Forgotten: a truly gripping psychological thriller

by Heleyne Hammersley

  Kai shook her head uncertainly. ‘Not a memory exactly, but something from my past. I don’t really know what to do with it. I thought talking to you might…’ She tailed off, unable to form a clear idea of what she hoped to achieve by this session. She expected a response but the doctor simply waited, expecting something more concrete, forcing Kai to try again to make sense of what she was feeling.

  ‘Okay,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I’ve got this journal, my journal. It was found with my other things and I’ve been reading it to try to see if anything is familiar. And, I suppose, to pick up clues, hints, anything about who I’m supposed to be and what I’m doing here. I didn’t want to tell you about it before because I wanted to work a few things out for myself.’

  Ellen, still silent, studied her face as though she was trying to read every muscle, every line, every shadow. Eventually she nodded for Kai to continue.

  ‘The journal starts in China, well the trip starts in China, but the first entry is Heathrow Airport.’ Kai could hear the confusion and lack of logical thought in her own voice and was worried that Ellen was listening to this more than to her words.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, desperately trying to focus, ‘It’s an account of my trip. I get these headaches, well they’re more like eyestrain or sometimes tension in my neck and shoulders so I’ve been reading it slowly.’

  ‘Looking for clues,’ Ellen interrupted with a smile that was less than reassuring. ‘From what you’ve told me so far it sounds like either you haven’t found any or you’ve discovered something momentous. I can’t work out which it’s gonna be.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m having trouble getting to the point. In the journal I seem sort of relieved to be away from home and, at first, enjoying myself but…’

  ‘Are you alone?’ Another interruption.

  ‘Yes,’ Kai nodded for emphasis. ‘There’s no mention of a travelling companion. It’s all ‘I’ and ‘me’. I met up with other travellers from time to time but there’s no-one constant.’

  ‘You don’t mention anyone back home, parents, friends, boyfriends?’

  Kai nearly leapt from the seat in her irritation. This wasn’t how this interview was supposed to go. She wanted Ellen to listen but all she kept doing was leaping in with questions as though she were trying to catch Kai out or spot some inconsistency in her story. She stood up.

  ‘I think I’m wasting your time here. I thought you might listen, I thought I could make you understand. This is just pointless.’ She strode to the door intending to walk out into the sterility of the corridor but she froze with her hand on the door handle. Tears were pricking behind her eyes as she turned back to Ellen, utterly defeated.

  ‘I can’t leave,’ she whispered, sliding her back down the door until she was huddled on the floor. ‘I’ve got nowhere to go.’

  ‘So stop running,’ Ellen said, no sign of sympathy in her eyes. ‘Sit back down and tell it your way if that’s what you want, but I need to ask you some questions if I’m going to try to understand. How about I try to rein in my curiosity and you try to keep your temper under control?’ Her manner was brusque, a stark contrast to the friendliness of their previous two meetings. It was almost as though being in the office reinforced Ellen’s professionalism.

  Kai studied the doctor from beneath her damp eyelashes. She suddenly had a flash of herself as Ellen might see her – demanding, spoilt and difficult. How had she become this person, how had she become so blinded by self-pity that she couldn’t allow anyone to help her? Wiping her eyes she got to her feet and sat back down on the edge of the chair, still unsure if she would be able to continue.

  ‘Okay,’ she rubbed her face, washing away the last two minutes, trying to find a way forward. ‘You asked about people back home. That’s the whole point. There’s only a friend, Penny, for a while, but then a man’s mentioned and suddenly it sounds like I’m running away from him.’

  ‘Why running?’ the doctor asked, frowning her interest. ‘Why don’t you think you just left him, dumped him? Or he dumped you?’

  This was the hard part, the real admission. Kai instinctively flinched away from stating that she was a victim, that she believed she’d allowed a man to systematically abuse her in some way. How would that seem to an outsider, to someone who didn’t know her? Forcing herself to meet Ellen’s searching eyes she took a deep breath and plunged in.

  ‘There are hints that I was in an abusive relationship. The journal mentions being forced to give accounts of my spending and my movements. Being slapped, pushed downstairs, that sort of thing.’

  The trembling was back – Kai could hear it in her voice – and somehow she’d lost her eye contact with the doctor. She gripped the arms of the chair to keep her hands still, and studied her knees, feeling awkward and ashamed. The whole thing sounded like she’d made it up, or at least like something that had happened to someone else, but her body’s involuntary responses told a different story. This was real, it had happened.

  ‘And you think this has something to do with why you lost your memory?’ Ellen’s voice sounded cold, clinical.

  Kai nodded.

  ‘It’s possible I suppose,’ Ellen considered. ‘It might explain why the hypnotherapy isn’t one hundred per cent effective. There are things that you don’t want to remember so your brain has simply shut down its long-term memory function.’

  ‘Dissociative amnesia,’ Kai muttered bleakly. ‘Ekachai has talked me through it.’

  Ellen nodded. ‘Okay. So, what do you know about this man, from your journal?’

  Kai shrugged. ‘Not much really. His name’s David, he wanted me to marry him and, in the last couple of entries, I think I had started to think he was following me.’

  Ellen raised her eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t that sound more than a little paranoid considering you’re thousands of miles from home?’

  ‘I know how it sounds,’ Kai snapped. ‘I’m just telling you what I wrote.’

  ‘Okay, calm down.’ Ellen leaned back, smiling. ‘I’m sorry if you think I’m being harsh on you. I’m only trying to let you see how this looks to someone who isn’t inside your head. I’m just being objective.’

  ‘I know,’ Kai sighed. ‘It’s just that I do feel paranoid and really frustrated with the whole situation. I need to know why my own mind won’t let me back inside. And I know I’m on a short fuse – I can see how Doctor Ekachai backs away if I so much as raise my voice. I just can’t seem to keep a lid on my impatience.’

  ‘Is it possible that, in your frustration, you’re clutching at anything which might help shed some light on your situation? You’re looking for something that isn’t really there?’

  ‘It’s possible that I’m doing everything I can to get my memory back. Is that a problem?’

  ‘Of course not, but don’t look for things that aren’t there. Try to see things rationally and take this at face value. You left home after an abusive relationship. You’re obviously a bit shaky and insecure, you don’t want to talk to anyone about it but it has to surface in some form. Don’t you think it’s reasonable to assume that this paranoia about being followed is a form of delayed shock? You still haven’t talked about your experiences though, it’s all still bottled up in there so your mind plays tricks on you.’

  Kai considered this. It did make a kind of sense. In fact, it made a lot more sense than the idea that she was being followed by someone who didn’t know where she was.

  ‘So, I’ve not only lost my memory, but when I get it back I’ll probably discover that I’m crazy. Is that what you’re saying?’

  Ellen laughed. ‘I doubt that you’re crazy. Worried, more than a little freaked out maybe, but not crazy.’

  Her humour was reassuring, especially after her earlier lack of emotion and Kai found herself smiling back at the therapist. Perhaps she was right, perhaps this was all a reaction. Firstly a reaction to whatever this man had done to her and, now, a reaction to discovering this aspect of he
r past. She didn’t like to think of herself as abused: it made her feel like a victim and her memory loss added to the feeling of helplessness.

  ‘What do you think happened to me Ellen? How did I end up here?’

  The doctor shrugged, ‘The popular theory is that you fell off a cliff when you were hiking. You hit your head and, bang, bruises and amnesia.’

  ‘I said what do you think?’ Kai pressed, noting Ellen’s avoidance of the real question.

  ‘Okay,’ she sighed, leaning back and running a hand through her close cropped not-quite-black hair. ‘I go with that up to a point but there are things it doesn’t explain. The lack of ID for one. It’s possible that your passport is in a hotel where you left it for safekeeping.’

  ‘I’ve thought about that,’ Kai interrupted. ‘But, if I left my passport somewhere, why is my rucksack full of stuff? Why didn’t I just pack what I needed for a hike?’

  ‘Exactly. The press hasn’t made too much of that though, or the fact that there was no money or any other valuables with you.’

  ‘Like my camera,’ said Kai, suddenly excited. ‘I know I had one, I mention it in my journal. So you think I was robbed and pushed off the cliff?’

  Ellen shook her head.

  ‘To be honest, violent crime is a bit unlikely in rural Thailand. I think that you probably fell and whoever found you went through your things and took whatever he thought was valuable.’

  ‘Including my passport?’

  Ellen shrugged. ‘There’s a market for everything. From a genuine passport you can make fakes, copies. Who knows?’

  ‘Has there been any follow-up in the press? Has anyone said that I was robbed?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Ellen said with a wry smile. ‘Crimes against tourists are often played down. Much of Thailand’s economy depends on tourism. We wouldn’t want to put people off, would we?’

  ‘But my story has been in the news. People draw their own conclusions, like you did. I’m surprised there’s been no confirmation or denial of the robbery idea.

  ‘The police here work slowly,’ Ellen said. ‘I wouldn’t expect too much from them. You might never find out what really happened.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ Kai groaned. ‘So even if I get my memory back this particular part might always be a blank? That’s really encouraging.’

  ‘Don’t dwell on it,’ Ellen advised. ‘How about you tell me what else you’ve learnt from your journal. You mention other people you met and a friend, Penny? What do you know about them?’

  Kai settled further into the armchair and closed her eyes, trying to put a face to any of the names in the diary. As she’d read she’d imagined the people she’d written about, just like she would when visualising the characters in a novel, and now it was difficult to decide whether these images were based on anything concrete.

  ‘There was a woman called Josie,’ she began. ‘I first met her in western China when I went out on a trip into the mountains. I picture her as tall and wiry with dark hair and quite dark skin, maybe something Mediterranean in her background, maybe just a great tan. We met up again later and she’d picked up an Irishman, Callum. I get the feeling that I probably fancied him a bit. He was tall and suntanned. It was Callum who first asked me about my own love life and I told him a bit, not the bad stuff though. He had kind eyes, light brown. I told him that wasn’t very Irish they were supposed to be blue and twinkly.’

  Kai stopped, her heart beating wildly. This was a memory, she was certain. She hadn’t written about his eyes, hadn’t imagined his eyes while she was reading about him.

  ‘Kai?’

  She shook her head, refusing to open her eyes and be drawn back to the present. She wanted to see him, to see Callum smiling down at her.

  ‘Kai, what’s wrong?’

  The memory wouldn’t come. Light, irregular moving patterns like the sun through leaves again. Birdsong. Nothing. Static.

  Frustrated she slapped the arm of the chair.

  ‘Fuck, I nearly had it!’

  ‘I’m sorry? What happened Kai?’

  She sighed and opened her eyes to see Ellen’s worried expression.

  ‘That bit about his eyes and me teasing him. I’m sure that wasn’t in the journal, I remembered it. But that’s all – I know I was there and what I said, but I can’t see it.’

  ‘And you’re sure you remembered it?’ Ellen sounded sceptical. ‘Perhaps you’re just adding to what you’ve read, embellishing the story.’

  Kai’s excitement began to fade. It was possible that she’d created a situation that she wished she could remember, something interesting that had happened to her. But she didn’t remember making it up. It wasn’t a conscious thing and again there was that nagging doubt. Was her mind playing tricks on her? Was she crazy? How can you invent a scenario and, in the space of a couple of days, forget that it is a fabrication and believe that it actually happened? Kai’s mind hummed with the high pitched whine of tension. What was real?

  She looked around, taking in the room. This was real, it was exactly as she remembered from her previous visit. It was a small room, restricting. Perhaps Ellen thought that enforced physical closeness would lead to an atmosphere of trust. Kai simply found it oppressive. The walls were a pale colour, cream or a washed-out apricot, but the furniture was dark and dominating, there was something almost funereal about it. The desk could have comfortably housed a coffin, allowing the bereaved to view the corpse, all it needed was a vase of lilies and–

  ‘Kai? You’ve lost focus.’

  That was exactly how she felt – blurred, lacking form.

  ‘I’m sorry, just got lost for a minute.’ She leaned forward with her forearms on her knees, head hanging as she drew in a deep breath. ‘Okay, let’s try again.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. It was nothing important, I just find this room a bit claustrophobic.’

  ‘Really?’ Ellen looked round as though she’d never seen her office before. ‘I think it’s quite bright and airy considering its size.’

  ‘Must be part of my particular psychosis, feeling closed in all the time. Hardly surprising when this hospital has become my world. I think I need to get out more.’

  ‘That’s probably a good idea,’ Ellen agreed. ‘New forms of stimulation might trigger something, you might start making associations with your past.’

  Kai smiled without allowing it to reach her eyes. ‘I meant it might just make me feel better, it might make me feel more real, more alive.’

  ‘Of course. God, I’m sorry! I’m thinking like a doctor too much. I’m sure it would help your state of mind to get out, see the town, have a beer.’

  ‘Now that I do remember. I’d have to be in a really bad way to forget beer.’

  ‘Sounds like you like a drink,’ Ellen suggested, her tone neutral.

  ‘I think I probably do,’ Kai laughed. ‘Right now I’d kill for one… or about ten.’

  ‘Do you think alcohol played a big part in your life? Is there a drink problem?’ suddenly Ellen was coldly professional, throwing Kai off balance.

  ‘I– I don’t know. I suppose anything’s possible but somehow I don’t think so. I’d just like to sit out in the sun with a cold beer.’

  ‘And your friends? Earlier you mentioned a friend from home.’

  ‘Penny,’ Kai said. ‘She saw me off at the airport. I’d e-mailed her and I think there was some friction between her and David. Perhaps I told her what he was really like – he certainly didn’t like her. I mention him calling her a ‘man-hating dyke’ or something like that. Hardly complimentary.’

  ‘Penny’s gay?’

  Kai shrugged. ‘Sounds like it.’

  ‘But you’re just friends?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kai laughed. ‘It’s yet another possibility. Alcoholic, lesbian, who knows? I might be a mass murderer or a political assassin. I could be anyone, anything.’

  Ellen’s expression told
Kai that her humour wasn’t appreciated. She leaned back and gave the question serious consideration.

  ‘It doesn’t fit with this relationship that I’ve written about. There’s also more than a hint that I’m attracted to Callum, and I spent yesterday with a man, Mark, who comes to visit me and I think there’s something a little sexy about him.’

  The doctor was quiet for a while, studying her nails then tapping a pen against the knuckles of one hand in an annoying rhythm. Kai realised the doctor was trying, in the absence of notes, to gather her thoughts and perhaps form some sort of conclusion. Suddenly Ellen smiled and held Kai’s eyes with her own deep brown ones.

  ‘Had enough?’ she asked.

  Kai nodded.

  ‘Okay, have you learnt anything about yourself?’

  ‘Like what?’ Kai felt irritated, as though she’d been cheated. There was nothing new here except for the lightning flash memory of Callum.

  ‘Well, I think we know more about what sort of person you really are.’

  ‘We do?’ she asked, unable to conceal the heavy sarcasm in her tone.

  ‘Come on, Kai, look at what you’ve told me. You’ve come out of an abusive relationship with enough strength and confidence to travel – alone – to some difficult and unusual places. Whatever this man did to you you’re not blaming all men because you’re still attracted to Callum and possibly Mark. You’re a social person, you like a drink with your friends and one of your closest friends is gay so you’re probably quite liberal, broad-minded, whatever. I don’t think there’s anything sinister here, I think you’re frightened by your memory loss, which is a pretty normal reaction I’d say, but otherwise I think you’re pretty much okay.’

  ‘So, what now?’ Kai asked, struggling with the blanket of depression that was trying to smother her again.

  Ellen smiled and checked her watch.

  ‘Now I’d like to buy you a beer. How does that sound?’

  ‘What?’ Kai was so surprised that she wasn’t sure that she’d heard the doctor properly.