Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Is Staff Nurse Marriott on duty?’

The receptionist looked up. I remembered her. ‘What’s it in connection with?’

I pulled out the ID card Iain had provided me with shortly after I started work at the Examiner . ‘I just need to ask her advice on something for the paper.’

‘Do you know which ward she works on, love?’

‘Chamberlain,’ I said, and waited as she dialled through. I was wasting my time and I knew it. There was no way Lisa would instantly recognize the writer of these letters, even if it was one of her patients. But what else was there? Even if the letters were genuine, finding Bethan was going to be a huge, huge task. And, anyway, I had to be able to tell Martin that I had completed this errand.

For some reason his good opinion mattered.

I was trying to think of a fresh approach to the problem when Lisa appeared.

‘Margot, how are you? I haven’t seen you for ages! How’re you keeping?’

‘I’m fine,’ I replied, perfectly truthfully. I’d never felt better. ‘I’m actually here on business. You knew I did some work for the local paper, didn’t you?’

Lisa nodded. ‘I gathered there was some reason for all those secretive phone calls requesting leaflets and so on. What were you up to?’

I laughed. ‘I must have surprised you a few times – sterilization one week, alcoholism another.’

‘The one that got me was Sickle Cell Anaemia,’ remarked Lisa drily.

I smiled. ‘The thing is, I was wondering whether you knew if someone in here had written this,’ I said, producing a photocopy of the first letter. ‘We’ve been getting a few of these at the paper.’

She scanned it, tiny lines crinkling the corners of her eyes. ‘I’ve not the faintest,’ she said after a long moment. ‘Spooky, isn’t it?’

I took the letter back.

‘You could ask around,’ she suggested. ‘If these things are a real nuisance. But I don’t think it’s from here, to be honest.’

‘I thought as much,’ I said.

‘I’m on my break now,’ she said. ‘Coming for a cup of tea?’

The place made my skin crawl and even Lisa’s pleasant face brought back unpleasant memories.

‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ I said, smiling right through the heart of my fear.

Perversely enough, I went to the Examiner before I went home. I turned my office key in the lock and was surprised to find Wendy there, even though it was Tuesday and seven o’clock at that. She was bent over a piece of paper.

‘God, Margot, you’re efficient. This has been every day this week.’

‘I was passing,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Thought I’d call by for my post.’

She eyed me curiously. She reached behind her into the cubbyhole. It occurred to me that she never let me check the cubbyhole myself if she was in the office. ‘Here you go.’

I glanced through the letters. I was wasting my time, I told myself. Then the familiar shaky, childish handwriting leapt out at me.

I was on the brink of asking Wendy when it had arrived and only just stopped myself. I shoved the bundle of letters into my bag. I could feel her staring at my back. I daresay she thought me very strange. But then, what the hell was she doing here?

As I straightened she looked away.

‘Working overtime?’ I asked, hefting my bag over my shoulder.

She nodded ruefully.

‘Well, I’ll probably see you tomorrow, then.’

‘Bye.’

Her eyes bored into me through the office window as I walked down the steps of the building. Perhaps she’d realized that something interesting was happening in my correspondence.

Dear Amy,

I hope you’re getting these letters. I can’t let myself think about what it would be like if you weren’t. I think I would just lay down and die.

There isn’t much time left. I’m sure he’s going to kill me soon. He gets angrier and angrier all the time.

I realized that I’ve never described him – well, not what he looks like. He has blond hair and blue eyes. I don’t know his age, but he might be something old, like over thirty.

He told my nanna and me when he came to visit us that his name was Alex Penycote and he was my social worker, but I think he was lying. He says he is part of a gang. I’ve never seen anybody else but I believe him, because he knows things about me, and about my mum and my nanna. When I was at the hospital visiting my nanna after her accident, he said I had to come with him. Now he says that he is very rich and powerful and anywhere I go in the world he will be able to find me, because he can pay people to kill me and they will.

Yesterday I tried to run away again. I got as far as the steps but he caught me. I was sure he would kill me, he just kept kicking me and kicking me and now I can barely move for the pain.

He keeps saying that I must be grateful for all he does for me, but I will only be grateful to see him burning in Hell.

Please look harder. It’s not that I’m not thankful for all you do but I have to be rescued soon.

Love,

Bethan Avery

P. S. Be careful because he’s very sly and I don’t think he’d have a problem hurting people other than me. Don’t let anyone in your house you don’t know.

P. S. again – I’m being very serious.

The next day, my enquiries were getting me frankly nowhere. I’d gone through my back files and, as expected, there’d been no other letters comparable to Bethan’s. The other psychiatric units in the district were no more help than Narrowbourne.

In the days that followed, there had been no more letters.

Perhaps there’d be nothing else now… Maybe we’d had our lot.

I was thinking about this possibility, funnily enough, when the doorbell rang.

I was cutting up vegetables for a wickedly spiced peanut stir fry, and musing to myself that even the deepest emotional wounds can have an upside – Eddy had never been able to stand the stuff.

‘Hello, Mrs Lewis?’

Two people were on my doorstep, a man and a woman, lit only by the lamp on my hall porch, so it took a second or so to make them out. The man wore a casual suit and raincoat and was youngish, with thick, gelled hair and a petulant, rosebud mouth; the woman had on a dark dress and dogtooth jacket. Her hair was short and white-blonde, to set off her aggressive permatan, and she had soft cheeks and large grey eyes.

I had a sudden flashback to the scrawled postscript on Bethan’s letter – ‘Don’t let anyone in your house you don’t know.’

‘We’re so sorry to bother you – I’m Detective Inspector Hayers and this is Detective Constable Watson. Would it be possible to have a word?’

‘I…’ I was stymied by the warrant card he held up before my face.

He’d glanced down at the knife in my hand, and my own gaze followed his.

‘We can see that you’re in the middle of making your tea, and I promise it won’t take long.’

The knife. In my distracted state, I’d carried it to the door. I blushed hotly. ‘Oh, God, sorry! Yes, I was cooking. Come in.’

I hurried into the living room as they followed me, remembering to put the knife down on the kitchen counter. I turned the fire under the pan down. (‘Something smells nice,’ said the woman. She had a broad Essex accent. ‘I love a bit of Thai myself.’)

They took a seat on the squashy leather sofa while I perched on the edge of the armchair, and tried not to look a) guilty or b) nervous, my default settings when confronted by the police.

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ said the man, whose name I had already forgotten, it being lost in the alarming prefix of his job title. ‘But we understand that you’ve received some letters that have since been entered as evidence in a crime.’