I Know Who You Are(44)

I play on the first machine for so long that my finger starts to feel sore from pressing the buttons, but then three lemons appear in a row and lots of money comes out the bottom, just like John said it would. He says the machine works best during the day if we empty all the money out of it at night, so perhaps that’s why I have to play it. When I win, it makes a big crashing sound that seems to go on forever. I jump off the black leather stool and slide it across to Pac-Man, before climbing back up again. I play ten times so that my name, the new one, fills the leaderboard.

Then I hear Maggie’s EastEnders program starting up in the flat, and she shouts down the stairs, “Dinner is ready in five minutes and you need to clean the hamster cage out first, like I told you.”

I had forgotten about Cheeks. He does the same thing every day: eats, sleeps, and runs in circles. I don’t know why Maggie hates him so much, but I’m hoping her TV program will cheer her up a little bit. I can smell the Deep Fat Fryer, so I know we’re having chips. We have chips all the time now, with everything. Eggs and chips, sausage and chips, burgers and chips, cheese and chips. On Sundays we have chips with Bisto gravy on top, that’s my favorite! I like eating chips every day, but I just got to Level 5 for the first time on Pac-Man, so I ignore Maggie for a little while.

When I hear the EastEnders music again, I realize that her program must have finished. I was so busy playing on the machine that I forgot all about going upstairs for my dinner. I hope Maggie isn’t mad with me. I run up the stairs and into the kitchen; the Deep Fat Fryer is still on, so maybe I’m not too late.

“There you are.” Maggie stands in the doorway. Her face looks strange, I don’t think I like it. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Really? Because I called you half an hour ago and you ignored me.”

She steps forward and I take a step back.

“Dinner has all gone, I’m afraid. No chips for you tonight, Baby Girl. I’m cooking something else now. Something special. You want to see?”

I don’t think that I do.

I turn and try to leave the kitchen, but she grabs me, lifts me up with one hand, and opens the lid of the fryer with the other.

The oil is hot and I can see something bubbling on top.

I scream when I see what it is.

I start to cry and try to look away, but she holds my chin with her hand, forcing me to watch.

Then she whispers in my ear, “Poor Cheeks. Never mind, I’m sure he’s running in circles somewhere in hamster heaven. You don’t need anyone except me, Aimee. It’s a lesson you really should have learned by now. Next time I tell you to do something, I suggest you do it.”





Thirty-six


London, 2017

People say we can be anyone we want to be in life.

That’s a lie.

The truth is, we can be anyone we believe we can be. There’s a big difference.

If I believe I am Aimee Sinclair, then I am.

If I believe I am an actress, then I am.

If I believe I am loved, then I am.

Destroy the belief, destroy the reality it gave birth to.

I’m starting to think maybe my marriage was little more than a lie. I find myself wandering around central London with no memory of how I got here. For a moment, I consider the possibility that the amnesia diagnosis all those years ago was correct, and that I’ve been kidding myself all this time, thinking that I could remember everything that has ever happened to me, and everything that I’ve done, but then I manage to shake the thought. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.

I walk and I think and I try and fail to make sense of everything that has happened over the past few days. I don’t know where to go, or who to turn to, and the realization that there is nobody I feel that I can trust at all makes everything seem even worse than it already is.

Ben can’t be dead, because I don’t believe it.

The unspoken thoughts rattle around inside my head, bouncing off the walls of my mind, looking for a way out. But there is no way out. Not this time. I think about the tide of hate I’ve had to swim against for the last few months. I think about what Ben did to me that night, and I think about my gun not being where I normally keep it, hidden beneath our bed. For the first time since this whole nightmare began, I sincerely start to doubt myself and accept that my grip on reality seems a little less firm than it used to.

Surely I’d know if my husband was really dead?

Surely I would have felt something?

Maybe not.

I feel as if I’ve been put in slow motion, and when I look around at all the people rushing by, everyone seems to be in such a desperate hurry. Most of them are too busy staring at their phones to be able to see where they are going, or where they have been. I find myself standing outside the TBN office where Ben works, without remembering the journey here. The sight of the place takes me back in time, to when we first got together. We used to meet here all the time when we started dating.

We were virtual strangers when we met online.

We were emotional strangers after almost two years of marriage.

I could never do that now—use my real name and picture on a dating website—but back then, nobody knew who I was, not really. My name meant very little to anyone, including me. Ben made the first move. He sent me a message, we exchanged a few emails, and I agreed to meet in real life. Everything was practically perfect until a few months after our wedding. Then we lived happily never after.