Hope's Vengeance (14 page)

The decision was instant, Dawn rose and dragged a hard-backed chair into the circle. “Sit on this. I’m going to relax you.” Hope moved to the chair. “Deeply relax you, then I want you to go back to your childhood, in your mind. I’m not going to ask anything about Griffin, so don’t worry, that’s for a later date. Today, I want to know who you were aged seven and eight.” Dawn had only ever read about this technique, and had dismissed it alongside Freud’s repressed memory theory, but today it just seemed like the right thing to do. One of the major realisations she’d had in the early days with Hope was that impulsiveness and spontaneity worked best with her. “Close your eyes.”

Her voice gentle, a transient breeze trickling through the room, with no harsh words, no abrupt statements, and over the following five minutes Dawn talked Hope into a trance, she could see by the slumped shoulders, curved back, and the inward pointing toes that hovered just above the carpet, Hope’s tiny legs not quite long enough to reach the floor, that she was under. Crossing her fingers that she wasn’t being unethical, she began the descent.

“Hope, I’m taking you back to your childhood. You’re seven years old, you live in Reading, you live with your Mum, your sisters Charity, Faith and Honesty. Tell me, are you seven again?”

Dawn’s eyes widened as Hope’s legs began to kick gently, swaying back and forth, childishly. Her hands left her lap and slipped to the edges of the chair, forcing her back straight, although her eyes were tightly shut. “You’re kicking your legs. Are you happy.” The giggle could have come from a seven year old, light and cheeky, a touch of shyness. “What are you wearing?”

“I got these from the jumble sale at the Working Man’s Club. Do you like them?” Hope’s voice was jerky, young, the words expressed questioningly as only a child could do.

Amazed, Dawn was certain Hope had actually traversed back where she needed to be. “I like them, describe them to me.”

“Silly you! You can see them. My brown skirt. It was five p. And my pink jumper was five p too.” Her legs were now swinging wildly, alternate sweeps to the front, and right to the back. “I like school now I’ve got new clothes.”

“Tell me about school.”

Hope’s grin spread fully across her face, almost appearing to be toothy by default, and her legs kicked merrily: the child before Dawn was happy. “Mrs Batty is my teacher, and she says I’m a prodigy. I don’t know what it means though.”

“Why does she say that?”

“Because I read grown up books. Mum taught me to read when I was really young, and now I read things for teenagers.”

Dawn scribbled notes on her pad with each statement, these answers were pure, from the child, not the adult. “What about home? What’s home like?”

“It’s good. I get to stay off school a couple of days a week so I can look after Honesty. She’s my little sister. She’s a baby. I love her.”

Dawn’s wrist swept across the page. “What does your Mum do when you’re looking after Honesty?”

“Mummy has to have special drinks so she can feed Honesty with her boobies.” Seven year old Hope giggled with shyness, her head cocked to the side, seeing if she could get away with uttering the rude word. She could. “Mummy needs to sleep a lot because having a baby is hard, so when she sleeps I cuddle Honesty, and I give her toys.”

“Hope, what do you look like? What colour is your hair?”

Hope’s hand shot up, she began winding the brunette, frizzy hair around her fingers, tugging it this way, that, curling and freeing. “My hair is brown. My hair’s curly sometimes. Mummy wants to cut it but I keep running away because I don’t want her to cut it.”

“Are you smiling? Tell me about your face.” Dawn had stopped writing, she was beginning to wonder what either of them were getting from this route now, the only part that stood out was that young Hope enjoyed staying off school to mind the baby, yet grown up Hope resented it.

The legs had stopped swinging, they hung lifelessly, toes pointing inwards, dead, and her body was less prominent. “I don’t have a face. I have hair but I don’t have a face. I have a black hole instead of a face.”

There it was, this was the fish they’d been baiting. “You must have eyes, what colour are your eyes?”

“I haven’t got eyes. I can’t have eyes because I haven’t got a face.”

“Can you see anything, are you blind?”

“I can see everything, I just don’t have any eyes.”

“Hope, tell me about your bedroom.”

The legs had begun a gentle swaying again, her body perking ever so slightly. “I can’t see my bedroom. I can see the frost flowers on the window. But I can’t see my bedroom.”

Dawn had heard enough, she began the careful process of bringing adult Hope back into the session, gentle words in gentle tones, caressing away the child, soothing the grown-up back. Dawn now knew enough to go on. She too was certain Griffin had interfered with her client, probably in her bedroom, and this abuse had led to Hope despising her face, for whatever reason, to the point of blocking it out. Hope was insistent that she wanted to know the truth, but Dawn was unsure how to progress, she’d never experienced, witnessed, nor read about anything like this. She needed to consult somebody before they went any further along this path.

Her voice chanted softly, but her mind was in disarray. Pat was gone. Who did she turn to? There were no more wise sages in the building, in the company, they were all thirty something’s like herself. “Are you back with us, Hope?” Hope smiled, she appeared deeply relaxed. “Do you remember any of what just happened?”

Another smile, thoughtful, and chillingly calm. “Yes, I remember everything, it was a strange sensation, because I felt just like a child again, and I spoke just like a child, but I’m an adult.”

Dawn swallowed, unsure how to approach the next question, the one she was burning to ask. She coughed lightly, clearing her unblocked throat, buying time. “What about the face? What did you make of that?”

Smiling, uncomfortably serene. “It was weird, it was like I was looking at myself, and somebody had crayoned black over where my face should have been. Maybe that explains why I feel so ugly all the time, even when people tell me I’m pretty, I still feel ugly. I look in the mirror and I hate what I see. I always feel dirty, like I don’t wash enough. I always feel like I smell.”

Dawn discreetly looked at her watch. “Hope, I want you to think seriously over the next week about this, about whether you really want to dredge up the past. I can help you move on without you ever knowing, you’d be healed without whatever pain the truth holds.”

The determined streak was back, Hope viewed her counsellor with confidence and defiance. “You’d want to know, wouldn’t you? You can’t tell me honestly that you wouldn’t, you’d be lying. He assaulted me. He might be still doing it to some poor kid out there. He was a trainee fucking vicar for Christ sakes, vicars have every opportunity with children because the very job they do instigates trust from all quarters. If I found out what he did, I could find him and prosecute. Then he’d never be able to do it to any other child.”

Dawn shifted uncomfortably, the words thrown at her like sharpened darts made sense, but every bone in her body told her Hope wasn’t ready yet, for such a strong person, she just wasn’t strong enough. “Hope, I can see your point, really, I can, but I worry it might be too soon. Thing is, you’ve only just found out after, what, twenty five years or so, that you may have been sexually assaulted, that’s a massive revelation to cope with already. I implore you to wait a while, use the counselling to accept the abuse, before moving on such a dramatic step.”

There was something devious about Hope’s nod of agreement and that worried Dawn, she could see she was being ignored, albeit politely. Her mind raced ahead, conjuring ideas of how she could stop Hope doing anything impulsive or damaging. “Hope, why don’t you come and see me more than once a week for the foreseeable future, we can work this through together.”

Hope grinned, and it appeared genuine, but Dawn was still concerned. “I’m fine, really, I feel better than I have in a long time.” She glanced at the clock. “I believe that’s it for today, so I’ll see you next Friday.”

Dawn barely had time for a response, Hope had collected her coat, gloves and scarf in a single movement and was at the door. “Hope, slow down, please.” Hope turned back, shrugging the woollen jacket across her shoulders with ease. “Promise me. You’ll not do anything stupid. Please.”

Hope’s bony fingers manipulated the scarf around her neck, and were covered deftly with the gloves. Her expression was tranquil, the edges of a smile were touching her lips, yet no laughter lines belied her worries. Something extraordinary had happened during the session, and now Hope’s eyes held a new, unprecedented danger. Black pools of peril, the intensifying fire within their depths ready to reach out and kill. She looked down at the floor briefly, gave Dawn a fleeting smile, two prickled dimples briefly fleeting her slender cheeks, and staged an elaborate wink. The door was closed, Hope had disappeared.

Momentarily mesmerised by the transformation she’d just witnessed, Dawn put her head in her hands, fingers grasping at the brown roots she’d not had time to have touched up. “Jesus Christ! What have I done? Pat, I wish you were here.”

The Phone Book

Helen heard Hope’s car pull into the driveway, she skipped to the front door and opened it a crack, not wanting to widen it enough to let the warm air out and the cold air in. She’d arrived in Saxlingham Nethergate two days before with her young sons, Darren and Dean, ready to spend the next week house-hunting, now that her present house had finally been returned to its rightful owner. She was grateful to Hope, as she’d paid for decorators to come in and make the house saleable, if only on the surface, and she promised she’d repay her when the proceeds hit her bank account.

Hope darted up the steps, stepping through the entrance as Helen held the door aside briefly. “How did it go?” Helen’s eyes had a sparkle that had died years before, she was so excited about moving north, moving close to her unlikely best friend.

Hope was undressing her outer layers, shedding the ensemble haphazardly on to the chairs, falling to the floor. She was in a hurry. “I’ll tell you later. I need to make a phone call, a private phone call, you go and get the kettle on, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Hope darted up the stairs, her low boots clacking on the laminated steps, echoing her haste, a door slammed and the hall returned to the playtime noises tumbling from the living room as Bern, Darren and Dean conducted their rowdy fun.

In her office, Hope grasped the Phone Book, fingers rifling through the pages, desperately searching for the help she’d decided would cure her. “Hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy. Hypno… ah, here we are, hypno, hypno, hypnotherapy and regression services.” Hope stabbed the page with her finger, before taking a pen and circling the advert for ease. She grasped the phone and dialled.

The College Book

Dawn was grateful she’d not had any clients for the afternoon, she’d previously booked a half day holiday to get all her Christmas shopping done, but that was irrelevant now, she needed to talk to somebody about Hope, about the technique she’d used, about how to retrieve the memories, or even if she should retrieve them. Her mind had been darting from one person to the next, and eventually the only man she could think of who would be qualified and willing enough to help was her old psychology tutor, Taylor Wilkinson. She couldn’t remember now why he’d given her his home number all those years ago, but she knew she had it somewhere.

She climbed the ladder, clasping the torch in her hand, and squeezed her large frame through the hatch, before shining the light around, illuminating the boxes of memories, rubbish, and excesses. Tearing open one box, two, three, she finally discovered the one with all her old college files, and she threw each one from the box recklessly, searching. The navy one, battered at the edges, creased in the middle, squashed and tatty, was the goal, and she tugged it open, hastily flicking through the pages, picturing the number she could remember from years before. There it was. She threw the file through the hatch, a dull thud as it landed on the bedroom carpet, and she followed it down.

Grasping the paperwork, Dawn scurried down the stairs, eager to find the number and dial him, desperately hoping he hadn’t moved house in the past nine years. With the receiver in her hand, she pressed out the number, and impatiently listened to the ring tone, monotonous, repetitive. Answered. “Wilkinson.”

Her desperation ebbed quickly away, and relief flooded through her, physically flowing along her limbs, reaching the ends of her fingers and toes. “Thank God! Mr Wilkinson, you might not remember me, but I was one of your pupils. Dawn Faraday. Mr Wilkinson, please can we meet up, it’s urgent, I can’t stress that enough.”

“Goodness, young lady, remember to breathe whilst you’re talking! Yes, I remember you, and yes, of course we can meet.” His good nature was apparent with the chuckle that followed.

Dawn uncommonly felt tears prickling her eyes, and was aghast at how much emotion she was pouring in to this. “Thank you, Sir, thank you so much.”

Mr Wilkinson

“Goodness! Look at you! You’re all grown up!” Taylor Wilkinson stood beside his desk, arm outstretched, waiting for the friendly handshake. Dawn was happy to oblige, and she took his warm hand with gratitude, before sitting in the seat he motioned towards. “I can’t believe how tall you are, I’m sure you weren’t that tall at university.”

Dawn giggled on hearing the words she’d heard so many times before, his presence transforming her into a carefree student again. “I didn’t stop growing until my mid twenties, overtook both of my parents apparently , I’m the tallest in the family, at least my brother says I am.”

Concern furrowed his brow. “You’re still not in touch with them?” She shook her head, waving a dismissive hand. He picked up another thread of conversation to lighten the mood. “What do you get up to nowadays? Still messing about in a band? I seem to remember you had a beautiful singing voice.” Mr Wilkinson was relaxed, foot on knee, laid back languishingly in the leather chair, and his openness relaxed Dawn’s nerves.