Then and Always (13 page)

“There is no ‘your world’ and ‘my world,’ Rachel. That’s just your injuries talking. You’ll see that once we get you back home.”

I tried to smile, and was pleased to see I must be a better actress than I had thought.

“I’m sure you’re right, Dad.”

MATT HAD CLEARLY
been primed about the meeting with Dr. Tulloch and its outcome, for when he came in to see me during visiting hours, half obscured by the biggest bouquet of flowers I had ever seen, he immediately bent to kiss me and spoke in a strangely irritating conciliatory tone.

“Rachel, my love, poor you. Amnesia. No wonder you’ve been acting so strangely since you came round. Do you remember anything at all? Do you know who I am?”

For one devilish moment I thought of playing along with it, but I backed down in the last instant. That was just too cruel.

“Yes, Matt, of course I know who you are, we’ve known each other since we were teenagers. It’s just … well, I’ve kind of ‘forgotten’ things that happened recently.”

He passed the flowers to a nurse who had come in to take my blood pressure.

“Can you put these in water, Nurse?”

She didn’t look too happy to be distracted from her duties by a visitor, but she took the mammoth bunch of flowers and I mouthed a small apology to her over Matt’s shoulder. That was one thing I hadn’t forgotten: Matt was used to getting his own way and could come across as arrogant if you didn’t know him better.

“So when you say you can’t remember things that happened recently, just how recently do you mean? The last few days?”

I shook my head.

“The last week?”

I shook my head again.

“Longer than that?”

Shaking my head wasn’t going to do it this time.

“I’ve kind of ‘lost’ the last five years.”

He sat down heavily in the chair. “Shit!”

I stayed quiet, letting him absorb the impact of my words.

“So you don’t remember anything about us? Nothing beyond when we left school? You don’t even remember us getting engaged?”

I bit my lip, knowing he was in shock, but unable to share his emotion. I had, after all, broken up with Matt five years ago. And the Matt I had left behind had been an eighteen-year-old boy, not the bewildered man who sat staring at me now in confusion.

He was quiet for some moments, and even though I hadn’t
known this new Matt for very long at all, I could tell his mind was already working at finding a solution. Presumably that was why he was such a success in business: if there was a problem, you fixed it. It was as simple as that.

“Well, I think it’s a good idea that you’re going back to your dad’s for a while. You obviously are going to need someone to look after you for the time being.”

“I’m not ill, Matt.”

“No, no, I realize that, Rachel. It’s just that I wouldn’t like to think of you back in London on your own, and you remember I have that important meeting in Hamburg I have to leave for tomorrow.”

“Actually, I didn’t know that. Amnesia, remember?” Oh, that was almost too cruel of me, but I couldn’t resist.

He looked confused. When had Matt lost his sense of humor?

“Oh, oh, of course you didn’t know. Well, it’s been planned for months … If there was any way of rescheduling it, then you know I would, but at this late stage …”

I reached out and patted his arm. “Relax, Matt, don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

He left not long after that but not before taking me in his arms and kissing me in a way that felt oddly familiar and completely new all at the same time. I tried to hold back, but he silenced my protests with his warm mouth and I ended up returning the kiss with barely concealed eagerness. I might not actually be his fiancée but that didn’t mean I couldn’t at least enjoy something pleasant out of all this madness before I finally made sense of it.

Both of us were a little breathless when we finally broke apart.

“Well, at least we haven’t forgotten how to do that, now,
have we?” There was a confidence now in his eyes and his voice. “And if you have forgotten everything else, well, I’m just going to have to make you fall in love with me all over again.”

He left, promising to call me at my father’s from Germany and assuring me he would only be away for a little over a week. That was perfect. That should easily give me enough time to try to sort out this whole stupid mess. I didn’t care that everyone else was perfectly happy to accept the amnesia theory. I
knew
that it wasn’t true. Somewhere out there was my real old life and the sooner I was able to get out of this hospital ward and prove that to everyone, the better.

The following morning a nurse brought me the clothes I had been wearing when I had been brought in. I didn’t recognize them, but when I slipped them on they fit me perfectly. And while I didn’t like the feel of wearing someone else’s clothing, it was either that or walk out of there clad only in a hospital gown.

What really surprised me was when the nurse placed a large expensive-looking leather bag on the bed.

“Whose is that?”

There was sympathy in her voice as she replied.

“That’s yours.”

I don’t know why she was sounding sorry for me. I appeared to be the owner of a Gucci handbag. As I fumbled to open the unfamiliar clasp, I wondered if it had been a present from Matt; it looked like his style of gift. I held the open bag upside down and tipped the contents out onto the faded hospital blanket. There wasn’t much to give me a clue: keys, a
wallet, a comb, a makeup bag. I flicked open the wallet: the back pocket held more money than I ever carried around, and the card slots were filled with an array of credit and store cards, all in my name. My own wallet held a solitary debit card.

But it was the mobile phone that interested me most of all. It was small and sleek, with a shiny mirrored surface that glinted brightly under the overhead light, sparkling like treasure. Which it very well could be. I snatched it up and found my fingers were trembling as I struggled to flick it open. It took several infuriating moments while I paused to try and figure out how to display the menu. When I did manage to access the right screen, I was disappointed to see that the phone book display held no answers.

I had been so sure that there would be some clue to be found in this tiny device. I scrolled through the list of names: a few were familiar but most were not. I was about to snap shut the phone when the final entry on the list caught my eye. Dr. Whittaker. Those two words, illuminated by the pale green backlight of the screen, shone out at me like a lighthouse through a fog. Dr. Whittaker was the consultant I had been under after the accident. He was the one who had prescribed the medication I was currently taking for my headaches, and it was him I’d been intending to see back in London to investigate why they had suddenly become so much worse.

With trembling fingers I pressed the call button and waited for what seemed an interminable time for the familiar ring tone. The connection had just been picked up when the door to my room swung open and in breezed a staff nurse carrying the flowers Matt had given me the night before.

“I’m sorry, dear, you can’t use your mobile in here.”

I ignored her, swiveling my body away from her and putting
a finger in my free ear, the better to hear what was being said at the other end of the line.

“Really, I’m going to have to ask you to hang up. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until you get outside.”

I gave her a look and something in my eyes must have told her to drop it.

“You have reached the offices of Dr. James Whittaker,” a tinny voice announced in my ear. “I’m afraid there is no one here to take your call. Our hours are …” I flung the phone down on the mattress in frustration.

The nurse eyed me warily as I frantically sought for pen and paper among the contents of the stranger’s handbag on the bed.

“Look, I really need you to do me a favor,” I urged, ripping a back page from a diary and scribbling hurriedly upon it. “This is the name and number of a doctor in London who has been treating me for … well, it doesn’t matter. It’s just he’ll know who I am. Can you get Dr. Tulloch to call him and he’ll be able to confirm everything about my headaches and … and, well, all the other symptoms.” I thrust the paper toward her and she hesitated for a second before taking it and placing it in the pocket of her uniform.

“You will remember, won’t you? It’s very, very important.”

Her look of annoyance at catching me using a mobile had been replaced by one of saddened compassion. I think I preferred her angry face.

“Ask him to ring me at my father’s when he’s got through to Dr. Whittaker. Anytime—day or night. It doesn’t matter. Everything will all make sense then.”

She was still looking incredibly sorry for me as she placed Matt’s flowers slowly down on the bed, as though on a graveside, and left the room.

When my father came to collect me a little while later, I decided not to tell him about finding the doctor’s number on the mobile phone. It would all make sense soon enough, once the hospital was able to confirm that everything I had told them was true. There was no need to endure another unsolicited explanation of how “this was all part of the amnesia.”

Of course, I hadn’t yet figured out how confirming my medical history could answer any of the other glaring anomalies that surrounded me. Little things: like people being back from the dead, cured of illnesses, and let’s not forget the unexpected addition of a fiancé. Mentally I threw these problems to one side as though they were wafts of confetti. I wouldn’t allow my racing thoughts to get sidetracked. Dr. Whittaker first: the rest would all fall into place after that.

OUR OLD HOUSE
looked the same. That’s to say the same as it had five years ago, which was conversely not the same as it had been when I’d stood before it a few days earlier. The iron railings and wooden shutters had disappeared as if they never were. The front door and window frames had regained their unkempt look and could now all do with a fresh coat of paint. Likewise the state of the garden had suffered an obvious decline. It all looked wonderful.

My first surprise came only seconds after opening the front door. I stepped across the threshold, closely following my father, and then took a sharp step backward as a bolt of something long and black streaked across the hall and into the lounge.

“What the hell was that?”

“It was only Kizzy. We must have startled her.”

She hadn’t been the only one.

“And Kizzy would be?”

“Our cat. Well,
my
cat now, I guess, since you left home.”

I took a second to absorb this surprising information. My childhood had been remarkably bereft of pets, aside from the odd goldfish or two, and it was peculiar to learn that my father now owned one.

“You bought her for me when you left for university. So I wouldn’t be so lonely, you said.”

Well, that had been quite nice of me.

I followed him slowly down the corridor, taking in this new revelation.
I had gone to university
. And as I walked into the shabbily familiar lounge, there, proudly displayed on the wall, was the evidence of that. My own face stared back at me from the large gilt-framed photograph. I was swathed in a gown and wearing a mortarboard, and there was no mistaking the look of pride in those eyes as I held in my hands a fancily engraved scroll. Absurdly I felt my eyes begin to prickle with tears. I had graduated. I had gone to university, gained a diploma, and achieved my dreams. I stepped a little closer to study the smiling girl in the photograph, focusing on the smooth skin of her unblemished right cheek. I raised my fingers to my face, as I had done countless times over the last few days, and ran them over and along the familiar route of my scar. I needed no mirror to confirm that there was nothing beneath my searching fingertips except unmarked skin. For the first time I actually questioned why I was so driven to tear down a world that might actually be far better than the one in which I really lived.

“Cup of tea?” questioned my dad, already halfway toward the kitchen to put on the kettle. He came from a generation where no problem was so huge that it couldn’t be solved by
simply pouring hot water onto a bag of tea leaves. I called out my response, but instead of sitting down to rest in one of the well-worn but comfortable-looking armchairs, I found myself wandering restlessly around the room, searching for … I’m not sure what I was searching for: was it definitive proof that this whole world around me was false, or was it to find evidence to prove that, unbelievably, it might actually all be real?

My graduation photo wasn’t the only picture on display in the room, for the mantelpiece held several other frames. I walked over to examine them more closely. The first two I recognized: my parents on their wedding day, the dated fashions and hairstyles made insignificant by the brilliance of their smiles. I had always loved that picture. The next was the only photograph we still had of the three of us. It had been taken on a day trip to the seaside, and I stood between them on the pier, I can’t remember where exactly, one hand held tightly in the palm of each parent. The photograph suddenly blurred and wavered, and I felt overwhelmed, as I hadn’t in years, by a shaft of despair and loss for the mother I couldn’t even remember having.

There were still two photographs yet to examine. The first brought out a bubble of laughter, which was just the antidote I needed right then. It had been taken on a school sports day when I was about seven years old. In the picture Jimmy and I held between us a small silver cup for having won the three-legged egg and spoon race. It was the only race I think I ever won during my entire school days. Of course, I could have turned out to be a decathlete at university, who was to say? Our eyes shone out in the picture, radiating a happy combination of pride, friendship, and pure unadulterated
happiness. We were both grinning from ear to ear, seemingly unaware that the huge gaps we sported in our front teeth did little to improve the picture.

The last photograph I hadn’t seen before, and I lifted it from the shelf and took it to the window to study it better. It was clearly taken quite recently, as I didn’t look any different than I had when I had seen my reflection that morning. The hair was the same, and so too was the unblemished face. The venue looked like a fancy hotel or restaurant; there were gifts piled in clusters upon the table in front of us and in the center of the photograph were its main subjects: Matt and myself. One arm was tightly wound around my waist; while his left hand encompassed mine, holding it aloft to allow the camera to capture the dazzling brilliance of the impressively large ring upon my finger. The radiance of the diamond seemed almost too bright to be contained by the small glass frame.