The Sister (56 page)

"How often do you have these dreams?"

"Three times in the last week or so."

"Mm-m." His hands moved apart and revealed his silver propelling pencil. He rotated the shaft through a variety of angles to catch the best light.

Miller jerked his chin in the direction of the pencil, "I can't believe you still do that."

Ryan ignored him. "It's all a question of timing, you having these dreams, contacting me. There's something else going on. I don't want to run out of time or get too tired to concentrate fully. I tire so easily these days . . ." A hint of resignation tainted his voice. Since opening the prediction envelope, he felt as if he'd turned an hourglass, and started a countdown on his remaining life.
Why have you set me this puzzle and then left me all alone to solve it?

Dismissing the fear that he may have opened the envelope too soon, he decided to play for time. He retrieved his appointment book from the counter, flicked the pages forwards and then back again.

"Mm-m, now let me see . . . I might be able to fit you in next week, once I've had the chance to go through your file properly." In reality, he was hoping he would have heard from The Sister by then.

Miller could see the appointment book was empty. "What about tomorrow?" he said, in a voice edged with sarcasm. "That's if you can fit me in with that busy schedule there?"

Ryan followed his gaze to the diary. "Aah . . . perhaps I should explain. This isn't mine – or at least, it isn't up to date. My secretary is looking for a job you see."

"You still have the same secretary?"

"No, she left years ago. This one started about three years ago. She's made a few changes, one of which is not keeping my physical diary up to date, she keeps all my appointments on a computer now, so I don't know what's happening if she's not here."

"Well, how do you know you can fit me in then?"

"The truth is Bruce I'm winding down, that's how I know. I'm keeping things going until Stella gets another job. Then I'll call it a day. That's where she is, by the way, at an interview. She's as bright as a button; it won't be long before someone snaps her up." Ryan didn't tell Bruce about the coincidences involved in looking at his file when he'd telephoned, or the real reason he kept the business open.

"You can't do this afternoon?"

Ryan thought quickly. He felt sure deferring their meeting until the next day was the right thing to do. "I know we haven't discussed what you came here to talk about. I'd like to cover everything in one go, and to do that I'm going to need to get your file out and read it again, just to refresh myself. Besides, I'm having to man reception while Stella isn't here. I'll ask if she can work tomorrow. If you come in around one o'clock, we'll spend the whole afternoon going through everything."

Ryan studied him over his silver-rimmed glasses. Miller noticed that the pupil of his left eye was milky-blue and unfocused, looking into some distant point. The eye was blind. Most people would have tactfully avoided staring, but Miller was not good at such things. Ryan caught him and stared him out until he averted his gaze.

"Okay, I'll see you tomorrow, Doctor Ryan."

Immersed in writing notes, he didn't look up.

Miller let himself out.

So much to talk about . . .
He'd just have to cover it tomorrow.

Chapter 120

When Stella returned later in the afternoon, Ryan handed her a note reminding her to prepare all the files in the archive room ready for digitalising, apart from the two he'd separated from the rest.

"How did your interview go?"

"I'm not sure. I think they liked me, but they had another couple of candidates to see and…"

The swirling fog of too many resurrected memories confused him, and he didn't pay much attention to her reply. He needed to sleep.

"I'll leave you to lock up for me," he said. "Oh . . . and there was something else . . ." putting a forefinger to his temple, he suddenly remembered. "That's it! Can you leave the Milowski file on my desk? I'll see you tomorrow."

"You've forgotten that it's Good Friday tomorrow, Doctor Ryan," she hesitated. "Are you all right?"

She couldn't believe how much he seemed to have aged suddenly, and she feared he might have left his plans for retirement for too long.

"I'm just really, really tired. I'll be all right after I've had a lie down for a bit. Look, I could really do with your coming in tomorrow. Have a lie-in first, if you like…" his eyes implored her.

She answered without hesitation, "Of course I will. I'll leave the file for you. I'll see you later in the morning."

Ryan nodded. He looked utterly drained.

She wasn't convinced he'd actually heard her and knowing she wouldn't see him before she left, she called out, "Goodnight, Doctor Ryan."

His key was already in the lock, and letting himself through the door at the back of his office; he walked up the stairs to his living quarters. He'd divided the house up years before always intending to sell the practice and the accommodation one day and move on, but Grace had died the year before he was supposed to retire. Left without a reason to stop, he'd just worked on. In the hallway at the head of the stairs, he paused before the collage of photographs. The middle one was a portrait of Grace in her prime. He'd arranged all their milestones around it, their wedding day, the first house they'd shared, their first car, anniversaries and holidays.
So many happy moments, but no children … we should have had children.

"Hello, dear," he said. He paused in front of her picture and examined her expression. It never ceased to amaze him how the photographer had captured her vivacity at that moment, in that certain light. Viewed from varying angles at different times during the day or under the lamplight glow cast down the hall, he sometimes thought her eyes lit, or her smile shifted, lifting him when he was down, or weary. "Wonderful thing, the mind, it keeps us alive," he said as he moved away from the portrait. Glancing back, he thought she looked concerned, so he gave her a reassuring smile, and then tottered along on tired legs down the hall to his bedroom. "It'll be all right, dear, don't you worry."

He woke up thinking he'd managed to sleep right through until the next morning. For a few moments, he panicked, and then realised with relief that he'd only slept for an hour.

Hauling himself out of bed, he struggled on stiff legs to the kitchen and put a TV dinner into the microwave. He left the food heating while he went into the bathroom and splashed cold water over his face in an effort to freshen up.
This is going to be a long night.

After his meal, he returned downstairs to his office. Stella had sorted the paperwork from the archive room already. The Milowski file was on his desk.

She'd planted a post-it note on it and written a single word: 'Enjoy!'

A weak smile drew across his lips. He realised how much he would miss her.

Beneath the note was another, much older one. Although the once royal-blue ink had faded with the passage of time, he recognised the hand that wrote it. The handwriting triggered unpleasant memories of Penny, and reminded him of one of the last tasks she'd ever carried out for him. He dismissed her from his thoughts.

A close examination of the pages revealed they were out of sequence. The temptation to sort them back into order was strong.

How did that happen? I don't have time for this.

After puzzling a moment longer, he decided with some disappointment, that it was just more evidence that Penny had failed to maintain her high standards until the end. He wondered if she'd set it as a sort of time-bomb revenge, knowing he would look at the files again in the future. Even if she had perceived he'd wronged her, he found it hard to believe that she would have stooped to such pettiness.

He looked for an easy way in, and not finding it straight away, he flashed over each page searching out keywords, attempting to follow the jumbled order of the paperwork before him.

He jotted a few notes from the original text onto a pad. At regular intervals, he paused to reminisce.

In those days, a hypnotherapist by the name of Anderson had worked with him; he recalled the early discussions they'd had. Milowski had maintained his earliest memory was that he'd fallen into a fire when he was less than a year old. A trauma that undoubtedly affected him so deeply he'd volunteered the memory before regression had even begun.

Snippets of conversation returned. Soon he was back in the room with
Anderson.

"It's extraordinary he can remember so far back, even taking into account the trauma of falling into a fire. He was ten months old!"
Anderson nodded as Ryan continued, "It isn't acquired false memory syndrome either because I checked that out with his mother immediately afterwards. It actually did happen," Ryan rubbed at his eyeball. "Have you made any progress?"

Anderson
looked exasperated, "He's an impossible subject for hypnosis. He just resists no matter what."

"Call yourself a hypnotherapist?" Ryan said.

"I'd like to see you try!" Anderson retorted.

"Well, actually I did, when he first came in to see me while you were on holiday," Ryan caught the light on his pencil and continued talking without looking in
Anderson's direction. "Did he say anything significant about the rest of his early life?"

"He spoke freely about everything he could remember leading up to the age of fifteen - it's all in my notes - then he just clammed up for the entire duration of that year. The number of near-death misses he'd had, he seems to remember all of them. He even jokingly said, 'I could write a book about the times I nearly died'. In every single case, it seemed; he was saved by some timely intervention, and I found that most strange."

Totally absorbed; he continued to read from his notes.

The boy had survived more than a dozen near fatal incidents, most of them involved rescues from water. His grandfather had turned up to save him virtually every time, but there was one exception.

Milowski had gone with friends to a public pool and was hanging onto the side of the when someone pulled him away for a joke, perhaps thinking that it might encourage him to swim, but he'd gone under straight away.

I remember coming up the first time, grabbing a breath, going down. At that stage, it wasn't a problem – I wasn't panicking. I bounced along the bottom and reaching the side; launched myself back up, but I collided with someone's elbow on the way up, swallowed a big lungful of water and panicked. I couldn't get back to the surface. Then someone grabbed me and hauled me out . . .

The long corridor of his memories led him out into the room with Anderson again. "What do you think of that?" he'd asked, referring to the many coincidental rescues performed by the grandfather.

Anderson
didn't answer.

Ryan rapped his pencil three times on the table.

Startled, the hypnotherapist gabbled, "I . . . I'm sorry, I just . . ." A puzzled look screwed his face and then he shot an accusatory look at Ryan as he realised what had just happened.

A small, self-satisfied smile creased the corner of Ryan's mouth, and he continued, "I made a few enquiries and found out a couple of interesting things. Apart from the fact they were remarkably close, it seems the old man had a history of turning up just at the right time, and not only where Bruce was concerned. There's a bit of a list . . . various friends in the army, his wife . . . No one quite knows how he was able to just-be-there so many times. It seems he possessed some kind of finely tuned intuition, a sort of radar for picking up distress signals."

"That's impossible. Didn't you ask him how he did it? You do surprise me," Anderson said.

Ryan didn't answer at first; he clicked away at the pencil again.
Anderson looked at it warily.

"I didn't ask him . . . because he's dead."

"Oh . . ." Anderson's lips encircled the word; the O shape remained for a full second as possibilities ran through his mind. "So, you think his grandfather was somehow alerted by a subconscious link when Bruce was in danger?"

"It's possible. He was thought to be psychic, but he died two weeks before the last incident at the pool. The last rescuer hadn't been among the original party of boys that went to the pool, deciding only at the last minute to go. He told his mother that someone had to look out for Bruce. As soon as he arrived at the pool area, he saw Bruce struggling below the water, and he got him out."

"Who was it?" Anderson asked.

"The rescuer at the swimming pool is most likely the reason the guilt complex is so deeply rooted," he said, looking directly into
Anderson's eyes. "It was Brookes."

The accuracy of the recollections Ryan had just experienced amazed him. This was what notes were all about. It was a firm belief of his that not one single thing was ever truly forgotten. All memories lay dormant, just waiting for the right trigger to reactivate them.