The Forgetting(11)
From Stephen’s phone gleams a selfie of the two of us together, Stephen’s arm around my shoulders. The sun is warm on our faces and behind us the houses of a narrow residential street peter out into the distance.
‘It was just a couple of nights but the weather was great and we had a lovely time visiting the baths and the Abbey.’
I feel his eyes hot on my face, but I cannot tear my gaze away from the photo. It is like looking at a parallel reality, one which I know must be real, but which seems to exist in a different realm of experience, one I cannot grasp hold of.
He takes the phone away, scrolls some more, turns it back towards me. ‘These are just some silly ones from a while back, taken at home.’
It is a portrait of me, pouting like a model in a magazine – clearly tongue-in-cheek – in front of a well-stocked bookcase.
Stephen bends his head towards mine, looks at the photo with me, swipes to the next, and then the next, all variations on the same theme. In the last one, Stephen joins me in the frame, both of us adopting faces of mock surprise, and I cannot decide whether these photos are encouraging or dispiriting – whether they speak of a happier time to which we will soon return, or whether they are a stark reminder of all I have temporarily lost.
‘Are you okay? Is it too much?’
I shake my head, swallow against the tightness in my throat. ‘I’m fine.’ I hear the uncertainty in my voice, look down at my nails, bitten to the quick, wonder what it says about me that I still chew my fingernails.
‘It must be so overwhelming. I thought it might help, showing you things, but perhaps it’s too soon.’ His voice is soft, placatory, the voice one might use to comfort a frightened child separated from their mother in a department store.
‘I’m sorry. I want to remember, I really am trying . . .’ My voice fractures and I do not know if it is from frustration or fear. I feel cut adrift, as though set loose in a dinghy in the middle of the ocean with no means of navigating my way back to land.
I look down at my hands and a thought jars in my head. ‘Why aren’t I wearing a wedding ring?’
Stephen follows my gaze down to my bare fourth finger. ‘That’s odd. You never take it off usually.’ He frowns, thinks for a moment. ‘Perhaps the nursing staff took it when you had your scan. Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ve got it safely stored somewhere. I’ll speak to them for you, get it back.’
I touch the bare skin of my finger, wonder whether, when my ring is returned, it will be like a talisman, restoring the memory of my marriage to me.
I glance across at Stephen, cannot hold back the question any longer. ‘What happened?’ Just two words and yet they feel dangerous in my mouth.
Stephen’s head tips slightly to one side, a pair of vertical ridges sculpting the skin between his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’
A part of me is unsure I want to know. I do not want to cast aspersions, have no interest in apportioning blame. But it feels important to understand the circumstances, to comprehend the events that have brought me here. ‘The accident. What actually happened?’
Stephen’s eyes flit down towards his hands, fingers interweaved as if in prayer. ‘We were driving along the A4 and a lorry careened into our lane. I had to swerve to avoid it, and we mounted the pavement and smashed into a brick wall. It all happened so quickly . . .’
‘Was anyone else hurt?’
Stephen shakes his head. ‘Thankfully not. But it should be me in that bed, not you. I was the one driving.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I hate seeing you like this.’
I return the squeeze, and it feels odd to be comforting a man with whom I must have shared much greater intimacies in the past and yet who is now little more than a stranger. ‘It’s not your fault. It sounds like it could have been a lot worse if we’d collided with the lorry.’
He responds with a grateful smile and we sit in silence as I try to pull some thread of recollection from my memory. But the imagined scene in my head is like a Hollywood movie, all screeching brakes and crunching metal, and I cannot locate any tangible detail.
In the cubicle opposite, a woman wipes the mouth of an elderly man I assume to be her father, and there is such tenderness in the gesture that it jolts something in me: not a memory but a visceral sensation of love and affection. Turning back to Stephen, the words spring from my lips before I know they are coming. ‘What about my parents? My family? Can you tell me about them?’
There is a pause, a stillness, an almost imperceptible twitch of the muscles across Stephen’s forehead. ‘What do you remember about your parents?’
The question sits in my head, waiting to see what I will do with it. I close my eyes, peer into the darkness, try to shine a light on images of people who must be there, hiding in the shadows. But I find nothing.
Opening my eyes, I squint against the glare of the sun, shake my head. ‘I don’t remember anything.’ It is there again, that feeling of excavation, as though the contents of my chest have been quarried, leaving behind an empty, gaping void.
Stephen inhales a long, deep breath, lets it out again. Light from the window moves across his face and I notice the flecks of silver in his stubble, like crystals of hoar frost on the branch of a tree. Time seems to expand as I wait for him to reply, clinging to the hope that, when he does, his response will unlock the riddle of my amnesia.