"That's awful." My hand tightened round the phone. "You couldn't come to London for the day, could you?"
"To London?"
"Yes."
"Not at the moment, Abigail. Not the way I've been feeling. I can't go anywhere."
"It's less than an hour on the train."
"And your father's not been well."
"What's wrong?"
"His usual. But why don't you come and see us? It's been ages."
"Yes."
"Give us some notice, though."
"Yes."
"I should go," she said. "I'm making a cake."
"Yes. All right."
"Ring again soon."
"Yes."
"Goodbye, then."
"Goodbye," I said. "Goodbye, Mum."
I was woken by a large machine being pushed through the door. It was a monstrous floor-cleaning machine with a revolving circular contraption and nozzles releasing soapy water. It would quite obviously have been far better to use a bucket and a mop and this machine was especially useless in the confined space of my room. It couldn't reach into the corners and it couldn't go under the bed and it didn't like tables very much so the man behind it pushed it along the few exposed spaces. He was followed by another man. This man didn't look like a cleaner or a nurse or even a doctor since he was dressed in black shoes, baggy brown trousers, a navy blue jacket that looked as if it was made out of sacking, and an open-necked checked shirt. He had wiry all-over-the-place grey hair. He was carrying a stack of files under his arm. He was trying to speak. I could see his mouth moving. But the noise of the cleaning machine drowned everything so he stood rather awkwardly by the wall until the machine had passed him and headed down the ward. He looked dubiously after it.
"One day somebody's going to check one of those machines and discover it doesn't do anything," he said.
"Who are you?" I said.
"Mulligan," he said. "Charles Mulligan. I've come to have a word with you."
I got out of the bed.
"Have you got any identification?"
"What?"
I walked past him and shouted for a passing nurse. She looked reluctant but she saw that I meant business. I said that a stranger had come into my room. There was a brief argument and she led him away to make a phone call. I went back to bed. A few minutes later the door of my room opened and the man was led back in by a more senior-looking nurse. "This man has permission to see you," she said. "He will be with you for a very short time."
She left with a suspicious glance at Charles Mulligan. He took some horn-rimmed glasses from his jacket pocket and put them on.
"That was probably sensible," he said. "It was very boring but probably sensible. What I was in the middle of saying was that Dick Burns rang me and asked me to have a word with you."
"Are you a doctor?"
He put down his files on the table and pulled a chair over towards the bed. "Is it all right if I sit down?"
"Yes."
I am a doctor. I mean, I'm qualified as a doctor. I don't spend much of my time in the hospital."
"Are you a psychiatrist? Or a psychologist?"
He gave a nervous, chopping ha-ha laugh.
"No, no, no, I'm a neurologist, really, more or less. I study the brain as if it were a thing. I work with computers and cut up mouse brains, that sort of thing. I talk to people as well, of course. When necessary."
"I'm sorry," I said. "But what are you doing here?"
"I said. Dick rang me up. Fascinating case." A sudden expression of alarm appeared on his face. "I know it was awful as well. I'm terribly sorry. But Dick asked if I could come and have a look at you. Is that all right?"
"What for?"
He rubbed his face with his hands and looked almost excessively sympathetic. "Dick told me something of what you've gone through. It's horrible. I'm sure somebody will be coming to talk to you about that. About the trauma. And all of that." His sentence had trailed off and he looked lost. Now he pushed his fingers through his curly hair. It didn't do much to straighten it. "Now, Abigail, is it all right if I call you that?" I nodded. "And call me Charlie. I'd like to talk to you about your amnesia. Do you feel up to that?" I nodded again. "Good." He gave a faint smile. He had got on to his real subject and his talk, his whole manner, was more assured. I liked that. "Now, this is the only time I'm going to behave like a real doctor, but I'd like to have a look at your head. Is that all right?" More nodding. "I looked at your notes. Plenty of bruising all over, but no particular reference to headaches, soreness on the head, that sort of thing. Is that right?"
"My very first memory, from after the bit where I lost my memory, if you know what I mean. I woke up and I had a terrible pain in my head."
"Right. Do you mind if I take some notes?" He took a mangy little notebook out of his pocket and began writing. Then he put it on the bed and leant forward. "They're going to pop you into a machine later for a quick look at your brain. But this is a different sort of examination. Do you mind?" As he said this, he leant forward and very gently touched my face and all over my head. I love my head being touched. It's my secret fetish. The main thing I love about getting my hair cut is having my hair washed by a stranger, those fingers on my scalp. Terry as well. Sometimes we'd sit in the bath together and he'd wash my hair. That's what relationships are for, little things like that. Charles Mulligan gave a little murmuring sound as his fingertips pattered over my head. I gave a little cry when he touched above my right ear. "That hurt?"
"It's just sore." He looked more closely. "Is there a problem?"
"Swollen and bruised but I can't see anything significant." He sat back. "There. That's all done." He reached over for a file. It took some rummaging to find the right one. "Now I'm going to ask you some questions. They might seem a bit silly, but bear with me. They'll take a bit of time. Are you up to it? I could come back later, or tomorrow, if you need a rest. I know you've had a hard day."
I shook my head. "I just want to do anything I can as quickly as possible."
"Great." He opened a large printed booklet. "You ready?"
"Yes."
"What's your name?"
"Is this part of the test?"
"That's sort of a philosophical question. Do you want to bear with me?"
"Abigail Elizabeth Devereaux."
"When were you born?"
"The twenty-first of August, 1976."
"What's the name of the Prime Minister?"
"Are you serious? I'm not that bad."
"I'm testing various kinds of memory. It'll get harder."
So I told him the name of the Prime Minister. I told him the day of the week and that we were in St. Anthony's Hospital. I counted backwards from twenty. I counted forwards in threes. I counted backwards from a hundred in sevens. I was rather proud of myself.
Then it started to get hard. He showed me a page of different shapes. He chatted to me for a moment about something stupid and then showed me another page of shapes. I had to remember which were on both sheets. He got a bit embarrassed as he read me a story about a boy taking a pig to the market. I had to tell it back to him. He showed me stars and triangles paired with colours, word pairs. He showed me four increasingly complicated shapes. The fourth one looked like a vandalized electricity pylon. It made me dizzy even to look at, let alone draw from memory.
"This is giving me a bloody headache," I said, as I struggled with it.
"Are you all right?" he said, with concern.
"It makes my head spin."
"I know what you mean," he said. "I get stuck at the counting backwards. Don't worry, there are just a couple more."
He started to recite sequences of numbers. Groups of three and four were a doddle. He stopped at eight, which I could just about manage. Then I had to recite the sequences backwards that really made my brain ache. After that he brought out a sheet of coloured squares. He tapped them in an order which I had to repeat. Again up to eight. And then backwards.