I am writing this at noon. Ben is downstairs, reading. He thinks I am resting but, even though I am tired, I am not. I don’t have time. I have to write this down before I lose it. I have to write my journal.
I look at my watch and note the time. Ben has suggested we go for a walk this afternoon. I have a little over an hour.
This morning I woke not knowing who I am. When my eyes flickered open I expected to see the hard edges of a bedside table, a yellow lamp. A boxy wardrobe in the corner of the room and wallpaper with a muted pattern of ferns. I expected to hear my mother downstairs cooking bacon, or my father in the garden, whistling as he trims the hedge. I expected the bed I was in to be single, to contain nothing except me and a stuffed rabbit with one torn ear.
I was wrong. I am in my parents’ room, I thought first, then realized I recognized nothing. The bedroom was completely foreign. I lay back in bed. Something is wrong, I thought. Terribly, terribly wrong.
By the time I went downstairs I had seen the photographs around the mirror, read their labels. I knew I was not a child, not even a teenager, and had worked out that the man I could hear cooking breakfast and whistling along to the radio was not my father or a flatmate or boyfriend, but he was called Ben, and he was my husband.
I hesitated outside the kitchen. I felt scared. I was about to meet him, as if for the first time. What would he be like? Would he look as he did in the pictures? Or were they, too, an inaccurate representation? Would he be older, fatter, balder? How would he sound? How would he move? How well had I married?
A vision came from nowhere. A woman — my mother? — telling me to be careful. Marry in haste …
I pushed the door open. Ben had his back to me, nudging bacon with a spatula as it spat and sizzled in the pan. He had not heard me come in.
‘Ben?’ I said. He turned round quickly.
‘Christine? Are you OK?’
I did not know how to answer, and so I said, ‘Yes. I think so.’
He smiled then, a look of relief, and I did the same. He looked older than in the pictures upstairs — his face carried more lines, his hair was beginning to grey and receding slightly at the temples — but this had the effect of making him more, rather than less, attractive. His jaw had a strength that suited an older man, his eyes shone mischief. I realized he resembled a slightly older version of my father. I could have done worse, I thought. Much worse.
‘You’ve seen the pictures?’ he said. I nodded. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything. Why don’t you go through and sit down?’ He gestured back towards the hallway. ‘The dining room’s through there. I won’t be a moment. Here, take this.’
He handed me a pepper mill and I went through to the dining room. A few minutes later he followed me with two plates. A pale sliver of bacon swam in grease, an egg and some bread had been fried and sat on the side. As I ate he explained how I survive my life.
Today is Saturday, he said. He works during the week; he is a teacher. He explained about the phone I have in my bag, the board tacked on the wall in the kitchen. He showed me where we keep our emergency fund — two twenty-pound notes, rolled tightly and tucked behind the clock on the mantelpiece — and the scrapbook in which I can glimpse snatches of my life. He told me that, together, we manage. I was not sure I believed him, yet I must.
We finished eating and I helped him tidy away the breakfast things. ‘We should go for a stroll later,’ he said, ‘if you like?’ I said that I would and he looked pleased. ‘I’m just going to read the paper,’ he said. ‘OK?’
I came upstairs. Once I was alone, my head spun, full and empty at the same time. I felt unable to grasp anything. Nothing seemed real. I looked at the house I was in — the one I now knew was my home — with eyes that had never known it before. For a moment I felt like running. I had to calm myself.
I sat on the edge of the bed in which I had slept. I should make it, I thought. Tidy up. Keep myself busy. I picked up the pillow to plump it and as I did something began to buzz.
I wasn’t sure what it was. It was low, insistent. A tune, thin and quiet. My bag was at my feet and when I picked it up I realized the buzz seemed to come from there. I remembered Ben telling me about the phone I have.
When I found it, the phone was lit up. I stared at it for a long moment. Some part of me, buried deep, or somewhere at the very edge of memory, knew exactly what the call was about. I answered it.
‘Hello?’ A man’s voice. ‘Christine? Christine, are you there?’
I told him I was.
‘It’s your doctor. Are you OK? Is Ben around?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s— What’s this about?’
He told me his name and that we have been working together for a few weeks. ‘On your memory,’ he said, and when I didn’t reply he said, ‘I want you to trust me. I want you to look in the wardrobe in your bedroom.’ Another pause, then, before he went on, ‘There’s a shoebox on the floor in there. Have a look inside that. There should be a notebook.’
I glanced at the wardrobe in the corner of the room.
‘How do you know all this?’
‘You told me,’ he said. ‘I saw you yesterday. We decided you should keep a journal. That’s where you told me you’d hide it.’
I don’t believe you, I wanted to say, but it seemed impolite and was not entirely true.
‘Will you look?’ he said. I told him I would, then he added, ‘Do it now. Don’t say anything to Ben. Do it now.’
I did not end the call but went over to the wardrobe. He was right. Inside, on the floor, was a shoebox — a blue box with the word Scholl on the ill-fitting lid — and inside that a book wrapped in tissue.
‘Do you have it?’ said Dr Nash.
I lifted it out and unwrapped it. It was brown leather and looked expensive.
‘Christine?’
‘Yes. I have it.’
‘Good. Have you written in it?’
I opened it to the first page. I saw that I had. My name is Christine Lucas, it began. I am forty-seven. An amnesiac. I felt nervous, excited. It felt like snooping, but on myself.
‘I have,’ I said.
‘Excellent!’ Then he said he would phone me tomorrow and we ended the call.
I didn’t move. There, crouching on the floor by the open wardrobe, the bed still unmade, I began to read.
At first, I felt disappointed. I remembered nothing of what I had written. Not Dr Nash, nor the offices I claim that he took me to, the puzzles I say that we did. Despite having just heard his voice I couldn’t picture him, or myself with him. The book read like fiction. But then, tucked between two pages near the back of the book, I found a photograph. The house in which I had grown up, the one in which I expected to find myself when I woke this morning. It was real, this was my evidence. I had seen Dr Nash and he had given me this picture, this fragment of my past.
I closed my eyes. Yesterday I had described my old home, the sugar jar in the pantry, picking berries in the woods. Were those memories still there? Could I conjure more? I thought of my mother, my father, willing something else to come. Images formed, silently. A dull orange carpet, an olive-green vase. A yellow romper suit with a pink duck sewn on to the breast and press-studs up the middle. A plastic car seat in navy blue and a faded pink potty.
Colours and shapes, but nothing that described a life. Nothing. I want to see my parents, I thought, and it was then, for the first time, I realized that somehow I knew that they are dead.
I sighed and sat on the edge of the unmade bed. A pen was tucked between the pages of the journal and almost without thinking I took it out, intending to write more. I held it, poised over the page, and closed my eyes to concentrate.
It was then that it happened. Whether that realization — that my parents are gone — triggered others, I don’t know, but it felt as if my mind woke up from a long, deep sleep. It came alive. But not gradually; this was a jolt. A spark of electricity. Suddenly I was not sitting in a bedroom with a blank page in front of me but somewhere else. Back in the past — a past I thought I had lost — and I could touch and feel and taste everything. I realized I was remembering.
I saw myself coming home, to the house I grew up in. I am thirteen or fourteen, eager to get on with a story I am writing, but I find a note on the kitchen table. We’ve had to go out, it says. Uncle Ted will pick you up at six. I get a drink and a sandwich and sit down with my notebook. Mrs Royce has said that my stories are strong and moving; she thinks I could turn them into a career. But I can’t think what to write, can’t concentrate. I seethe in silent fury. It is their fault. Where are they? What are they doing? Why aren’t I invited? I screw up the paper and throw it away.
The image vanished, but straight away there was another. Stronger. More real. My father is driving us home. I am sitting in the back of the car, staring at a fixed spot on the windscreen. A dead fly. A piece of grit. I can’t tell. I speak, not sure what I am going to say.
‘When were you going to tell me?’
Nobody answers.
‘Mum?’
‘Christine,’ says my mother. ‘Don’t.’
‘Dad? When were you going to tell me?’ Silence. ‘Will you die?’ I ask, my eyes still focused on the spot on the window. ‘Daddy? Will you die?’
He glances over his shoulder and smiles at me. ‘Of course not, angel. Of course not. Not until I’m an old, old man. With lots and lots of grandchildren!’
I know he’s lying.
‘We’re going to fight this,’ he says. ‘I promise.’
A gasp. I opened my eyes. The vision had ended, was gone. I sat in a bedroom, the bedroom I had woken up in this morning, yet for a moment it looked different. Completely flat. Colourless. Devoid of energy, as if I was looking at a photograph that had faded in the sun. It was as if the vibrancy of the past had leached all the life from the present.
I looked down at the book in my hand. The pen had slipped from my fingers, marking the page with a thin blue line as it slid to the floor. My heart raced in my chest. I had remembered something. Something huge, important. It was not lost. I picked the pen off the floor and started writing this.
I will finish there. When I close my eyes and try to will the image back, I can. Myself. My parents. Driving home. It is still there. Less vivid, as if it has faded with time, but still there. Even so, I am glad I have written it down. I know that eventually it will disappear. At least now it is not completely lost.
Ben must have finished his paper. He has called upstairs, asked if I am ready to go out. I told him I was. I will hide this book in the wardrobe, find a jacket and some boots. I will write more later. If I remember.
That was written hours ago. We have been out all afternoon but are back at home now. Ben is in the kitchen, cooking fish for our dinner. He has the radio on and the sound of jazz drifts up to the bedroom where I sit, writing this. I didn’t offer to make our meal — I was too eager to come upstairs and record what I saw this afternoon — but he didn’t seem to mind.
‘You have a nap,’ he said. ‘It’ll be about forty-five minutes before we eat.’ I nodded. ‘I’ll call you when it’s ready.’
I look at my watch. If I write quickly I should have time.
*
We left the house just before one o’clock. We did not go far, and parked the car by a low, squat building. It looked abandoned; a single grey pigeon sat in each of the boarded windows and the door was hidden with corrugated iron. ‘That’s the lido,’ said Ben as he got out of the car. ‘It’s open in summer, I think. Shall we walk?’
A concrete path curved towards the brow of the hill. We walked in silence, hearing only the occasional shriek of one of the crows that sat on the empty football pitch or a distant dog’s plaintive bark, children’s voices, the hum of the city. I thought of my father, of his death and the fact that I had remembered a little of it at least. A lone jogger padded around a running track and I watched her for a while before the path took us beyond a tall hedge and up towards the top of the hill. There I could see life; a little boy flew a kite while his father stood behind him, a girl walked a small dog on a long lead.
‘This is Parliament Hill,’ said Ben. ‘We come here often.’
I said nothing. The city sprawled before us under the low cloud. It seemed peaceful. And smaller than I imagined; I could see all the way across it to low hills in the distance. I could see the thrust of the Telecom tower, St Paul’s dome, the power station at Battersea, shapes I recognized, though dimly and without knowing why. There were other, less familiar, landmarks, too: a glass building shaped like a fat cigar, a giant wheel, way in the distance. Like my own face the view seemed both alien and somehow familiar.
‘I feel I recognize this place,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘Yes. We’ve been coming here for a while, though the view changes all the time.’
We continued walking. Most of the benches were occupied, by people alone or in couples. We headed for one just past the top of the hill and sat down. I smelt ketchup; a half-eaten burger lay under the bench in a cardboard box.
Ben picked it up carefully and put it in one of the litter bins, then returned to sit next to me. He pointed out some of the landmarks. ‘That’s Canary Wharf,’ he said, gesturing towards a building that, even at this distance, looked immeasurably tall. ‘It was built in the early nineties, I think. They’re all offices, things like that.’
The nineties. It was odd to hear a decade that I could not remember living through summed up in two words. I must have missed so much. So much music, so many films and books, so much news. Disasters, tragedies, wars. Whole countries might have fallen to pieces as I wandered, oblivious, from one day to the next.
So much of my own life, too. So many views I don’t recognize, despite seeing them every day.
‘Ben?’ I said. ‘Tell me about us.’
‘Us?’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’
I turned to face him. The wind gusted up the hill, cold against my face. A dog barked somewhere. I wasn’t sure how much to say; he knows I remember nothing of him at all.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything about me and you. I don’t even know how we met, or when we got married, or anything.’
He smiled, and shuffled along the bench so that we were touching. He put his arm around my shoulder. I began to recoil, then remembered he is not a stranger but the man I married. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘How did we meet?’
‘Well, we were both at university,’ he said. ‘You had just started your Ph.D. Do you remember that?’
I shook my head. ‘Not really. What did I study?’
‘You’d graduated in English,’ he said, and an image flashed in front of me, quick and sharp. I saw myself in a library and recalled vague ideas of writing a thesis concerning feminist theory and early twentieth-century literature, though really it was just something I could be doing while I worked on novels, something my mother might not understand but would at least see as legitimate. The scene hung for a moment, shimmering, so real I could almost touch it, but then Ben spoke and it vanished.
‘I was doing my degree,’ he said, ‘in chemistry. I would see you all the time. At the library, in the bar, whatever. I would always be amazed at how beautiful you looked, but I could never bring myself to speak to you.’
I laughed. ‘Really?’ I couldn’t imagine myself as intimidating.
‘You always seemed so confident. And intense. You would sit for hours, surrounded by books, just reading and taking notes, sipping from cups of coffee or whatever. You looked so beautiful. I never dreamed you would ever be interested in me. But then one day I happened to be sitting next to you in the library, and you accidentally knocked your cup over and your coffee went all over my books. You were so apologetic, even though it hardly mattered anyway, and we mopped up the coffee and then I insisted on buying you another. You said it ought to be you buying me one, to say sorry, and I said OK then, and we went for a coffee. And that was that.’
I tried to picture the scene, to remember the two of us, young, in a library, surrounded by soggy papers, laughing. I could not, and felt the hot stab of sadness. I imagined how every couple must love the story of how they met — who first spoke to who, what was said — yet I have no recollection of ours. The wind whipped the tail of the little boy’s kite; a sound like a death rattle.
‘What happened then?’ I said.
‘Well, we dated. The usual, you know? I finished my degree, and you finished your Ph.D., and then we got married.’
‘How? Who asked who?’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I asked you.’
‘Where? Tell me how it happened.’
‘We were totally in love,’ he said. He looked away, into the distance. ‘We spent all our time together. You shared a house, but you were hardly there at all. Most of your time you would spend with me. It made sense for us to live together, to get married. So, one Valentine’s Day, I bought you a bar of soap. Expensive soap, the kind you really liked, and I took off the cellophane wrapper and I pressed an engagement ring into the soap, and then I wrapped it back up and gave it to you. As you were getting ready that evening you found it, and you said yes.’
I smiled to myself. It sounded messy, a ring caked in soap, and fraught with the possibility that I might not have used the bar, or found the ring, for weeks. But still, it was not an unromantic story.
‘Who did I share a house with?’ I said.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I don’t really remember. A friend. Anyway, we got married the following year. In a church in Manchester, near where your mother lived. It was a lovely day. I was training to be a teacher by then, so we didn’t have much money, but it was still lovely. The sun shone, everyone was happy. And then we went for our honeymoon. To Italy. The lakes. It was wonderful.’
I tried to picture the church, my dress, the view from a hotel room. Nothing would come.
‘I don’t remember any of it,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
He looked away, turning his head so that I couldn’t see his face. ‘It doesn’t matter. I understand.’
‘There aren’t many photographs,’ I said. ‘In the scrapbook, I mean. There aren’t any photos of us from our wedding.’
‘We had a fire,’ he said. ‘In the last place we were living.’
‘A fire?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Our house pretty much burned down. We lost a lot of things.’
I sighed. It didn’t seem fair, to have lost both my memories and my souvenirs of the past.
‘What happened then?’
‘Then?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What happened? After the marriage, the honeymoon?’
‘We moved in together. We were very happy.’
‘And then?’
He sighed, and said nothing. That can’t be it, I thought. That can’t describe my whole life. That can’t be all I amounted to. A wedding, a honeymoon, a marriage. But what else was I expecting? What else could there have been?
The answer came suddenly. Children. Babies. I realized with a shudder that that was what seemed to be missing from my life, from our home. There were no pictures on the mantelpiece of a son or daughter — clutching a degree certificate, white-water rafting, even just posing, bored, for the camera — and none of grandchildren either. I had not had a baby.
I felt the slap of disappointment. The unsatisfied desire was burned into my subconscious. Even though I had woken up not even knowing how old I was, some part of me must have known I had wanted to have a child.
Suddenly I heard my own mother, describing the biological clock as if it were a bomb. ‘Get busy achieving all the things in life you want to achieve,’ she said, ‘because one day you’ll be fine and the next …’
I knew what she meant: boom! My ambitions would disappear and all I would want to do was have children. ‘It’s what happened to me,’ she said. ‘It’ll happen to you. It happens to everyone.’
But it hadn’t, I suppose. Or something else had happened instead. I looked at my husband.
‘Ben?’ I said. ‘What then?’
He looked at me and squeezed my hand.
‘Then you lost your memory,’ he said.
My memory. It all came back to that, in the end. Always.
I looked out across the city. The sun hung low in the sky, shining weakly through the clouds, casting long shadows on the grass. I realized that it would be dark soon. The sun would set, finally, the moon rise in the sky. Another day would end. Another lost day.
‘We never had children,’ I said. It was not a question.
He didn’t answer, but turned to look at me. He held my hands in his, rubbing them, as if against the cold.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No. We didn’t.’
Sadness etched his face. For himself, or me? I could not tell. I let him rub my hands, hold my fingers between his. I realized that, despite the confusion, I felt safe there, with this man. I could see that he was kind, and thoughtful, and patient. No matter how awful my situation, it could be so much worse.
‘Why?’ I said.
He said nothing. He looked at me, the expression on his face one of pain. Pain, and disappointment.
‘How did it happen, Ben?’ I said. ‘How did I get to be like this?’
I felt him tense. ‘You’re sure you want to know?’ he said.
I fixed my eyes on a little girl riding a tricycle in the distance. I knew this couldn’t be the first time I have asked him this question, the first time he has had to explain these things to me. Possibly I ask him every day.
‘Yes,’ I said. I realized this time is different. This time I will write down what he tells me.
He took a deep breath. ‘It was December. Icy. You’d been out for the day, at work. You were on your way home, a short walk. There were no witnesses. We don’t know if you were crossing the road at the time or if the car that hit you mounted the pavement, but either way you must have gone over the bonnet. You were very badly injured. Both legs were broken. An arm and your collarbone.’
He stopped talking. I could hear the low beat of the city. Traffic, a plane overhead, the murmur of the wind in the trees. Ben squeezed my hand.
‘They said your head must have hit the ground first, which is why you lost your memory.’
I closed my eyes. I could remember nothing of the accident, and so did not feel angry, or even upset. I was filled instead with a kind of quiet regret. An emptiness. A ripple across the surface of the lake of memory.
He squeezed my hand, and I put mine over his, feeling the cold, hard band of his wedding ring. ‘You were lucky to survive,’ he said.
I felt myself go cold. ‘What happened to the driver?’
‘He didn’t stop. It was a hit-and-run. We don’t know who hit you.’
‘But who would do that?’ I said. ‘Who would run someone over and then just drive away?’
He said nothing. I didn’t know what I had expected. I thought of what I had read of my meeting with Dr Nash. A neurological problem, he had told me. Structural or chemical. A hormonal imbalance. I assumed he had meant an illness. Something that had just happened, had come out of nowhere. One of those things.
But this seemed worse; it was done to me by someone else, it had been avoidable. If I had taken a different route home that evening — or if the driver of the car that hit me had done so — I would have still been normal. I might even have been a grandmother by now, just.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why?’
It was not a question he could answer, and so Ben said nothing. We sat in silence for a while, our hands locked together. It grew dark. The city was bright, the buildings lit. It will be winter soon, I thought. We will soon be halfway through November. December will follow, and then Christmas. I couldn’t imagine how I would get from here to there. I couldn’t imagine living through a whole string of identical days.
‘Shall we go?’ said Ben. ‘Back home?’
I didn’t answer him. ‘Where was I?’ I said. ‘The day that I was hit by the car. What had I been doing?’
‘You were on your way home from work,’ he said.
‘What job, though? What was I doing?’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You had a temporary job as a secretary — well, personal assistant really — at some lawyers, I think it was.’
‘But why—’ I began.
‘You needed to work so that we could pay the mortgage,’ he said. ‘It was tough, for a while.’
That wasn’t what I meant, though. What I wanted to say was, You told me I had a Ph.D. Why had I settled for that?
‘But why was I working as a secretary?’ I said.
‘It was the only job you could get. Times were hard.’
I remembered the feeling I had earlier. ‘Was I writing?’ I said. ‘Books?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
So it was a transitory ambition, then. Or maybe I had tried, and failed. As I turned to ask him the clouds lit up and, a moment later, there was a loud bang. Startled, I looked out; sparks in the distant sky, raining down on the city below.
‘What was that?’ I said.
‘A firework,’ said Ben. ‘It was Bonfire Night this week.’
A moment later another firework lit the sky, another loud bang.
‘It looks like there’ll be a display,’ he said. ‘Shall we watch?’
I nodded. It could do no harm, and though part of me wanted to rush home to my journal, to write down what Ben had told me, another part of me wanted to stay, hoping he might tell me more. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Let’s.’
He grinned, and put his arm around my shoulders. The sky was dark for a moment, and then there was a crackle and fizz, and a thin whistle as a tiny spark shot high. It hung for a slow moment before exploding in orange brilliance with an echoing bang. It was beautiful.
‘Usually we go to a display,’ said Ben. ‘One of the big organized ones. But I forgot it was tonight.’ He nuzzled my neck with his chin. ‘Is this OK?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I looked out over the city, at the explosions of colour in the air above it, at the screeching lights. ‘This is fine. This way we get to see all the displays.’
He sighed. Our breath misted in the air in front of us, each mingled with that of the other, and we sat in silence, watching the sky turn to colour and light. The smoke rose from the gardens of the city, lit with violence — with red and orange, blue and purple — and the night air turned smoky, shot through with a flinty smell, dry and metallic. I licked my lips, tasted sulphur, and as I did so another memory struck.
It was needle-sharp. The sounds were too loud, the colours too bright. I felt, not like an observer, but instead as though I was still in the middle of it. I had the sensation I was falling backwards. I gripped Ben’s hand.
I saw myself, with a woman. She has red hair, and we are standing on a rooftop, watching fireworks. I can hear the rhythmic throb of music that plays in the room beneath our feet, and a cold wind blows, sending acrid smoke floating over us. Even though I am wearing only a thin dress I feel warm, buzzing with alcohol and the joint that I am still holding between my fingers. I feel gravel under my feet and remember I have discarded my shoes and left them in this girl’s bedroom downstairs. I look across at her as she turns to face me and feel alive, dizzily happy.
‘Chrissy,’ she says, taking the joint. ‘Fancy a tab?’
I don’t know what she means, and tell her.
She laughs. ‘You know!’ she says. ‘A tab. A trip. Acid. I’m pretty sure Nige has brought some. He told me he would.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I say.
‘C’mon! It’d be fun!’
I laugh and take the joint back, inhaling a lungful as if to prove that I am not boring. We have promised ourselves that we will never be boring.
‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘It’s not my scene. I think I just want to stick to this. And beer. OK?’
‘I suppose so,’ she says, looking back over the railing. I can tell she is disappointed, though not angry with me, and wonder whether she will do it anyway. Without me.
I doubt it. I have never had a friend like her before. One who knows everything about me, whom I trust, sometimes even more than I trust myself. I look at her now, her red hair wind-whipped, the end of the joint glowing in the dark. Is she happy with the way her life is turning out? Or is it too early to say?
‘Look at that!’ she says, pointing to where a Roman candle has exploded, throwing the trees into silhouette in front of its red glare. ‘Fucking beautiful, isn’t it?’
I laugh, agreeing with her, and then we stand in silence for a few more minutes, passing the joint between us. Eventually she offers me what is left of the soggy roach and, when I refuse, grinds it into the asphalt with her booted foot.
‘We should go downstairs,’ she says, grabbing my arm. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’
‘Not again!’ I say, but I go anyway. We step over a couple kissing on the stairs. ‘It’s not going to be another one of those pricks from your course, is it?’
‘Fuck off!’ she says, trotting down the stairs. ‘I thought you’d love Alan!’
‘I did!’ I said. ‘Right up until the moment he told me he was in love with a guy called Kristian.’
‘Yes, well,’ she laughs. ‘How was I supposed to know that Alan would decide to choose you to come out to? This one’s different. You’ll love him. I know it. Just say hello. There’s no pressure.’
‘OK,’ I say. I push the door open and we go into the party.
The room is large, with concrete walls and unshaded light-bulbs hanging from the ceiling. We make our way to the kitchen area and get ourselves a beer, then find a spot over by the window. ‘So where’s this guy, then?’ I say, but she doesn’t hear me. I feel the buzz of the alcohol and the weed and begin to dance. The room is full of people, dressed mostly in black. Fucking art students, I think.
Someone comes over and stands in front of us. I recognize him. Keith. We’ve met before, at a different party, where we ended up kissing in one of the bedrooms. Now, though, he’s talking to my friend, pointing to one of her paintings that hangs on the wall in the living room. I wonder whether he’s decided to ignore me, or can’t remember having met me before. Either way, I think, he’s a jerk. I finish my beer.
‘Want another?’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ says my friend. ‘Want to get them while I deal with Keith? And then I’ll introduce you to that bloke I mentioned. OK?’
I laugh. ‘OK. Whatever.’ I wander off, into the kitchen.
A voice, then. Loud in my ear. ‘Christine! Chris! Are you OK?’ I felt confused; the voice sounded familiar. I opened my eyes. With a start I realized I was outside, in the night air, on Parliament Hill, with Ben calling my name and fireworks in front of me turning the sky the colour of blood. ‘You had your eyes closed,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. My head spun, I could hardly breathe. I turned away from my husband, pretending to watch the rest of the display. ‘I’m sorry. Nothing. I’m fine. I’m fine.’
‘You’re shivering,’ he said. ‘Are you cold? Do you want to go home?’
I realized I was. I did. I wanted to record what I had just seen.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you mind?’
On the way home I thought back to the vision I had seen as we watched the fireworks. It had shocked me with its clarity, its hard edges. It had caught me, sucked me into it as if I were living it again. I felt everything, tasted everything. The cool air and the fizz of the beer. The burn of the weed at the back of my throat. Keith’s saliva, warm on my tongue. It felt real, almost more real than the life I had opened my eyes to when it vanished.
I didn’t know exactly when it was from. University, I supposed, or just after. The party I had seen myself at was the kind I imagined a student would enjoy. It did not have the feel of responsibility. It was carefree. Light.
And, though I could not remember her name, this woman was important to me. My best friend. For ever, I had thought, and even though I didn’t know who she was I had felt a sense of security with her, of safety.
I wondered briefly if we might still be close, and tried to talk to Ben about it as we drove. He was quiet — not unhappy, but distracted. For a moment I considered telling him everything about the vision, but instead I asked him who my friends were, when we met.
‘You had lots of friends,’ he said. ‘You were very popular.’
‘Did I have a best friend? Someone special?’
He glanced over at me then. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. Not particularly.’
I wondered why I couldn’t remember this woman’s name, yet had recalled Keith, and Alan.
‘You’re sure?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure.’ He turned back to face the road. It began to rain. Light from the shops, and from the neon signs above them, was reflected in the road. There is so much I want to ask him, I thought, but I said nothing and, after a few more minutes, it was too late. We were home, and he had begun cooking. It was too late.
As soon as I had finished writing, Ben called me down to our dinner. He had set the table and poured glasses of white wine, but I was not hungry and the fish was dry. I left most of my meal. Then — as Ben had cooked — I offered to wash up. I carried the plates through and ran hot water into the sink, all the time hoping that later I would be able to make an excuse and come upstairs to read my journal and perhaps write some more. But I could not — to spend so much time alone in our room would arouse suspicion — and so we spent the evening in front of the television.
I could not relax. I thought of my journal and watched the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece creep from nine, to ten, to ten thirty. Finally, as they approached eleven, I realized I would have no more time tonight, and said, ‘I think I’m going to turn in. It’s been a long day.’
He smiled, tilting his head. ‘OK, darling,’ he said. ‘I’ll be up in a moment.’
I nodded and said OK, but as I left the room I felt a creeping dread. This man is my husband, I told myself, I am married to him, yet still I felt somehow as if going to bed with him was wrong. I could not remember ever having done so before, and did not know what to expect.
In the bathroom I used the toilet and brushed my teeth without looking at the mirror, or the photos arranged around it. I went into the bedroom and found my nightie folded on my pillow and began to get undressed. I wanted to be ready before he came in, to be under the covers. For a moment I had the absurd idea that I could pretend to be asleep.
I took off my pullover and looked at myself in the mirror. I saw the cream bra I had put on this morning and, as I did so, had a fleeting vision of myself as a child, asking my mother why she wore one when I did not, and her telling me that one day I would. And now that day was here, and it had not come gradually, but instantly. Here, even more obviously than the lines on my face and wrinkles on my hands, was the fact that I was not a girl any more but a woman. Here, in the soft plumpness of my breasts.
I pulled the nightie over my head and flattened it down. I reached underneath it and unhooked my bra, feeling the weight of my chest as I did so, and then unzipped my trousers and stepped out of them. I did not want to examine my body further, not tonight, and so, once I had peeled off the tights and knickers I had put on this morning, I slipped between the covers and, closing my eyes, turned on to my side.
I heard the clock downstairs chime, then a moment later Ben came into the room. I didn’t move but listened to him undress, then felt the sag of the bed as he sat on its edge. He was still for a moment, and then I felt his hand, heavy on my hip.
‘Christine?’ he said, half whispering. ‘Are you awake?’ I murmured that I was. ‘You remembered a friend today?’ he said. I opened my eyes and turned on to my back. I could see the broad expanse of his bare back, the fine hair that was scattered over his shoulders.
‘Yes,’ I said.
He turned to me. ‘What did you remember?’
I told him, though only vaguely. ‘A party,’ I said. ‘We were both students, I think.’
He stood up then and turned to get into bed. I saw that he was naked. His penis swung from its dark nest of hair and I had to suppress the urge to giggle. I could not remember ever seeing male genitals before, not even in books, yet they were not unfamiliar to me. I wondered how much of them I knew, what experiences I might have had. Almost involuntarily, I looked away.
‘You’ve remembered that party before,’ he said as he pulled back the bedclothes. ‘It comes to you fairly often, I think. You have certain memories that seem to crop up regularly.’
I sighed. So it’s nothing new, he seemed to be saying. Nothing to get excited about. He lay beside me and pulled the covers over us both. He didn’t turn out the light.
‘Do I remember things often?’ I said.
‘Yes. A few things. Most days.’
‘The same things?’
He turned to face me, propping himself on his elbow. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Usually. Yes. It’s rare there’s a surprise.’
I looked away from his face and up to the ceiling. ‘Do I ever remember you?’
He turned to me. ‘No,’ he said. He took my hand. Squeezed it. ‘But that’s OK. I love you. It’s OK.’
‘I must be a dreadful burden to you,’ I said.
He moved his hand and began to stroke my arm. There was a crackle of static. I flinched. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at all. I love you.’
He twisted his body into mine then, and kissed my lips.
I closed my eyes. Confused. Did he want to have sex? To me he was a stranger; though intellectually I knew we got into bed together every night, had done so since we were married, still my body had known him for less than a day.
‘I’m very tired, Ben,’ I said.
He lowered his voice, and began to murmur. ‘I know, my darling,’ he said. He kissed me, softly on the cheek, my lips, my eyes. ‘I know.’ His hand moved lower, beneath the covers, and I felt a wave of anxiety begin to build within me, almost panic.
‘Ben,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’ I grabbed his hand and stopped its descent. I resisted the urge to fling it away as if it were revolting and stroked it instead. ‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘Not tonight. OK?’
He said nothing, but withdrew his hand and lay on his back. Disappointment came off him in waves. I didn’t know what to say. Some part of me thought I should apologize, but some larger part told me I had done nothing wrong. And so we lay in silence, in bed but not touching, and I wondered how often this happens. How often he comes to bed and craves sex, whether I ever want it myself, or even feel able to give it to him, and if this is always what happens, this awkward silence, if I do not.
‘Goodnight, darling,’ he said, after a few more minutes, and the tension lifted. I waited until he was snoring softly and slipped out of bed and here, in the spare room, sat down to write this.
I would like so much to remember him. Just once.