The Breakdown(28)

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‘You wouldn’t need to leave that early.’

‘Well, I will if they’re going to be there at eight.’

I can’t help wondering if his refusal to stay the night is his way of punishing me because he won’t let himself be angry with me for ordering the alarm in the first place.

‘But you will come back tomorrow evening, once

they’ve finished?’ I say.

‘Yes, of course,’ he says, taking my hand in his.

He leaves shortly after and I go up to my room and

watch a film until my eyes droop with tiredness. But

I can’t sleep. The knowledge that I managed to fill in

a whole contract without any recollection of doing so

has shaken me to the core. I try to tell myself that I’m

not doing anything as bad as Mum was when I first

realised there was a real problem. It was in the spring of 2002 – she’d gone to the local shops and had got lost on her way back home, only turning up three hours later.

Before the alarm, it was only little things that slipped

from my memory. Forgetting what I was meant to have

bought for Susie, forgetting Matthew was going away,

forgetting I’d invited Hannah and Andy for a barbecue,

forgetting Rachel was coming to stay – all those things

are bad enough. But ordering an alarm without realising

what I was doing is huge. I want to believe more than

anything that the salesman tricked me into it. But when

I think back to when we were in the kitchen together, I

realise that I don’t remember very much at all – except

at the end when he handed me the brochure and said

that my husband would be very impressed indeed.

SUNDAY AUGUST 2nd

We don’t talk very much as we check out from the

hotel. I’d suggested going on somewhere for lunch but

Matthew said he preferred to get home. I know we’re

both disappointed that the weekend didn’t live up to

our expectations. Even though Matthew’s explanation

of why he didn’t want to stay at the hotel on Friday

night held up, I couldn’t help worrying that he was

getting fed-up of all the hassle my forgetfulness has

been creating. So yesterday, while he was at the house

waiting for the alarm system to be fitted, I plucked

up my courage and googled ‘periodic amnesia’ which

directed me to Transient Global Amnesia. Although the

term was familiar to me in relation to Mum, my heart

still dropped a little further with each line I read and I closed off the page quickly, trying to squash the panic mounting inside me. I don’t know if it’s what I’ve got Title: The Breakdown ARC, Format: 126x198, v1, Output date:08/11/16





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and, more importantly, I don’t want to know. For now,

ignorance is bliss.

When Matthew had finally turned up at seven last

night, in time for a drink in the bar before dinner, I

was aware that he was watching me more closely than

usual and I kept expecting him to tell me that he was

worried about me. But he didn’t say anything, which

made it somehow worse. I thought that maybe he was

waiting until we were in the privacy of our room. But

when we eventually went up, instead of saying that he

wanted to talk to me, he turned on the television and I

wished that he hadn’t because there was a special report

about Jane’s murder following her funeral earlier in the

day. They showed footage of her flower-covered coffin

being carried into the little church in Heston with her

distraught parents following behind and tears had seeped

from my eyes.

During their report, the police revealed that Jane’s

mobile phone was missing, information they had previously held back. They showed a photo of a smartphone similar to Jane’s and asked anyone who’d found one

like it to contact them. Then a photo of Jane appeared

on the screen, a different one to the one they’d been

using before.

‘She was so pretty,’ Matthew said. ‘It’s such a terrible

shame.’

‘So it would be less of a shame if she hadn’t been

pretty?’ I retorted, suddenly angry.

The Breakdown





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He looked at me in surprise. ‘That’s not what I meant


and you know it. It’s terrible when anyone gets murdered

but especially so in her case as she has two young children, who are bound to find out one day that their mother was violently killed.’ He turned back to the

television where the report showed police stopping and

searching cars using Blackwater Lane, which was once

again open to the public. ‘They’re hardly going to find

the murder weapon in someone’s boot,’ he went on.

‘They’d be better off looking for the murderer. Someone

must know who he is. He must have been covered in

blood that night.’