Terms & Conditions (25 page)

Blushing with pride, the lawyer replies, ‘Why, thank you, Mr B. We at S&S aim to please. Yes, sir, we do!'

When I emerged from the fit, I was on the floor, flaccid, the world vibrating – the vision still burning the edges of reality – and Oscar was standing over me, slapping my face gently, shouting, ‘Franklyn, you OK, Franklyn –
Franklyn!
Someone get some water now.'*

* I realised that containing my rage wasn't going to be easy.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF ACTING

It's easy when you know your motivation.

I was sure that when I saw my wife I would fall apart again but something stranger happened. I opened the door and spotted her in the kitchen making me dinner.

Looking over her shoulder, she said, ‘You're home, great. I'm nearly finished cooking spagbol, your favourite.' (My new memory confirmed that it was, in fact, my favourite.)

I said, ‘Oh, that's lovely, dear,' as I grabbed a knife and stabbed her in the face . . .*

* No I didn't.

Before I was fully conscious of my actions, I found myself holding and kissing her. As if I was trying to trick my rage – switch hate to love – so she wouldn't suspect anything. I kissed her and, as she placed her tongue in my mouth, I bit down like it was raw steak, and tore it from the root spitting it out, screaming,
How could you do that to me, you bitch?
*

* No – no, I didn't.

Then we sat for a pleasant dinner and I told her I'd fainted at work. She placed her hand on mine and said I wasn't to worry, time would heal me.

Our dinner had the woozy sensation of a dream, and I played along, saying, ‘Yes I know, I just hope that I remember every single little thing one day, I hope it all comes back to me, I hope I can remember exactly what triggered my little episode, because I feel like I'm letting a lot of people down by not remembering everything.'

She held her expression so tightly I almost laughed.

I pushed the point, ‘Yes, one day I just know something will trigger me and it will flood back and we will be together properly again. In love, real love.'

She swallowed and said, ‘We
are
in love, Franklyn, we are in love, and you don't need to remember everything to know that we are two people very much in love.'

I shouldn't have enjoyed watching her squirm.*

* But you've got to get your kicks where you can.

After pudding, the truth of the night came out like an unwelcome dinner guest, the reason for my wife's uncharacteristically happy mood.

Moving the plates aside she said, ‘I've got great news. Another publishing house has agreed to publish a follow-up to
Executive X
. Isn't that exciting?'

‘Alice, that's such great news, I'm so proud of you.'

‘Oh God, thanks, I'm so pleased. I mean, I thought it might not happen but look they said yes and it's going to be amazing.' She took a swig of wine and, without missing a beat, said, ‘I'd love if you'd help me with my new test questions. We're really cracking the paradigm, Franklyn, my new approach will revolutionise everything.'

‘And I'd just love to help you with your tests, Alice. I could think of nothing better.'

She smiled, turned, and pulled out a test questionnaire from her work bag, laughing and saying in a triumphant voice, ‘Well, no time like the present, we should have a little fun with this one, and I promise you sexual favours in return, Mister.'

‘Wonderful,' I said. ‘Absolutely wonderful.'

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF QUANTIFYING HAPPINESS

On a scale of 0–100, at what capacity are you currently living your life (100% = your personal ideal potential)?

a. 1–25% of ideal.

b. 25–50% of ideal.

c. 50–75% of ideal.

d. 75–100% of ideal.

I asked my wife why there was no ‘0%' option.

She smiled and said, ‘Very funny, Franklyn.'

My wife's new tests were different; no longer all multiple choice, some now required actual written answers. After pages of the normal inane tosh, I hit the killer question.

What's the worst thing you've done in your life?

I sat there sweating, wondering if my wife could see that I was having another panic attack, wondering if she noticed that I was breathing strangely, the nib of my pen shaking, and the answer formed in my mind:

‘Convince myself that everything was fine.'

Instead I wrote, ‘Not tell my wife that I love her enough times.'

My wife looked over the test and, when she came to that answer, she looked up and said, ‘LOL.'

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF THE LIVER

Eventually your liver can't keep cleaning up after you.

As we walked down the hospital corridor, Sandra broached the subject of Alice.

She made a joke of it at first. ‘Alice joined a cult or something?'

‘How do you mean?' I asked.

‘I'm being silly,' said Sandra, but she reconsidered, and added, ‘Do you know what she did to me the other day? She ignored me. To my face. I spotted her having a drink with some people in a bar in town and I went up to her and she just . . . sort of ignored me. I was incredibly embarrassed. I said hello and finally after saying it a lot of times she turned away from her friends, sighed loudly like it was such an effort, and said,
oh hi
. Like that,
oh hi
.'

Sandra pulled tissues from her cardigan sleeve, aggressively wiped her tear-soaked eyes, then stuffed the tissues back up her sleeve where they formed an unattractive lump. I looked at Sandra and realised how different she was to Alice.

They used to be the same: Sandra and Alice. Both intelligent, nice-looking girls; both wore cardigans, jeans and trainers, as if they were too intellectual to worry about how they looked. But they had grown so far apart. Sandra still dressed the same; she worked in publishing where you could dress like a messy intellectual, and she carried a little extra weight, but she carried it well. Whereas Alice now dressed like some Italian model, her body thin and hard from cycling and her clothes tailored and immaculate from Gucci.

Sandra caught me looking at her and said, ‘It's lovely to see you again, Frank, I missed you.'

I smiled and said, ‘Yes, I missed me too.'

‘You look different to the last time I saw you. How's your head these days?'

‘I've some very interesting things to update you on but let's forget
about all that now; I'll tell you after we've seen your mum. Come on now, we need to be cheerful for Molly.'

Sandra reached over and touched my face; her fingers moved up to my scar and she softly felt its outline. With the exception of Dr Mills, no one – not even my wife – had touched my scar and I smiled a little awkwardly and said, ‘I just tell people I was attacked by a great white shark.'

Sandra laughed but she didn't move her hand away; instead she caught my fringe and scooped it back, off my forehead so my scar was exposed, and said, ‘You look better with your hair like that, that's how you used to wear it.'

When we stepped in, Molly was asleep, pale and thin as death. Her big hair, which used to be piled high like a Chinese lantern, was now deflated, stringy and thinning; her face was hollowed out. The room smelled strongly of mushroom. Sandra and I sat on plastic chairs and watched Molly sleeping as machines purred around us. I noticed she had a red panic button above her bed and it made me feel slightly jumpy and in a strange way rather nostalgic for a time when I was just a pulped amnesiac, a blissfully blank page.

‘Will Molly wake up or is she out for the night?' I asked.

‘She's on a lot of drugs for the pain so sleep's the best place for her.'

Then Molly stirred and looked straight at me, mumbling, ‘Fucking hell, what happened to you, Frank? You've a bloody big scar on your noggin.'

I smiled and replied, ‘Car crash. What the hell happened to you, Molly?'

‘Life crash,' she joked.

Sandra laughed and leaned over and kissed Molly, who said, ‘Where's Alice? Did she not come with Frank?'

‘She's really busy at work,' said Sandra.

‘Well, I'm really busy dying,' said Molly, and Sandra said, ‘Don't say that, Mum.'

‘Don't listen to Sandra; she knows it like I do. It's over for me, Frank,' Molly said.

‘I know how you feel,' I said.

Anger rippled over Molly's old face as she said, ‘Listen here, Frank, grow some balls and put some hair on them, I won't hear you talking like that. I'm all done, but you're just a little broken, like my mosaics. All the best people have a few cracks in them. I know you've had a fright, a bad crash, but your mind is a good one, Frank, it'll come back to you. But me, well, that's different. See this bed, Frank, this shitty NHS bed is the border where death meets life. I'm on the death side; you make sure you stay on the other side, hear me?'

‘Yes, Molly,' I said and I was going to say sorry for being a wimp but Molly flipped into sleep in the way that I used to directly after my car accident – like a giant switch had been clicked to OFF. I remember that feeling and all its discombobulating effects. I remember chatting to a nurse one minute then –
splice!
– the nurse would vanish and it would be hours later.*

* But to me it felt like a split second had passed and the nurse had gone up in a puff of starchy smoke.

We sat there a long time and Sandra placed her hand over mine. At first it was a little awkward because of the silence and her hand on mine, but after a bit, a calm sense of exhaustion took over my body and I relaxed.

When I turned to Sandra to say something, to finally tell her about my returning memories, I saw she too had fallen asleep, her head to one side, near my shoulder, her hair falling around my neck and she was snoring.

Even in this room of sleeping, estranged friends, I felt something, a closeness, the like of which I had been so sorely lacking.

Molly woke up again and we had a chat as Sandra slept. She smiled at her sleeping daughter and said, ‘She has an incredibly pretty nose, my daughter, but it snores like a bloody tuba. Always has. Even when she was a tiny baby, that honk would wake up the whole house.'

I laughed.

Molly said, ‘I'll cheat this fucker death yet, just you watch, Frank.'

‘I'm right here and I'm watching. Trust me when I say death can be a bit dim; he missed me so there's no reason why you're not nimble enough to skirt around him.'

Molly grinned like a child before sagging back into sleep.

When Sandra woke up I fetched her a coffee and a water for myself, and with Molly now snoring in the background, I told Sandra that I had remembered everything.

‘What? Have you got all your memory back?'

‘Well, the parts that count,' I said.

‘You remember who I am, at least, that's all that matters,' she said and smiled that lovely smile of hers, but then couldn't help adding, ‘Which is more than I can say for that wife of yours.'

‘And she didn't even get a bash on the head,' I said.

‘You look so good, Frank,' Sandra said suddenly.

‘Oh.' I was taken aback by how much emphasis she put into that sentence and said, ‘Um, thank you.'

The sentence was so strongly laced with emotion that I was lost in the nuance of it; it felt like a thousand little strings stretching, meeting and tying Sandra tightly to me. But as quickly as the flirting flush came, it went, and Sandra and I both sat in silence until the moment was truly torn by Molly farting in her sleep.

‘Fancy a drink?' I said.

‘Gagging for one,' Sandra said, and she put her arm around my waist and we walked to a nearby bar.

When we sat down with our drinks I told Sandra about the details, about Oscar and Alice screwing each other, my episode, the weapons contracts. In all that time Sandra stared at me gob-smacked. Relating the details of my memory out loud was not a catharsis, it actually made it worse, it made me realise just how ludicrously and irrevocably my life had spun out of control.

When I finished, Sandra took a long drink and said, ‘That fucking bitch.'

‘Indeed,' I said.

I took a long drink too and finally Sandra, who was lost in thought, turned to me and said, ‘So what are you going to do now?'

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF GLUTEN-FREE

Inspiration can come from the least likely place.

My memory by this stage was incredibly active again. As if the department – which had been shut for many months, its furniture covered in dust cloths – was suddenly back in business, doors flung open, packed with frantic workers desperately filing all the messy piles of thoughts, experiences and memories. As this was happening, I began to do to Alice what she'd done to me for many years. I observed her, stalked her. The day after my total recall I stalked Alice all the way into the arms of Oscar. I followed her when she told me she was going ‘cycling with Valencia' and she ended up in a boutique hotel with Oscar; they even had dinner together in the restaurant, in public. I sat a long distance away in the hotel bar watching them. I took photographs with my phone.* I took notes.*
¹

* I've no idea why.

*
¹
I've no idea why.

I felt like I had all the ingredients but how best to serve the sour dish? The simplest option: call a meeting with them, calmly lay the photographs on the desk, and watch as they realised that I knew everything, wait to see if they got mad, or tried to lie and squirm their way out of it. But this option seemed unsatisfactory; it lacked something.

Option two hit me as I pretended to read the menu (hiding behind it in case I was spotted) when I noticed that even menus have fine print. It was nothing unusual; it simply had two asterisks that denoted
vegetarian
and
gluten-free
options.