Each Day I Wake: A gripping psychological thriller: US Edition Read Free Page A

pass.”
    He took his daughter’s hand and walked on in the rain.
    As I watched them walk away, I realized he’d helped me. The moment had passed. So long as I didn’t look towards the pool, so long as I didn’t think about the volume of water held there. I would be fine.
    The fear had passed. But I now knew that at any time it could return.
    I made it to the path that ran alongside the pool and turned right at Bird Street, up a short hill.
    I knew where this would lead. To the Close, past Erasmus Darwin’s house, and then to the first full view of the three-spired Cathedral itself.
    I knew these things.
    I knew I belonged here.
    So why couldn’t I remember who I was?
    Why didn’t this give me back my past?
    I walked into this ancient space. Where St Chad was buried, where the townsfolk fought for a Parliament, where Samuel Johnson walked and, yes, I knew these things about this place.
    It was somewhere I should call home.
    I stopped walking and looked up at the stone statues of the saints that peopled the front face of the Cathedral. So many saints, too many sinners down here on the ground.
    When I made it back to Lombard Street, Janet was relieved yet agitated. “Tom, don’t do that again. Please. Don’t go out like that without telling me.”
    “I had to find out.”
    “Find out what?”
    “If I belong here.”
    “You’re wet right through.”
    I thought of the young father and his daughter at the pond side. “I didn’t feel the rain.”

CHAPTER 13
    My sister Marianne, flew in from Florida and we spent a long weekend reminiscing about our childhood.
    The terraced house in Nottingham.
    Marianne closed her eyes to bring back the scene. “The house was so small and we had so little. I think times must have been hard for Mom and Dad, raising two children on a health worker’s pay.”
    “What did he do?”
    “You really don’t recall?”
    “I thought Janet told you I need to rebuild it all.”
    She apologized. “I’m sorry, Tom. I didn’t need to say that. It’s just that I can’t get used to your knowing none of this.” She paused. “Dad was a nurse - and a good one, too. But the pay was poor and Mom couldn’t work. Something about her nerves. I think they kept most of it from us. They gave us a good upbringing and, look, we’ve both done well.”
    I nodded as if what she was saying was second sense to me. “Yes, we owe them everything.”
    Marianne moved on to talk about the Brogans, the Irish family next door.
    Marshall Brogan, my boyhood friend and sparring partner.
    “You and he were the same age and fought like demons. I can’t count the number of times you’d be locked together in mortal combat. He was a strong lad. There were times when I thought he might kill you. But somehow you survived. I guess that’s how you learned to step back to get what you want.”
    I didn’t like what she was saying. “You mean I’m someone who compromises too much?”
    She smiled. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that.” She paused. “How can I say it better? You, Tom, my brother, are the dearest person I know. And the biggest part of that is that you’ve learned to get on in life by avoiding the fight. Any kind of fight. I wish there were more people like you out there. The world would be a better place.”
    “You mean I used that with Mom and Dad.”
    “All the time. Drove me mad, seeing you getting what you wanted from them.”
    “But you’re not still cut up about it?”
    She smiled. “Course not! It’s just families. What they are.”
    Marshall Brogan’s elder sister Della, the tomboy leader of our gang.
    “I think you must have had a crush on her, like all the other boys in the street. She was so full of life, so quick to dare us to do what we knew we shouldn’t do and just as quick to give us a hard time if we refused.”
    The times we had, marauding over the nearby Nottinghamshire countryside.
    “You remember the oak we called the Bash Tree, the one on the far side of the