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miles away. She shook her head as she turned down
the heat.
    Just as she sat down at the
table to eat her dinner, the telephone rang.
    ‘Hello, darling, it’s me.’
    ‘Oh, hi, Mum. How are you?’
    ‘I’m fine. I was just calling to
make sure you’re okay.’
    ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
    ‘Good. Listen, I’m sorry I
couldn’t spend much time with you yesterday. I feel bad.’
    ‘Oh, that’s okay.’
    ‘Are you working tomorrow,
Alice?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Great, why don’t you come over
and spend the day with me? I’m not going in to the salon; I’m taking a couple
of days off.’
    ‘Okay, great, because I was
meaning to come and see you anyway. I’ll come over at about ten, is that okay?’
    ‘Yes, that’s fine. I’ll see you
then. Bye.’
    ‘Bye, Mum.’ Alice placed the
handset back onto the telephone and as she did so, she felt the sharp pain in
her right arm again, starting from the wrist and ending at the elbow. She
screamed out loud and grabbed her arm. This time the pain lasted for about ten
seconds and she could hardly bear it. Her arm felt stiff. She rocked backwards
and forwards until the pain stopped. When it did stop, her mind was filled with
concern. There had been no reason for the pain and it had come on so suddenly
without warning. The day before, when it had happened, she thought it was
because she had stretched her arm too far reaching for the table, but she had
not had to stretch her arm at all when she replaced the handset just now—the
telephone was right in front of her.
    She sat at the kitchen table,
hesitating to pick up her fork to continue eating her meal, half-expecting the
pain to return; she was on edge as if waiting for it. But it seemed to have
disappeared as quickly as it had come. She slowly flexed her arm and it felt
fine, so she decided to try to put it to the back of her mind.
    As she ate her pasta, she
flicked through the rest of the newspaper, trying to avoid the story about Jane
Forester, but thoughts of her father taunted her mind. She wanted to find out
more about him. Would her mother be willing to talk about him? In the past
eighteen years, she had hardly spoken a word to Alice about him. The odd bits
of information Alice did have had been gleaned from listening in to her
mother’s conversations with her friends. As the years went by, her mother had
lost touch with people who had known her when she was married. Whenever Alice
had asked her mother about him in the past, she had found ways to skirt around
the subject. She’d told Alice that the reason her father left was because they
had drifted apart. In the past few years, Alice had been busy with her studies
and her friends, so she had not been concerned about her absent father; she had
settled into a pattern in her life and felt quite happy as she was. She’d
always told herself that his rejection had never really affected her because
she was just too young when he left home for it to have had an impact on her
life. It was hard for her to relate to those people she would see on daytime
chat shows who wanted to find their long-lost parents; his absence had not left
a hole in her life. But now, suddenly, some part of her had been awakened, the
curiosity too loud to be ignored.
    As she lay in bed that night,
she resolved to try to find a way to ask her mother about Roger Forester, the
man who had once been a part of their lives. After tossing and turning in
anticipation of what information she might uncover, she eventually drifted off
to sleep. She dreamt she was in a large building, which looked like a hospital,
and she saw a long needle. A doctor was trying to find a vein to give her an
injection. She saw herself screaming. She woke up to find that she was actually
screaming and grabbing her right arm. The pain had returned, but as soon as she
realised what was going on, it subsided. She felt afraid to go back to sleep in
case the pain came back again.

 
     
    Chapter Four
    Thursday 14th August 1997
     
    Alice