Strangers: A Novel(24)

“You promised me. I know how afraid you were of having the conversation, but I thought you’d gotten it over with.” He turns his head to the side, slams the palm of his hand down on the bar. The spoons in the coffee cups clink.

“You said you had, anyway. You said it was hard but that in the end your father accepted it. Unwillingly, but he did.” He laughs. “You also said that we still had a lot of hard work ahead of us. Well, Jo, maybe I should have asked you what you meant by that.”

I open my mouth to retort, but he doesn’t give me a chance. “So you already lied to me when your memory was still intact, and about such an important thing at that. But who knows—maybe you’re just pretending not to know me? If that’s the case, there’s no need to go to all this effort. If you’re so eager to get rid of me, you can just tell me.” Erik gets down from the barstool and stretches his hand toward me. He wants his phone back. I give it to him. And all of a sudden I’m picturing the knife again, long and shiny and sharp. It’s not just in my thoughts, it’s actually close to hand. I would only need to take five steps into the kitchen and I could pull it out from the wooden block, eleven inches of Japanese steel, and plunge it into the stranger’s body.

I instinctively edge back to the door, which makes Erik shake his head in resignation. “No, I’m not going to hurt you. Maybe you’ll finally realize that.” He puts the phone into his jacket pocket and raises his hands, looking dejected. “If you want to run away, then run. If you want to call the police, do it. I’m going to the office to get some things, I’ve got a change of clothes there.” He gestures down at his body. “I don’t have anything to wear here anymore, you know? Not even any underwear. So I’m going to go shopping, that could take a few hours. If you’re still there when I get back, I’ll be very happy. If not…” He takes a step toward me, warily, and brushes his hand across my cheek. “If not, then have a good life, Joanna.”

He goes without locking the door after him. He left my cell phone here too; I plug it into the charging cable and turn it on.

Seven missed calls. Once the battery has started to fill up again, I listen to my messages. Five of them are from Manuel, each one angrier than the last. Why didn’t I show up to the photo studio when I had clients booked in? Don’t I realize that it’s his business and his reputation that I’m damaging if potential clients leave disappointed? The last two messages are from Darja, who’s also working as an assistant for Manuel, and she sounds much more concerned than he did. Is everything OK, she asks, adding that I was usually so reliable.

I decide to call her back instead of Manuel. I tell her I woke up with a migraine so bad that I couldn’t get up and use the phone.

“And are you better now?” she asks.

“Yes. Please tell Manuel I’m very sorry. And that I’ll be there on time tomorrow.”

I spend the next two hours turning the house upside down, searching for some clue that I don’t live here by myself. There’s not a single text message from Erik on my phone, nor any emails on my computer. There are no photos of him on either of the devices, nor on any of my SD cards, and of course there’s also no trace of Antigua. But there are at least fifty pictures of Matthew. Playing polo, at the wheel of his damn yacht, in the enormous waterscape he calls a pool. Always grinning and tanned. I’m itching to delete the photos, but I stop myself. It’s possible that my memory is uncertain territory, so I shouldn’t destroy anything that I might later forget.

After I’ve searched through all the rooms, I’m bathed in sweat. I found precisely three things that I don’t know the origins of: a green USB cable under the bed that I definitely never used and certainly never bought. In one of the chest of drawers there’s a comb, not like the ones women use—black, narrow, and wholly inadequate for long hair like mine. And the final object, crumpled up in a corner of the basement, a gray T-shirt with oil stains on it, most definitely neither my size nor my style.

Nothing specific. In theory, they could all be things left behind by the previous tenant. Except that the house was unfurnished when I took it, so the theory can’t be applied to either the cable or the comb.

I glance over at the kitchen clock. Even though Erik has a lot to do, it won’t be much longer before he comes back. He’ll hurry, no doubt about that. By then I want to have showered and changed.

My glance falls on the knife block again, and I pull out the knife, the one I keep thinking of. The blade shimmers dully, alluringly …

And suddenly an idea comes into my mind, one that makes sense to me but which at the same time is so terrible I almost can’t bear to acknowledge it.

Systematic amnesia, as Dr. Schattauer described it, is unleashed by trauma. One that is probably connected to the person who the consciousness is now blocking out.

This knife, the knife I can’t get out of my head—is it possible that Erik threatened me with it? Or even hurt me? Or held it to my throat while we had sex because fear turns him on? Is that conceivable?

I try to search for a memory, to force something back, but there’s nothing, so I put the knife back into the block and run up the stairs into the bedroom. I undress to my underwear and search my body for injuries. Cuts, scars.

Nothing. Just some bruises, one on my upper arm, two on my left thigh. And a graze on my right knee.