The Painted Door

Chapter 3

"How do you know my name" Nicola asked, baffled.

"Nicola, don't you recognise your old man?" Ronnie softly asked, reaching his hand out for her to take.

Nicola went silent as the grave, she started to form her face into various forms of recognition and confusion; morphing between them. She scoffed and walked away from Ronnie who called after her a couple times, she turned and snapped at him.

"You were no father to me!"

Ronnie was dragged out the cell by the officers and I was left in the empty room, processing reality for a second. A young male officer came to the cell and asked me to follow him, I obliged and followed to a small interrogation room where Nicola was already sitting across from where I was meant to be.

"Take a seat" she ordered, I did as instructed, the chair creaked slightly as my weight pushed down onto it. "Mr Davidson, what do you know about this red door?"

I groaned and sighed, "I already told you everthing I know about the damn door!"

"Yes, well. It would seem people who have passed through the door can crop up in people's lives if that person is still alive in the time they arrive in, or if they are still alive when they catch up to that person." Nicola explains, "Ronnie D'Amelio lost a young girl through that door a while ago" she continues

"Yes, apparently that was you" I respond, Nicola stands up abruptly sending the chair she was sitting on flying into the wall behind her with an almighty crash.

"Sorry" I apologise

"Don't ever call that man my father!" Nicola shouts

"Officer Lyons!" the male officer barked

"Apologies" she sighed, took a deep breath and then grabbed her chair and sat opposite me again. "Listen, I was that girl who walked through the door thinking it was my toy cupboard" she explains

"Right?" I raise an eyebrow

"Clearly, it's impossible to have gone from being 4 years old to being 38 in one month; so I got sent back 34 years, the house I found on the other side was a nurturing family. Ronnie was constantly buying all sorts. Drugs, weapons, prosititutes; you name it, he bought it!" she begins, "I found the Lyons family on the other side, I was slightly confused, but they took me in and loved me and cared for me more than Ronnie ever could." she explains, I lean forward in my chair.

"Officer Lyons, that man you call good-for-nothing? He's been searching for you ever since, newspapers, websites, anything he could access." I begin, "He pulled a blade on me when I suggested that people could come back, and he explained the story to me; he claims that you walked into the door thinking it was your toy cupboard and then the door slammed shut and vanished."

"Yeah, I wish that was the case" Nicola mutters, "I wish I just walked in there" she begins to cry, I see tears form and fall as she sniffles and wipes her eyes on her sleeve. The other officer gives her a box of Kleenex tissues.

"It's OK, if you don't want to talk to me about it" I say, in a low voice

"It's O-OK, I c-can t-t-t-alk abo-out it" she chokes on her words

I listen to her retelling of the events leading up to the moment she vanished, and I feel my heart sink like the titanic when she explains that Ronnie had kidnapped her from her mother and forced her to stay at his house whilst her mother called him frantically trying to get her back from him.

"That... that is-" I begin, she raises her hand to stop me commenting

"Thanks" she says simply, wiping more tears away. A sudden crash of thunder in the distance boomed loudly as rain struck against the window panes and the sides of the building surrounding us in a constant stream of tip-taps of rain drops against the murky room. Nicola tries to explain what happened next, but as soon as the memory is present in her mind, she breaks down in hysterical tears and has to be taken out, I hear her wails fading into the distance as the wind outside howls through the cracks and the rain strikes the walls like a cruel master. The male officer sat opposite me now.