“But what am I to do?” Sue had said.
“Use your judgment. Most memory loss concerns small, irrelevant matters, but they can be very perplexing.”
As perplexing as a room missing from a flat he thought he remembered?
Sue walked into the bedroom. Another room that smelled musty. She opened the curtains but the windows here were swollen, or seized with paint, and she could not shift them. A small fanlight opened for her. The bed stood against the wall, just inside the door. Someone had made it up, far more neatly than either she or Richard would have done it. Who could it have been? She knew the police had visited the flat after the car bomb, and suddenly she had a bizarre mental image of two uniformed policemen in helmets, painstakingly smoothing the sheets and pulling up the covers, tucking in the blankets. She smiled.
She pulled back the bedclothes, and found that the sheets were far from fresh. While Richard moved around in the other rooms she stripped the bed and struggled to turn over the mattress. This too smelled stale, but there was nothing she could do about that. She remembered there was a small airing cupboard in the bathroom, over the hot-water tank. In this she found a complete set of sheets and pillowcases, none of which smelled of damp. While she was there she switched on the electric immersion heater, thinking how, piece by piece, a home was brought back to life. With the same thought she plugged in the fridge, but nothing happened. The compressor did not start and the interior light would not come on. She went out to the landing, found the fuse box, and turned on the mains supply. The overhead light came on.
In the kitchen the fridge was whirring, but when she looked inside she discovered the white insulated walls had grown large areas of spotty black mold. A bottle of milk had separated Out into a yellow liquid and a foul-smelling brown scum. She poured it away, and rinsed the bottle under the tap. She was kneeling on the floor, wiping away the mold with a damp cloth, when Richard came in.
“I suppose we ought to buy some food,” he said. “Or shall we eat out this evening?”
“We could do both.” She rinsed the cloth in clean water, then wiped the surfaces of the fridge once more. She stood up. “Let’s get some food in for tomorrow, but eat in a restaurant tonight.”
“Does that mean you’re going to stay?”
“Probably.” She kissed him lightly. “We ought to get your stuff into the flat. I’ve got to return the car this evening.”
“While it’s still ours, why don’t we drive over to collect mine?”
“Where is it?”
“The last time I used it I parked it in the road outside your place. Unless it’s been stolen, it should still be there. The battery’s almost certainly dead.”
“I don’t remember seeing it.” She frowned. “It’s bright red, isn’t it?”
“It was. it’s probably covered in leaves and dirt now.”
She said no more, but she was certain his car was not there. It had figured large in her life, and she would recognize it anywhere. He normally kept it in a rented lock-up, and she had been assuming it was there.
“Are you able to drive?” she said.
“I don’t know until I try, but I think so.”
The next hour was occupied with domestic tasks, and after they had returned to his flat and put away the groceries they set out on what she was convinced would be a wasted journey to find his car. The evening rush hour had begun, and driving across north London was a minor nightmare for her. At last they escaped the crush of traffic in Highgate and crossed the Archway into Hornsey. She drove slowly down her street, bringing the car to a halt outside the house.
“It’s farther down,” Richard said. “On the other side.”
“I can’t see it.” But she drove the length of the street, and at the end executed an awkward turn.
As she drove back, Richard said, “I distinctly remember that I left it here. Under that tree, where the Mini is. And when I left I was too upset to drive, and walked home.”
“Could you have come back for it later?”
“No, that was the day of the car bomb.”
They reached her house again, and because there was a parking space opposite she pulled in and switched off the engine. Richard was obviously confused by the absence of his car, because he turned in his seat and was looking along the row of parked cars.
“Let’s go back and at least look in your garage,” Sue said. “It might have been moved by the police. They had all your papers, didn’t they?”
“Yes. Maybe you’re right.”
She opened the driver’s door. “I’m just going to go inside and see if there are any messages for me. Do you want to come in too?”
“I think I’ll stay here.”
A sudden tension in his voice made her glance at him, but his expression revealed nothing. He was scanfling the parked cars that could be seen. She left the car and went to her house, searching for the keys.
Inside, she found two scribbled messages on the communal notice board beside the phone; one was from the studio, and her immediate instinct was to call them back at once. She looked at her wristwatch and realized they would have left by now. The message was undated, so it could be up to four days old. When she went into her room she found everything as she had left it. She was hardly ever here now. She took a change of clothes and underclothes from the wardrobe and thrust them into her holdall. She had everything else she needed in her overnight bag at Richard’s flat.
Alone for a few moments, she stared around the old familiar room remembering how it had felt when she first moved in, three years earlier. That had been her first real attempt to reject Niall and the way of life into which he had led her. By then she had already made the decision which was only implemented when she met Richard, allowing Niall to hover around on the fringe of her life all that time. She knew when she moved in that there was more to life than Niall’s way. The art-school education her parents had given her was being wasted; she was growing up and wanted more than a life of petty crime and useless drifting. This room, legally rented, and paid for with work professionally earned, had marked a new turning. But with time it had simply become the place she lived in, symbolic of nothing.
She returned to the car. They drove back to West Hampstead; the traffic was lighter now, and she was beginning to learn the way, but he had to direct her to the exact location of his garage. When he unlocked the door they found the car inside. Two of its tires were flat and the battery was dead, but otherwise it was just as he must have left it, all those months ago.
III
They went to a Chinese restaurant in Camden High Street, then returned to his flat. Using jump leads from the rental car, they had managed to start Richard’s and he had tried driving it. He took it as far as the nearest filling station, where they pumped up the tires, but after that he had been too fatigued for more driving.
This aside he seemed relaxed and happy, and for the first time since leaving Middlecombe he became talkative. He said he wanted to get back to work, perhaps overseas; he had always enjoyed travel. When they were back in the flat they watched the evening news on television, and he talked interestingly about the style of television reporting and how there were subtle differences between the British and American ways. He had had to learn the American style while working for the agency. After the program he even talked about trying to find a full-time job once more.
Then they went to bed, and of course she could not help thinking about the past. The physical act of love was a reminder for them both: how long ago it had been, how good it could be, how much it mattered. Afterward she lay close against him, resting her head on the side of his chest. She could see none of his scars from this position—an illusion of the past, because his injuries affected everything in the present. It had been here, in this bed and possibly in the same sheets, that they had first made love.