by S. J. Watson
I found it, then picked up both phones. I couldn’t remember which one Dr Nash had given me. The larger of the two I checked quickly, seeing that every call was from, or to, Ben. The second – the one that flipped open – had hardly been used. Why had Dr Nash given it to me, I thought, if not for this? What am I now, if not confused? I opened it and dialled his number, then pressed Call.
Silence for a few moments, and then a buzzy ring, interrupted by a voice.
‘Hello?’ he said. He sounded sleepy, though it wasn’t late. ‘Who is this?’
‘Dr Nash,’ I said, whispering. I could hear Ben downstairs where I had left him, watching some kind of talent show on the television. Singing, laughter, sprinkled with punches of applause. ‘It’s Christine.’
There was a pause. A mental readjustment.
‘Oh. OK. How—’
I felt an unexpected plunge of disappointment. He didn’t sound pleased to be hearing from me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I got your number from the front of my journal.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. How are you?’ I said nothing. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. The words fell out of me, one after another. ‘I need to see you. Now. Or tomorrow. Yes. Tomorrow. I had a memory. Last night. I wrote it down. A hotel room. Someone knocked on the door. I couldn’t breathe. I … Dr Nash?’
‘Christine,’ he said. ‘Slow down. What happened?’
I took a breath. ‘I had a memory. I’m sure it has something to do with why I can’t remember anything. But it doesn’t make sense. Ben says I was hit by a car.’
I heard movement, as if he was adjusting his position, and another voice. A woman’s. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said quietly, and he muttered something I couldn’t quite hear.
‘Dr Nash?’ I said. ‘Dr Nash? Was I hit by a car?’
‘I can’t really talk right now,’ he said, and I heard the woman’s voice again, louder now, complaining. I felt something stir within me. Anger, or panic.
‘Please!’ I said. The word hissed out of me.
Silence at first, and then his voice again, now with authority. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m a little busy. Have you written it down?’
I didn’t answer. Busy. I thought of him and his girlfriend, wondered what it was that I’d interrupted. He spoke again. ‘What you’ve remembered – is it written in your journal? Make sure you write it down.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘but—’
He interrupted. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll call you, on this number. I promise.’
Relief, mixed with something else. Something unexpected. Hard to define. Happiness? Delight?
No. It was more than that. Part anxiety, part certainty, suffused with the tiny thrill of pleasure to come. I still feel it as I write this, an hour or so later, but now know it for what it is. Something I don’t know that I have ever felt before. Anticipation.
But anticipation of what? That he will tell me what I need to know, that he will confirm that my memories are beginning to trickle back to me, that my treatment is working? Or is it more?
I think of how I must have felt as he touched me in the car park, what I must have been thinking to ignore a call from my husband. Perhaps the truth is more simple. I’m looking forward to talking to him.
‘Yes,’ I had said when he told me he would call. ‘Yes. Please.’ But by then the line was already dead. I thought of the woman’s voice, realized they had been in bed.
I dismiss the thought from my mind. To chase it would be to go truly mad.
Monday, 19 November
The café was busy. One of a chain. Everything was green, or brown, and disposable, though – according to the posters that dotted the carpeted walls – in an environmentally friendly way. I drank my coffee out of a paper cup, dauntingly huge, as Dr Nash settled himself into the armchair opposite the one into which I had sunk.
It was the first time I’d had the chance to look at him properly; or the first time today at least, which amounts to the same thing. He had called – on the phone that flips open – not long after I had cleared away the remains of my breakfast and then picked me up an hour or so later, after I had read most of my journal. I stared out of the window as we drove to the coffee shop. I was feeling confused. Desperately so. This morning when I woke – even though I could not be certain I knew my own name – I knew somehow that I was both an adult and a mother, although I had no inkling that I was middle-aged and my son was dead. My day so far had been brutally disorientating, one shock after another – the bathroom mirror, the scrapbook, and then, later, this journal – culminating in the belief that I do not trust my husband. I had felt disinclined to examine anything else too closely.
Now, though, I could see that Dr Nash was younger than I had expected, and though I had written that he did not need to worry about watching his weight I could see that this did not mean he was as skinny as I had supposed. He had a solidness to him, emphasized by the too-large jacket that hung from his shoulders and out of which his surprisingly hairy forearms poked infrequently.
‘How are you feeling today?’ he said, once settled.
I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Confused, I suppose.’
He nodded. ‘Go on.’
I pushed away the biscuit that Dr Nash had given me though I hadn’t asked for it. ‘Well, I woke up kind of knowing that I was an adult. I didn’t realize I was married, but I wasn’t exactly surprised that there was somebody in bed with me.’
‘That’s good, though—’ he began.
I interrupted. ‘But yesterday I wrote that I woke up and knew I had a husband …’
‘You’re still writing in your book, then?’ he said, and I nodded. ‘Did you bring it today?’
I had. It was in my bag. But there were things in it I didn’t want him to read, didn’t want anyone to. Personal things. My history. The only history I have.
Things I had written about him. ‘I forgot,’ I lied. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I can see it must be frustrating, that one day you remember something and the next it seems to have gone again. But it’s still progress. Generally you’re remembering more than you were.’
I wondered if what he’d said was still true. In the first few entries of this journal I had written of remembering my childhood, my parents, a party with my best friend. I had seen my husband when we were young and first in love, myself writing a novel. But since then? Lately I have been seeing only the son I have lost and the attack that left me like this. Things it might almost be better for me to forget.
‘You said you were worried about Ben? What he’s saying about the cause of your amnesia?’
I swallowed. What I had written yesterday had seemed distant, removed. Almost fictional. A car accident. Violence in a hotel bedroom. Neither had seemed like anything to do with me. Yet I had no choice but to believe that I had written the truth. That Ben had really lied to me about how I ended up like this.
‘Go on …’ he said.
I told him what I’d written down, starting with Ben’s story about the accident and finishing with my recollection of the hotel room, though I mentioned neither the sex we’d been in the middle of when the memory of the hotel room came to me nor the romance – the flowers, the candles and champagne – it had contained.
I watched him as I spoke. He occasionally murmured an encouragement and even scratched his chin and narrowed his eyes at one point, though the expression was more thoughtful than surprised.
‘You knew this, didn’t you?’ I said when I’d finished. ‘You knew all of this already?’
He put down his drink. ‘Not exactly, no. I knew that it wasn’t a car accident that caused your problems, although since reading your journal the other day I now know that Ben has been telling you that it was. I also knew that you must have been staying in a hotel on the night of your … of your … on the night you lost your memory. But the other details yo
u mentioned are new. And as far as I know this is the first time you’ve actually remembered anything yourself. This is good news, Christine.’
Good news? I wondered if he thought I should be pleased. ‘So it’s true?’ I said. ‘It wasn’t a car accident?’
He paused, then said, ‘No. No, it wasn’t.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me Ben was lying? When you read my journal? Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’
‘Because Ben must have his reasons,’ he said. ‘And it didn’t feel right to tell you he was lying. Not then.’
‘So you lied to me, too?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve never lied to you. I never told you it was a car accident.’
I thought of what I had read this morning. ‘But the other day,’ I said. ‘In your office. We talked about it …’
He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t talking about an accident,’ he said. ‘You said that Ben had told you how it had happened, so I thought you knew the truth. I hadn’t read your journal then, don’t forget. We must have got ourselves mixed up …’
I could see how it might happen. Both of us skirting around an issue we didn’t want to mention by name.
‘So what did happen?’ I said. ‘In that hotel room? What was I doing there?’
‘I don’t know everything,’ he said.
‘Then tell me what you do know.’ The words emerged angrily, but it was too late to snatch them back. I watched as he brushed a non-existent crumb from his trousers.
‘You’re certain you want to know?’ he said.
I felt like he was giving me one final chance. You can still walk away, he seemed to be saying. You can go on with your life without knowing what I am about to tell you.
But he was wrong. I couldn’t. Without the truth I am living less than half a life.
‘Yes,’ I said.
His voice was slow. Faltering. He began sentences only to abort them a few words later. The story was a spiral, as if circling round something awful, something better left unsaid. Something that made a mockery of the idle chat I imagine the café is more used to.
‘It’s true. You were attacked. It was …’ He paused. ‘Well, it was pretty bad. You were discovered wandering in the street. Confused. You weren’t carrying any identification at all, and had no memory of who you were or what had happened. There were head injuries. The police initially thought you had been mugged.’ Another pause. ‘You were found wrapped in a blanket, covered in blood.’
I felt myself go cold. ‘Who found me?’ I said.
‘I’m not sure …’
‘Ben?’
‘No. Not Ben, no. A stranger. Whoever it was calmed you down. Called an ambulance. You were admitted to hospital, of course. There was some internal bleeding and you needed an emergency operation.’
‘But how did they know who I was?’
For an awful moment I thought perhaps they had never discovered my identity. Perhaps everything, an entire history, even my name, was given to me the day I was discovered. Even Adam.
Dr Nash spoke. ‘It wasn’t difficult,’ he said. ‘You’d checked into the hotel under your own name. And Ben had already contacted the police to report you as missing. Even before you were found.’
I thought of the man who had knocked on the door of that room, the man I had been waiting for.
‘Ben didn’t know where I was?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Apparently he had no idea.’
‘Or who I was with? Who did this to me?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nobody was ever arrested. There was very little evidence to work with, and of course you couldn’t really help the police with their investigations. It was assumed that whoever attacked you removed everything from the hotel room and then left you and fled. No one saw anyone go in, or leave. Apparently the hotel was busy that night – some kind of function in one of the rooms, lots of people coming and going. You were probably unconscious for some time after the attack. It was the middle of the night when you went downstairs and left the hotel. No one saw you go.’
I sighed. I realized the police would have closed the case, years ago. To everyone but me – even to Ben – this was old news, ancient history. I will never know who did this to me, and why. Not unless I remember.
‘What happened then?’ I said. ‘After I was taken to hospital?’
‘The operation was successful, but there were secondary effects. There was difficulty in stabilizing you after surgery. Your blood pressure in particular.’ He paused. ‘You lapsed into a coma for a while.’
‘A coma?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was touch and go, but, well, you were lucky. You were in the right place and they treated your condition aggressively. You came round. But then it became apparent that your memory had gone. At first they thought it might be temporary. A combination of the head injury and anoxia. It was a reasonable assumption—’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Anoxia?’ I had stumbled over the word.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Oxygen deprivation.’
I felt my head begin to swim. Everything started to shrink and distort, as though it were getting smaller, or me bigger. I heard myself speak. ‘Oxygen deprivation?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You had symptoms of a severe lack of oxygen to the brain. Consistent with carbon dioxide poisoning – though there was no other evidence for this – or strangulation. There were marks on your neck that suggested this. But the most likely explanation was thought to be near drowning.’ He paused as I absorbed what he was telling me. ‘Did you remember anything about almost drowning?’
I closed my eyes. I saw nothing but a card on a pillow upon which I see the words I love you. I shook my head.
‘You recovered, but your memory didn’t improve. You stayed in the hospital for a couple of weeks. In the intensive care unit at first and then the general ward. When you were well enough to be moved you were transported back to London.’
Back to London. Of course. I was found near a hotel; I must have been away from home. I asked where it was.
‘In Brighton,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea why you might have been there? Any connection to that area?’
I tried to think of holidays, but nothing came.
‘No,’ I said. ‘None. None that I know of, anyway.’
‘It might help to go there, at some point. To see if you remember.’
I felt myself go cold. I shook my head.
He nodded. ‘OK. Well, there could be any number of reasons why you’d be there, of course.’
Yes, I thought. But only one that incorporated flickering candles and bunches of roses but didn’t include my husband.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’ I wondered if either of us was going to mention the word affair, and how Ben must have felt when he realized where I had been, and why.
It struck me then. The reason Ben had not given me the real explanation for my amnesia. Why would he want to remind me that once, however briefly, I had chosen another man over him? I felt a chill. I had chosen someone over my husband, and look at the price I had paid.
‘What happened then?’ I said. ‘Did I move back in with Ben?’
He shook his head. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘You were still very ill. You had to stay in the hospital.’
‘For how long?’
‘You were in the general ward at first. For a few months.’
‘And then?’
‘You were moved.’ He hesitated – I thought I would have to ask him to continue – and then said, ‘To a psychiatric ward.’
The word shook me. ‘A psychiatric ward?’ I imagined a fearful place, full of crazy people, howling, deranged. I could not see myself there.
‘Yes.’
‘But why? Why there?’
He spoke softly, but his tone betrayed annoyance. I felt suddenly convinced we had been through all this before, perhaps many times, presumably before I had begun to keep my journal. ‘It was more secure,’ he said. ‘You had made a reasonable recovery from
your physical injuries by now, but your memory problems were at their worst. You didn’t know who you were, or where. You were exhibiting symptoms of paranoia, claiming the doctors were conspiring against you. You kept trying to escape.’ He waited. ‘You were becoming increasingly unmanageable. You were moved for your own safety, as well as the safety of others.’
‘Of others?’
‘You occasionally lashed out.’
I tried to imagine what it must have been like. I pictured someone waking up every day, confused, not sure who they were, or where, or why they’d been put in hospital. Asking for answers, and not getting them. Being surrounded by people who knew more about them than they did. It must have been hell.
I remembered that we were talking about me.
‘And then?’
He didn’t answer. I saw his eyes go up and he looked past me, towards the door, as if he were watching it, waiting. But there was no one there, it did not open, no one left or came in. I wondered if he was actually dreaming of escape.
‘Dr Nash,’ I said, ‘what happened then?’
‘You stayed there for a while,’ he said. His voice was almost a whisper now. He has told me this before, I thought, but this time he knows I will write it down and carry it with me for more than a few hours.
‘How long?’
He said nothing. I asked him again. ‘How long?’
He looked up at me, his face a mixture of sadness and pain. ‘Seven years.’
He paid, and we left the coffee shop. I felt numb. I don’t know what I was expecting, where I thought I had lived out the worst of my illness, but I didn’t think it would be there. Not in the middle of all that pain.
As we walked, Dr Nash turned to me. ‘Christine,’ he said, ‘I have a suggestion.’ I noticed how casually he spoke, as if he was asking which flavour of ice cream I would prefer. A casualness that can only be affected.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘I think it might be helpful for you to visit the ward where you were admitted,’ he said. ‘The place you spent all that time.’
