Borderliners (12 page)

I thought about the mind of the diary’s owner. Scenes of destruction were dominant. Many of the dreams featured burning embers, cinders and charred remains, images so powerful I could feel the author’s terror as I recalled it. And the eyes described in the diary had begun to haunt me, too. As I lay on the lounger, I could almost see the woman from the dreams in front of me, her curtain of dark hair, hollow cheek bones and dark eyes merged into deep purple, the colour of death, as they exacted a vice-like grip on my soul. I shivered, just thinking about it, and I decided I would do well to go somewhere warmer.

The sauna lay empty behind its thick glass door. I grabbed a towel and pushed my way into the heat. The decked wood inside sat bereft. Lying down, I stretched the full length of my body across a bench, only a couple of inches from the hot coals. The heat stung, but I didn’t care, wanting only to be submerged in the thick, scalding air, to submit to it and blot out my thoughts.

Images from my life danced about in the heat as I lay, thinking about all the people I'd come across in the short time I’d been living in the village. I considered their distance, and the thought of it made me tremble, despite the heat on my back and the undersides of my legs. Thankfully, after a few minutes the woody darkness of the sauna closed in. Gradually, I relaxed and extracted the negative images from my mind.

When I opened my eyes again I became aware of a flash of white just outside the glass of the door. I got up and paced over to take a look. I was enjoying my solitude and would need to escape if anyone else wanted to use the sauna. Peering through the hot semi-darkness, I saw a group of women just outside each with their health-club towels pulled in tight to their busty chests: soft, white towelling tucked into three sets of rosy Anglo-Saxon skin which bulged slightly at the edges. They moved off around the corner and I slipped through the sauna door towards the lockers in the hope of evading notice.

One of the three was Emma, Vince's younger sister. I could recognise her anywhere, just from her wide smile and loud confidence. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the other two were probably her friends Louise and Lucy. I wasn’t too keen on meeting them, particularly given their attitude to me in the surgery. I changed direction and went back towards the changing rooms reasoning that if I got under the shower they would be well and truly gone by the time I emerged.

My heart sank as voices increased in volume on the other side of the changing rooms. I busied myself with my shower gel and towel as I listened, catching Emma’s voice which stood out above the others, clear and confident. 'That was Julia back there. I’ve not seen her in here before, have you?

I didn’t hear the reply. The voices, muffled and low, rumbled on for a bit until I heard Lucy. ‘Did you hear that Martha Dawson was into all that New Age nonsense? You know, all that weird palmistry-astrology stuff.’

‘Yes and
I heard
it was suicide. And she’d been hanging around that New Age shop a lot too.’

Emma spoke again. ‘Vince mentioned something about that.’

I fumbled with the faucet, trying to get it on before anyone noticed I was in there.

After a few minutes spent standing under running water, I heard voices again. This time they seemed to be coming from the alcove just outside. Julia’s low, lilting tones were unmistakable although I couldn’t work out who the second woman was. Pulling my towel tight across my breastbone, I slipped out of the cubicle and around the corner to get a look at them.

Julia was standing alone near the lockers. My smile was small and tight as I padded over to join her and the smile she returned was more controlled…no, more controlling than mine. A real pro, I thought.

‘Hi Julia.’

‘Elena,’ said Julia. ‘I didn’t know you were a member here?’

‘Oh, I have been for a while.’

It wasn’t often I came across another woman who was as tall as I was, but this time I chose not to meet her level gaze, looking down, instead at her spindly fingers, which were cradling a small wash bag.

She smiled. ‘You know, Elena, it’s nice to bump into you here. I sometimes get the impression you work too hard.’

‘I do, especially now,’ I said. ‘There are a lot of troubled people in this village.’

She stared. ‘Not the people of my community.’

As she spoke, a shadow passed across her face, a darkness so intense I could feel it. Cold crept over my body as we stood, my hair wet and dripping, my feet bare and my stomach hollow. And as we stood, the look on Vince’s face flashed in and out of my memory once again, his incisive stare cutting a hole in my heart, through my integrity. Making me doubt myself.

There was no sign of the other person Julia had been talking to moments before, although in the distance I could hear loud gales of laughter coming from inside the steam room into which Emma, Louise and Lucy had just disappeared.

‘Look,’ I said, remembering something I could use. ‘I’ve been thinking, Julia, about your invite.’

‘Invite?’ Her eyes narrowed.

‘You remember? A few months ago you invited me to that women’s prayer group of yours. I’ve never been. I could do with it at a time like this.’

We both knew this wasn’t true.

After a small silence, Julia answered, ‘Of course. New people are always welcome. In fact, why don’t you join us next time? We’re meeting again on Sunday night at 7pm in our community hall.’

I nodded. ‘I’d like that. If you could call for me on the way, I’d appreciate it.’

She nodded too, and with a quick grimace, I said goodbye and moved towards the changing rooms. After another moment’s hesitation Julia went towards the pool.

Back in the changing room my locker door swung backwards to reveal my clothes and bag and the mirrored reflection of a young woman sitting behind me in silence. Caught off guard, I grabbed and dropped my wash bag, stumbling on its contents which had spilled out onto the floor. The girl seemed startled out of her stupor and stammered an apology.

Seeing that she was one of my patients, I stopped and composed myself. Her stance worried me: she sat very still, almost too still, as if she didn’t trust herself to move and her eyes belied an emptiness I didn’t care for. Sitting in her wet towel, with her short, neat hair still damp around her dull, pinched face, she seemed far older than her years. From what I remembered of this girl, she could be about twenty at the most. Even though I was only a few years older myself, somehow it felt like there were decades between us.

‘Hi Linda. Clumsy me, eh?’ I said bending down to push my belongings back into my handbag. ‘I really must clear this bag out.’

Linda seemed to jump back into the land of the living. She stood up and started to get changed into a tracksuit. Puzzled, I followed suit and when I was ready to go, I turned back to the girl, my gaze more deliberate. ‘See you soon,’ I said to her. ‘And take care.’

I strained to catch her words as they disappeared into the background echoing noise of the pool. ‘Is Julia still here?’ she said.

‘She’s in the swimming pool.’

‘Right. Well, I’ll see you soon then.’

With this she shuffled out of the changing room, head bent and eyes forward. As the door swung behind her, I threw on my coat and ran towards the gap she’d left behind, catching the back-swing a split second before it closed. She must have moved swiftly as I could see no sign of her in the health club foyer beyond. Instead my eyes rested on water features and immaculate staff in regulation tracksuits. Driven by a sixth sense, I ran through the reception area leaving a trail of wary glances in my wake.

Outside I paused to look up at a cloudless sky. The health club was in the middle of nowhere and the lack of street light and neighbouring properties made the darkness all the more pressing. It seemed like we were wrapped in a charcoal blanket studded only by the lights of the car park and neatly manicured grounds. The village lay several miles beyond, cut off from where I now stood.

A rush of something to my right caught my attention and I called 'Linda!?' without thinking. The movement stopped and as I looked round, Linda appeared from behind a small, midnight blue car on the other side of the car park. I walked over to her.

‘Yes?’ She had one eye on the spa entrance behind me.

‘What did you mean about Julia back there?’

‘Nothing. I just wondered if she was still there, like I said.’ Her pupils had narrowed to tiny dots.

‘Well yes, but Linda, what’s wrong? Do you want me to drive home behind you? Forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn, but if you're feeling anxious I can help.’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she replied, but the other-worldly expression I’d glimpsed before had crept back and her voice was faint.

'Well, any time you want to come back to our sessions, you can.'

Her face blanched, and a gust created by the reception door opening and closing behind us hit the back of my neck.

I sensed a third person emerge from the building into the shadows behind me. Linda wrung her hands together and I spun round to find myself almost nose to nose with Julia. I tried to combat the intensity of her stare with some cold hostility of my own, but she seemed to envelope all three of us in darkness. It felt almost like drowning, as we were plunged into the pitch black around.

After a pause, I found my voice to say the first thing I could think of. ‘Did you want a lift?’
Julia shook her head, slowly. ‘Thank you, Elena, but no. And if you'll excuse us, there’s something I forgot to say to Linda earlier.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Turning, I saw that Linda was nodding fervently, knuckles white against the blood red of her gym bag. She was nothing like Martha and yet it was Martha who sprang to mind, the whites of her knuckles on my consulting chair as she told me of her fears, the red of her lipstick against the pallor of her face as she told me she thought her life was in danger.

When Julia talks to people I feel a strange current pass from one to the other. I cannot identify it but it troubles me and sends my mind into a spin. At the same time, she has been so kind, so hospitable. I have been attending the community’s activities with her, and I am glad of this.

I accompanied Julia on her grocery shop today. We had to drive to the nearest large town as there is only a small corner shop in the village. She explained she often had to entertain and needed to bulk buy. It’s an alien concept for me. Furthermore, the money spent on luxuries surprised me. What a lot of money Julia and Iain have. She explained it was from ‘pooled resources’ the community keeps.

On the way home Julia decided to pay a visit to a young girl, Helen Taylor, who lives with her father on the outskirts of the village in a large, rambling farmhouse. I couldn’t discern the details but it seemed her mother had met an untimely end some months ago.
Best thing for her
, Julia seemed to mutter as she stared straight ahead at the winding road leading up to Helen’s home. I wanted to ask what she had died of but something about the silence which hung between us put me off. In the meantime, the road had narrowed and I noticed it was overgrown on both sides. Julia explained this was the fault of Helen’s father who had fallen into a deep depression after the death of his wife and stopped maintaining his property properly. I thought it looked as it should. Nature is supposed to be wild and untameable, rather like the human mind.

Just before we turned off up a narrow dirt track which led to the Taylor’s farm, I noticed a large, dark building through the trees. And again I was struck by the feeling that Julia could reach into my mind to pluck my thoughts out.

‘You don’t want to be going anywhere near that place,’ she said, one hand on the steering wheel as she thrust the other right across my bows to point in the direction of the dark building we were veering away from. I jumped back and shrugged, but she kept on. In a lowered voice, she muttered, ‘Work of the devil…’ I remained silent but when I didn’t respond, she straightened up and flicked her wavy locks my way. ‘Don’t be tempted to go there, Tony. You’ll be sure to regret it.’

I saw that we had reached the farmhouse, so I merely nodded and made to get out of the car. As I turned I noticed the glint in her eye. I wished I could forget about it, but later, as we sat at the Taylor’s large oak table which spanned the breadth of their sprawling farmhouse kitchen, I was aware of her eyes still on me, still glinting. I didn’t know what it was I’d done wrong, but I was afraid. It seemed Helen and her father - particularly her father - could not see it, as they seemed so taken with her. And who wouldn’t be? As we stepped across their threshold, she took Helen’s hands in hers and whispered a comforting verse or two from the Bible whilst fixing the girl’s father with her most charming smile, and the whole place was immediately filled with her confidence.

When we got back she had something to ask me.

‘It’s something important,’ she said. ‘In order to protect you from the evils of your…illness, the best thing would be for you to join our community, become an official member, perhaps.’

I didn’t reply and she took this as an invitation to elaborate. ‘I’ve noticed how preoccupied you are with death and purgatory. I’m sure you’ll agree this isn’t healthy, especially not for someone with your condition. No, you need something else, something which might enable you to get closer to the true nature of eternal life.’

I thought: maybe this will help me escape the alienation of my studies. The endless analysis and comparisons are so dry, so dead where what I really crave is contact. I hoped she would leave me to think about it, to ponder the idea and take my own sweet time to decide.

But she wasn’t finished. ‘We will need some money from you,’ she said. ‘To keep the community going, you understand. Not many people have enough money to help, but you have your father’s inheritance and he would have wanted it.’

I wasn’t so sure. ‘I think it would be best if I discussed that with my mother.’

She frowned and the intensity of her stare made me take a step back. ‘Now, Tony,’ she began, her voice so low I could barely hear her. ‘You know as well as I do that your mother would be happy for you to live at home all your life, but that’s hardly going to help you get better. No. What you need is connections, people who will stand with you shoulder to shoulder, who will show you the way. Our community can do that for you. We can give you a new lease of life, a new start.’