Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling. Barbara Erskine

       Prologue

       Edinburgh 1970

      It was snowing. Idly Sam Franklyn stared out of the dirty window up at the sky and wondered if the leaden cloud would provide enough depth to ski by the weekend.

      ‘Tape on now, Dr Franklyn, if you please.’ Professor Cohen’s quiet voice interrupted his thoughts. Sam turned, glancing at the young woman lying so calmly on the couch, and switched on the recorder. She was an attractive girl, slender and dark, with vivacious grey-green eyes, closed now beneath long curved lashes. He grinned to himself. When the session was over he intended to offer her a lift back into town.

      The psychology labs were cold. As he picked up his notebook and began heading up a new page he leaned across and touched the grotesquely large cream radiator and grimaced. It was barely warm.

      Cohen’s office was small and cluttered, furnished with a huge desk buried beneath books and papers, some half-dozen chairs crowded together to accommodate tutorial students, when there were any, and the couch, covered by a bright tartan rug, where most of his volunteers chose to lie whilst they were under hypnosis, ‘as if they are afraid they will fall down’, he had commented once to Sam as yet another woman had lain nervously down as if on a sacrificial altar. The walls of the room were painted a light cold blue which did nothing to improve the temperature. Anyone who could relax comfortably in Michael Cohen’s office, Sam used to think wryly, was halfway to being mesmerised already. Next to him the radiator let out a subterranean gurgle, but it grew no hotter.

      Professor Cohen seated himself next to the couch and took the girl’s hand in his. He had not bothered to do that for his last two victims Sam noticed, and once more he grinned.

      He picked up his pen and began to write:

       Hypnotic Regression: Clinical Therapy Trials

      Subject 224: Joanna Clifford 2nd year Arts (English)

      Age: 19

       Attitude:

      He chewed the end of the pen and glanced at her again. Then he put ‘enthusiastic but open-minded’ in the column:

       Historical aptitude:

      Again he paused. She had shrugged when they asked her the routine questions to determine roughly her predisposition to accurate invention.

      ‘Average, I suppose,’ she had replied with a smile. ‘O-level history. Boring old Disraeli and people like that. Not much else. It’s the present I’m interested in, not the past.’

      He eyed her sweater and figure-hugging jeans and wrote as he had written on so many other record sheets: Probably average.

      Professor Cohen had finished his preliminary tests. He turned to Sam. ‘The girl’s a good subject. There’s a deep trance established already. I shall begin regressing her now.’

      Sam turned back to the window. At the beginning of the series of tests he had waited expectantly at this stage, wondering what would be revealed. Some subjects produced nothing, no memories, no inventions; some emerged as colourful characters who enthralled and amazed him. But for days now they had been working with routine ill-defined personalities who replied in dull monosyllables to all the questions put to them and who did little to further their research. The only different thing about this girl – as far as he knew – were her looks: those put her in a class by herself.

      The snow was thickening, whirling sideways, blotting out the buildings on the far side of the street, muffling the sound of car tyres moving north towards the city. He did not bother to listen to the girl’s words. Her soft English voice sounded tired and blurred under hypnosis and he would have to listen again and again to the tape anyway as Cohen transcribed it and tried to fathom where her comments, if there were any, came from.

      ‘And now, Joanna,’ the Professor’s voice rose slightly as he shifted on the high stool to make himself more comfortable. ‘We’ll go back again, if you please, back before the darkness, back before the dreams, back to when you were on this earth before.’ He is getting bored too, Sam thought dryly, catching sight of his boss glancing at his watch.

      The girl suddenly flung out her arm, catching a pile of books on the table beside the couch and sending them crashing to the floor. Sam jumped, but she seemed not to have noticed. She was pushing herself up onto her elbow, her eyes open, staring in front of her.

      Cohen was all attention. Quietly he slid from the stool and as she stood up he moved it out of her way.

      Sam recovered from his surprise and wrote hastily: Subject somnambulant; moved from couch. Eyes open; pupils dilated. Face pale and drawn.

      ‘Joanna,’ Cohen spoke softly. ‘Would you not like to sit down again, lassie, and tell us your name and where you are.’

      She swung round, but not to face him. Her eyes were fixed on some point in the middle of the room. She opened her mouth as if trying to speak and they saw her run her tongue across her lips. Then she drew herself up with a shudder, clutching at the neck of her sweater.

      ‘William?’ she whispered at last. Her voice was husky, barely audible. She took a step forward, her eyes still fixed on the same point. Sam felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle as he found himself looking at it too, half expecting someone or something to appear.

      His notebook forgotten, he waited, holding his breath, for her to speak again, but she stayed silent, swaying slightly, her face drained of colour as she began to stare around the room. Disconcerted, he saw that huge tears had begun to run slowly down her cheeks.

      ‘Tell us where you are and why you are crying.’ The quiet insistent voice of Professor Cohen seemed to Sam a terrible intrusion on her grief but to his surprise she turned and looked straight at him. Her face had become haggard and old. ‘William,’ she said again, and then gave a long desperate cry which tore through Sam, turning his guts to water. ‘William!’ Slowly she raised her hands and stared at them. Sam dragged