Just Before I Died: The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Ice Twins

‘You should pity me, Kath. I’m doing Section 211 on Tree Preservation Orders, it’s practically better than sex.’ He clicks something on his computer. ‘Jesus, I hate January. What we really need is a massive accident to liven things up. Like, a bus could drive into a lake, up at Meldon, that would help.’ He stops, and turns my way. ‘Hey, sorry, ah, Kath, I—’

‘No. It’s OK. I want people to forget, Andy, I’m bored of being The Woman That Had That Accident.’ He listens as I go on: ‘In fact I want to go back to regular work soon, working proper shifts, doing my job as before, I mean: it’s nice you’re giving me half days, letting me work from home, but I’m OK now. Can we get back to normal?’

‘Abso-bloody-lutely. If you really feel you’re up to it, that’s great. We’ll put you back on normal shifts in a few weeks.’

He returns to his work. I gaze at him as he concentrates.

Why won’t he let me do proper shifts now? Sometimes it feels as if everyone is tip-toeing fastidiously around me, scared I might break. They’re not treating me like someone recuperating, they’re treating me like something odd. Unusually fragile.

Returning to my work, I scan the words on my own computer. The official Dartmoor Tourism website.

Dartmoor constitutes the largest area of granite in Britain, with about 360 square miles stretching across central Devon, making it the only true wilderness in Southern England. Much of it is covered by marshy peat deposits, in the form of bogs or mires. The moorland is also capped with many characteristic granite outcrops, known as tors (from the Celtic ‘tor’, meaning tower) that provide varied habitats for wildlife. The entire area is rich in archaeology, from the Neolithic to the Victorian …

I want to edit this, make it flow better, liven it up: but the words blur in my eyes. Sphagnum. Carboniferous. Wassailing …

I hate this new, enduring haze in my mind, I despise this peculiar sensation – since the crash – that my mind has become one of those vast cupboards in my mum’s old kitchen, in the big Victorian house, down on the coast at Salcombe. Those cupboards were dusty and chaotic, and every week my hippy-chick, eco-sensitive mum would reach in and find some pot of organic mustard, or jar of Manuka honey, that she’d clean forgotten, and she’d say, Gosh I didn’t remember we had this, and sometimes she’d have to throw it away, wasting more of the dwindling Kinnersley cash, and sometimes the jar would go back in, only to be forgotten and retrieved and thrown away all over again … and that’s what my brain feels like, since the accident. I don’t quite know what’s in there, and when I put things in there they sometimes get lost, and when I find things in there they are often useless, past their sell-by date, actively unpleasant.

My brain is hiding things from me.

And now it’s 3.15. So dark the office lights are on.

I try to relax. Perhaps I am being hard on myself. The stress about Lyla doesn’t help, the tensions with Adam, too. Perhaps we all need more time. That’s what the doctors repeated from the start: Be patient, don’t expect instant miracles. And remember, they said: remember that you are relatively lucky: because you will heal over time. I was classified with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, nothing worse; I was apparently unconscious for less than six hours; I was 13–15 on the Glasgow Coma Scale.

Any longer than that, and I’d have been upgraded and they would have taken away my driving licence, for at least a year. At one point in my unconsciousness I was technically dead, flatlining for a minute or so, but the machines flickered into life and I got through. So I was ‘Mild’.

MTBI.

As for my retrograde amnesia, the stuff I’ve forgotten from before the accident, that is expected to recede over the coming weeks, and the misplaced memories will return like ‘hills emerging after a flood’ as one of the psychologists put it, and eventually the whole landscape will be revealed as the obscuring waters drain away.

‘Hey. Is that your new car?’

Startled from this introspection, I look up. Andy is gesturing out of the window: I can see Adam’s cousin Harry, standing by a blue Ford Fiesta, parked right outside. The car is a bit battered and scratched, but that’s fine, nearly every car on Dartmoor is a bit battered and scratched. And so am I.

Harry waves at me. He has the Redway looks: a handsome young man. They all have these looks, the Redway cousins. The eyes and the cheekbones, they are so distinct. Harry does odd jobs all over the moor, when he’s not making a few quid from car dealing. He is a bit of a lad.

But he’s also very likeable. He reminds me of a younger Adam. But then Adam, in the right mood, reminds me of a younger Adam. I think I desire my husband as much today as the afternoon I first met him.

Andy says, ‘You must be chuffed to get wheels again, don’t know how you’ve been coping without a car.’ He flashes me a smile. ‘Go on, Kath, go for it – I’ll see you tomorrow.’

My kindly boss is making my shortened working day even shorter. I can get my new car, collect Lyla from school, go home to Huckerby, and everything will be fine. My brain will be fine. Lyla will be fine.

‘Thanks,’ I say, ‘You’re a superstar,’ and I grab my raincoat, and step out into the wintry afternoon. The cold has abated, which means it is probably about to rain. Harry and I sign the documents and he hands me the keys and he says, ‘It’s not a Ferrari, but it’ll give you a couple of years.’

And I offer my thanks as I climb in. And when he strolls off to a pub, I sit here in the driver’s seat, holding the cold, hard keys in my hand, suddenly scared that I have forgotten how to drive. I haven’t done it since the crash into the reservoir. Since the dark waters tried to turn me into moorland mud.

Key. You put the key in the ignition. You turn it. Then the engine starts. Remember?Come on, Kath Redway: you’ve done this a million times. You got your licence at nineteen. You’ve done this virtually every day for eighteen years. It’s called driving.

I turn the key. I press my foot down. I steer away. I do not crash into the saloon bar of the Plume of Feathers, I do not smash into the leaded windows, crushing off-duty prison wardens in a clatter of stained wood and beer-bottles. I am driving.

From the anxiety of the afternoon, I feel a kind of elation. I CAN DRIVE. It’s another sudden mood swing. I get more of them now. Since the accident.

Happy, even giddy, I collect Lyla from school. She looks a little bemused: she thought she was going to After School Club, to be alone in a whole new place, but she also looks content to be going home early, where people will talk to her, where she can play with the dogs in front of the fire.

Or make cryptic patterns with dead birds.

I CAN DRIVE!

But as we aim for the turning that leads to the open moor, to the wild emptiness, I realize I have left my bag in the office. I was so excited by the car, I quite forgot.

Hastily, I park, once again, outside the Dartmoor NP Office. The day is wintry and dimming, a faint drizzle speckles the windscreen.

Lyla pipes up as I swing open the door, ‘Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere, darling. Just the office. Forgot my bag.’

‘No! Don’t go!’

‘Lyla?’

I turn, surprised, a little shocked. Lyla is trembling in the back seat.

‘Mummy, don’t go. Don’t.’

This is strange. Lyla worries about odd things, shapes, sounds, or the wrong kind of prickly vest, but she rarely worries about being left alone.

‘Darling—’

‘No. Mummy! You might not come back! You might not come back!’

‘Lyla, this is ridiculous. I’ll only be gone a second, really, I promise.’ I put out a hand to calm her but she waves it away. She does, however, seem a little soothed. She turns and gazes at the wrinkles of rain on the window, the black shape of the prison.

I seize the opportunity. Scooting out of the door, I run into the office, past my surprised boss. ‘Forgot my bag!’

He grins. ‘Ah.’

Grabbing the handbag, I head back to the car, but as I do I notice something on Andy’s desk. It’s a row of roundish grey stones, about the size of large golf balls, or wild apples. They might have been there all day.

They’re half hidden by his computer.

All the stones have holes in them. And I’ve seen this sort of stone before. I know the type. And it makes me quietly shudder.

‘Hey,’ I say, trying to hide the tremble in my voice. ‘Where did you get those?’

He glances up at me, the blue light of his computer shining on his spectacles. ‘These rocks? Ah.’ He picks one up and turns it in the light. ‘They were arranged along the window ledges this morning, outside, so I brought them in. Kinda odd, right? Guess some hiker made a collection? Left them here overnight.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think so.’

His grin is edged with perplexity. ‘Sorry?’