by Jean Levy
‘Yes!’
‘It wasn’t his fault, you know. He argued your case the whole time.’
‘He hit Dr Williams!’
‘I was there. It was the best moment of my entire career.’ He topped up their glasses. ‘So, how’s the memory refreshing at the moment?’
‘I don’t know.’ I picked up the piece of paper. ‘Everything to do with these two people drains straight out of my head as soon as I know it. And now I’ve been told my mother’s alive, and I can’t remember her. Sam, the photos Dr Gray gave me, of my birthday, in one of them, my granny and I are smiling at the person taking the picture. I remember that day but however much I try I can’t remember who the third person was. I would remember my mother, wouldn’t I?’
Sam looked thoughtful. ‘It is possible that person might not have been significant enough to be remembered from all those years ago. Nobody remembers everybody. But, alternatively, from what’s been learned from interviewing you, it might be that this third person was significant enough for you to forget. This process of repression, it might be a unique facility your mind has perfected over the years to conceal unpleasant memories.’
Matthew sat forward. ‘You think Sarah’s done this before?’
‘Bob thinks so.’
‘He thinks I’ve deliberately forgotten my mother?’
‘Sarah, none of it’s deliberate. It seems your unconscious mind can operate independent of your volition, of your will. A coping mechanism that arose in childhood.’
‘But I’m smiling at her in the photo. If it’s her. Why would I need to forget my mother?’
‘You probably felt abandoned every time she went away. Children don’t always understand their parent’s actions. Occasionally they blame themselves. Sometimes she would have stayed away for several months.’
‘Alice Parker said my mother was in a loony bin.’
Matthew’s wine glass stopped half way to his lips. ‘Sarah, love, who’s Alice Parker?’
‘She was a girl in school. We hated each other.’
‘From what I’ve gathered,’ said Sam, ‘there were frequent periods of institutionalisation. It was during rehab that she met John Dawson.’
Matthew lifted the sheet of paper from my lap and pointed to one of the names. ‘He was her father. Arachne Dawson. AD. She was your half-sister. That’s right, isn’t it, Sam?’
I watched Sam nod his head. I remember thinking how strange it was that everybody knew more about my life than I did. Sam Clegg seemed to know more than anyone.
‘Sam, how did you find out all these things about me?’
‘Medical records, social services.’
‘And this was all done without me knowing?’ I could feel myself becoming angry.
‘Not maliciously,’ said Sam. ‘And tomorrow, if you’re happy to see it, Bob is going to show you the data I accumulated.’
‘The story of my life that everybody knows except me? Will it be illustrated?’
‘Illustrated?’
‘Yes, Dr Clegg, I’ve got a whole fucking cupboard full of camera equipment and no photos! Will the story of my life include my photographs?’
Matthew moved to put his arm around me. ‘Hey, Sarah, everyone’s trying to help.’
‘Well, perhaps I can’t be helped.’ I shrugged him away. ‘Perhaps my unique mind is going to carry on burning out my brain until there’s nothing left. Have either of you any idea what it’s like being told about your life by other people?’
‘Sarah,’ said Sam, ‘I know this must be awful for you. And tomorrow there will be photos. As I said, Geraint believes photos corrupt memories, but to an extent they can also evoke them. And then those memories might access other memories: like stepping stones back to when you yourself can remember.’
‘Back to things the police are interested in? That happened in that place.’
‘In Hornsey?’ said Sam. I had forgotten that name. Sam leant forward, his tone quietly conspiratorial. ‘Sarah, we want you to recover your memories so you can come to terms with them and move on. There’s a chance we might be able to help you remember your life by taking you back over it, like rewinding a videotape that’s got a glitch in it. Do you remember videotapes?’
‘Yes, of course!’
‘Well, if you remember, the best thing to do when a videotape got a kink in it was to wind it back to the beginning then forward to the piece you wanted to watch. It’s only a theory but it might work. And then it will be up to you what you tell people.’
‘What I tell people?’ I searched Sam Clegg’s eyes: friendly, brown, truthful. I scanned those brown eyes for any sign of meaning that was different to the one I now feared. ‘And it will be up to me what I don’t tell people, right, Sam? Do you think there are things I’d want to conceal?’ I pointed to the two names. ‘About what happened to those two people? And my mind’s helping me by not letting me know either?’
‘No, Sarah. I think your mind is protecting you from things that are too hurtful to remember. Perhaps related to the circumstances in which you were found. What happened to those two people could well be some tragic coincidence.’
I looked down at my hands, clasped together, like a criminal begging for forgiveness. Like Sarah Blake begging for a future not destroyed by nightmares from her past.
‘How huge can a coincidence be, Sam? Two people’s lives ended and I disappeared. Perhaps the thing my mind is protecting me from is the truth.’ I reached over for the phone. ‘I’ll call down for some tea.’
‘Let me do that!’ Matthew eased the phone from my hand.
I snatched it back. ‘For God’s sake, I can make a telephone call!’
Sam got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
I sighed. ‘I know. I’m just terrified about what I might have done.’
‘There’s no suggestion that you did anything,’ Matthew said.
‘You can’t know that.’
*
Tea arrived. Matthew convinced me to sit and enjoy it and we chatted more about Geraint Williams. Sam was only too pleased to provide detailed criticism, and I was heartened by every negative appraisal. Eventually, the conversation turned to football, so I left them discussing transfer fees and wandered off to fetch my pills. I found my room in semi-darkness, illuminated by a cold, unnatural light coming in from outside. I went over to the window to close the blind and was forced to shade my eyes. The grounds outside were deathly still, uniformly illuminated by a vast number of intense, blue-white lights, hidden in the shrubbery so that they cast their shadows upwards into the empty sky. A single golf buggy had been left outside to suffer the damp night air. I could see headlights passing in the distance, their drivers oblivious to the anguish trapped at great cost within this fine institution, every one of them blissfully unaware of the personal crises that were unravelling just a few hundred yards away from their uncomplicated lives. I envied their distance, because, for all its manicured gardens and excellent cuisine, this was not a place of happiness. I turned as the door half opened.
‘Can we come in?’ said Matthew, manoeuvring one end of a mattress into the room.
Sam appeared, supporting the other end. ‘Matthew’s scared to sleep on his own,’ he said.
Episode Forty
Hoping that sleep would come quickly, I got into bed, placed the paper with the two names under my pillow and lay there watching Matthew arranging his pillows against the spindle legs of the bedside table. Eventually he resigned himself to discomfort, kissed me, turned off the light and crawled into his makeshift bed. I hung my arm over the side, so that it rested against his cheek. ‘This is just another inconvenience I’m causing you.’
‘Nonsense, woman, I’ve never been more comfortable in my life. And I can see under the furniture from here so that’s a bonus I wasn’t expecting. Go to sleep.’
I watched the darkness and listened to Matthew’s quiet breathing and the whirring of the minibar in the next room. I shifted around on the mat
tress. It was too hard and it was getting harder. I tried to ignore it and waited for sleep to come. After perhaps twenty minutes of rigid expectation, I realised something had gone wrong. Why did this have to be the one night that the pills failed to work? Probably all the thoughts racing through my head had united and launched a counterattack on the chemical invasion that usually allowed me to sleep. I was wide-awake. And I had spent so long drifting to sleep in a pharmaceutical blur that I could no longer remember how to fall asleep unassisted. I had forgotten how impossible it is to go to sleep deliberately, how the more you try to sleep the more unlikely it becomes. And the more your thoughts and fears catch hold of your failure. I needed to instruct my mind to let me sleep. But my mind had a mind of its own. Like an internal parasite. This was why I was in this state, and why Matthew was on a mattress on the floor.
I stared at the ceiling, my eyes now adjusted to the light flowing in from around the edges of the blind. I could pick out the furniture, the bathroom door. I wondered if Matthew was still awake. It would be ridiculous for us to both be lying there unable to sleep. But I was too close to see him where he lay. I moved to the edge of the concrete mattress so I could see over. Quietly, so that the bed wouldn’t creak.
‘Are you all right?’ he whispered. He sat up. ‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘No.’ I reached out and touched his shoulder. ‘I can’t stop thinking about what Sam said: about only telling people what I want them to know. You said the police thought I might be pretending. Why would they think that if there wasn’t something to hide?’
He reached up and turned on the bedside lamp. ‘Did you take both your pills?’
‘Yes, but they’re not working. Matthew, was I at my mother’s house that day?’
He sat up on his knees. ‘Sarah, it’s important you remember for yourself.’
‘I need you to start the memory. Like Sam said: one memory leading to another. You have to tell me if you know. You might think you’re protecting me, but you can’t protect me from the truth. It’s my choice, Matthew.’
He settled himself back against the pillows and the bedside table, as if he needed to secure himself. He held my gaze. ‘You phoned me that afternoon to say you were going over to your mother’s place to tell Arachne you were leaving Jeff. And that, if anything happened to Diana, she could find you with me.’
I took a moment to digest the gravity of what he had said. But I was confused. ‘Did Arachne live with my mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘And was Jeff Blake also there that day?’
‘I argued with you not to go there until I got back. I’d been in Birmingham the previous evening at a book launch. I was on my way back when you called. I went straight to your flat but you weren’t there and you weren’t answering your phone. When I got to your mother’s place the police were already there. Two days later they found you. Nobody knows what happened that day. The police checked your phone records. I told them you phoned me about sales of your book. Nobody knows you intended to go over there. I’ve not told anyone.’
‘And did I go there?’
‘Sarah, all anybody knows is that on that day your husband was critically injured, your sister died and you went missing. Jeff died six weeks later of an infection. The police have provisionally concluded that Jeff’s fall was an accident and that Arachne ran out of the house for help and fell into the path of a lorry. She died instantly. They believe there might be suspicious circumstances simply because the circumstances remain unexplained. Nobody saw you there. Nobody knows how you came to be lying on a beach over a hundred miles away. The police can only assume that the circumstances of your disappearance are an additional mystery that may be unrelated to the events at your mother’s. Like Sam said, an unfortunate coincidence. Sarah, I truly don’t know what happened that day and there’s nobody left that can explain it. Apart from you.’
I stared at Matthew and he stared back, expressionless, probably because no expression could be adequate. I lay back on my pillows and waited for the laughter. It didn’t come. Perhaps the pills were achieving something after all.
‘Matthew, if the police knew I intended to go there, do you imagine they’d still think it was all an unfortunate coincidence?’
‘Possibly not. It’s important they don’t find out.’
He crawled up to sit on the edge of my bed and rested his hand lightly across my chest. I could feel my stomach churning beneath his touch, my lips tingling as the blood failed to reach them. He had not told me all he knew, I was sure of that.
‘Do you want me to remember, Matthew?’
‘I want us to be happy.’
‘And you think that if I remember, I’ll remember something that will make that impossible? Do you know if I was there? Matthew, tell me!’
He shook his head. In resignation rather than denial. ‘The police let me through the cordon. They were hoping I’d be able to throw light on what had happened. The clean-up team were there. Diana had been taken away. I told them I was looking for you. That I was worried because you’d been feeling unwell and you were not answering your phone. I left after about an hour and started to walk back to Crouch End.’ He paused. ‘Your car was parked in the next street.’
I pushed myself up. ‘My car was in the next street?’
‘It was unlocked. The key was in the usual place, under the mat. There was a box of books on the passenger seat. Your suitcase was in the boot. Your bag was under the driver’s seat. I got in and drove to my flat and unloaded your things then I drove to Islington and parked your car round past the Indian takeaway. It was towed away a couple of days later. I told the police the builders had been parking in your place and you often had to park away from the house. I said you’d been staying with me. I had to give them your things. But I destroyed your phone.’
He waited for me to react. Eventually I did. ‘So you lied to the police? Is that because you thought I’d done something awful?’
‘No! I don’t believe you’d hurt anyone ever. But I think it’s best if the police never find out you were there. And, Sarah, just remember I love you, whatever happened that day.’
I crawled over and hugged him. He didn’t deserve all this. It was as if he was being punished for caring about me. He’d been guarding these lies alone, and I couldn’t even be sure I’d remember any of it by the time the morning came. And now, finally, the pills were taking effect.
I sat up and shook away the tiredness. ‘We need to sleep. Will you set the alarm for eight? I’ll phone first thing and tell Dr Gray we’ll be there at ten. Then, if I’ve forgotten everything you’ve just told me, promise me you’ll tell me again, Matthew. I’m going to work out what to do about all this, I really am!’
Episode Forty-one
I opened my eyes to see Matthew sitting on the edge of my bed, dressed and ready for another day. ‘Get out this side,’ he said. ‘There’s a mattress on the other one.’
‘I remember!’
‘What do you remember?’ He held my dressing gown ready.
‘That you were scared to sleep on your own! Did you manage to sleep?’
‘After a fashion. It’s twenty past eight. I’ve phoned Sam to say we’ll be there at ten.’
I stepped out of bed. ‘I said I’d do that!’
‘You remember saying that?’
‘Yes. We were talking until late and we were upset, so I said set the alarm for eight and I’d phone Dr Gray.’
‘Do you remember what we were upset about?’
‘About my husband, Jeff Blake. And a sister. Her name was … I can’t remember. I’ve only just woken up. Something to do with a spider.’ I took a few steps towards the bathroom then paused, returned to my pillow, felt beneath it for a slip of paper and read it aloud: ‘Arachne.’ I folded the paper into my dressing-gown pocket. ‘I’ve made up my mind, Matthew. Today things have to change.’
*
I picked at my breakfast and tried to piece together fragments from the previous evening�
�s conversations: about a husband falling and a half-sister, my half-sister, running into the path of a lorry. I could remember the very clear image I had constructed when Matthew told me that. I watched him poking at his plate. ‘I told you to avoid the eggs.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t think anyone could scramble eggs as badly as this.’
‘She was called Arachne. She died. And so did Jeff Blake. But my mother is still alive and in an institution for people with dementia.’
‘Sarah, that’s a lot to have remembered!’
‘But I can only remember being told those things. I can’t remember them being real. And I can’t make myself have any feelings about them.’
‘But it’s an enormous improvement. Last night you were forgetting those things straightaway. Every time you tried to remember there were noises, forcing you to forget.’
‘They’re still there, but I’m keeping them away. When I was in the shower, watching the water drain away, I started to think about those noises, the laughter and the waves. There’s also the sound of waves. And I realised that I’ve just been letting them creep up on me and wash my memories away, letting my memories be sucked away and drowned. So I’ve decided to be prepared. To stay ahead of the waves. And if I do that, then I’ll be able to sort out what to do about everything else.’
