“You’re sure?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He put the photograph on the desk in front of me. “You got married here,” he said, tapping it. It was of a church. Small, with a low roof and a tiny spire. Totally unfamiliar.
“Anything?”
I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind. A vision of water. My friend. A tiled floor, black and white. Nothing else.
“No. I don’t remember ever having seen it before.”
He looked disappointed. “You’re sure?”
I closed my eyes again. Blackness. I tried to think of my wedding day, tried to imagine Ben, me, in a suit and a wedding dress, standing on the grass in front of the church, but nothing came. No memory. Sadness rose in me. Like any bride, I must have spent weeks planning my wedding, choosing my dress and waiting anxiously for the alterations, booking a hairdresser, thinking about my makeup. I imagined myself agonizing over the menu, choosing the hymns, selecting the flowers, all the time hoping that the day would live up to my impossible expectations. And now I have no way of knowing whether it did. It has all been taken from me, every trace erased. Everything apart from the man I married.
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing.”
He put the photograph away. “According to the notes taken during your initial treatment, you were married in Manchester,” he said. “The church is called Saint Mark’s. That was a recent photograph—it’s the only one I could get—but I imagine it looks pretty much the same now as it did then.”
“There are no photographs of our wedding,” I said. It was both a question and a statement.
“No. They were lost. In a fire at your home, apparently.”
I nodded. Hearing him say it cemented it somehow, made it seem more real. It was almost as if the fact he was a doctor gave his words an authority that Ben’s did not have.
“When did I get married?” I said.
“It would have been in the mid-eighties.”
“Before my accident—” I said.
Dr. Nash looked uncomfortable. I wondered if I had ever spoken to him about the accident that left me with no memory.
“You know about what caused your amnesia?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I spoke to Ben. The other day. He told me everything. I wrote it in my journal.”
He nodded. “How do you feel about it?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. The truth was that I had no memory of the accident, and so it did not seem real. All I had were its effects. The way it had left me. “I feel like I ought to hate the person that did this to me,” I said. “Especially as they’ve never been caught, never been punished for leaving me like this. For ruining my life. But the odd thing is I don’t, really. I can’t. I can’t imagine them, or picture what they look like. It’s like they don’t even exist.”
He looked disappointed. “Is that what you think?” he said. “That your life is ruined?”
“Yes,” I said after a few moments. “Yes. That’s what I think.” He was silent. “Isn’t it?”
I don’t know what I expected him to do, or say. I suppose part of me wanted him to tell me how wrong I am, to try and convince me that my life is worth living. But he didn’t. He just looked straight at me. I noticed how striking his eyes were. Blue, flecked with gray.
“I’m sorry, Christine,” he said. “I’m sorry. But I’m doing everything I can, and I think I can help you. I really do. You have to believe that.”
“I do,” I said. “I do.”
He put his hand on top of mine, where it lay on the desk between us. It felt heavy. Warm. He squeezed my fingers, and for a second I felt embarrassed, for him, and also for me, but then I looked into his face, at the expression of sadness I saw there, and realized that his action was that of a young man comforting an older woman. Nothing more.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I need to use the bathroom.”
When I returned, he had poured coffee and we sat on opposite sides of the desk, sipping at our drinks. He seemed reluctant to make eye contact, instead leafing through the papers on his desk, shuffling awkwardly. At first, I thought he was embarrassed about squeezing my hand, but then he looked up and said, “Christine. I wanted to ask you something. Two things, really.” I nodded. “First, I’ve decided to write up your case. It’s pretty unusual in the field, and I think it would be really beneficial to get the details out there in the wider scientific community. Do you mind?”
I looked at the journals, stacked in haphazard piles on the shelves around the office. Is this how he intended to further his career, or make it more secure? Is that why I am here? For a moment, I considered telling him I’d rather he didn’t use my story, but in the end I simply shook my head and said, “No. It’s fine.”
He smiled. “Good. Thank you. Now, I have a question. More of a sort of idea, really. Something I’d like to try. Would you mind?”
“What’s your idea?” I said. I felt nervous but relieved he was finally about to tell me what was on his mind.
“Well,” he said. “According to your files, after you and Ben were married, you continued to live together in the house in East London that you shared.” He paused. Out of nowhere came a voice that must have been my mother’s. Living in sin—a tut, a shake of her head that said everything. “And then, after a year or so, you moved to another house. You stayed there pretty much until you were hospitalized.” He paused. “It’s quite near where you live now.” I began to understand what he might be suggesting. “I thought we could leave now and visit it on the way home. What do you think?”
What did I think? I did not know. It was an almost unanswerable question. I knew it was a sensible thing to do, that it might help me in some undefinable way that neither of us could yet understand, but still I was reluctant. It was as if my past suddenly felt dangerous. A place it might be unwise to visit.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“You lived there for a number of years,” he said.
“I know, but—”
“We can just go and look at it. We don’t have to go inside.”
“Go inside?” I said. “How—?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve written to the couple who live there now. We’ve spoken on the phone. They said that if it might help they’d be more than happy to let you have a look around.”
I was surprised by this. “Really?” I said.
He looked slightly away—quickly, but enough for it to register as embarrassment. I wondered what he might be hiding. “Yes,” he said, and then, “I don’t go to this much trouble for all my patients.” I said nothing. He smiled. “I really think it might help, Christine.”
What else could I do?
On the way there I had intended to write in my journal, but the journey was not long and I had barely finished reading the last entry when we parked outside a house. I closed the book and looked up. The house was similar to the one we’d left that morning—the one that I had to remind myself I live in now—with its red brick and painted woodwork and the same bay window and well-tended garden. If anything, this house looked bigger, and a window in the roof suggested a loft conversion that we did not have. I found it hard to understand why we’d left this place to move what must be only a couple of miles away to an almost identical house. After a moment, I realized: memories. Memories of a better time, before my accident, when we were happy, living a normal life. Ben would have had them, even if I did not.
I felt suddenly positive that the house would reveal things to me. Reveal my past.
“I want to go in,” I said.
I pause, there. I want to write the rest, but it is important—too important to be rushed—and Ben will be home very soon. He is late already; the sky is dark, the street echoing to the sounds of slammed doors as people arrive home from work. Cars slow outside the house—soon one of them will be Ben’s. It is better if I finish now, if I put my book away, hide it safely in the closet.