Splintered Memory

by Natascha Holloway

  Claire looked slightly confused, and she didn’t understand the reference that Charlie had made to her memory needing to be triggered. She saw Charlie recognise the confusion in her face and smile.

  “The doctor’s that I saw after my accident all told me that if I was to regain my memory, something would have to trigger it. They thought that it was likely that the trauma of my accident, and the memory of being trapped inside the car, had caused my memory to seal itself to protect me from having to re-live it,” Charlie said before she took another sip of her wine.

  “They explained that they believed that I had retrograde amnesia, which is basically where you have the ability to retain new memories but you can’t remember your old ones. The trigger that they spoke about could be anything. It could be a person, a thing, a reaction to something or someone. It could even be a certain word. The most frustrating thing about it is that until the memory is triggered,” Charlie said; “you won’t actually know what the trigger is.”

  Claire smiled at the way in which Charlie kept making quotation mark signs with her fingers each time she referred to the word trigger.

  “Is it wrong if I say that it’s kind of interesting though? You know, how your brain can remember new stuff but not any of the old stuff?” Claire asked before smiling awkwardly at Charlie, who she could see didn’t look like she agreed with her that it was interesting.

  “So,” Charlie continued smiling at Claire as she did. “At the end of that first week, I was miserable and disheartened. The search for the needle in a haystack continued, and I had no idea what I was looking for to trigger my memory. Plus everyone was already getting on my nerves, and I really felt like I just needed some time on my own. I wanted to just be able to wonder around, get on with things, and not have to sit in my parent’s house hour after hour listening to people talk at me. But it was difficult you know. I didn’t want to be rude to anyone, and I also didn’t have anything to do.”

  Claire looked at her confusedly, and Charlie smiled again and said; “I haven’t been able to work, because I haven’t been able to remember what it was that I did for a living. Or even what being a solicitor entailed. So as you can imagine, I was getting pretty down beat. But luckily my dad could see it, and he asked me if I wanted to go to school with him. He said that I could spend some time in the library, or even just sit in his office reading. He said that if I liked it and enjoyed being in the school, and I carried on with my plan of going back to school to re-take some exams, then maybe I might want to consider teaching as a new profession.”

  “At Kings of Wessex,” Claire said sounding surprised.

  “Weird isn’t it,” Charlie said still smiling. “I never thought that I’d go back to our old senior school, but it gave me the chance to get out of the house. It was a way to get away from my mum, your mum, Matt’s mum, and everyone else’s mum and dad for that matter,” she added shaking her head. “I’d forgotten how claustrophobic our parents make life in Cheddar.”

  “That’s why we all packed up and shipped out,” Claire said smiling.

  “Yeah I know,” Charlie said returning Claire’s smile.

  “Anyway, I think that my dad was keen for me to go to school with him. I got the sense that he wanted to impress me. You know make me proud of him and his school,” Charlie said smiling yet again.

  Claire smiled again too. She knew that Charlie was proud of her father having become the headmaster of their old school, and she knew that Charlie and her dad had always been close.

  “So I went into school with him, and it was really nice. The kids didn’t care who I was, or that I’d lost my memory. They were just loud and energetic and full of their own traumas and end of the world situations. The teachers were all stressed, and so they were also completely uninterested in my woes. Most of them were new as well, and there was no one from our days still there that I had to worry about not recognising.”

  Charlie took another sip of wine before continuing. “After the first day out of the house and in school, I came back home feeling really good. My spirits were lifted and for the first time in a very long time, I hadn’t spent the whole day trying to be someone that I couldn’t remember ever being. I had spent the day just being me, and that felt really good. Actually it felt great.”

  Claire nodded, but she also smiled sympathetically at Charlie. She’d had no idea what her best friend had been through before now, and she couldn’t imagine how awful it must’ve been for her.

  “I started to go to school two or three times a week. I’d sit and talk with my dad when he wasn’t in meetings, and he’d make sure that he kept the conversation based around his pupils and teachers. He would ask my advice about things, and we’d discuss all of his options. It was nice to be able to think about other things, and it kept me totally distracted from my own worries.”

  Claire nodded again.

  “When I wasn’t in my dad’s office, I’d either be in the library or the teacher’s lounge. I’d read, or try to see if I could remember any of the stuff from the books that were left lying around. All the teachers were really nice, and some of them even offered to help me with any studies I might want to do. It was pretty obvious that whilst they didn’t necessarily care about my memory, they’d all been fully briefed on my predicament. Although in fairness I don’t think my dad had told them. It was probably more likely to have been Matt’s mum or Rich’s mum, who are both still on the PTA!”

  “Who ordered the salmon?” The waiter asked appearing behind Claire and carrying two plates.

  “Me,” Claire said.

  “So the chicken Caesar salad is for you?” He asked Charlie, and she nodded.

  “Can I get you ladies anymore wine?” He asked them.

  “No thanks we’re fine for now,” Claire said eager for him to leave so that Charlie could continue.

  Charlie put an overly large sized forkful of chicken and salad into her mouth, and Claire rolled her eyes and said; “still a lady then I see?”

  Charlie nodded smiling, and then swallowed her food swilling it down afterwards with a sip of wine.

  “Okay,” she said seeing Claire’s eagerness for her to continue. “Well, that’s how I spent my time over the next few months. I wasn’t remembering anything, but I was excited at the prospect of going back to school for myself. I also thought that I might even like to train as a teacher, assuming that I could get all the relevant qualifications of course.”

  Claire gave her a look that made Charlie smile, and she knew that Charlie had understood without words that she wanted her to get to the more interesting parts of the story. She wanted to know how her memory had come back, and what had caused it.

  “When the school shut for the holidays my dad still had to go in to oversee some maintenance work that was needed, but he said that I could go with him. He warned me that it would be dull, but I was keen to help. To be honest I was keen to do anything to get me out the house and away from my mum, who I knew would start harking on again about the days when I was happily married,” Charlie said raising her eyebrows slightly before eating some more of her salad.

  “You found something at the school didn’t you?” Claire asked eagerly.

  Charlie nodded and said; “I was in one of the classrooms with a bunch of desks that the teachers had identified as needing to be discarded. My job was to have a look at them and make sure that they really were at the end of their life. If they still had a couple more terms in them, I was under strict orders from my dad to put a sticker on them for them to be returned. It was pretty dull work, although it was quite amusing to read some of the graffiti on the desks. Messages either pencilled or penned onto the desk, or engraved into the wood with either a sharp pen or…”

  “A compass,” Claire said interrupting Charlie and smiling reminiscently.

  “Some of the messages seemed to act as a kind of timeline for certain pupils,” Charlie said; “and they detailed their relationships and melodramas.”

  “What so there wer
en’t any I was ’ere messages, or I heart so and so?” Claire asked smiling.

  “Well yeah, obviously, there were loads of those. Let’s face it kids from any generation aren’t very original, but I didn’t bother with those. My eyes fell on the more heartfelt messages, or the poems or quips that had been jotted down by previous pupils,” Charlie said.

  Claire rolled her eyes at her.

  “Anyway, as I was reading them, I came across one that said please speak to me. I don’t want to lose both my best friends. I was intrigued by it, and I wondered what that kid must have done to lose two best friends. Although for some reason,” Charlie said as Claire sat forward on her stool; “I was sure the message had been written by a boy.”

  “I honestly don’t know why I thought that,” Charlie said; “but the more I looked at it, the more familiar that something about the handwriting became. Yet the more I tried to focus on the familiarity of it, the further away that feeling of familiarity seemed to go.”

  Claire stared at her.

  “I’d gotten so used to my doctor’s telling me not to force my memories,” Charlie said; “that I stopped obsessing over the familiarity and carried on reading the chain of messages that followed. The one below it read…”

  “You haven’t lost me, but I can’t speak to you,” Claire said once again interrupting Charlie.

  Charlie nodded appreciatively, and then she smiled at Claire and said; “nice memory!”

  “Thanks,” Claire said inclining her head as Charlie gave her a silent round of applause. “Although I’m not sure that I can remember the other messages verbatim, but weirdly I can picture the desk you’re talking about. It was in the far left hand corner of Mrs Penwood’s class. Matt used to sit in it, and Rich sat in front of him in their English class. In our English class it was originally your desk and I sat in the one in front, but then you got moved for passing notes so I sat in it.”

  Charlie nodded and smiled fondly at the memory.

  “I used to read the messages that Matt wrote, and then pass them to you in a note by asking to borrow something from Rach. She always sat one desk behind you from the front because she couldn’t see the board from the back. Then you’d write what I should reply,” Claire said as the stream of memories came back to her.

  Charlie laughed out loud and said; “yep. I remember that you told Rach when we were at middle school that she either got better glasses or we couldn’t be friends with her anymore, as you weren’t prepared to be associated with anyone that might be classified by any boy as a geek.”

  Claire burst out laughing and said; “I was such a bitch! How did I have any friends aside from you?”

  “Beats me,” Charlie said still laughing.

  “Okay,” Claire said; “so you were reading the messages.”

  “Yes. So I read your reply, and the ones that followed it, and I was intrigued as to what must’ve been happening. Why couldn’t they speak to each other? What had happened? Also who was the third best friend? I kind of got the distinct impression that there was a bit of a love triangle going on? Yet every time my mind raised questions, another part of my mind seemed to be trying to tell me that I already knew the answers. So I tried to concentrate on what the answers were,” she said; “but everything seemed to just keep moving further and further away from me.”

  “That must have been so frustrating,” Claire said.

  “You think?” Charlie asked rhetorically, and then smiling she continued; “after I finished reading the messages I was feeling irritable, so I decided to go for a walk in the school grounds. I quickly stuck labels on the desks that I thought were still okay, and then I put a note on the teacher’s desk telling my dad where I’d gone.”

  Charlie took another sip of her wine and said; “I walked round the school grounds and I tried to clear my mind and take in some fresh air, but then out of nowhere I heard a screech and I saw an image of a car skidding in front of me. Everything around me started to spin and I could hear, or at least I could remember hearing a man’s voice. He was telling me that I’d been in an accident, but that I was okay and that they’d have me out of the car in no time. I remembered grabbing hold of his hand – unable to see his face, and begging him to stay with me, but then everything went dark.”

  Claire looked horrified.

  Charlie took yet another sip of wine, looking down at the same time at her discarded salad and pushing the plate away from her. She could feel Claire’s eyes on her.

  “The next thing I knew my dad was at my side holding my hand and helping me up off the floor. He looked worried and he asked me what had happened. I wasn’t really sure though so I lied. I said that I must’ve fainted, and I tried to laugh it off. He took me home and I went straight up to my room. I lay on my bed and tried to focus on the memory that I’d had of my accident, you know to see if I could remember anything else,” Charlie said.

  Claire leant across the table, clearly riveted by what Charlie was telling her.

  “Nothing came back,” she said. “So to distract myself, and probably partly out of boredom I suppose. I got up and went over to my desk, and I began to scribble down the messages that I’d read on the desk at school that had seemed so familiar to me.”

  “You remembered them?” Claire asked.

  “Never been anything wrong with my short term memory,” Charlie said rolling her eyes at Claire.

  “Oh, sorry,” Claire said smiling awkwardly again.

  “What was weird was that as I wrote the responses – the messages that you’d written, I had a memory of watching you write them. This threw me at first, but then I got excited by it and so I kept reading and re-reading the messages. I thought that maybe they were the trigger that I’d been looking for since I’d woken up,” Charlie said; “but nothing else came back to me, and so feeling disheartened again I gave up and went to bed.”

  “And,” Claire said encouraging Charlie to continue.

  “The next morning I felt less optimistic, and I reminded myself that it was possible that what had happened in the school grounds was completely unrelated to the messages that I’d read on the desk. It was likely that they’d been written by people that I didn’t know,” Charlie said; “so I gave up on them, and tried instead to focus on the memory that I’d had of the crash.”

  She took a sip of wine again and said; “bits of that memory were becoming clearer. The paramedics face for instance, I could see it now whereas I hadn’t been able to before. I also remembered telling him that I was pregnant, and I remembered asking him if the baby would be okay. I remembered telling him that Matt was a doctor at Selly Oak A&E, and I remembered asking if that was the hospital that we’d be going to.”

  “Could you remember right up until you lost consciousness?” Claire asked.

  “Eventually, over the next few days I could,” Charlie said. “I could remember from the point where I saw the car in front of me swerve, or whatever it did across my lane. I could remember my car rolling over, and me being trapped inside it upside down. I could remember the pain, and how scared I felt. I remembered holding the paramedics hand, and I could remember telling him that the pain in my chest was getting worse. I remembered thinking that they couldn’t get me out, and that I was going to die in the car. Finally I remembered thinking about Matt holding our baby, but then everything went dark.”

  Claire didn’t say anything. She wasn’t really sure what to say.

  “I was feeling okay though,” Charlie said more brightly. “The memory I was having was a little scary, but I was remembering something. So it made me feel more positive that eventually I’d be able to remember more things.”

  Charlie squeezed her hand, and Claire smiled back at her knowing that she was worrying about her. It was typical Charlie she thought, always being kind and looking out for everyone else.

  “The following morning after I’d recalled the whole accident, I was sat in the kitchen eating some toast when I suddenly got an image of Matt’s face. It was a younger version
though than the one I’d known in Birmingham after my accident. Yet as I was trying to focus in on this memory, Mrs Taylor came round to speak to my mum. My mum was still getting ready, and so Mrs Taylor sat in the kitchen making polite chit chat with me. Well that is until she said; “I’m glad you seem happy here Charlie. I think it’s made it easier for both Matt and Rich to get on with their lives without you around.”

  “What a bitch,” Claire said sounding highly disgruntled.

  “Well that’s kind of what I thought,” Charlie said smiling. “To be honest I’d gotten so used to people being nice to me, the comment came as a bit of shock. I also found myself retaliating in kind. I said to her that I understood why it was easier on Matt – my husband, but I didn’t really see what difference it could or should have made to Rich.”

  “Nice,” Claire said nodding appreciatively.

  Charlie smiled and continued. “She then said to me though; I understand what you mean, but there was a time when everyone here thought it would be you and my son that would tie the knot and live happily ever after. I think my Rich still holds a small candle for you. Well the old you at least.”

  “What a complete cow,” Claire said.

  “Well yes, but also no. If she hadn’t said that, then I don’t think I’d have stormed out of the kitchen and headed towards the school. I also don’t think that I’d have been thinking about the concept of me having ever been with Rich, which interestingly no one up until that point had ever mentioned to me. No one, and Claire seriously by this time I’d had a lot of accounts of my life told to me. Including versions given to me by Rich, Matt, and Bex. Yet none of them had ever mentioned that I’d been with anyone other than Matt!”

  “Well obviously Bex would never tell you that,” Claire said grinning; “I think she’s managed to convince herself that you were never with him.”