘I know. You could have been admitted for anything from novel-reading to nymphomania – so that’s me admitted.’
‘I didn’t know you read novels.’
‘I don’t.’ She burst out laughing, and I laughed too. ‘Seriously though,’ she said, sighing. ‘They would even admit poor souls for grieving.’
‘It’s hard to believe now how terrible the mental health system was back then.’
‘The treatments were awful. They would immerse patients in ponds until they were unconscious, or tie them naked to a chair and pour cold water over them.’ She looked about her and shivered. ‘I wouldn’t want to be out here alone,’ she said. ‘There’s something spooky about this place, don’t you think?’
I shrugged. It was quiet, yes – but it seemed peaceful, and the apartments were stunning. Anyway, I didn’t believe in ghosts. Truth was, I was more scared of the living.
‘I saw a ghost once,’ she said. ‘When I was a child, I slept with my arm dangling out of the bed. I woke one night feeling certain something cold had touched my hand.’ She shuddered. ‘A girl in blue stood by my bed.’
‘A dream?’ Tingles crawled up my neck, despite my determination not to believe in the paranormal.
‘It must have been. Although I never slept with my arm out of the bed after that.’ She laughed. ‘Let’s go inside before we freeze to death.’
I looked over my shoulder, trying to imagine lost souls looking down from the many apartment windows. And despite only seeing the stunning apartments, lit by what I imagined were happy dwellers, I couldn’t help wondering what secrets the walls held.
As we walked, Zoe nodded towards the lower building we were heading for, built from the same mustard-coloured brick as the apartments. ‘Apparently the swimming pool is where the morgue used to be,’ she said, reaching the door.
‘Good God,’ I said with a laugh. ‘I’m actually glad I don’t swim.’
‘Hello, ladies,’ said the man behind the counter as we approached, his Irish accent charming. He was in his early forties, with a sprinkling of grey in his dark hair.
‘I’m the manager, Connor Mahoney.’ His eyes drifted to Zoe, a look of appreciation on his face. Men seemed to like her.
‘Zoe Marsh,’ she said.
While he glanced at his computer screen and tapped on his keyboard, I studied Zoe’s perfectly made-up face, her blemish-free skin, her full lips, and her perfect eyebrows. I tended to hide my brows under my fringe. I’d never got the hang of plucking, and now power-brows were the in thing, and I hadn’t got the first clue how to shape and fill them. I’d been a bit of a tomboy when I was a kid, so never