Free A Trick of the Mind by Penny Hancock Page A

my phone, relieved to have a signal now I was back in civilisation, and pressed Chiara’s number. It went straight to voicemail.
    Flustered now, I played Patrick’s message again. His tone was relaxed, friendly. The anaesthetic – and he must only just have been coming out of it when he woke and saw me leaving
– must have confused him. That was when I remembered my diary, missing when I’d gone to get it out at the exhibition. I got my bag and put it on the kitchen table. I rummaged through.
My make-up bag was there. My purse. No diary.
    I’d emptied my bag in the hospital, looking for my mobile, when the nurse had suggested showing him photos. Had I missed putting the diary back, in my anxious state?
    If he rang again I would tell him that we’d never met. That it was a mistake. If he asked how my diary had got there I would say I had no idea. There were any number of explanations
– someone might have found it elsewhere and brought it in while visiting someone else. Who knows?
    Everything would be cleared up and I would never see him again.
    With this thought I went through to my room to unpack my bag, shaking everything out onto the bed, then pushing it into the washing machine. The clothes I wore at the hospital seemed
contaminated, I wanted the weekend washed off them.
    I put on my yoga trousers and a vest top and spread a rug out on the floor. I lay down and lifted my thighs into the Bridge. Lowered myself. I moved into a Fish, arching my back, folding my legs
into a fishtail shape, lifting my shoulders from the mat and resting the tip of my head on the floor. I lay on my back and did a Happy Baby pose – holding my toes – usually guaranteed
to evoke a sense of being in the moment. I lay back, tried again to empty my mind.
    The phone went almost as soon as I’d relaxed. I heard it click on in the kitchen, the recording asking the caller to leave a message.
    ‘Ellie! I’m a bit drugged up. You didn’t call back! I need your help to get me through this. Someone ran me over. But they can’t find who did this to me. It’s all
getting to me now. Please phone, no one else has.’
    Was he crying? Was that a sob I could hear?
    Should I pick up the phone? Explain? Or pretend I wasn’t here?
    I could perhaps ask to speak to one of the nurses, tell them that their patient was ringing me in the mistaken belief that he knew me. I hesitated, then made for the phone, grabbing it just as
the line clicked shut. That settled it. I would leave it.
    The poor man must realise, as his memory came back, that he’d never met me, that it was a mistake. The diary would be thrown away and my visit forgotten.
    I sidled into our cramped bathroom, put the plug in, ran a deep, hot bath and got in. Reflections of bathwater danced on the ceiling, white on white. Police cars whooped along Mile End Road
outside. Cars, their windows down, went past, music turned up loud, the bass reverberating. The bathroom door was ajar. I hadn’t bothered to lock it since there was nobody here but me. I
thought for a second that I heard someone opening the main door into the flat. Pepper began to yap. No one but me and Chiara had a key. But Chiara was at the pub with Liam. I froze. Someone was
moving about out there. I could hear the creak of a floorboard, the sitting-room door’s squeak.
    There was a smallish window in here, frosted glass, big enough if I pushed it up to crawl out of onto a garage roof. If I’d locked the bathroom door, I’d have had time. I sat up,
pushed my hands down on the edges of the bath, stood, dripping, reached for a towel.
    I stopped, listened again. I’d left my yoga clothes strewn all over the sitting-room floor. Nothing could have given an intruder a better indication of my vulnerability, in the bath, on my
own.
    My options: one, lean across, slam the door to buy myself time, jump out and slide the lock across. Two, confront whoever had come in. It couldn’t be Patrick from the hospital. He
couldn’t