Open Your Eyes

by Paula Daly

  Leon appeared to be sleeping when we went in. I hung back in case of another attack and DI Ledecky took the lead. The other officer – DC Payne – took out a pocket notebook ready to transcribe whatever was said.

  ‘Mr Campbell,’ Ledecky said, her voice soft, cajoling. ‘I apologize for waking you.’

  At first Leon didn’t stir.

  Then, as Hazel Ledecky repeated her introduction, his left eyelid lifted halfway and he gave her a grin. It was almost lascivious in nature, as if Leon was waking from a sex dream.

  I held my breath.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said, still grinning.

  Ledecky’s usual unyielding exterior cracked and she seemed surprised to find herself smiling back at Leon. ‘I’m a detective, Mr Campbell. I’m here to ask you some questions. Do you feel up to talking?’

  Leon blinked a few times before attempting to sit up. His T-shirt was bunched up around his chest and I feared he might expose his genitalia, but, as the covers loosened around him, I could see the staff had decatheterized him and got him into some underwear. He looked down at the T-shirt, caught under his right arm, and he seemed perplexed as to what to do with it. My instinct was to rush forward, untangle him, but I didn’t. I stayed where I was.

  ‘I hear you’re having some memory problems?’ Inspector Ledecky said.

  ‘Am I?’ Leon said. ‘I really can’t remember.’ Then he shot her another smile. ‘Nah, I’m just messing with you.’

  ‘Nice to see you’ve kept your sense of humour,’ Ledecky said.

  That’s when Leon noticed me standing off to the side, trying to look invisible. I dipped my head, braced myself for a repeat of the onslaught of earlier, ready to be ejected from the room, but Leon said, ‘And who are you?’

  I struggled to come up with an answer lest it send him into a fury again but DC Payne looked up from his notebook, glanced at Leon, then at me, then back at Leon again.

  ‘That’s your wife,’ he said, frowning. ‘Don’t you recognize her?’

  Hazel Ledecky rolled her eyes. ‘Payne,’ she said, her tone one of exasperation, ‘far better to keep your mouth shut and to appear stupid, than to open it and remove all possible doubt.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said, castigated. ‘Sorry. Sorry about that.’ He addressed Leon. ‘Didn’t mean to cause offence.’

  Leon spread his hands wide. ‘None taken.’

  Then Leon said, ‘That’s not my wife, by the way,’ and when Payne went to correct him, Hazel Ledecky cut in, saying:

  ‘Mr Campbell. OK if I call you Leon?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Leon, I’m certain the doctors have already explained to you the reason you’re in here. Someone attacked you. It’s my job to find out what happened and I was hoping you’d be able to help me. How does that sound?’

  She was talking to him as though he was a child. The Leon of old would have been incensed by her manner, told her to go fuck herself. But he listened attentively to her question before replying that he would very much like to help. ‘Anything I can do, just let me know,’ he said, as if it was not he who’d been attacked, but a stranger, someone he didn’t know, and Leon was just a concerned bystander.

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Let’s start then with what you do remember.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Leon. ‘I remember having breakfast with Gina, going upstairs to work on my latest novel … I’m a writer,’ he said proudly.

  ‘I know,’ said Ledecky. ‘Some of my colleagues are fans.’

  ‘They are?’

  Ledecky nodded. ‘Real page-turners, I believe,’ she said.

  Leon was pleased. He went on: ‘Well, as I said, I remember having breakfast with my wife and then …’ He paused. His gaze rested on me. He reached up with his right hand and tentatively felt at his scars, wincing as he touched the one above his ear. ‘Who did you say you were again?’

  I swallowed.

  Hesitated.

  ‘I’m Jane,’ I said finally.

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ There was recognition in his eyes.

  ‘I hope so,’ I said.

  He looked at Inspector Ledecky. ‘I know her,’ he said. ‘I remember her. I know I’ve seen her face before. I’m absolutely sure of it.’

  ‘That’s good,’ she replied, encouraging. ‘What else do you remember about her? Can you tell me how you know her? Where she lives?’

  Leon studied my face, willing the information to come. It was unbearably tense. His eyes were locked on mine and I knew he knew me. I could feel it. Feel the connection we had. It was right there.

  Say it, Leon.

  Tell them I’m your wife. Say it out loud for everyone to hear.

  Leon’s expression darkened.

  ‘That woman is the person who attacked me,’ he said.

  9

  ‘I’ve no idea why he’s saying that,’ I snapped at Hazel Ledecky outside Leon’s ward. ‘Just as I’ve no idea why he doesn’t remember who I am, but knows who his mother is, and knows who his sister is. He even knows he’s a stupid Everton supporter, but he doesn’t know I’m his wife.’

  ‘He’s saying you were there. He’s saying he remembers you.’

  ‘I know what he’s saying,’ I said. ‘And yes, I was there. He does remember me. But for some reason he thinks I was playing the role of assassin rather than his wife. You’re not taking this seriously, are you?’

  Ledecky’s face was unreadable.

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  She looked towards DC Payne, nodded once in his direction, and said, ‘We’ll be back later.’

  I felt helpless.

  What if Leon continued with this? What if the part of his brain that was short-circuiting never recovered?

  What if people believed him?

  Would they really think I’d wanted to kill him? Would they try and prove I’d wanted to kill him?

  I thought about my prints on the nail gun.

  I thought about Ledecky’s face when Leon told her it was me. She was taking his claim seriously. She thought it was possible.

  I needed him to remember.

  I needed Leon to realize he was married to me. That he loved me. That I would never want to hurt him.

  I needed him to look at me and say my name out loud.

  So I did the only thing I could do. I called Gina.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’ Gina said.

  I should probably explain a few things.

  Gina didn’t exactly leave Leon, as I might have suggested earlier. I said that to hurt Leon. To make him remember. I said it in retaliation, whereas the truth was quite different.

  Gina did not leave of her own accord. Leon and I had an affair.

  I won’t try to justify it by saying I’d never dated a married man before; that we didn’t mean it to happen; that as soon as we knew we had feelings for one another we did everything we could to put a stop to it. All of which was true, but really, so what? It didn’t make what we did any less painful for Gina, and it probably won’t make you judge me any less.

  All I will say is this: I thought I’d die if I could not be with Leon Campbell.

  You know when you’re a teenager and you ask your mother: How will I know? How will I know when the right person comes along? And your mother gives a wistful look, then gazes off into the middle distance for a time, remembering, before gathering herself and saying: Darling, you just know.

  Well, I knew.

  I knew Leon was the one. The one person in the world I was meant to be with, the person I couldn’t bear to be apart from if only for an hour.

  Never before had I felt pretty, stylish, sexy. My hips sashayed as I walked. I could write for hours and hours in a steady stream without getting tired. People who’d irritated me for my whole life: suddenly, I felt magnanimous towards them. Even a stubborn patch of eczema on the back of my knee cleared up.

  It was as if up until meeting Leon I’d been living half a life. Something always missing, something not quite right.
r />   Finally, I understood what all the fuss was about.

  We were completely consumed by one another and so we navigated his really ugly divorce, Leon giving Gina everything he owned, including his beloved Weimaraner. And we started from scratch. There were no kids involved, thankfully. Gina had wanted to delay having children until she’d got her new store in Chester off the ground, and they’d just about started trying for a family when …

  I came along.

  Gina still hated me with a passion. And ‘What the fuck do you want?’ was probably the least I deserved.

  ‘It’s Leon,’ I told her.

  I was aware that Gina would of course know about Leon’s brain injury. It had made the regional news, and the Liverpool Echo had also run a story on the assault being a possible hate crime, since a young biracial kid had been beaten up quite badly outside a kebab shop on Penny Lane. They’d alluded to the two crimes being linked.

  ‘He’s awake, I hear,’ Gina said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That must be a relief for you.’

  ‘It is … but, Gina?’

  ‘What is it, Jane?’

  ‘There’s been a bit of a complication …’

  She looked amazing, as expected.

  And I’m not sure if she’d agreed to come to the hospital because she genuinely cared about Leon’s recovery, and wanted to help out in any way she could, or if she took some dark pleasure from the fact that Leon had woken up wanting her instead of me.

  Would I have turned up at the brain-injury unit looking my absolute head-turning, off-to-a-film-premiere best? Full make-up, little black dress, hair glossy and loose?

  Probably not.

  But I wasn’t Gina.

  And I couldn’t really blame her for the whole look-at-me-now routine. These moments of retribution were scarce in life and you had to take them whenever you could.

  I stood at the end of Leon’s bed. He knew Gina was coming and had asked his mother to bring his favourite Armani jeans and white, capped-sleeved T-shirt which clung to his chest muscles and biceps in a way that made him look borderline camp. A bit Dr Christian. Usually, I managed to talk him out of wearing it.

  Here’s what I was hoping would happen: Leon would clap his eyes on Gina and remember. He would see her, and Gina being a good eight years older than she was when they were together, Leon would think, Hang on, that’s not the Gina I know … Perhaps I’ve got my wires crossed, perhaps—

  She walked on to the ward and Leon’s eyes welled up.

  He got up from the bed. He was like a kid on Christmas morning. And in that moment my heart broke.

  ‘Hey, baby,’ he said to Gina as she approached, and he put his arms around her waist before kissing her deeply.

  Gina didn’t pull away and I looked at Leon’s mother, stricken.

  ‘Give him time,’ she whispered urgently. ‘He’ll remember.’

  I watched as Leon tenderly stroked the side of Gina’s face, and though Gina was clearly uncomfortable with the situation, she didn’t pull away.

  Gloria and I didn’t speak. We didn’t know what to say for the best. Leon was smiling at his ex-wife as if he couldn’t believe she was real.

  With hindsight, this meeting should probably have taken place in the presence of a clinical psychologist, someone who could mediate, because I wasn’t sure I had the strength to continue. I’d felt so sure Gina’s arrival would trigger Leon’s memory of me. That on seeing her his accusation of my attacking him would melt away. Now my limbs felt insubstantial. My stomach like lead.

  Leon turned to his mother. ‘I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. Caring for me while I was out, coming here every day and doing what you thought was best. But d’you think you could give me and Gina some privacy, now she’s finally here?’

  He did not address me. It was as if I was not even in the room.

  ‘Gina’ll take over … won’t you, baby?’ he said.

  But Gina now had a strange look on her face.

  I think up until this point she’d been kind of happy to go along with it. I’d explained the situation, in full, over the phone, and I think the romance of the thing had bewitched her. Her ex-husband loved her again! Leon loves me! Take that, bitches! She had waltzed in full of confidence, ready to calmly take control.

  But now that she was here, now that she saw Leon was really quite maniacal, she was alarmed. It shocked her deeply and she started to panic.

  She extricated herself from his grasp and when he tried to touch her again she shook him off. ‘Leon,’ she said, not meeting his eye, ‘stop.’

  ‘What is it, baby?’

  ‘Stop it, Leon,’ she said, firmer now. She seemed almost repulsed.

  Leon gave a short laugh before reaching for her again, his brow furrowed excessively to show he didn’t understand why she would pull away from him. ‘You’re my girl,’ he said softly.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I’m not.’

  She was finding it hard to look at him. This was not the Leon she knew and her shoulders began to quake. She took a deep breath in, in order to gain charge over her body.

  ‘Look,’ she said, thrusting out her left hand for Leon to inspect, ‘no ring. Not even the hint of a ring.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Of course it does!’ Gina looked at us, her eyes wide with dismay. She didn’t know what to do.

  ‘I’m not wearing a ring either,’ said Leon reasonably. ‘See?’

  ‘We’re not married, Leon!’ she said. ‘You have to listen to me. We’re not together any more.’

  ‘Don’t say that. You’re upset. I know. I understand. But don’t say we’re not married.’

  Gina exhaled dramatically. ‘Leon,’ she said, gentler now, realizing perhaps that she was going about this all wrong, ‘your brain is telling you something that just isn’t true … And I’m sorry that this has happened to you. Really, I am. But you’re all mixed up.’

  ‘Baby, I—’

  ‘No.’ And she grabbed her bag from the end of the bed.

  She turned to Gloria and me. ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t deal with this. It’s too much. He’s way worse than I expected.’

  Gloria nodded.

  There was hurt in Leon’s eyes, but he reached for Gina once more, nonetheless, and she snatched her hand away.

  ‘I have to go … It would be cruel of me to stay here and give you false hope,’ she said, addressing Leon. ‘I’ve moved on. I stopped loving you a long time ago.’

  ‘Gina, I—’

  ‘I don’t love you and you don’t love me.’ She cast a brief look my way before saying, ‘Jane is your wife.’

  Leon was shaking his head. ‘You’re wrong. Don’t say this. Please, I—’

  ‘Jane is your wife now,’ she repeated.

  ‘Jane tried to kill me!’ he yelled back.

  ‘No, she didn’t, you idiot! You love her! You left me to be with her! She’s the one you wanted, Leon, even if you can’t remember … But someday you will remember, because you fought so very hard for her … And you broke my heart in the process, you cruel bastard.’

  Leon was looking at her as though this was all lies.

  We were liars. All of us.

  ‘I won’t be coming here again,’ Gina said quietly.

  10

  It was now 7 a.m. on 7 September, Jack’s first day of school, and Hazel Ledecky was plaguing me.

  She’d been plaguing me for the past week, in fact, and as much as I tried to chatter amiably to Jack and Martha as I set down their breakfasts, smeared peanut butter on to bread for Jack’s packed lunch, my mind was on the interview scheduled for later that morning.

  Another seven days had passed and though Leon had improved enough to warrant being transferred to the neuro-rehabilitation unit, he still hadn’t recovered the memory of me, the kids, or his former life, and he was maintaining that I was the one responsible for his brain injury.

  Ledecky treated his claims seriously, not onc
e suggesting they weren’t true, not once intimating that she might think Leon’s allegations fantastical – even though Gloria and I had tried to persuade her otherwise. She had a duty to investigate, she said, and so had called me in for a second interview within the space of three days. I was feeling brittle and skittish, finding it hard to concentrate. I’d begun dropping things, losing my words mid-sentence. The prospect of a second interview, combined with Jack’s first day at school without Leon by my side, had me feeling, in short, as if I was coming apart. So I’d asked my mother to come along to school with us. Not that she was particularly great at injecting calm into a situation, but I needed her, needed someone. She said she’d be here for eight thirty.

  At eight twenty, I was washing up the breakfast bowls when I sensed a presence pass by the kitchen window. Like us, my mother always used the front door. And she was never early. I craned my neck to see if there was anyone out there but could see nothing, so I let it go.

  I was seeing things. It happened a lot now.

  I wrung out the dishcloth and was just about to start on the surfaces when I heard a noise. It was the softest tap-tapping on the back door.

  My breath stuttered inside my chest.

  I kept my eyes on the door.

  The tapping continued but it was barely audible. It was almost apologetic in nature. No one used the back door as a point of entry. No one except—

  I strode across and unlocked it. Pulled down on the handle fast.

  ‘Glyn,’ I said pointedly when I saw him standing there, his rounded, pale blue eyes looking back at me, before he immediately looked away again, holding his gaze steady at the level of my waist.

  I’d not seen Glyn Williams in person since that strange episode in our driveway: when he’d loitered, unmoving, and had scared the shit out of me after Leon’s attack. I’d seen his car over at Lawrence and Rose’s often enough, seen the three of them together in Lawrence’s driveway, each shooting furtive glances across to my side of the street, but our paths had not crossed.