A Doorway into Ultra

A DOORWAY INTO ULTRA

by

Susannah J. Bell

Text copyright © 2012 Susannah J. Bell

Revised Edition 2019

ISBN: 9781301467259

All Rights Reserved

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A DOORWAY INTO ULTRA

ONE

It could have been a second moon on the horizon but then a veil was drawn across it and a girl was lying on the heath, unconscious, bleeding from a wound on her hand. All was dark.

She might have lain there until morning, when the dog walkers would have found her, slight and fair, her body hardly registering in the wild grass. A dog might have licked her face. There would have been shouts. Mobile phones would have been put into operation. The press would have arrived in seconds. It might have happened if she hadn’t woken up.

Her body jerked once and thrashed briefly, as if she was trying to escape a bad dream. Then she was sitting up, under the dark sky, a girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve, wearing overalls that zipped up the front, and plimsolls. She touched her hand where it hurt and blood came away on her fingers. But then it was forgotten as she got to her feet, dark horizons on every side, nothing recognisable. She turned around, then turned again. She was on a small hill. Paths wound down to clumps of trees, naked and still, as if dead. Or waiting. She saw lights in the distance. It must have been a city. She stared at it for a long time, then wrapped her arms around herself. It was cold.

She began to walk down the hill, picking the steepest path so that at the end, she was almost running. The only sound was of her breath, coming quickly. She picked another path when she reached a fork but it must have been the wrong one because there was no sign of an exit. The city had disappeared. She began to hurry. The trees grew denser, bare branches reaching over her. A wide path sloped downwards and then went left. It looked like a main path but wasn’t cemented like the others. It was rutted with bad weather and long sections had small stones scattered across it, to help prevent further erosion. A small stream trickled to the right. She reached a drinking fountain and had to pick her way across a small bog to reach it. But it worked. The water was cold. She tried to wash away the blood on her hand but it stung. In the dark she could make out nothing of the wound.

Walking with one hand closed around the other, she kept to the wide path. It began to slope upwards, steeply, and she was panting before she reached the top. The trees stretched away from her on all sides with nothing but a tangle underneath. She had almost given up when she reached the road. It was quiet with no traffic. There were houses on the other side but with walls so high they looked impenetrable. She didn’t know which way to go. She thought she should try to reach the city lights she had seen but had lost her bearings. The road was steep. It would have been easier to go downhill but the city was sure to be in the other direction.

Wearily she began to walk. Her face and hands were freezing, but her skin was coated with sweat. She no longer cradled her hand and let the blood run down to the tips of her fingers and drip on the pavement. The darkness seemed to grow thicker. Rain was in the air, light like mist, and in the streetlights, creating dim pools set too far apart to light the way adequately, she could see the raindrops dancing. When the heath began to overgrow itself onto the sidewalk, she stepped out into the road. Cold again, she walked with her hands jammed into her armpits. Her long hair clung damply to her head. She was following the white lines when car lights jerked around a corner towards her.

It stopped, badly, at an awkward angle, as if in shock. The girl stared into the lights. She could see nothing beyond them. If there were people in the car, she couldn’t tell, but then she heard one of them, muffled as if they were miles away. Oh my God! And again. Oh my God, oh my God! It was a woman. A door was flung open, seat belt snapping back like an elastic.

What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re in the middle of the goddamn street. I could have run over you. Jesus, I could have –

The other door opened.

For God’s sake, said another woman’s voice. Let’s just go. It’s got nothing to do with us.

The girl stared at the first woman.

I could have killed you, said the first woman. I nearly killed you.

She took the girl by the arm and half dragged her off the road. She looked as if she had more questions ready, questions like, what are you doing out in the middle of the night, are you running away, do your parents know you’re out, has something happened, do you have a home to go to, but she didn’t ask them because she saw the blood on the girl’s hand and in the headlights, she saw the bruises on the girl’s face.

Jesus, said the woman.

The other woman was out the car. She was barefoot, despite the cold, and picked her way across the wet tarmac. The car engine was still running.

What’s the hold up? Can’t we just go?

I don’t think so, said the first woman. I think we need to do something.

The second woman looked at the girl.

Shit, she said. She’s probably from that estate. She’s probably just run away. Are you sure you want to get involved?

We don’t have to take her inside. Just drop her off. She turned to the girl. How old are you?

The girl said nothing, just stared at her with eyes bleached of colour in the headlights.

We’re going to drive you to a hospital. They’ll fix up your hand.

There was no response from the girl.

Do you understand me? Do you speak English?

I don’t know who I am, said the girl.

The two women stared at her. The girl continued staring back, eyes flicking from one to the other. The rain coated them with tiny drops that glittered in the headlights.

Shit, said the second woman at last. Well, at least we know she can talk.

If you get in the car, I can drive you to the hospital.

Because it was the right thing to do or because she was responding to the kindness in the woman’s voice, the girl allowed herself to be belted into the back seat. They drove off in silence, the woman in the passenger seat pulling on a pair of soft slipper boots that she had taken off because she’d thought they’d get ruined in the rain.

We should have stayed longer, she said eventually, her voice muted in the plump interior of the car. She was referring to the party they had just been to.

Perhaps we should be grateful we didn’t. What if someone less scrupulous than us had found her?

What if she didn’t want to be found?

I don’t think so, said the woman driving the car. I think there’s something badly wrong.

They didn’t talk again until it was to argue about the quickest route to the hospital. There was very little traffic about and the Royal Free was nearby but the one-ways made it awkward. In the back seat, the girl volunteered nothing. The second woman, beginning to unwillingly sober up, turned around once and asked the girl her name, but got no response.

They left her outside the A&E. Despite giving her instructions to go inside to get her hand fixed up, she was still standing where they had dropped her off when they drove away. The car seemed to hesitate before it turned, as if the occupants were arguing, but then, finally, with a gear change, it was gone. The girl stood in the rain and watched the empty space their car had been in. When she was sure it wasn’t coming back, she went in through the A&E doors, to where it was warm and bright and there were people with questions she couldn’t answer. Her hand was bandaged and her hair dried with a towel. There was a kind woman who said her name was Carol. She brought the girl things to eat and drink, like hot chocolate and a sandwich, a Kit Kat with four fingers, and a banana. She ate everything. She listened to all the questions but she said nothing. She couldn’t tell them her name.

When dawn came, Carol was still with her. The girl sat on a hospital bed, refusing to lie down or to sleep. Carol tried to explain things to her but she was no longer sure the girl was listening. She took her hand, the one that wasn’t bandaged.

You don’t have to worry about being lost anymore, she said.

I’m not lost, said the girl unexpectedly. I just don’t know who I am.

TWO

She could hear someone calling her name. Mrs Halward! It was a woman’s voice, probably the hospital psychologist. Or one of the policewomen who seemed intent on killing her with kindness. Their faces seemed to thrust themselves at her and she thought that it was from them that she was running. But it wasn’t. She just wanted to get to her baby. There had already been so much time wasted. So much talking. It didn’t matter what anyone had to say. It didn’t matter about the rules and regulations. There was too much red tape. The whole world was wrapped up in it, like a Christmas present, throttled with inaction.

In a brightly lit hallway, someone tried to stop her.

No, she said, very clearly, very firmly.

She knew where she was going. She knew the way. There was only one place they could keep her.

Mrs Halward, please!

She was through the door before the security guard had a chance to uncross his legs, get out of his chair, replace his magazine, open his mouth. There was another woman in the room, another face that was going to stop her and quieten her down. They were always trying to quieten her down. It wasn’t as if she was shouting at anyone. Mrs Halward? The woman asked, coming towards her. They hadn’t met. She ignored her because all at once, in a room that had seemed empty when she had burst in, she saw her.

She was standing at the window. Her hair had been washed and hung straight and fair to her shoulders. She wore jeans and a dark blue polo neck sweater which made her seem very pale. Her hands were in her pockets. Her eyes were on her, very intent, unmoving, almost unblinking. For the first time, Karin Halward faltered.

Claire? she said.

The girl caught her name but didn’t respond. Karin walked forward tentatively, her face alive with a hundred expressions, as if she couldn’t decide which one to settle on, which emotion was appropriate for the occasion. Because there wasn’t one. Nothing was appropriate. She wanted to scream and cry and shout and whisper Claire’s name, over and over. She was smiling, she thought. Or she could, at least, feel her mouth stretched on her face in what she presumed was a smile. But she might have been crying. Behind her, she heard the door open. Someone came in, following her, but they said nothing.

Claire? she said again.

They had warned her that it was going to be like this. They had talked to her endlessly. They had tried to make her understand. She had listened. Nick had held her hand and had listened too. She had almost heard him taking notes, mental notes that he would recall later with chilling accuracy and be able to quote verbatim. She’s not unresponsive, the psychologist had said to them. But she says very little.

There was no doubt that it was Claire. The DNA match was conclusive. It was all Karin had wanted to hear. Nothing else mattered. She was relatively unharmed. She was healthy. She had not, as far as they could tell, been sexually abused. She just didn’t remember anything and could tell them nothing about what had happened. Yet. Karin didn’t care about any of that. There would be time enough to find out. All she wanted was to see her. A hundred thousand times she had whispered to herself, in the dark, If I could just see her, one more time. She had whispered to God when he wasn’t listening. And now that she could see her, standing there, rigid in an unknown hospital waiting room, she forgot that she had said it. She forgot that she had prayed for this moment or that she had prayed at all.

Claire, she said, and the question had fallen out of her voice.

Because it was Claire. It could be no one else. The shock of seeing her so tall, so grown up, her face so closed, was beginning to wear off. She was nothing like the little girl they had lost. Seven years had passed. She was almost as tall as Karin. Her eyes were greener than she remembered, green like spring grass but with a dark rim around the iris. Just for a moment, she thought she saw suspicion creep into them. She had been told that Claire would not remember them but she hadn’t believed it. There were physical memories. Genetic memories. All Claire had to do was look, just as Karin was looking, tears definitely running down her face now, tears that she was aware of, hot and burning on her skin. Once she had thought she was never going to stop crying, then she had thought she would never cry again. She had been wrong on both accounts.

With a swift movement, she pulled Claire into her arms. Her body was stiff and painfully slender. She heard the air squeeze out of her and knew she was hugging her too tightly but she couldn’t let go.

Claire, she whispered. I’m so glad to see you.

She felt Claire’s arms lift tentatively and touch Karin’s arms but if Karin thought her daughter was about to hug her back, she was mistaken. She could feel Claire pulling away from her, just fractionally. She made no movement, but her hands were on Karin’s arms to unwind them from her body. Karin felt the rejection and remembered all the words they had said to her. Don’t rush it. Don’t overwhelm her. But she had. She had done everything she shouldn’t have. She stood back and looked into the suspicious green eyes.

I’m your mother, she said.

Claire looked past her to the other people in the room. Nick was there, his hands in his pockets. Karin turned and caught his eye. She was still smiling. Her arms still felt full of Claire, though the girl had moved away from her, closer to the window. The white bandage on her hand stood out very starkly against the darkness of her clothes. The psychologist, or one of the policewomen, or a doctor, Karin didn’t know and didn’t care, had started talking again but Karin wasn’t listening. She was staring at Nick. It was one of those moments when she was unsure of him. There had been a lot of those, many, many of them when they had first met, when she had been sure of her love but not of his. And always, in these moments, when she was unsure and hesitant, she became aware of how terribly sexy he was. It was almost unbearable. In a room full of women who didn’t stop talking, who all seemed frail and colourless next to him, he was golden and taut. It was his green eyes that Claire had inherited. His fair colouring, his height. And now, it seemed, his coolness.

There seemed to be some agreement being made across the room. Karin took Claire’s hand, the one that wasn’t bandaged, and held it, just as she had held it when Claire had been a little girl and they were about to cross a road. Claire didn’t resist and her hand wasn’t entirely limp. Nick extricated himself and walked across to Claire.

I’m your father, he said. But you can call me Nick, if you like.

He put his hand out to shake hers and Claire had to let go of Karin’s to take it. Karin felt a second wave of rejection, or was it a third? But she kept smiling. Her eyes glittered with tears but the smile stayed on her face. It was understandable that she would feel this way, uncertain of herself and Claire and, most of all, Nick. These feelings would pass. Claire was back. It was all that mattered.

She watched as a flush rose in Claire’s face. Nick was smiling at her. His eyes were icy but people rarely noticed. They saw the smile and the blond good looks, the sharp, sexy teeth, the broad shoulders. They felt his firm grip and it was all that it took. Claire was almost responding. She looked up into Nick’s eyes and withdrew her hand. She turned her head to look at Karin. The doctor, a social worker, or someone, was talking again. Nick responded. Karin wasn’t listening.

What is it? she whispered to Claire.

The suspicion in Claire’s eyes had changed. Karin saw in them, with a jolt of recognition because she had seen it so often in her own, reflected back at her in countless mirrors, a flicker of despair.

Where’s my sister? said Claire.

A silence fell in the room with all the weight of something terribly significant.

My twin sister, Claire said. Is she here?

Nick seemed to retreat several miles. The doctor cleared her throat to say something but Karin got there first.

You don’t have a sister, she said. No twin sister.

Claire met all their eyes. They were all doing what they weren’t supposed to do. They were staring at her. Arranged in a half circle, they couldn’t have been more intimidating. Across the room, at the door, his hand already reaching for the handle, Nick, in his expensive suit that made him look as if he’d stepped out of an old-fashioned aftershave ad, knew with absolute certainty that the girl at the window was not his daughter.

THREE

The bus stop outside Marks & Spencer was littered with people, all waiting for buses that wouldn’t come. There was only one bench and it was already full. Leaning against the railings, a man was reading a newspaper with the air of someone who was absorbed in the news only because there was nothing else to do. A single deck bus came along at last and almost everyone crammed into it. The man folded up the newspaper and watched the bus go.

There was a picture of Claire under the headlines, her five-year-old eyes smiling out from above the fold of the paper, the school photograph they had used when she had first gone missing. No recent photos had been included. The news story was almost entirely speculation. Neither Nick nor Karin had talked to the press and they had no one left representing them because the story had died after a couple of years. A child goes missing: no one believes it will ever be found alive after so long.

With the newspaper under his arm, the man lit a cigarette. Then he looked at his watch. It was no longer obvious that he was waiting for a bus. His eyes flicked up the road to the hospital. He was too far away to see anything. The entrance wasn’t visible from where he stood but he tensed suddenly when a car turned left into the road, moving away from him. He couldn’t see into the car, couldn’t see the occupants, but when he glanced up the road, it was if he knew. His eyes were a startling silver-blue and their intensity ferocious as they watched the road. In a moment, he had binned the paper and was boarding a 168.

Claire’s bedroom belonged to someone much younger. It was full of stuffed toys and the dresses in the wardrobe were tiny. There wasn’t a speck of dust and it was immaculately tidy, as if Karin came in every day to clean it. Or just be in it. Karin couldn’t stop talking. She had talked all the way back in the car. She was still talking when they reached the house, a house that Claire didn’t remember. She talked up the front stairs and into the rooms, across the hall, down the passageway. She talked because she needed to, because no one else was filling up the silences, because Nick wouldn’t say anything and Claire couldn’t. Through it all, Claire listened. She watched the woman who was her mother and absorbed everything that was said. She was being offered a great deal of security and affection. In this house she didn’t remember, she was going to be loved.

She walked around the young child’s bedroom and touched the fluffy animals. Karin was talking about shopping trips. Claire would need new clothes. And shoes. She skirted around the subject of school but Claire hadn’t yet formed an opinion. She didn’t know what to think yet because she wasn’t thinking at all. A metallic squeaking sound distracted her from the toys. She moved to the windows, expecting to see a swing.

Gonna make you sick, said a child’s voice.

It was one of those old-fashioned double-seated swings, with the seats facing each other. Two identical blond girls of about five sat opposite each other. Claire felt herself looking through the eyes of one. The other’s face twisted nastily.

Gonna make you sick!

Claire reared back from the window as if burned. There was no swing on the back lawn. Karin was staring at her with her concerned brown eyes, an expression that was going to be stamped on her face forever if she kept it on too long. She was quiet at last. Her hands were locked together in front of her. She seemed to be trying not to wring them. Perhaps she was holding them for comfort because no one else in the world was ever going to hold her hand again.

What is it?

Claire wanted to answer her. She could still hear the squeaking of the swing.

Gonna make you sick.

Did you remember something?

To distract her, Claire picked a book at random from the shelf. It was a large picture book, something Karin had probably read to her once. Or Nick. Though she couldn’t see Nick in any position that could be called relaxed. Straight fair hair fell across Claire’s face as she looked at the pictures without seeing them, turning the pages with fingers that seemed somehow numb. Her heart was beating too fast. She could feel it in her chest. Karin was talking again. She was going to leave her alone. At last.

She touched everything in the room. The pretty dresses in the wardrobe. The toys. The animals. The games. She sat down in front of the cheerful bookcase and read every single book on it, Little Pig Figwort, The Gruffalo, The Snail and the Whale, Can’t you sleep, little bear? There were several books about a Mr Bear and his family. Claire liked those best. Mr Bear to the Rescue. They were going to do everything they could to make her remember. She hadn’t thought about it much, just accepted it, as she’d had to accept that Karin and Nick were her parents and this was their house and this was her life from before. But now she was less sure. She could no longer hear it but the squeak of the swing had made her feel cold, as if her skin was crawling with chills. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to remember the past if it was going to include that girl in it, the one that looked exactly like her, the twin that didn’t exist.

When she got up, her knees were stiff and it was beginning to get dark outside. Heat emanated from the radiator under the window but she didn’t approach it again. She was still holding the Mr Bear book. In a moment, Karin was going to come back. She was going to draw her into their world. She was going to feed her and cosset her and smother her with love. It would be easiest just to let her. Claire had no interest in fighting her. She looked down at the book. The pictures were kind. She liked Mr Bear. She wished he had rescued her instead. But where had she been that she’d needed rescuing? All she could remember was waking up on the heath. There was nothing before that. Nothing. And nothing in the bedroom registered with her.

She left the book on the bed and ventured down the passageway outside her room, looking for the bathroom. She found it and shut the door and thought how nice it smelled, of flowers. Everything in the house she had seen so far was beautiful. The bathroom was white and pink, but not sugary pink, not cute and fussy. It was soft, like an overblown rose, and subtle. Washing her hands, Claire noticed that the soap bar was new. She glanced up into the mirror over the basin and felt the sharp burn of electric needles sink into her skull. The soap shot out of her fingers. She stepped back. Her heart was hammering again. Her breathing seemed very loud in the small bathroom. She stared at the reflection, at the whites around the eyes, but it wasn’t her.

From the stairs, Claire could hear the people she was to call her parents moving around at the bottom of the house. She thought Nick must be on the phone because she couldn’t hear any responses to what he was saying. There was a radio going in the kitchen. She thought Karin must be there. She pictured Karin itching to come back upstairs, to find Claire, to bring her down, to include her and keep her close. The last half an hour must have been excruciating for her. She must have been told to do this. Give her time. So Claire had been given time. She wasn’t sure she wanted it.

The walls of the stairway were covered with photographs, all in white frames of differing size, shape and design. In every frame was Claire: as a baby, a toddler, first day in nursery school, first day in reception, wearing a smart little uniform that was too big for her. Claire followed all the pictures, watched herself progress and then halt suddenly, a history cut off. She didn’t remember being this little girl. She didn’t remember being Claire. She couldn’t remember the last seven years. It was as if she had never existed, as if she had never lived. She had never been. Her life had begun the day she had woken up on the heath and because DNA results said so, she had ended up with these people as parents, in this house, with these pictures on the wall that meant nothing to her.

She knew it couldn’t be like this. She must have begun somewhere earlier than the heath. She must have had a life. It was just that she wasn’t Claire. But if she wasn’t Claire, then who was she?

FOUR

Claire saw the same pictures of herself in albums that Karin had carefully put together, everything labelled and dated in case she ever forgot. She sat at the dining room table wearing her new clothes and her new haircut and paged through the thick volumes of her life. And when they weren’t enough, Karin brought out the scrapbooks. Each one was themed. Claire’s first birthday. Her first nursery. Her first day at primary school. Claire felt as if she was looking at the life of some other little girl, a very cute little girl, all fair hair and smiles, but not a girl she knew.

Each scrapbook was a work of art. There seemed to be a great deal of planning in each one. They were colour-schemed and patterns were repeated and echoed, with colours lifted out of the photographs to enhance the page. There was a great deal of sunny yellows and pinks, colours that Karin had dressed her in a lot. Claire preferred the greens and blues. In the shops, she had said nothing while Karin had chosen clothes for her. Days began to go by when she hadn’t said anything at all. Karin’s look of concern became more pronounced and when Nick went back to work, the grooves in her face were already a permanent feature.

There was no connection, Karin could feel it. No one was saying anything except herself and she was saying too much, all the time, a babble of words as if this could somehow bring back the Claire she remembered. Nick was in a zone she couldn’t reach. This wasn’t new. It wasn’t unexpected. For the first year after Claire had gone missing, he had been strong and supportive. She had leaned on him, leaned too heavily perhaps because she thought later that he had broken without her becoming aware of it. A year after Claire’s disappearance, he had changed. He had stopped talking to her. It wasn’t that he had become distant. It was just that he hadn’t been there at all. Like Claire.

They were visited frequently by people who failed as much as Karin did in getting Claire to talk. They all wanted to know the same thing: where she had been, what had happened. Who had done it. In despair, Karin watched Claire’s closed face and knew the police, the social workers, the therapists and every other agency that wanted answers wasn’t going to get any. They sat in their beautiful lounge, all tasteful cream and wheat and natural fibres, a room that Nick liked because it wasn’t fussy and the pictures on the walls were of nothing at all. Claire nodded occasionally so she understood what they were saying. She understood the questions. She was listening carefully. But she didn’t answer any of them. To Karin it was obvious why: she didn’t know the answers. Claire didn’t know what had happened.

Because she couldn’t remember and because she wouldn’t talk, Karin tried instead to keep Claire busy. They did things together. They baked biscuits. They went for walks in Waterlow Park. She managed to get Nick to take her to the wooden playground but Claire was too old for it and didn’t do anything there except swing. Time began to slip by and nothing had changed. There was no improvement. The three of them circled each other in their lovely, tasteful house, where the days were structured and there were no sharp noises, nothing jarring, nothing untoward. Again and again, people said to her: It’ll take time. Karin thought she might scream if someone said that again, but she hadn’t the energy to scream. She couldn’t fight back. She agreed and agreed and saw that Claire was agreeing too. She did everything Karin asked of her. She helped in the kitchen. She paged through the damn scrapbooks. She walked in the park. She showed interest in the museums they visited and once, just once, she saw something flare in Claire’s eyes, something like surprise, something that had made her turn her head sharply and catch her breath.

Of course Karin had jumped in too quickly.

What is it, Claire? she had said. Are you all right?

But Claire had already moved away. For a moment, her face had looked alive. She