Polly Courtney - The Day I Died

POLLY COURTNEY

The Day I Died

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2009

Copyright © Polly Courtney 2009

Polly Courtney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847561503

Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007331666

Version: 2018-06-18

For mum and dad.

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

She came to with a jolt. Someone was pressing a finger against her neck.

‘You’re all right. Take it easy, OK?’

Her eyes slowly focused in the dim morning light and she propped herself up on one elbow. A man in a luminous yellow jacket was crouching over her.

‘Steady now…Slowly.’ He reached round to support her and shone a small torch in her face. She tried to twist away but her muscles felt all spongy. There was a noise like a hundred car alarms going off at once. And the people…There were people everywhere.

‘Okaaaay,’ he said, clicking the torch off and rocking back on his heels. ‘You’ve had a bit of a shock, but nothing serious.’ He gently hoisted her into an upright position.

‘Derek, over here!’ cried someone above the din.

The paramedic gestured that he was on his way and took another look at the girl.

‘Here,’ he said, grabbing what looked like a crumpled jacket from the gutter and shaking off the grit. ‘Sit on this–you don’t want any more cuts and bruises, do you?’

She allowed him to slip it underneath her, and for the first time looked down at her body. Her palms were grazed and bleeding slightly, like a child’s after a playground fall. Her bare feet were scratched too, probably from the shards of glass that littered the street. But it wasn’t her skin she was looking at; it was her clothes–or lack of. Tugging at the stretchy material of her dress, she tried to cover the tops of her thighs, only to find that the whole garment moved down and she didn’t appear to be wearing a bra.

‘Once we’ve accounted for everyone we’ll get you to a hospital and check you over properly. Can you tell me your name?’

She nodded vacantly.

The man waited a moment then repeated, ‘Can you tell me your name?’

‘Derek!’ the voice yelled again. ‘Over here, please!’

Holding up a hand in acknowledgement, the paramedic peered into the girl’s face. She avoided his gaze and stared out at the mayhem. The road was strewn with fallen masonry, pieces of twisted metal and broken, blackened furniture. Parts of the street were stained with blood. But she saw none of it. She wasn’t listening to the sirens or the screams. Something else was occupying her thoughts.

‘I think you may be in shock,’ said the paramedic, standing up. ‘Put the jacket around you and I’ll get one of my colleagues to check you over. Just wait here, OK?’

She nodded vaguely, continuing to stare into space as the man rushed off. The questions were mushrooming inside her head, multiplying, jostling and competing for space. Questions like, why was she here, where the hell was ‘here’, what had happened…? But of all the fears crowding her mind, one was so immediate, so profound that it eclipsed all the rest.

She didn’t know her own name.

How was that possible? And it wasn’t just her name that was missing; it was her whole life: her background, her home, her family…Friends, lovers…Everything was a blank.

Ignoring the mounting nausea, she tried to focus, to force her memory back into action. She ran through as many names as she could think of in the hope that one might click. None did. Her head pounded and there was a high-pitched whining in her ears. The harder she struggled to remember, the emptier her mind seemed to be.

She shivered and wrapped the coat around her bare legs. Her breathing was shallow and her hands were shaking uncontrollably. The fear engulfed her all of a sudden. She looked around. It was as though she was scared of something, or someone. It wasn’t just fear of the unknown–the unknown that was her identity–it was something dark and amorphous: a paranoia that she couldn’t explain. She only knew one thing for sure: she had to get away .

On autopilot, she grabbed the jacket from under her and stood up. Her legs wobbled and the ringing in her ears intensified. She was half expecting a paramedic or one of the other uniformed men to stop her as she slipped away, but nobody did.

The scattered debris hindered her bare-footed progress, but slowly she picked her way down a narrow street bordered by tall buildings that seemed eerily quiet compared to the pandemonium she’d just left. She looked back. It was a nightclub, she ascertained. That explained her flimsy dress. The remains of a neon sign, bulbs half shattered, stuck out above the entrance, which was now little more than a burned-out concrete shell. She wondered what could have caused the destruction. A burst gas main? A bomb ?

She slowed down, relieved to have escaped unchallenged but still feeling tense and scared. It was partly the fear of what lay ahead, she thought, but mostly it was fear of what had gone before: the huge, gaping hole that was her past and, more specifically, the thing–whatever it was–that had caused her to run away.