it was time for Jadie to go to bed and for me to start getting ready to accompany Vincent to dinner next door. After managing to extract a new toothbrush from Tara’s store in the small room she used when she stayed over, I went up to the bathroom to take a shower.
For a while I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to find something familiar in the face that looked back at me, but in the end, depressed, I gave up and stepped into the shower cubicle. It was a good feeling, letting the hot water cascade down over me. I found it was impossible to protect the butterfly plaster on my temple from getting wet, but the cut didn’t hurt much and I soon gave up trying to tilt my head to avoid it. All my negative emotions washed away with the running water, leaving me relaxed and tingling under the hot jets. I closed my eyes, daring myself to conjure up the feelings I’d felt with Vincent when he’d rescued me, but all I felt was a light-headedness, a strange sensation of disembodiment.
It was all too easy to pretend I didn’t exist, standing under the warm water as it trickled over my eyelids, ran down my nose, over my mouth and dripped off the end of my chin. I had just tipped my head back, luxuriating in the feel of it, when the water began to cool. In a few short seconds the water turned downright cold and I reached for the tap to turn it up, wondering if the hot tank was empty. It seemed stiff and I began to gasp as the jets of water falling over me became breath-takingly icy.
Squinting from under the deluge, I groped again for the tap, trying to turn it off, but the water stung my eyes so I closed them again quickly, wrenching at the tap with both hands. But the water kept pouring. Freezing cold water invaded my mouth and nostrils, filling my airways, and suddenly I could barely breathe. Gasping and choking, I held my head away from the cascading water, my fingers fumbling frantically for the tap again. It wouldn’t budge. I tried to push open the shower door to escape the icy torrent, but that too appeared jammed. With horror I found the shower cubicle was filling with dark water that was rising rapidly up around my ankles and legs, climbing swiftly up over my hips then under my raised and frantically flailing arms.
Pounding on the shower door with fists that were turning white with cold, I tried to call for help, but within seconds the water had risen up round my shoulders and was trying to force its way from the back of my neck over my upturned chin and into my mouth. I clamped my lips tightly together as the water lapped over my head and I took one last great gasping breath before I sunk beneath the murky blackness.
For a few more agonised moments I kicked impotently at the glass door with frozen feet and hands. I could feel my hair floating up round my head as my lungs burned with the desperate urge to breathe. Everything started to go black.
‘No!’ I screamed, the words erupting in a cascade of bubbles, which broke the surface over my head. ‘No!’
The last of my breath had been expelled with the scream and now I hung limply in the water. Any second my tortured lungs would take a last desperate, gasping breath and the water would flood me, claiming me for its own. As I prepared myself for the inevitable the shower door was yanked open. Water poured out in a great torrent and someone hauled me out of the shower onto the bathroom floor, where I lay fighting for breath.
I felt a warm towel being draped over my violently shaking body; dry hands tucking it securely round me. A second towel was placed under my head and I lay there for a moment, too weak to move.
‘You’re OK now.’ Tara’s voice was anxious. ‘Looks like you had the water turned up much too hot and you fainted. I’ll fetch another plaster for that cut of yours. Just lie still, you’ll be all right in a minute.’
I lay for some time staring at the black-and-white-tiled bathroom floor, trying to make sense of what had happened while waiting for some strength to return to my limbs. Eventually I managed to sit up and I pulled the towel tightly round me.
Tara bustled in holding a first-aid box and kneeled next to me while she patted the cut on my temple dry and applied a fresh plaster. ‘You want to be careful of that for a few days,’ she advised. ‘That wound is quite deep. You shouldn’t have got it wet.’
I stared round the steamy bathroom. ‘Where did all the water go?’
She looked at me blankly. ‘I assume it went down the drain.’
‘There was so much of it,’ I mumbled. ‘The shower was full to the top.’
I could see her eyeing me dubiously. ‘The tap was already off when I heard you call out and came in to find you huddled on the floor of the shower. It’s lucky I know how to unlock the knob from outside the bathroom door—I’ve always worried that Jadie might lock herself in.’
‘You didn’t see all the water then?’ I asked hesitantly.
She shook her head. ‘I saw you hunched over in the shower tray and I pulled you out. I thought you’d slipped or fainted. Lucky you cried out when you went down or you could have been in there for ages.’
‘I’m sor—’
‘Don’t apologise,’ she interrupted, cutting me off. ‘It could have happened to anyone. Just take it easy, OK?’
I nodded and let her help me to my feet, supporting myself against the washbasin with my free hand.
‘I’m fine now, honestly.’
‘You shouldn’t go out tonight, you know. You look really washed out.’
I would have laughed at her unintentional joke if I’d had the strength. Instead I allowed her to help me to my room, where I sank gratefully down on the bed.
‘Is there anything else you need?’ She hesitated before turning to leave the room.
I shook my head. ‘I’ll be fine in a few minutes, thank you.’
As soon as she’d gone I reached round and pulled the quilt round me, trying to instil some warmth back into my damp, shivering body. What had happened in there? Had it all been a horrible hallucination brought on by the heat of the shower or was my head injury worse than I had feared? Closing my eyes, I realised that this was not the first time my imagination had run away with me; first there had been the feeling of euphoria I’d experienced when Vincent had carried me back here, then the bad dreams and now this…
I sat bolt upright on the bed as another thought occurred to me. Hadn’t I been trying to recapture that very feeling—the peaceful out-of-body sensation of floating in another place with Vincent when the water had suddenly turned so cold? Little daggers of fear shot through me; could my memory loss be part of something else, something sinister that I didn’t understand?
Sliding off the bed I dried myself vigorously, taking comfort from the roughness of the towel as I rubbed it hard over my skin. Soon my whole body was pink and glowing, and I put my doubts firmly to the back of my mind as I turned to the immediate matter of readying myself for an evening out with Vincent.
For all her possessiveness, Tara was providing me with everything I needed to survive. She had laid out some clothes for me over the back of the chair, presumably selected from Vincent’s wife’s wardrobe. I slipped into what appeared to be some brand-new silk underwear, pulled on smart grey trousers and buttoned the blouse. Tara had brought me an eyeliner pencil and lipstick, and I applied both to my pale face, determined not to give in to the lingering feeling of despair the ordeal in the shower had left me with.
Tara had also put out a thick cardigan, which I picked up before squaring my shoulders and hurrying downstairs to where Vincent was waiting for me, looking resplendent in a claret-coloured striped shirt; a suede jacket thrown over his shoulder.
He looked at what appeared to be a pretty expensive gold watch and smiled at me. ‘Spot on time. I like a lady who can be punctual.’
I ventured a glance at Tara, who avoided my gaze as Vincent took my arm and guided me towards the front