When Your Eyes Close: A psychological thriller unlike anything you’ve read before!. Tanya Farrelly

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СКАЧАТЬ friend. She’s trouble, I don’t like her.’

       ‘Why not?’

       ‘I don’t know. There’s something about her. Rachel’s annoyed. She says it’ll only be for a few hours.’

       ‘Are you jealous? Jealous of Orla?’

       ‘No. I think she’s hiding something … she’s not being honest.’

       ‘What do you mean?’

       ‘I don’t know … I’m not sure yet.’

      Tessa leaned forward and stopped the recording. ‘That’s pretty much it,’ she said. ‘I bring you out of it then.’

      Nick looked at her. ‘It’s so weird, listening to myself …’

      ‘What do you think is happening, Nick?’

      ‘I don’t know. It seems so real and now, I mean the year: I wasn’t born then. This sounds ridiculous, but I’ve been reading about it, you know, the past life stuff. I’ve always been a cynic, but I’m beginning to wonder … maybe it’s the only explanation.’

      Tessa wasn’t as quick to dismiss it as usual. She doodled on the notepad with her pen. He noticed she’d scribbled the year and the name, his name: John Davis. Johnny.

      ‘We’ll keep going, Nick. See what happens.’

      The craving was strong. Nick pulled into a supermarket car park and went into the off-licence. Just a mouthful. A mouthful would stop the trembling in his hands. He returned to the car with a small bottle of whiskey. He put the paper bag on the passenger seat, breathed deep and made a fist. Michelle. He hadn’t heard from her since she’d turned up at the house that night. He’d fought the urge to contact her, had picked up the phone a thousand times, and had to keep reminding himself that it wouldn’t be fair. What was done was done. And yet, if he told her, she could help. She could be the only thing between him and that bottle of whiskey.

      He took his phone from his pocket, the craving getting worse as the ringing went on. He hung up without leaving a message. What was she doing? Not sitting by the phone anyway. That was good. He wouldn’t expect her to. Maybe she was too angry now to even answer.

      At home, he opened the bottle of whiskey and poured a shot. This would be it, his last, something to steady him while he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. He raised the glass to his lips, swallowed it in one and gripped the sink as the liquid burned the back of his throat. He picked up the bottle to pour again, and then, mad at his own weakness, made a fist and tried to overcome it.

      Take the drink and pour it down the sink, Nick. Tessa’s voice. You don’t want it. Don’t need it.

      But he did. He’d begun pouring the second glass when his mobile rang. The jangly sound of it almost made him drop the bottle. Michelle. Her name flashed up on the screen and he answered it before he had time to think.

      ‘Hey. Did you ring?’

      ‘Yeah. Sorry, were you in class?’

      ‘No, soup run. We’ve just finished.’ Her tone was uncertain, but at least she wasn’t mad. He couldn’t handle that.

      ‘Could you … I mean is there any chance you could you come over?’

      A beat before she answered. ‘Okay. I’ll just go home first, get changed …’

      ‘No. I mean, do you think you could come straight away? There’s something I need to tell you.’

      She picked up on the urgency in his tone. ‘What is it? Is everything all right?’

      ‘I don’t want to discuss it over the phone, how soon can you get here?’

      ‘I guess around thirty minutes, all being well …’

      Relieved, Nick hung up and paced the room. He looked at the bottle of whiskey, but he didn’t pour another drink. He could hold out; Michelle was on her way, she could help him. He screwed the top onto the bottle and put it in the press, Tessa’s voice nagging in his head, telling him to pour it down the sink, but he couldn’t do that. Not yet. He’d do it later, after he’d told Michelle.

      Johnny. What was going on? He turned his laptop on and sat at the table. He had a year now; he had names. He typed the name ‘Johnny Davis’ into Google. A number of sites came up – nothing that looked familiar. He clicked on Google Images, scrolled through looking at picture after picture – and then he saw it. A grainy black-and-white shot. A long-haired man in a black T-shirt. He peered at it but couldn’t make out if it was the same person he’d seen under hypnosis. He went back to the search engine, added the year ‘1980’ and the word ‘murder’. Hand shaking, he hit the return key and closed his eyes.

      When he opened them again, he found himself reading the words he’d dreaded.

       Three Dead in Horror Spree, Child Escapes.

      Christ. He clicked the link. It was archived information from the Independent newspaper.

      The bodies of a man and a woman in their early thirties were found at a house in south Dublin in what appears to have been a domestic killing. The alarm was raised by a neighbour who heard screams coming from the house at around 6 p.m. The woman has been named as Rachel Davis, who lived at the address. Police are still trying to identify the man. In what is believed to be a related incident, a car plunged off Dun Laoghaire pier at approximately 7 p.m. A five-year-old girl was saved in a dramatic rescue by a man who swam out to the car. The driver who drowned at the scene has been identified as John Davis, husband of the deceased woman. He is believed to have handed the child out through a window just before the car was submerged. Police are not currently questioning anyone else in relation to either incident.

      The shake in his hand had got worse. This was all so horrifyingly familiar. He clicked on another link, saw himself, or rather Johnny Davis, and the woman, Rachel, smiling at the camera, looking very much in love. Three dead. Johnny Davis had killed himself, and attempted to take the little girl with him, but had changed his mind at the last second. The girl, the orphan, Caitlin, was that her name? He searched again, desperate for his assumption to be disproved, for there to be some other explanation for what he’d witnessed under hypnosis.

      He scanned the other news stories, but none of them mentioned the child’s name. He started again, typed ‘Caitlin Davis’ into the search engine. It was a long shot; the girl would be what – forty-two now? She could be married, or if not, she could have taken the name of her adoptive parents.

      There were a couple of women called Caitlin Davis on LinkedIn. Nick stared at the profile pictures and clicked to enlarge one of them. It had to be her. She bore such a resemblance to the woman, Rachel, that it just couldn’t be coincidence. He read her profile. She was the owner and editor of a woman’s magazine. He looked at her sites. She had a Twitter account. Her most recent tweet asked if anyone had a copy of a newspaper supplement about missing persons. It was probably a story she was working on, he thought.

      Caitlin. Rachel. They’d existed, these women from his confabulation. What would Tessa make of that? But what about him, could he really be Johnny Davis, a jealous husband, a killer? No, there had to СКАЧАТЬ