The Final Minute Read Free Page B

as if she thought I might grab her at any moment if she stayed put. Of course I’d never mentioned the fact that I occasionally had inappropriate thoughts about her, nor had I ever put any of those thoughts into action. If anything I was very much the other way, avoiding any physical contact, just in case. But I wondered then if she had an inkling that my view of her wasn’t entirely brotherly.
    I sighed. ‘Yeah, I know. I’m sure I will eventually. But it just seems to be taking a long time.’
    ‘Dr Bronson said there’s been some progress this week. That you might actually be getting the first memories back.’
    I wasn’t sure that it was entirely ethical for Dr Bronson to be discussing my condition with Jane, especially as he always liked to inform me that anything I said would never go further than the four walls of my sister’s study where we always had our meetings, but I let it go. ‘I’ve had a few,’ I said, ‘but nothing substantial.’ There was no way I was going to tell her anything about the dream, and I was hoping that the doc hadn’t either. I didn’t want my sister thinking I was some kind of psycho.
    ‘He also says you didn’t want to do the hypnotherapy today,’ she added, wearing a vaguely reproachful look.
    I raised an eyebrow. ‘Did he now?’
    ‘You know, you’ve got to trust him, Matt. It’s costing me a lot of money to hire his services – these things don’t come cheap. He’s one of the best therapists in the country. So please, try to cooperate.’
    ‘I will.’
    ‘He’s still here if you want to see him. It seems daft for him to come all this way from London and not manage to get a full session in with you. Especially when you’ve been making progress.’
    ‘I don’t think I can face it today. I’m sorry, Sis.’
    ‘It costs me six hundred pounds every time he comes here,’ she said, the frustration showing on her face.
    I didn’t want to upset her, and I could see I was doing a pretty good job of that, but there was no way I was going under today. ‘Well, as I said, I’m sorry, but I’m really not feeling up to it.’
    She breathed out loudly in a show of exasperation and, with an angry shake of the head, left the room, shutting the door behind her with something close to a slam.
    I’d never seen Jane like that before. She always went out of her way to be nice to me. But then, I thought, I’d always cooperated in the past, and now I was standing up to her. I remembered her words to the doc earlier: How much longer? They hadn’t sounded like those of a caring sister.
    I looked down at the cup of tea and decided there was no way I was going to drink it. God alone knew what Jane had put in there but I was sure it was more of the drugs they’d been feeding me these past two months, the ones that had always seemed to sap my energy. The irony right now was that, far from feeling sick, I actually felt better physically than at any time since I’d arrived here.
    A thought struck me then with absolute clarity. I had to get out of this house. I needed to breathe in some fresh air, to walk and to think.
    To remember.
    I waited for a few minutes until I heard Dr Bronson’s car pulling away on the gravel driveway, then got up and went over to the old-fashioned sash window. I flicked open the catch as far as it would go, which was only about eighteen inches. The view looked straight out on to a beech tree, the outer branches of which were tantalizingly close.
    Not even thinking about it, I crawled through the gap in the window and manoeuvred myself round so that I was half in and half out, before slowly letting myself down so I was hanging from the ledge. At this point I had no choice but to drop. The distance from my feet to the grass was probably about eight feet. It was a long way, especially given that spending the last few months sitting around had left me seriously unfit, but it was too late to worry about that now and I felt an unusual sense of exhilaration as I