The Last Thing She Remembers

by J. S. Monroe

  Jemma walks over and tears off two sheets with a rasping noise that seems to fill the room. As she puts the pad down, she looks at the knife, picks it up and turns. Laura stares at her wide-eyed.

  “Is this what you were looking for earlier?” Jemma asks.

  Laura can’t speak, fixated by the sight of Jemma holding the glistening knife. All she can think of is the online link Susie sent; the image of Jemma Huish, her vacant eyes.

  “It belongs over there,” Laura manages to say. She takes the knife from her as quickly as she can and slides it back into the block with a sickening thud. “You’ve got a pen?” she asks, failing to sound nonchalant. Jemma nods.

  She turns to stack a couple of plates from the drying rack—anything to keep her mind occupied, her breathing steady. “I’ll be up in a minute,” she says. “Sleep well.”

  But when she turns around again, Jemma has already gone upstairs.

  She hopes to God Tony will be home soon.

  CHAPTER 11

  My bed is comfortable—white sheets that feel like expensive Egyptian cotton—and Laura has put a handful of freshly picked wildflowers in a miniature milk bottle on my painted bedside cupboard. The kindness of strangers. The room itself is just as I had described it to Laura and Tony earlier. Perfect for a child, although the colors may be a bit muted.

  Starting with my arrival at the airport, I begin to write down everything that I did: trying to report my lost bag, traveling here by train, meeting Laura and Tony, visiting the surgery, going to the pub quiz tonight. I don’t record anything personal about anyone, as I already feel like public property and have no doubt that whatever I write down will be read by others—doctors, police, mental health staff. They all mean well, I’m sure, but I need to be careful. At the top of the paper I write: READ THIS WHEN YOU WAKE UP.

  Laura is still downstairs. She’s behaving so strangely toward me. One moment wary, the next warm and tactile. We both saw the reaction of Dr. Patterson at the surgery at the end of our meeting. Her shock was too obvious to miss. Just like Laura’s, when she received the text at dinner. It was nothing about yoga. Who the hell is Jemma Huish?

  I haven’t heard Tony come back from the pub yet. He told me to leave the key under the flowerpot outside the front door. I was tempted to stay, just to see if his singing was as bad as Laura says, but I felt too tired.

  I am desperate for sleep now, but I’m anxious about what the morning might bring. Can it be any worse, more stressful than today? I have to keep going but feel at the mercy of others, the medical profession, my own memory. Images of Fleur continue to come and go. The moment I see her, she’s gone again.

  If I close my eyes now, I can bring her up from the darkness. Here she is, sitting in bed in her apartment, her face obscured by the book she’s reading: another account of Berlin’s underground techno scene. “Fleur,” I whisper, my eyes watering. She lowers the book and I gasp out loud. Her face is locked in a wide-mouthed scream.

  The brain is a frightening thing, capable of remembering so much of what we want it to forget, and forgetting the one thing that we most want it to remember. And then, years later, it chooses to work, operating like an autonomous neural state, summoning a nightmare from beyond the city walls, the badlands of amnesia.

  CHAPTER 12

  Half an hour later, I read through all that I’ve written and reach to turn off the light. It’s then that I hear them talking, downstairs in the kitchen. Their voices are muffled, too far away for them to be directly below me in the sitting room. I slip out of bed, wearing a pair of cotton pajamas from my suitcase, and creep onto the landing, straining to hear. As far as I can tell, Tony seems to be fighting in my corner, which is a relief, but Laura is keen for me to move out of the house as soon as possible.

  “We can’t just throw her onto the street, angel,” Tony says.

  “Read this. Jemma Huish walks into A&E, warning that she wants to kill someone. She pleads with them to section her and take her in. The triage nurse refers her for psychiatric assessment but while she’s waiting to be seen, she strolls out onto the street. Why didn’t anyone stop her?”

  “I don’t know, angel.”

  “And look at this. Minutes before Jemma slits her friend’s throat with a kitchen knife, she dials 999, warning again that she wants to harm someone and begging for help. The police arrived too late.”

  I creep farther down the landing, desperate to hear more.

  “Susie just said to be careful,” Tony says. “We’ve no way of knowing if it’s her.”

  “I’ve been speaking to her all evening. Jemma Huish would be thirty now. Jemma upstairs must be about that age. She was convicted of manslaughter twelve years ago, when she was a student in London.”

  “Where is she meant to be now?”

  “No one seems to know. Released back into the community. Susie also said that she used to live in this house. And that she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and amnesia.”

  “I don’t remember seeing a Huish on the list of owners in the attic.”

  “Susie’s not making this up, Tony. It’s in her medical records. They keep them at the surgery for fifteen years.”

  “It still doesn’t mean that the woman who turned up today is her.”

  “She told me earlier about a friend, that she’d died. That’s good enough for me. And you didn’t see her tonight—the way she was holding the kitchen knife.”

  “Did she do anything with it? Threaten you in any way?”

  “It felt like it. Look at this photo.”

  Silence. “It’s so blurry,” Tony says. “It could just be her, I suppose.”

  “What about this court drawing?”

  “Even harder to tell.”

  “That woman is sleeping upstairs, in our house.”

  I think I can hear Laura sobbing, but I’m not sure. It’s a while before Tony speaks.

  “It says she was an art student. Jemma was on a business trip in Berlin, arrived here in a suit. A professional woman...”

  “What kind of professional has a tattoo of a lotus flower on her wrist? I’m going to sleep down here, on the sofa. Until we know for sure.”

  “Come on, angel. There’s no need for that.” Tony doesn’t seem bothered by the tattoo.

  “I’m just freaked out, that’s all,” Laura says. “You calling her Jemma, the text from Susie.”

  I’ve heard enough and tiptoe back into my room, closing the door until it’s just ajar. I don’t want anyone to hear it click shut. Why does Laura think I’m Jemma Huish? And what were they reading? It would explain the look Laura gave me when I handed back the kitchen knife. She snatched at it as if she were disarming me. Jemma Huish slit her best friend’s throat. I close my eyes. Could I do that? Kill another person with a knife? I try to imagine a piece of cold metal in my hand, the anger or fear I’d need to drive it home.

  I get back into bed just as Tony begins to climb the stairs. The house is feeling more claustrophobic, smaller proportioned than I thought, the ceiling of my small bedroom pressing down on me. Have I got time to close the door properly? Tony is already on the landing. I lie still in the darkness, my eyes shut, heart jumping, wishing I had pulled the door shut. Tony seems to be standing there, breathing hard after climbing the stairs. And then I hear a door being pushed open, just a few inches. Is it my door or his? Should I call out?

  “Are you awake?” I hear him say at the doorway.

  I say nothing, feign sleep, try to make my breathing more audible but my lips are trembling too much. A tear rolls down my cheek as I stare at the wall.

  “Welcome home,” he whispers.

  I want to scream but I can’t move. What does he mean? I wish Laura would come upstairs. I’m trying to be brave, but I’m so fucking scared here.

  I can’t remember my own name.

  CHAPTER 13

  Luke look
s in on his elderly parents when he gets back to their house. They are watching a BBC4 documentary on digging the Crossrail tunnel under London, the third time they’ve seen it. After chatting briefly with them about Ada and Phyllis, their favorite pair of tunnel-boring machines, he heads out to his office in the garden. It’s more of a summerhouse than an office, but it gives him some space to work when he’s down here, away from the parental requests to recover lost emails, find car keys, order the weekly shop online. (The first time his mother tried to use the Waitrose website, eighteen shiny grapefruits turned up. Nothing more, nothing less.)

  It’s the least he can do for all that they’ve done for him over the years, helping to bring up Milo. His fifteen-year-old son is over at a mate’s house tonight. And Luke knows that’s exactly where he is because Milo has forgotten he’s friends with his old man on SnapChat, and failed to turn off his location.

  Luke fires up his desktop computer and searches for his old school photo on Facebook again. The girls are all sporting boaters, the boys silk skullcaps. He didn’t want his parents to buy him one—they were too expensive and he’d never wear it again—but they’d insisted, saying it was important to mark the moment.

  He zooms in on Freya Lal. Why did he confide so much in Jemma tonight? It was unsettling when he bumped into her in the surgery. She was so familiar, and yet he couldn’t place her. When he saw her in the pub again later, it was like being transported back in time to their school days. Her dark, expressive eyes, offset by pale skin, were identical to Freya’s, but it wasn’t so much an exact physical likeness as a manner. The way she tucked a loose strand of hair behind an ear, tilted her face upward in conversation. The lilt of a faint Indian accent. Maybe it’s all just wishful thinking, a symptom of his recent desire to find Freya.

  He thinks again about Jemma, aware of a nagging idea in the back of his mind. If she’s not connected in some way to Freya Lal, who is she? The mystery woman who turned up in their village today, unable to remember a single thing about her life. And that tattoo—a lotus flower. It would make a compelling story. Irresistible clickbait. He left that world behind long ago but he still misses it, even if it has changed. The Fleet Street he once worked in, before the death of his wife, has all but gone, shoe-leather investigations replaced by big data leaks on the dark web, content providers taking over from reporters, drunken subeditors sacked to make way for clean-living digital natives who clock on at 5:00 a.m. Milo has grown up not knowing a world without social media, or Google, or the internet.

  The woman with no name and no memory. It’s tempting. His phone buzzes. It’s a text message from Laura.

  Are you awake? Lx.

  He hesitates, glancing at the time. It’s 12:50 a.m., late for a text by his generation’s standards. He tries to rationalize the situation, his normal logic blurred by one too many pints with Sean after the quiz. Laura’s a spice, as Milo would say. She’s also married to Tony, blissfully so it would seem. Luke had been very happy with his girlfriend, Chloe, but it wasn’t right or fair that she was waiting for him to be ready to have children with her. He would never be ready. As he tried to explain to her, he’s almost fifty, ten years older than her, onto the next stage in life, a teenager in tow. Middle age is lapping at the levee of his youth.

  He texts back. Awake. Everything OK? He pauses and then adds a kiss. Strict parity, no “chirpsing,” another Milo phrase. He can see his son rolling his eyes.

  Google Jemma Huish + manslaughter.

  He looks at her message, disappointed by the end of texting niceties, the cut to the chase. And then he searches Google. The first result is a brief story about a murder case twelve years ago. He reads it through, taking in the sickening details, and looks at the woman in the fuzzy main photo. A sallow haunted face, beautiful in a deranged sort of way. Why’s Laura asked him to Google her?

  His phone buzzes with another text. Look familiar?

  He glances at the face again and sits up in his chair. Christ.

  You think it’s Jemma? He is still staring at the out-of-focus face. It’s hard to tell but it could just be her.

  Susie Patterson thought it might be. She used to live in our house, before she moved to London.

  Where is she now?

  Sleeping upstairs...

  Where are you?

  On the sofa in the sitting room.

  What does Tony think?

  That I’m an overanxious yoga teacher, which is probably true. Susie says Jemma Huish has probably been rehabilitated back into the community.

  Luke scrolls through the search results and clicks on a longer article about the shortage of specialist unit beds and the danger of rehabilitating psychiatric patients. In one National Health Service region alone, eighteen mental health patients over the past fifteen years have gone on to kill after being released into the community. Jemma Huish, who lived in the village as a child, long before his parents retired here, is cited as an example of a potentially dangerous early release. After being found guilty of manslaughter, she was ordered to be held indefinitely in a high secure psychiatric hospital. First Broadmoor then Ashworth. No one seems to know where she is now.

  Luke sighs, thinking back to his chat with the woman in the pub. She didn’t seem like a psychotic killer. Far from it. He liked her. She struck him as a lost soul—a bit like him—and in need of help. No danger to anyone, though. But then he’s not sleeping in the same house as her.

  She was discharged because she was no longer considered a threat to society, he texts back to Laura. Sure it’s fine/not her. He wants to add that he’s a bit hurt by the suggestion as he thinks Jemma might be related to an old girlfriend, but he resists. For now he’ll keep that theory to himself.

  That’s what Tony said. I’m taking Jemma to the surgery at 9am. I’d rather stick hot needles in my eyes.

  I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning. Sleep well.

  Fat chance. Not sure why we let a stranger stay in our house.

  Because you are kind, decent people. The kindest in the village. We’re very lucky you moved here.

  She sends a solitary kiss. He pauses and then sends one back himself.

  CHAPTER 14

  DAY TWO

  I stare at the ceiling, morning sun filtering through the blind. For a few seconds I wonder where I am. No fear yet, just confusion. Outside the window I can hear the sound of a train pulling away. Perhaps that’s what woke me. I turn to reach the sheets of paper on the bedside table and sit up. READ THIS WHEN YOU WAKE UP is written on the top sheet.

  And then the feeling returns, like a lead cloak has been wrapped around my shoulders. The words shock me as I read them, a brutal reminder of what I am doing in this bedroom. Free of any sentiment, my short sentences are an unembellished record of all that’s happened, like a child’s diary. I lost my bag. I took the train. I went to the pub quiz with Tony. I reach the end and read the last sentence again: Laura asks me if I’m someone called Jemma Huish.

  Who is Jemma Huish? Why am I being mistaken for her?

  I need to get ready for the day. There’s a note that’s been slipped under the door in what I assume is Laura’s handwriting. If you want a shower, use the one in our bathroom (loo shower downstairs broken!). Turn on the switch outside the bathroom first. Lx.

  Friendly enough tone. The shower is perfect, just what I need. I tilt my head upward, trying to focus on what I need to do. But my body tenses as soon as I think of what might lie ahead. I let the water run over my face, allowing thoughts to come and go. I see a Bodhi tree in a cleansing downpour, raindrops running off its heart-shaped leaves. I must stay strong.

  Tony and Laura both look up when I walk into the kitchen for breakfast.

  “How you feeling?” Tony says, making coffee at the sideboard. “Sleep well?” Laura is slicing a mango, dropping thick juicy pieces into a bowl of yogurt at the table. The block of knives is nowhere to
be seen.

  “Okay,” I say, turning to Laura. She avoids eye contact with me, maybe because hers are bloodshot. The truth is I feel sick. I summon what strength I have and begin to speak. Tentatively, quietly. “I know that I’m calling myself Jemma,” I say, pausing. “That I arrived at Heathrow Airport yesterday and lost my handbag, and that I then came out here to this village, where you two were good enough to look after me.”

  Laura glances at Tony.

  “That’s great news,” she says, beaming.

  “Is it?” Tony asks, looking at me and then at Laura. “Did you find your notes from yesterday? By your bed?”

  They both turn to me. I give the faintest acknowledgment, my cheeks reddening.

  “So you didn’t remember anything when you woke up?” Laura asks, unable to hide her disappointment.

  “I knew it was my handwriting when I started to read the sheets, but it seemed like someone else’s life.” I pause and look up at them both, struggling to continue. “What’s happening to me?”

  “It’s okay,” Laura says. She gets up from the table and walks over to me. Tears start to come as she gives me a hug. I wish she wasn’t so nice.

  “We went to see a doctor at the surgery yesterday, Susie Patterson,” she says, standing back. “Together, you and me. She said that if you wake up this morning unable to recall what happened yesterday, you might be suffering from something called anterograde amnesia.”

  “I know,” I say quietly. “I wrote that down in my notes too. I think I’m also suffering from the retrograde version.” I pause, wiping away my tears. “I still don’t know my own name.”

  “Transient global amnesia,” Tony says, raising his eyebrows as if he’s impressed. “A rare dose of double forgetfulness.”

  Laura looks up at him. “It will come back,” she says, turning to me. “Don’t worry.”

  “The thing is, when I read the notes, I really tried to commit them to memory, imagine myself turning up here in the village, going to the surgery, but there’s no feeling attached to any of the events I’ve written down. I can’t remember what it actually felt like to knock on your door, see you open it.”