I can’t even imagine.’
Now it was Claire’s turn to shrug. ‘Tell me something about me. A story to jog my memory.’
‘How about some photographs? Let me have your phone.’ Gaby grabbed Claire’s phone and pressed a few buttons. ‘Here is your Facebook page. You must have thousands of photos up there.’
She scrolled through pictures, telling Claire funny anecdotes about all the people in them. Claire had spent hours in the hospital staring at the photos. But it was one thing looking at faces of strangers and quite another listening to Gaby bringing these strangers to live. ‘This is Tiffany,’ Gaby was saying. ‘You went to ballet school together.’ Tiffany was wearing a tight-fitting business suit, as if she had just stepped out of a job interview, but her posture, her body, the way she carried herself betrayed a dancer.
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘You call her the cow behind her back. And sometimes even to her face.’ Another photo popped up. ‘And this is Kevin. He tried to kiss you at your birthday last year. And when you turned him down, he kissed three other people just to prove it didn’t mean anything.’
‘Three other women?’
‘Not all of them women.’ There must have been shock on her face because Gaby laughed and added, ‘Dancers, what can I say?’ She had a good laugh, loud and infectious. It lit up her face and made her eyes twinkle. Suddenly Claire felt like a ray of light had illuminated her otherwise dark universe. She had a friend. She was no longer alone.
When a photo of a blonde woman in her fifties appeared, Claire exclaimed, ‘That’s Mum!’
‘You remember?’
‘I just knew.’ But she didn’t know how she knew. She pondered it for a moment, wondering if it was a memory or just intuition. Her mother was looking straight at Claire from the screen, her light hair pulled away from her face, her arms around the man Claire had spent hours watching at the hospital.
‘This is her with your dad at a barbecue a few years ago.’
Angela looked tiny next to Tony. She seemed lost in his embrace, and he hovered over her, holding her close as if he wanted the whole world to know she was his.
Claire couldn’t stop looking at her mother. She was so beautiful, her eyes so kind, her features delicate. Suddenly she found herself unable to speak or smile at Gaby or think of anything else. Tears filled her eyes and she didn’t know why. To change the subject, she asked, ‘What about me and Paul? Are we happy?’
Gaby seemed thrown off balance by her question. She emptied half her wine glass before she replied, ‘If you need to ask, the answer is probably no.’
‘We’re not happy?’ As if Paul’s cold smile and distant eyes hadn’t already alerted Claire that something was wrong.
‘Let’s just say, you have some issues.’
‘What kind of issues?’
‘It’s not my place to tell you.’
‘If you won’t tell me, no one else will.’
Gaby stepped from foot to foot, as if she wanted to be anywhere but here, having this conversation with Claire. ‘Maybe that’s for the best. I have to run, anyway. I’m always late, to everything. How do I look?’
Claire assured Gaby she looked fine, better than fine. But what she wanted to do instead was ask her friend not to go because for an hour in her grim morning she had laughter and joy. Gaby almost made her forget that she had forgotten her whole life. And for a brief moment with Gaby she felt hopeful. ‘Will you come back to see me?’
‘Of course.’
When the door closed behind her friend, Claire went up to her room. Climbing into bed and hugging Molokai, she reached for her mobile phone. It was as if her fingers once again had a life of their own. They knew exactly what numbers to press to unlock the phone. She looked through every photo until she came across the one she was looking for. Stroking her mother’s beautiful face with her fingertips, she struggled not to cry. Her mother was smiling at her as if telling her everything was going to be okay.
Claire loaded her contact list, hoping to find her mother’s number. And there it was, listed under Angela, ten digits that just a few short weeks ago she had probably known by heart. She stared at the number, blinking rapidly, reading it out loud, rolling every syllable off her tongue, hoping it would trigger a shadow of recollection, a glimmer of hazy remembrance.
Her whole body trembling, she pressed the call button. The phone rang and rang.
* * *
As Claire followed her husband across the hospital car park and through the front entrance, she realised she was petrified of the real world. She had spent a morning in that world and felt out of place, an outsider looking in. But at the hospital she was at home. As if this was where she belonged. Others had childhood memories, heartwarming and sweet, sometimes bitter, but always there to remind them that once there had been a different life, a different journey. They had memories of weddings, anniversaries and holidays by the sea. All Claire had was this place, with its closet-sized rooms, grim corridors and overworked staff. Nothing had changed here since the day before. It was still grey, shabby and depressing. So why did it feel so infinitely comforting to be walking down the familiar corridor?
No one expected her to be herself here, she realised. No one expected her to be anything. She could just be. Wake up in the morning, eat her meals, wrinkling her face in disgust, have her meds. She didn’t have to make decisions because they were made for her, by the doctors and the nurses. And that was what she missed when she stayed inside her beautiful mansion wearing her designer clothes, living someone else’s dream life but feeling like a prisoner.
She wished she could go back to her old room and remain like before, confined within her small world where nothing threatened her peace. She wished she could sit by the window, watching the oak tree outside, longing for a different life but not forced to go out there and live it. Could she stay with her father instead of going back to the alien house with a husband who treated her like a stranger? Of course, her father was a stranger to her, too. But she’d spent so long watching him, studying his face for clues, memorising his every feature, she felt she could open her mouth and recount every little detail of his life. His life was on the tip of her tongue, at the edge of her subconscious.
On the drive to the hospital, she had asked Paul what her father was like. ‘He’s not the friendliest man in the world. I don’t think he likes me much,’ he’d said. ‘But he’s your father. He loves you.’ His answer wasn’t what she wanted to hear, and it didn’t match the inner picture of her dad she had painstakingly created over long hours of watching and thinking, so she put Paul’s words to the back of her mind, to that place where her other memories were hiding.
But now, as she was about to face the man who had known her since the day she was born, the man she remembered nothing about other than the shape of his nose and the curve of his mouth, she wondered why her husband would say something like that. Didn’t Paul and her dad spend time together, discussing football and weather over a pint of beer? Were there no family barbecues, Christmases and birthdays where sausages sizzled on the grill and intoxicated confidences were exchanged late into the night? Or maybe Paul not getting along with Tony was completely natural. Fathers didn’t always like to share their little girls with their husbands. And husbands were often intimidated
