Forgotten: a truly gripping psychological thriller (16 page)

The nurse grinned her understanding and hurried out, leaving Kai to pace and fret about whether she was doing the right thing.
Was
there a right thing? She couldn’t use her history or self-knowledge to make a judgement so she had to rely on the only option open to her, intuition, gut feeling, instinct. Whatever she called it, it came down to the same thing: groping in the dark.

Ekachai looked worried when he appeared at the door moments later. He looked slightly more dishevelled than she was used to as though he’d rushed away from something else to attend to her problems.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked frowning. ‘The nurse said you needed to see me urgently.’

Kai smiled at his agitation. ‘I’m fine. I just feel like I need to talk to Doctor Thomas again, if you can arrange it.’

His relief was obvious from his expansive grin.

‘Of course. I am sure she will be pleased to see you. I had hoped your trip outside would help you to relax and come to terms with your situation. Perhaps your friend Mark has also helped a little?’

‘No,’ she snapped, resenting his suggestion that she needed to rely on somebody else. ‘This is my decision. I can’t live like this, it isn’t a life. I can either try to get my life back or try to start something new, but I won’t be able to do either by sitting on my arse feeling sorry for myself.’ Her anger was growing, she could almost feel it crackling around her like static, wide-ranging and irrational. With a huge effort she reined it in.

Ekachai had retreated to the door looking worried again.
He thinks you’re mad
a paranoid little voice whispered.
He’s scared of what you might do
.

‘I will speak to Doctor Thomas,’ he said, clearly eager to be out of range of her anger. ‘I am sure she will be able to see you today, later.’

Try telling her I’m going fucking crazy
Kai thought.

***

Whatever Ekachai had said to Ellen had obviously been enough to convince her of the urgency of his request because Kai found herself sitting in the claustrophobic office less than two hours later. The last time she’d been here she’d felt nervous and uncertain, but this time she was confident, aware. As the therapist slid the prism out of her desk drawer and on to the dark wood surface Kai shook her head.

‘No, I don’t need that, I just want to talk to you.’

Ellen frowned. ‘Dr Ekachai didn’t really explain why you wanted to see me. I just assumed that you were willing to give the hypnotherapy another try.’ She glanced round to Ekachai for confirmation but he simply gave her a non-committal shrug.

‘And can I just talk to
you
?’ Kai asked pointedly. Again Ekachai shrugged and smiled at her before slipping silently out of the door. As he closed it behind him Kai relaxed into the armchair which was the focus of the small office.

‘So, you just want to talk,’ Ellen stated, not quite able to keep the disappointment out of her voice. She pulled up her desk chair opposite Kai and leaned closer to her. ‘Has something happened? Another memory? Another dream?’

Kai shook her head uncertainly. ‘Not a memory exactly, but something from my past. I don’t really know what to do with it. I thought talking to you might…’ She tailed off, unable to form a clear idea of what she hoped to achieve by this session. She expected a response but the doctor simply waited, expecting something more concrete, forcing Kai to try again to make sense of what she was feeling.

‘Okay,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I’ve got this journal, my journal. It was found with my other things and I’ve been reading it to try to see if anything is familiar. And, I suppose, to pick up clues, hints, anything about who I’m supposed to be and what I’m doing here. I didn’t want to tell you about it before because I wanted to work a few things out for myself.’

Ellen, still silent, studied her face as though she was trying to read every muscle, every line, every shadow. Eventually she nodded for Kai to continue.

‘The journal starts in China, well the trip starts in China, but the first entry is Heathrow Airport.’ Kai could hear the confusion and lack of logical thought in her own voice and was worried that Ellen was listening to
this
more than to her words.

‘Anyway,’ she continued, desperately trying to focus, ‘It’s an account of my trip. I get these headaches, well they’re more like eyestrain or sometimes tension in my neck and shoulders so I’ve been reading it slowly.’

‘Looking for clues,’ Ellen interrupted with a smile that was less than reassuring. ‘From what you’ve told me so far it sounds like either you haven’t found any or you’ve discovered something momentous. I can’t work out which it’s gonna be.’

‘Sorry, I’m having trouble getting to the point. In the journal I seem sort of relieved to be away from home and, at first, enjoying myself but…’

‘Are you alone?’ Another interruption.

‘Yes,’ Kai nodded for emphasis. ‘There’s no mention of a travelling companion. It’s all ‘I’ and ‘me’. I met up with other travellers from time to time but there’s no-one constant.’

‘You don’t mention anyone back home, parents, friends, boyfriends?’

Kai nearly leapt from the seat in her irritation. This wasn’t how this interview was supposed to go. She wanted Ellen to listen but all she kept doing was leaping in with questions as though she were trying to catch Kai out or spot some inconsistency in her story. She stood up.

‘I think I’m wasting your time here. I thought you might listen, I thought I could make you understand. This is just pointless.’ She strode to the door intending to walk out into the sterility of the corridor but she froze with her hand on the door handle. Tears were pricking behind her eyes as she turned back to Ellen, utterly defeated.

‘I can’t leave,’ she whispered, sliding her back down the door until she was huddled on the floor. ‘I’ve got nowhere to go.’

‘So stop running,’ Ellen said, no sign of sympathy in her eyes. ‘Sit back down and tell it your way if that’s what you want, but I need to ask you some questions if I’m going to try to understand. How about I try to rein in my curiosity and you try to keep your temper under control?’ Her manner was brusque, a stark contrast to the friendliness of their previous two meetings. It was almost as though being in the office reinforced Ellen’s professionalism.

Kai studied the doctor from beneath her damp eyelashes. She suddenly had a flash of herself as Ellen might see her – demanding, spoilt and difficult. How had she become this person, how had she become so blinded by self-pity that she couldn’t allow anyone to help her? Wiping her eyes she got to her feet and sat back down on the edge of the chair, still unsure if she would be able to continue.

‘Okay,’ she rubbed her face, washing away the last two minutes, trying to find a way forward. ‘You asked about people back home. That’s the whole point. There’s only a friend, Penny, for a while, but then a man’s mentioned and suddenly it sounds like I’m running away from him.’

‘Why running?’ the doctor asked, frowning her interest. ‘Why don’t you think you just left him, dumped him? Or he dumped you?’

This was the hard part, the real admission. Kai instinctively flinched away from stating that she was a victim, that she believed she’d allowed a man to systematically abuse her in some way. How would that seem to an outsider, to someone who didn’t know her? Forcing herself to meet Ellen’s searching eyes she took a deep breath and plunged in.

‘There are hints that I was in an abusive relationship. The journal mentions being forced to give accounts of my spending and my movements. Being slapped, pushed downstairs, that sort of thing.’

The trembling was back – Kai could hear it in her voice – and somehow she’d lost her eye contact with the doctor. She gripped the arms of the chair to keep her hands still, and studied her knees, feeling awkward and ashamed. The whole thing sounded like she’d made it up, or at least like something that had happened to someone else, but her body’s involuntary responses told a different story. This was real, it had happened.

‘And you think this has something to do with why you lost your memory?’ Ellen’s voice sounded cold, clinical.

Kai nodded.

‘It’s possible I suppose,’ Ellen considered. ‘It might explain why the hypnotherapy isn’t one hundred per cent effective. There are things that you don’t want to remember so your brain has simply shut down its long-term memory function.’

‘Dissociative amnesia,’ Kai muttered bleakly. ‘Ekachai has talked me through it.’

Ellen nodded. ‘Okay. So, what do you know about this man, from your journal?’

Kai shrugged. ‘Not much really. His name’s David, he wanted me to marry him and, in the last couple of entries, I think I had started to think he was following me.’

Ellen raised her eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t that sound more than a little paranoid considering you’re thousands of miles from home?’

‘I know how it sounds,’ Kai snapped. ‘I’m just telling you what I wrote.’

‘Okay, calm down.’ Ellen leaned back, smiling. ‘I’m sorry if you think I’m being harsh on you. I’m only trying to let you see how this looks to someone who isn’t inside your head. I’m just being objective.’

‘I know,’ Kai sighed. ‘It’s just that I
do
feel paranoid and really frustrated with the whole situation. I need to know why my own mind won’t let me back inside. And I know I’m on a short fuse – I can see how Doctor Ekachai backs away if I so much as raise my voice. I just can’t seem to keep a lid on my impatience.’

‘Is it possible that, in your frustration, you’re clutching at anything which might help shed some light on your situation? You’re looking for something that isn’t really there?’

‘It’s possible that I’m doing everything I can to get my memory back. Is that a problem?’

‘Of course not, but don’t look for things that aren’t there. Try to see things rationally and take this at face value. You left home after an abusive relationship. You’re obviously a bit shaky and insecure, you don’t want to talk to anyone about it but it has to surface in some form. Don’t you think it’s reasonable to assume that this paranoia about being followed is a form of delayed shock? You still haven’t talked about your experiences though, it’s all still bottled up in there so your mind plays tricks on you.’

Kai considered this. It did make a kind of sense. In fact, it made a lot more sense than the idea that she was being followed by someone who didn’t know where she was.

‘So, I’ve not only lost my memory, but when I get it back I’ll probably discover that I’m crazy. Is that what you’re saying?’

Ellen laughed. ‘I doubt that you’re crazy. Worried, more than a little freaked out maybe, but not crazy.’

Her humour was reassuring, especially after her earlier lack of emotion and Kai found herself smiling back at the therapist. Perhaps she was right, perhaps this was all a reaction. Firstly a reaction to whatever this man had done to her and, now, a reaction to discovering this aspect of her past. She didn’t like to think of herself as abused: it made her feel like a victim and her memory loss added to the feeling of helplessness.

‘What do you think happened to me Ellen? How did I end up here?’

The doctor shrugged, ‘The popular theory is that you fell off a cliff when you were hiking. You hit your head and, bang, bruises and amnesia.’

‘I said what do
you
think?’ Kai pressed, noting Ellen’s avoidance of the real question.

‘Okay,’ she sighed, leaning back and running a hand through her close cropped not-quite-black hair. ‘I go with that up to a point but there are things it doesn’t explain. The lack of ID for one. It’s possible that your passport is in a hotel where you left it for safekeeping.’

‘I’ve thought about that,’ Kai interrupted. ‘But, if I left my passport somewhere, why is my rucksack full of stuff? Why didn’t I just pack what I needed for a hike?’

‘Exactly. The press hasn’t made too much of that though, or the fact that there was no money or any other valuables with you.’

‘Like my camera,’ said Kai, suddenly excited. ‘I know I had one, I mention it in my journal. So you think I was robbed and pushed off the cliff?’

Ellen shook her head.

‘To be honest, violent crime is a bit unlikely in rural Thailand. I think that you probably fell and whoever found you went through your things and took whatever he thought was valuable.’

‘Including my passport?’

Ellen shrugged. ‘There’s a market for everything. From a genuine passport you can make fakes, copies. Who knows?’

‘Has there been any follow-up in the press? Has anyone said that I was robbed?’

‘Hardly,’ Ellen said with a wry smile. ‘Crimes against tourists are often played down. Much of Thailand’s economy depends on tourism. We wouldn’t want to put people off, would we?’

‘But my story has been in the news. People draw their own conclusions, like you did. I’m surprised there’s been no confirmation or denial of the robbery idea.

‘The police here work slowly,’ Ellen said. ‘I wouldn’t expect too much from them. You might never find out what really happened.’

‘Fantastic,’ Kai groaned. ‘So even if I get my memory back this particular part might always be a blank? That’s really encouraging.’

‘Don’t dwell on it,’ Ellen advised. ‘How about you tell me what else you’ve learnt from your journal. You mention other people you met and a friend, Penny? What do you know about them?’

Kai settled further into the armchair and closed her eyes, trying to put a face to any of the names in the diary. As she’d read she’d imagined the people she’d written about, just like she would when visualising the characters in a novel, and now it was difficult to decide whether these images were based on anything concrete.

‘There was a woman called Josie,’ she began. ‘I first met her in western China when I went out on a trip into the mountains. I picture her as tall and wiry with dark hair and quite dark skin, maybe something Mediterranean in her background, maybe just a great tan. We met up again later and she’d picked up an Irishman, Callum. I get the feeling that I probably fancied him a bit. He was tall and suntanned. It was Callum who first asked me about my own love life and I told him a bit, not the bad stuff though. He had kind eyes, light brown. I told him that wasn’t very Irish they were supposed to be blue and twinkly.’