The Last Laugh

The Last Laugh

The sound of their laughter met him as he opened the front door. He
found them in the kitchen. She was sitting opposite Emma at the table,
nursing a mug of coffee, a tall, slim girl with long dark hair. Emma
looked up and smiled.

"Here's Jason," she said. "Jason, this is Samantha. She came in the
shop to book a holiday just before we closed. We hadn't seen each other
since we left school."

Jason stood frozen in the doorway, feeling the blood drain from his
face. He could say nothing, only stare as if at a ghost, while memories
suppressed for years bubbled to the surface.

She should not have laughed at him! If she hadn't wanted to dance why
couldn't she just say so, politely? Instead of looking him up and down
in that contemptuous way, then turning back to her mates and laughing.
Burning with humiliation, he had spent the rest of the evening in the
bar.

He must say something, Emma would notice..

"Oh, er, hi. Going somewhere exciting?"

"Just a short trip to Paris, with a friend."

"Boyfriend?" asked Emma, archly.

Samantha smiled and shook her head. She was looking at him as if he
was someone she had met for the first time. Polite, friendly. Could she
really have forgotten him? Of course, ten years is a long time and it
had been dark in the disco. With that strobe lighting you hardly see
what anyone looked like. It had been even darker, afterwards.

"Sam's got a really interesting job," Emma was saying. "She works at
that Alternative Therapy place, you know, the one on Moseley Road.
She's a hypnotherapist."

"Goodness," said Jason. "What's that when it's at home?"

"I mostly see people who want to give up smoking or drinking, or need
help to deal with stress."

"I wouldn't be much good to you then. I don't smoke and I don't
drink."

"Jason has no vices," grinned Emma. "Well, hardly any."

Samantha drained her mug. "Thanks for the coffee, it's been lovely
meeting again after all these years, we must do it again, but I really
have to go now. Do you mind if I ring for a taxi?"

"Don't be silly," cried Emma. "Jason will run you home, won't you,
dear?"

"Certainly," agreed Jason at once. He would be glad of the opportunity
to speak to her alone.

Yet once in the car he could think of nothing to say. In the weeks
after it had happened he had been terrified every time there had been a
knock on the door. She must have told someone. He had scanned the local
papers frantically every night. Nothing. But as the weeks turned into
months and then into years he had begun to relax. Eventually it had all
seemed like a dream. After all, he was a different person now, no
longer the gangly youth whose mother insisted on knitting all his
pullovers. He had a good job, grocery manager at the local supermarket.
A nice home, a lovely wife. He could not allow all that to be
jeopardised by an almost forgotten incident from the past. He must find
out how much she remembered. Then if necessary he would deal with
her.

She lived in a modern low-rise block of flats on the other side of
town.

"Thanks for the lift," she said.
"Would you like to come up for a drink?"

Jason hesitated. It was true that he hardly ever drank. Some people
could take it, some couldn't. He had told himself afterwards that it
was the drink that had made him behave as he had that night. He had not
been himself. Following her from the club like that. She had laughed
out of the other side of her face then, all right.

"Thanks," he said. "I don't mind if I do."

Minutes later he was sitting on a white leather sofa sipping a large
whisky. He looked round the room admiringly. "Pays well, then, this
hypnotherapy lark?" he said. "How'd you get into it, anyway?"

She came to sit beside him. "Well," she began slowly, "It was personal
reasons, really. When I was fifteen I had a very traumatic experience,
so traumatic that I suppressed all memory of it, tried to pretend it
had never happened. Of course that was totally the wrong thing to do,
it led to dreadful psychological problems. I was in therapy for years.
It was only when I managed to recover the memories under hypnosis that
I was able to deal with them, and regain some sort of control over my
life."

Jason gulped his whisky nervously.
"Did you remember . . . everything?"

"As much as I needed. By then I had become interested in the subject.
I decided to study it, and eventually became a therapist myself. I hope
I manage to help others, as I was helped. Finish your drink."

Obediently Jason drained his glass. She smiled at him.

"You don't have to worry about me, Jason. I'm no danger to you. I
don't remember anything."

Relief surged through him. Of course she was right. She was not a
threat. Why had he ever imagined she might be?

"I think it's time you went home." She helped him to his feet. "Oops!
That drink has gone to your head. I'd better see you downstairs." She
slipped her arm through his as they negotiated the staircase. "Of
course, it's not just the drink, there's the little something I put in
it as well. Quite harmless, I use it occasionally on the more difficult
cases. It makes them less inhibited. More suggestible."

She walked him across the forecourt to his car. "You must be careful
on the way back. Especially on that bend in Dumbles Lane, you know, the
one with the big oak tree. They keep threatening to cut it down, but I
expect it will take another accident before they do anything. It would
be so easy too lose control, if you take the corner too fast. And you
always drive fast, don't you?"

She dumped him in the driver's seat and picked up his keys from the
ground where he had dropped them. For a moment she stood looking down
at him.

"Did you really think," she said, "I would forget the face of the man
who raped me? Now, drive!"

She slammed the door. After a couple of attempts he managed to get the
key in the ignition. As he pulled away he caught a last glimpse of her
in his wing mirror.

She was laughing.