"Fuck," I said, when he put the sheet away.
"Yes," he said. "That's all. We're done."
"So, did I pass? Am I brain-damaged?"
He smiled cheerfully. "I don't know. I have no tests for the pre-morbid period. Sorry, that sounds grim. I mean for the period before the onset of amnesia. But I can't believe that it was much better than this. You've got a remarkably good memory. Your spatial recall in particular is excellent. I'd swap you any time."
I couldn't help blushing. "Well, thanks, um, Charlie, but.. ."
He looked serious for a moment and peered at me closely. "What do you think?" he said.
"I feel fine. I mean, I don't feel fine. I have bad dreams and I keep going over and over things in my head. But I can think clearly. It's just that gap in my memory. I keep trying and trying to remember but it's like staring into pitch darkness."
He began putting the papers back into files.
"Try looking at the boundaries," he said. "Take your image of an area of darkness. You could say that there is an area that's entirely dark and another that's entirely light. You could try concentrating on where the two areas meet."
"I've done that, Charlie. Oh, God, I've done it. There's no problem for the afterwards bit. I woke up and I was there in that place. I didn't know how I'd got there, didn't remember being grabbed. Before it's different. I can't remember the last thing I did or anything like that. There's no cut-off point. I just have vague recent memories of being at work. It was like I went into the darkness slowly without noticing."
"I see," Charles said, and wrote something more. It made me nervous when he did that.
"But isn't there something ridiculous about it? The one thing I need to remember is gone. I don't want to know who the bloody Prime Minister is. I want to remember how I was grabbed, what he looks like. What I've been thinking is, could it be something that happened that was so disturbing that I've suppressed it?"
He clicked his pen shut. When he replied it was almost as if he were trying to hide a faint smile. "And that maybe I could dangle my watch in front of your face and it would all come flooding back?"
"That would be very useful."
"Maybe," he said. "But I'm sure your amnesia is unrelated to any form of post-traumatic stress. Or indeed any psychological symptom."
"When I'm talking to Cross I mean the police it just feels so ridiculous."
"It's unfortunate and frustrating," he said. "But it's not ridiculous. Post-traumatic amnesia after a closed head injury such as yours isn't uncommon. It usually happens in car crashes. They bang their head during the smash. When they wake up after the injury they don't remember the crash, but often they don't remember the hours or even days leading up to it either."
I touched my head gently. Suddenly it felt so fragile.
"Post-traumatic," I said. "I thought you said it wasn't something psychological."
"It isn't," he said. "Psychogenic amnesia -I mean amnesia caused by psychological influences, rather than an injury to the brain is rarer in cases like yours. And also how shall I say? more dubious."
"What do you mean?"
He gave a wary cough. "I'm not a psychologist, so maybe I'm biased. But, for example, a substantial percentage of murderers claim to have no memory of committing their murders. These are not people who have received physical injuries. There could be various explanations. They are often very drunk, which can result in memory black-outs. Committing a murder is, presumably, an extremely stressful thing to do, more than almost anything else that can be imagined. That could affect memory. Some of us sceptics might also say that there is often an incentive for a murderer to claim he has no memory of what happened."
"But being kidnapped and threatened with death must be pretty bloody stressful. Couldn't that have made me forget for psychological reasons?"
"Not in my opinion, but if I were standing in court and you were a lawyer, you could get me to admit that it was possible. I'm afraid you're going to have a few other people prodding you like a lab rat to answer questions like that."
He stood up and mustered his files under his arm with some difficulty. "Abigail," he said.
"Abbie."
"Abbie. You're a fascinating case. I don't think I'm going to be able to resist coming back."
"That's all right," I said. "I seem to have lots of time on my hands. But I've got one question: is there any chance of my memory coming back?"
He paused for a moment and pulled an odd face, which must have been some sort of indication that he was thinking. "Yes, it's possible."
"Could I be hypnotized?"
Suddenly he looked shocked and rummaged in his pocket, which was a particularly awkward operation with his armful of files. He extracted a card and gave it to me. "That's got various numbers on it. If anybody comes in here and starts dangling things in front of your eyes or talking to you in a soothing voice, call me straight away."
With that he was gone, and I lay on the bed with my sore, vulnerable head. My head with a black hole in it.
"Have you talked to your boyfriend?"
I only managed to murmur something. I wasn't entirely awake and DI Cross leant closer over me in concern.
"Shall I call someone?" he asked.
"No. And, no, I haven't."
"We're having a bit of difficulty tracking him down at the moment."
"Me too," I said. "I've left three messages on the answering-machine. It'll be because of his work."
"Does he go away often?"
"He's an IT consultant, whatever that means. He's always flying off to Belgium or Australia or wherever on special projects."
"But you can't remember when you last saw him?"
"No."
"Do you want to talk to your parents?"
"No! No, please."
There was a pause. I was doing so badly. I tried to think of something I could give Cross. "Would it help if you could have a look at our flat? I'll be back there in a day or two, I guess, but there might be something there. Maybe that's where I was grabbed. I might have left a note."
Cross's blank expression barely altered. "Do you have a key you can give me?"
"As you know I've got nothing except the clothes I escaped in. But in the front garden, to the left of the front door, there are two things that look like ordinary stones. But they're these crazy mail-order gimmicks and one of them is hollowed out. Inside there's a spare key. You can use that."
"Do you have any allergies, Miss Devereaux?"
"I don't think so. I came up in hives once with some shellfish."
"Do you suffer from epilepsy?"
"No."
"Are you pregnant?"
I shook my head so hard it hurt.
It doesn't mean anything but we're legally obliged to tell you that a CAT scan can have side effects, but the likelihood is extremely small, negligible. Would you sign this consent form? Here and here."
Suddenly the nurse was sounding like an air stewardess. I thought of those demonstrations with the life jacket In the unlikely event of a landing on water.
"I don't even know what a CAT scan is," I said, as I signed.
"Don't worry. The technologist will explain it all to you in a minute."
I was led into a large, fiercely bright room. I saw the hi-tech trolley where I was going to lie, padded and concave in the middle, and, behind it, a white tunnel into the heart of the machine. It looked like a toilet bowl turned on its side.
"Ms Devereaux, my name is Jan Carlton. Won't you sit down for a minute?" A tall spindly woman in an overall gestured to a chair. "Do you know what a CAT scan is?"
"It's one of those names you hear," I said cautiously.
"We like you to be prepared. Is there anything you're unsure about?"
"Everything, really."