I promised myself I would never let my mind go back there, I would never revisit that night, but I can’t help it. Seeing that image of Huntley Lodge has brought everything rushing back. My breath is getting shallower. Breathe in, Faye… but nothing helps. It’s like the whole cast from that dreadful nightmare has pulled up in a bus inside my head and now they’re all stepping off and back into my life.

Tara Moore is the first down the steps. I hate her. The kind of hate you can only muster up for someone you once loved. Tara was my best friend. We grew up together. Did everything together. I loved that girl… I was there when she needed me because I thought she would have done the same for me. But then she did the unthinkable. I didn’t know what Tara Moore was capable of.

My mind is rambling, remembering, trying to make sense of the sudden surge of memory bursting through the barrier that I’ve built to protect it. My head is slumped, tears are welling in my eyes and then I hear the sound of the intercom in the hallway calling my name. My last appointment of the day. Shit. Dabbing my eyes, I take a deep breath and inhale the soft scent of vanilla in the air. I pull a smile onto my face and hope to hide the utter turmoil going on inside me. People need to have faith in their doctors; they need to believe they’re strong, that they have everything under control. So this is not the first time I’ve had to disguise my crumbling interior.

Taking the file from the table, I brush myself down. I lift my head high, shaking off the fear, the truth, the anxiety over what is going to happen now. The knot in my stomach tightens as I walk out the door and, not for the first time, wish I had never set foot in Huntley Lodge.

Chapter Four

Then

‘How much?’

‘Six hundred euro a month.’

‘That’s for nothing, why is it so cheap?’ Tara’s eyes are open wide, staring at me in disbelief and excitement. I’m sitting on her bed watching her try out some makeup her Aunt Rose gave her for her birthday. The room is small compared to my bedroom in my parents’ house but it’s cosy. We prefer hanging out here. Tara’s an only child so unlike at my house, where there are three of us, we don’t have to put up with the constant rows over someone touching something belonging to someone else.

‘I know, great isn’t it? He’s a friend of my father’s and just wants someone staying in it for a few years until he’s ready to renovate it or something like that. Anyway my dad thought of us because it’s so close to the college.’