What about us? (22 page)

I thought long and hard about
that question; it was too important to be hurried.  If there was any chance, no
matter how small or remote, that I felt I would be a danger to someone else, I
wanted to do whatever was needed to remove that risk.

Eventually and only when I was
sure that the answer I was about to give was as honest as I could be, did I
say, “No.  I don’t think I am.”

She nodded and I could see that
she was pleased that we’d reached the same conclusion.

“You do have too much time on
your hands,” she said as I was leaving.  “Perhaps you should find a job.  Your
arm is completely healed now and if you talk to the Inland Revenue and give
them the certificates that you have, I am sure you can be issued with a code or
something that will allow you to take part in everyday life, until you remember. 
It’s not impossible you know.  One day it might all come flooding back.”

I made my next appointment for
two weeks time and walked away deep in thought.  We’d all stopped using words
such as ‘soon’ or ‘when’ and now spoke of ‘maybes’ and ‘mights’ whenever we
talked of my memory returning.  I began to feel a deep sense of loss as I made
my way down to the ground floor in the lift.  I had moved through life for
twenty-seven years and yet it meant nothing to me.  Finally I understood what
the doctor had meant about mourning; I no longer knew what or who had been on
all the floors of my personal lift journey.  I was stuck and couldn’t open the
doors.

As I left the building I turned
right, automatically making my way to the home where Grace worked.  She’d
finish in an hour or so and I needed to talk to her; I knew she’d be worried. 
She didn’t like the fact that I didn’t have a mobile phone, but I’d never seen
the sense in going to the expense of acquiring one.  I only needed the one
number and anyway I always knew where to find her.

I began to walk a bit quicker, not
because of any sense of urgency, but from the lighter feeling that I felt
whenever I thought about her.  She was in my life after all and whilst I didn’t
have any really good news to tell her, she deserved to know what the kind
doctor had told me.

We went to get a bite to eat
and I told her everything that Dr Green and I had discussed.  She listened
carefully and only once I’d finished did she share her thoughts.

“I’ve wondered if perhaps you
were just passing through.  I mean, no one has recognised you and you walk
miles every day in all weather, yet nothing seems familiar to you.  Even if you
can’t pinpoint it, you ought to get some sense of familiarity, but you don’t.  You
had an awful lot of money on you, more than most people carry.  Maybe your
friends and family, your wife even, live in another country and you’d taken a
year out to travel or something.  If they don’t know where you were heading,
they won’t know you’re missing yet.”

“I didn’t have a passport or
any travel documents on me.” I said.  “Otherwise, it’s a good theory.”

“You might have left them all
at the hotel or hostel that you were staying in.  But you wouldn’t leave money
there, would you?”

“Hmm... maybe not.” I said
slowly, as another thought began to materialise.

“I don’t think I can have a
wife, or if I do, we must be heading for a divorce.”

“What makes you think that?”
she asked, as a smile began to play on her lips.

“I don’t think I’m the sort of
person who could leave someone I loved for a year, while I travelled the
world.”

She tilted her head and looked
at me for a long moment.

“No... I don’t think you’re
that kind of person either.” she said.

As we left the cafe, I felt
freer than I had for a long time.  I still didn’t know who I’d been, but I was
beginning to think that I wouldn’t mind being who I could become.

July and August were wet and
not that warm and the weather went well with the frustration I encountered at
the Inland Revenue and Social Security offices.  In the end, my landlady came
to my rescue, as my funds were beginning to dwindle to alarmingly low levels.  Her
father owned a small hardware shop, but he was getting on a bit and needed some
help.  So I worked there six mornings a week; sorting out stock, stacking
shelves, moving the heavier things, making the tea and basically doing anything
else he needed done.  It paid my rent and bought the food, but only just.  The
truth is though, I didn’t need any more at that point in my life.

As we moved into September, I
learnt that Grace’s birthday was also approaching and discovered some of her
secrets, mainly because her mother was rushed into hospital one afternoon.  Grace
had arrived home and found her unconscious, lying in her own vomit.  She’d had
to tell me where she was as we’d planned to meet, so she phoned my landlady who
gave me the message.  As I sat with her in the waiting room at the hospital,
she told me some of the details of her life.

Apparently it wasn’t the first
time she’d sat there waiting while her mother had her stomach pumped out and
she knew it wouldn’t be the last.  Her mother’s boyfriend had deserted her and
in a drunken stupor she’d taken an overdose of sleeping tablets.

“She’s sick Jack.  She’s been
sick ever since I was born.  I think pregnancy disagreed with her; it must have
changed her hormone balance or something.  She was very young, she had her
whole life ahead of her, then ‘boom’ I arrived and spoilt it all.  Anyway, she’s
never been able to cope with life and maybe the bottle helped once, but now
it’s one of the problems, not part of the cure; she’s not strong enough to deal
with it.”

There was nothing I could say. 
It was part of her nature to make excuses for the bad behaviour of others and I
vowed to myself never to put her in a position where she would have to make
excuses for me.  The positive side to all the trauma though, was that now I
knew the situation, there was no need to hide it, so I was allowed to visit, or
to stop by for a cup of tea.  It didn’t require an Einstein to work out the
dynamics of Grace’s life.  Sometimes when her mother was out we’d stay there
for the evening, although when she was home I didn’t stop long.  I couldn’t be
as forgiving of the bully that seemed to take pleasure in making her daughter’s
life so bleak and I found myself on more than one occasion being dragged out of
the flat by Grace, whilst being told, “Let it go Jack, she doesn’t mean it.  She
won’t remember when she’s sober anyway.”

Those words seemed to give
Grace some comfort, but they just inflamed me more.

I began to see why we got on so
well.  Neither of us fitted into the life immediately around us and I think we
each wanted to protect the other, so it wasn’t really a surprise to find that
we were both starting to feel something that wasn’t just platonic.  There were
no long conversations about whether it was right or not, no what ifs or why
nots, just a lovely journey of discovery that we undertook together and we were
happy to let it unfold in its own delicious way in the months leading up to
Christmas.

As we became closer I became
sure that there had never been anyone in my life who meant one tenth of what
she meant to me.  She would have none of it when I said this to her, but I knew
my words were not empty.  I had no sense at all of ever having shared so much
with another person.  Whatever else had been in my life, there was no wife or
long standing girlfriend out there somewhere missing me.  I was certain of it.

During this time Grace’s mother
acquired a new boyfriend, his name was Gavin.  He was younger than her, with a
very mean streak in his nature and Grace was a little afraid of him.  She
didn’t tell me so, but I could tell by her reactions to him.  With her mother
she was always very controlled, giving little of her thoughts or feelings away,
but when Gavin was there she was overly watchful and wary. 

Occasionally, when he came too
close to her, she flinched, something she couldn’t hide from me.  She assured
me he’d never threatened her or laid a finger on her, but she seemed to fear
either him, or something that he reminded her of.  She wouldn’t tell me what it
was, no matter how many times I asked her.

“You can’t change the past
Jack, so there’s no point in spending too much time there.  We just learn from
it and move on and that’s just what I’m doing.  It can’t hurt me now, so we’ll
leave it where it belongs thank you very much.” she’d say firmly, effectively
putting an end to any kind of discussion.

Not only was Gavin thoroughly
unpleasant, but the bastard also stole from her.  He didn’t just steal the
contents of her purse, he took some of the very few things that she treasured
as well, including some of her Nan’s jewellery and the new boots that she’d
saved hard for and hadn’t worn yet.  Neither did he contribute to the running
of the home, for want of a better word, despite the fact that he was always
there.  Grace’s hard earned money bought the food that they all ate and paid
the bills, including the one at the off licence.

She spent less and less time at
home and wouldn’t allow me to visit any more.  She told me that she didn’t want
more arguments, or even worse, a fight.

“Come and live with me Grace.”
I said for the umpteenth time, one evening as we were watching the TV in my
room.  “If you don’t like it here, maybe we can find a different flat, or
Natalia next door has been talking about moving out and going back to Spain.  Maybe
we could take both rooms if you don’t want to share with me.”

“I’d love to share with you
Jack, but having both rooms would be better; then we could have our own sitting
room as well.  It’s just...”

“What?” I asked while stroking
her hair, although I knew it would be something to do with her mother.

“If I’m not there, who will
look after her? He won’t, that’s for sure.”

Her voice was sad and I
understood, even though I knew her mother had done nothing to deserve this
consideration.

“Just because you won’t be
living there doesn’t mean you can’t keep an eye her.  You can go round there
whenever you want to; it’s not that far away.”

“I’ll think about it.” she
promised.

Three weeks later, just after
she’d been paid, all of her money was stolen while she was asleep.  Her mind
was made up and she moved in with me the following morning.  It didn’t take
very long; she arrived with two black bin liners full of her things and I
learnt that Grace had always travelled lightly through life.  Natalia was still
there, but we had first option on her room when it became available in June.  When
she returned to Madrid, we had a sweet two roomed home with our own bathroom
and an even sweeter life together.

There wasn’t a lot of money,
but we had enough for what we needed and what we didn’t have we didn’t seem to
miss.  I took on some other odd-jobs as they came up and Grace did some extra
shifts over the summer when other staff at the home went on holiday.  We
decided to have a short break to coincide with her twenty-first birthday.  We’d
been reading ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ together and settled on Lyme Regis
as the place we would go to.  We both fancied Paris, but she didn’t have a
passport and I still couldn’t get one.

“One day we’ll go,” she said
wistfully, “I’ve always wanted to go there, more than anywhere else in the
world.  And as you understand French, well! We’ll have a lovely time when we do
get to go.”

“It’s a promise.” I assured
her.

I wasn’t too clear on just how
I would fulfil it, but I meant to, of that I was certain.

As we set off, Grace was a bit
low.  She’d been round to her mother’s the evening before, to tell her of our
plans and discovered that Gavin had left her and according to Grace, she was in
a terrible state.  I could see that she was beginning to waver; she was
actually thinking of cancelling our holiday and her birthday.

It was the only delicate issue
between us.

“Grace, she’s an adult.  You
can’t always be hovering around her, trying to take responsibility for her
actions.” I said, trying not to sound as sharp and exasperated as I felt.

“Part of me knows that Jack.  But
what if she overdoses while I’m away enjoying myself?” she said sadly.

“She won’t.” I said with some
confidence.  “She doesn’t want to die, she only ever does it when she knows you
are about to come home, safe in the knowledge that you’ll find her and deal
with it all, just as you deal with everything else for her.  She knows we’re
going away, so she won’t do anything stupid; at least not until we get back.”

She thought about what I’d said
and clearly decided that there was some truth in my words.  So we left as planned,
but like I said, she was a bit low.

Leaving London behind made us
both feel good.  The weather was lovely and the journey from Waterloo to
Axminster seemed to fly by.  The taxi ride to the centre of Lyme Regis was full
of different views and scenes to keep us amused and my mind was full of
anticipation for the week ahead.  Therefore, as we pulled up outside the
charming bed and breakfast that we’d booked ourselves into, it was a complete
surprise to realise with absolute certainty that I’d been there before.

“I know this place...”