The Attic Room: A psychological thriller by Linda Huber

poor little head off …
Fuck, fuck, that was a memory, she could remember screaming, there had been a
lot of screaming…
    What had happened to her?
    Sam tried to grasp her hands and she yanked them away,
conscious that she was shaking all over now.
    ‘Nina, you can tell me, or you can tell the doctor. Whatever
this is you can’t deal with it alone. Which do you want?’ He was holding his
mobile, thumb poised to tap.
    Nina stared at him, bleary-eyed. She didn’t want to confide
in him, but perhaps she should. She needed an impartial opinion, and telling
Sam would be better than having him summon yet another stranger here.
    ‘I – when I read the letter I remembered screaming too,
upstairs in the attic room,’ she whispered, not looking at him, unable to stop
her teeth chattering.
    For a moment there was silence, then Sam reached out and
squeezed her hand very briefly. Nina fought for control over her breathing. It
was a relief to have told someone, though Beth would have been a better
someone.
    ‘But Nina – if that’s an accurate memory then - ‘
    ‘Then the allegations in that letter could well be true,’
said Nina bleakly. She took a deep, shaky breath, then another. ‘Sam, I know.
It’s so horrible – I just don’t remember enough. Hell, I was only three years
old when we left this house, nobody would - ‘
    She broke off, yet more horror flooding through her as she
realised what she had said. This house… it had been this house, her gut
instinct was shrieking that now.
    Another thought crashed into her head. This could be the
reason for Claire’s flight from Bedford and the Moore family. Maybe they hadn’t
left because Robert Moore died – Claire could have been running from an abusive
John Moore. But how could she find out, all these years later? Nina swallowed,
her throat dry and painful.
    And of course, of course, hell – this would be why Claire
took over the application for both their passports so firmly. Nina closed her
eyes, remembering. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time; she signed
the appropriate pages and left the bundle with Claire to ‘send off with all the
paperwork’. Shit. She’d been twenty-two, Naomi was a toddler, and Claire had ‘done
the donkey work’, as she called it. Did she do it to prevent Nina noticing her
father’s name on her birth certificate? Nothing seemed more likely now.
    Dear God, where was this going to end?
    ‘I think you should go to a hotel,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t forget,
whoever wrote that letter is out there somewhere.’
    Nina stared out of the kitchen window. Rain was dripping
from the ivy growing up the garden wall. ‘There’s no reason to think he’d harm
me. All I want is to finish up here as soon as I can and then go home, Sam.
Back to Arran.’
    ‘I’ll do everything I can to get you on the first possible
plane north. Let’s wait and see what the police say when they get into John
Moore’s computer. They might find an explanation there.’
    Sam left soon after and Nina set her shoulders. She was
going to get on with things here. First stop was the police station for her
cheek swab, and then she would continue what she’d started yesterday, bagging
John Moore’s stuff.
    But how scary it was that John Moore, whether or not he was
her father and whether or not he was a criminal – had known about her all the
time. The thought made her feel invaded, as if he’d been snooping about in her
life.
     
     
    By evening she’d made good headway clearing John Moore’s
possessions and organised with a charity shop in town to take some bits and
pieces. It felt good, having a menial task to do, and it gave her time to
think. Either John Moore was her father – and she was still hoping he wasn’t –
or he was a more distant relation. He may have abused the letter-writer in the
past, but it was also possible that the writer was nothing more than a mean
chancer after the money. After all, a sick, single man might pay up simply