Watching Edie: The most unsettling psychological thriller you’ll read this year. Camilla Way

to bear it. Maya continues to scream and yet the thought of picking her up is entirely beyond me; I am too exhausted to even lift my head.

      And then, my face still buried in my hands, I feel the bench beside me sag with a sudden weight, the warmth from the sun that had been shining on my right side vanishes and a familiar, oniony smell fills my nostrils. A thick arm rests upon my shoulders. I look up to find Heather sitting beside me. ‘There, there,’ she says gently. ‘Shush now.’

      I don’t think about how or why she found me, or what this means. Something inside me breaks at the sight of the old, familiar face, and I drop my head on to her shoulder and feel myself sink into her large, soft body. After a long time, she pats me on the back, gets up and, taking the handle of the buggy, holds a hand out to me as if I were a small child. ‘Let’s get you both home, shall we?’ she says. ‘And have a nice cup of tea.’

      This is how Heather comes back into my life. This is how it begins.

PART TWO

       Before

      Sometimes when I’m feeling sad there’s this thing I do to make myself feel better. I choose a memory from a time when I was really happy and I dive into it, leaving the world far behind; all its sights and sounds dissolving until the memory is all around me, more real and warm and colourful than the life I’d just been living.

      Because it’s Sunday we have all been to church, Mum, Dad and I. We were late so the pews were almost full and I had to sit across the aisle from my parents. The service went the same as usual with the same old prayers and hymns. But then, during the Lord’s Prayer, as I bent my head with everyone else and began to say the words, I felt the strangest sensation, like a cold pressure on the back of my neck. I continued on with the prayer … as we forgive those that trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil … the feeling grew stronger until at last I turned and there, amongst all the bowed, murmuring heads, was my mother, sitting bolt upright, her lips silent, her eyes fastened on me. And the expression on her face made my heart stop, actually stop for a long, dizzying moment.

      A second later she looked away and I went back to my prayer. My heartbeat returned, hammering against my ribs, my body trembled. The prayer ended and in its place was the rustling, shuffling throat-clearing sound of the congregation preparing to sing the next hymn. But I wasn’t amongst them any longer. I had left the sick, sad, desperate feeling far behind and the next thing I knew I was five and Lydia was two and we were playing together in our old room back in Wales.

      My mother had gone out and my father was in another room. I was absorbed in my dolls so it was some time before I looked up to discover that Lydia was surrounded by the empty pots of poster paint I’d been playing with before. Her face and hands, her clothes, the carpet surrounding her was covered in multicolour streaks. I gasped as she grinned back at me, pleased with herself. Mum would be home any minute and she’d be furious: it was my fault the paints were left where Lydia could get to them. But just at that moment Lydia threw her head back and began to laugh and I realized suddenly I didn’t really care. I went to her and put my arms round her and squeezed her tightly and laughed and laughed too, and love, I felt such love.

       After

      I can’t seem to get myself started. I think about getting up, getting on with it, but the hours and days pass and still I don’t move. Between waking and sleeping, memories gather and retreat. Sometimes Maya’s cry pierces the murky sadness that’s seeped into every part of me, leaving me listless and bedridden, without energy or purpose. Occasionally I’ll surface long enough to hear Heather’s soothing response, before I sink once again, pulled back deeper and deeper by the cold, dead fingers of the past.

      I drift.

      I’m in the street where I used to live with Mum. Above our row of pebble-dashed semis the sky is heavy with unshed rain yet somewhere behind it the sun still shines, infusing the world with a strange metallic light, the trees copper against an iron sky. A rainbow arches over the string of front yards with their washing lines and wheelie bins and abandoned toys and bits of junk, and somewhere out of sight the motorway roars on, like the blood rushing in your ears.