Final Cut(10)

Conclusions and treatment plan

The working diagnosis is currently dissociative fugue with dissociative amnesia. The patient will be engaged in psychotherapy as an inpatient and has been reassured that in this condition, symptoms will often resolve spontaneously. Though discharge is not imminent, a current concern is her housing situation, and the patient has consented to appropriate referrals to social services and other agencies. She cannot remember the four-digit pass code on her mobile phone (and, rather frustratingly, has not yet agreed to allow us to ask the police to investigate), but she seems certain (and I am optimistic) that she will do so eventually.

Report prepared but not signed by,

Dr Laure Olsen BSc PhD MRCPCH





Now





6


Hope Cottage, along with three or four almost identical stone-faced buildings, is off a quaint, cobbled square at the bottom of Slate Road, accessible only through a narrow L-shaped alley and so close to the sea I can taste it. It’s perfect, sparse but comfortable, with everything I need. A cloistered bolthole to which I can retreat.

Downstairs comprises the kitchen and a living room, in which a deep sofa and matching armchair complement a carpet of seagrass. A television stands in one corner, a circular mirror on the wall to the left, and in the opposite corner, by the door, hangs a barometer, the needle hovering seemingly permanently between Rain and Stormy. Upstairs there’s one bedroom, plus a bathroom. Everything is tasteful: all biscuits and greys with throw cushions in contrasting colours, extra blankets on the bed, framed photos on the wall featuring picture-postcard scenes in arty black and white. More photos decorate the stairs, though here a couple seem to be family pictures. A woman – Monica herself, I’m guessing – features in several. In one she sits in front of a photographic backdrop, half turned to the camera, smiling, and in another she stands near the slipway with a group of kids, two girls standing slightly off to one side. Best friends.

I pour some coffee and drink it black. It’s bitter, but as soon as I’ve finished it I have another. I’ve been here for two days now and I’m not sleeping well. The village is almost exactly as I remember it, yet somehow also different, as if it’s a familiar person wearing different clothes. But there are more people around than I’d thought there might be. I see them, popping in and out of the shops, climbing the hill, relaxing on the benches down near the water. It’s hardly bustling, a long way from busy, but it doesn’t seem as forlorn and empty as I’d feared. More are submitting clips than I’d dared hope, too, and I’ve even spotted a few people filming. Everything’s going to be all right. It has to be.

I think back to yesterday’s submissions: a guy waking up, his wife handing him a card and wishing him a happy birthday. A girl running along the beach, as fast as she can, until she trips and falls. An old woman in a nursing home. Girls eating fish and chips by the water. One was particularly interesting, if almost certainly unusable. A teenager standing at the slipway beside The Ship Aground in the weak afternoon light, staring out at the waves. She grips the railing, then slowly begins to climb over. She clings to the metal, then, with a dramatic, campy flourish, lets herself fall. It’s as if she’s throwing herself into the water, and instantly I think of Daisy. I can almost believe it’s her, though Daisy can’t have jumped from the same place, as it’s only a few feet drop to the beach. But what is the girl doing? As I watched, she reappeared, running up the slipway, giggling. The camera zooms in and she grins, as if to say, Did you get it? Did I do well? and I realise she was taking the piss.

My mind goes to Daisy, and Zoe. Apart from Gavin, no one has mentioned them, but I’ve done online research of my own. I searched Daisy’s name, delving deeper this time. It was almost Christmas when it happened; she jumped in the early hours, nearly ten years ago. At home, in the caravan in which she lived, her clothes were untouched and her belongings as she’d left them. A few days later, one of her trainers washed up on the beach a few miles down the coast, followed shortly after by the remains of her jacket. The fact that her body was never found means she’s still classed as a missing person, but there can be little doubt she killed herself. No one suspects a third party was involved.

Zoe Pearson’s story is different. She went in late spring, over three and a half years ago. She was there one day, gone the next. Her bed empty, her parents thought she’d snuck out to meet a boyfriend, but she never returned. A runaway, that’s all; no one has talked about suicide, no one thinks she was abducted. So why, according to Gavin at least, do ‘some people’ think the girls’ cases are linked?

I finish my coffee and find my coat and camera. I won’t find out sitting here.

I squeeze through the narrow gap and out on to Slate Road. The village is more or less deserted. A lone man sits down by the slipway, and a little further on a group of girls has taken over one of the benches near the pub. Smoking, I suppose, though I’m too far away to tell. There’s no one else. I record the scene for a moment, then head down. On the slipway I film the gulls wheeling and diving over the lobster pots, the weed-tangled ropes slapping in the wind. I film The Ship Aground – or The Ship, as I know it’s called locally – the gift shops, a bookshop I find up one of the alleys. I film the lighthouse and make a mental note to return at night. Beyond the pub the coastline curves sharply towards the promontory that juts out into the water – The Rocks, Gavin called it – and on it, the black house sits. Bluff House. I film that, too, then decide to climb the steep path up towards the car park.