The Forgetting(26)

‘I’m not exactly being stalked—’

‘Well, that’s what it sounds like.’

‘I was just a bit freaked out. But it’s fine. Dominic and I will sort it out.’ There was a definitive full stop in Livvy’s tone – more brusque than usual – and her mum tactfully changed the subject, asked Bea about the new young vet Bea had taken on at the practice where she was a partner.

As she listened to them talk, Livvy found herself silently cursing Imogen for having arrived unannounced in their lives and for opening a can of worms she knew Dominic would rather keep firmly shut.





ANNA


LONDON

A light breeze brushes my cheeks, the sun warming my scalp. It feels good to be breathing air that has not been circulating inside the same eight hundred square feet of our house, good to be looking at trees, sky and grass rather than whitewashed walls and wooden floors. The park is quiet, too early yet for the lunchtime crowd. For now, it is just retired people, parents with preschool children, and whatever category I fit into.

For the past two days I have kept my promise to Stephen. I have stayed at home, trying to read novels I once loved but now seem unable to enjoy, prepared dinners from cookbooks in which brightly coloured Post-it notes mark the pages of favourite recipes, none of which I recall ever having made before. I have watched the woman in the house behind ours stare at her laptop screen, tap busily at her keyboard, and speculated about what work she is doing. I have wondered when I’ll be able to work again, whether it will be the library services to which I’ll return or whether I’ll have to reinvent myself entirely. I have napped copiously, like a newborn baby, falling asleep for an hour or two in the armchair when I’m supposed to be reading, or taking myself upstairs to bed and slipping gratefully under the duvet.

But today, I couldn’t bear being trapped at home any longer. The past two days have felt stifling, the dimensions of every room seeming to narrow with each passing hour.

I didn’t leave the house until after Stephen’s call this morning: he phones as soon as he gets to the university, again at lunchtime and often in the afternoon. He is not due to phone again until long after I plan to be home.

In the jacket of my pocket is a folded piece of A4 paper and a pencil, and I have diligently mapped my route here – only ten minutes’ walk from home, but far enough, I know now, for me to get lost – every street name specified, every landmark noted. I have even written Stephen’s mobile number at the top in case history repeats itself and I have to ask a shopkeeper to use their telephone, admit to Stephen that I have broken my promise. But I won’t get lost. I need to prove to myself that I can do this, that I can leave the house without supervision or misadventure. I cannot stay cooped up indoors, locked inside a mind that seems determined to keep my past from me. I have to do something to try and unfreeze my memories.

In the six days since the crash – as Stephen and I have woken up together, eaten dinner, talked about our respective days – I have wondered how much this quotidian rhythm resembles our lives before the accident. Whether, since being made redundant, I have counted the hours until Stephen’s return, as I do now: the pivotal moment in an otherwise uneventful day. Whether our dinner-time conversations have always been dominated by Stephen’s anecdotes about university life. Or whether the tenor of our relationship has changed beyond all recognition. And, if it has, whether it will ever revert to the way it was before.

Yesterday evening, Stephen told me he has been researching amnesia online. He’s read that it’s best for now that we dwell not on the past but focus on the present, that by anchoring my experiences in the here and now we are more likely to help strengthen my memory. ‘Memory recovery isn’t something that can be rushed. We just have to be patient and let your brain have time to heal.’

Last night, after dinner, he suggested we watch one of our favourite films, The Royal Tenenbaums, telling me we’d seen it multiple times before. I managed to follow the plot but remembered nothing about it from previous viewings and found its eccentricity too pronounced, too self-conscious. But Stephen kept turning to me, asking with such optimism whether I was enjoying it, that I had smiled and nodded, fabricated the response I knew he wanted.

There is a gust of breeze and my head feels light suddenly, as though my brain has been scooped out and replaced with helium. The sensation is debilitating and I wish I were at home, in familiar surroundings, where I could lie on the sofa or crawl under the duvet and wait until the episode passes.

I close my eyes, consciously regulate my breathing, hoping that a steady supply of oxygen to my brain will recalibrate my feelings. I sense my lungs expand and then contract, fill and then empty, until gradually the light-headedness begins to subside. It feels like a small moment of triumph, to have survived this dizzy spell away from home, and I try to use the knowledge of it to calm the pulse tapping at my wrists reminding me that this kind of episode is precisely why Stephen didn’t want me to leave the house alone.

There is a change of weight on the bench and I snap open my eyes, spin my head around, a surge of inexplicable fear flooding my veins.

‘God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump. Are you okay?’

There is a woman smiling at me, apology in her eyes, and it takes a few seconds for me to recall where I have seen her before. It is the woman from the playground a few days ago, the mother with the little boy wearing the blue tractor jumper. I follow the quick dart of her eyes to the sandpit, where the same little boy – now wearing a bright green sweatshirt – is dragging a plastic digger through the sand.