Later, I saw Dr Nash. We were sitting at traffic lights, Dr Nash tapping his fingers on the rim of the steering wheel, not quite in time to the music that played from the stereo — pop that I neither recognized nor enjoyed — while I stared ahead. I’d called him this morning, almost as soon as I had finished reading my journal, finished writing about the dream that might have been a memory. I had to speak to someone — the news that I was a mother had felt like a tiny rip in my life that now threatened to snag, tearing it apart — and he’d suggested we move our next meeting to today. He asked me to bring my journal. I hadn’t told him what was wrong, intending to wait until we were in his offices, but now didn’t know whether I could.
The lights changed. He stopped tapping and we jerked back into motion. ‘Why doesn’t Ben tell me about Adam?’ I heard myself say. ‘I don’t understand. Why?’
He glanced at me, but said nothing. We drove a little further. A plastic dog sat on the parcel shelf of the car in front of us, its head nodding comically, and beyond it I could see the blond hair of a toddler. I thought of Alfie.
Dr Nash coughed. ‘Tell me what happened.’
It was true, then. Part of me was hoping he would ask me what I was talking about, but as soon as I said the word
I felt angry. He had known all along.
‘And you,’ I said. ‘You gave me my novel. So why didn’t you tell me about Adam?’
‘Christine,’ he said, ‘tell me what happened.’
I stared out of the front window. ‘I had a memory,’ I said.
He glanced across at me. ‘Really?’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Christine,’ he said, ‘I’m trying to help.’
I told him. ‘It was the other day,’ I said. ‘After you’d given me my novel. I looked at the photograph that you’d put with it and, suddenly, I remembered the day it was taken. I can’t say why. It just came to me. And I remembered that I’d been pregnant.’
He said nothing.
‘You knew about him?’ I said. ‘About Adam?’
He spoke slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did. It’s in your file. He was a couple of years old when you lost your memory.’ He paused. ‘Plus we’ve spoken about him before.’
I felt myself go cold. I shivered, despite the warmth in the car. I knew it was possible, even probable, that I had remembered Adam before, but this bare truth — that I had gone through all this before and would therefore go through it all again — shook me.
He must have sensed my surprise.
‘A few weeks ago,’ he said. ‘You told me you’d seen a child, out in the street. A little boy. At first you had the overwhelming sense that you knew him, that he was lost, but was coming home, to your house, and you were his mother. Then it came back to you. You told Ben, and he told you about Adam. Later that day you told me.’
I remembered nothing of this. I reminded myself that he was not talking about a stranger, but about me.
‘But you haven’t told me about him since?’
He sighed. ‘No—’
Without warning I remembered what I had read this morning, of the images they had shown me as I lay in the scanner.
‘There were pictures of him!’ I said. ‘When I had my scan! There were pictures …’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘From your file.’
‘But you didn’t mention him! Why? I don’t understand.’
‘Christine, you must accept that I can’t begin every session by telling you all the things I know but you don’t. Plus, in this case, I decided it wouldn’t necessarily benefit you.’
‘Benefit me?’
‘No. I knew it would be very upsetting for you to know that you had a child and have forgotten him.’
We were pulling into an underground car park. The soft daylight faded, replaced by harsh fluorescence and the smell of petrol and concrete. I wondered what else he might feel it unethical to tell me, what other time bombs I am carrying in my head, primed and ticking, ready to explode.
‘There aren’t any more—?’ I said.
‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘You only had Adam. He was your only child.’
The past tense. Then Dr Nash knew he was dead, too. I didn’t want to ask, but knew that I must.
‘You know he was killed?’
He stopped the car and turned off the engine. The car park was dim, lit only by pools of fluorescent light, and silent. I heard nothing but the occasional door slamming, the rattle of a lift. For a moment I thought there was still a chance. Maybe I was wrong. Adam was alive. My mind lit with the idea. Adam had felt real to me as soon as I read about him this morning, yet still his death did not. I tried to picture it, or to remember how it must have felt to be given the news that he had been killed, yet I could not. It did not seem right. Grief should surely overwhelm me. Every day would be filled with constant pain, with longing, with the knowledge that part of me has died and I will never be whole again. Surely my love for my son would be strong enough for me to remember my loss. If he really were dead, then surely my grief would be stronger than my amnesia.
I realized I didn’t believe my husband. I didn’t believe my son was dead. For a moment my happiness hung, balancing, but then Dr Nash spoke.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’
Excitement discharged within me like a tiny explosion, turned to its opposite. Something worse than disappointment. More destructive, shot through with pain.
‘How …?’ was all I could say.
He told me the same story as Ben. Adam, in the army. A roadside bomb. I listened, determined to find the strength to not cry. When he had finished there was a pause, a moment of stillness, before he put his hand on mine.
‘Christine,’ he said softly. ‘I’m so sorry.’
I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him. He was leaning towards me. I looked down at his hand, covering mine, criss-crossed with tiny scratches. I saw him at home, later. Playing with a kitten, perhaps a small dog. Living a normal life.
‘My husband doesn’t tell me about Adam,’ I said. ‘He keeps all the photographs of him locked away in a metal box. For my own protection.’ Dr Nash said nothing. ‘Why would he do that?’
He looked out of the window. I saw the word
I thought. I thought of all the reasons I could. So that he can control me. Have power over me. So that he can deny me this one thing that might make me feel complete. I realized I didn’t believe any of those were true. I was left only with the mundane fact. ‘I suppose it’s easier for him. Not to tell me, if I don’t remember.’
‘Why is it easier for him?’
‘Because I find it so upsetting? It must be a horrible thing to have to do, to tell me every day that not only have I had a child but that he has died. And in such a horrible way.’
‘Any other reasons, do you think?’
I was silent, and then realized. ‘Well, it must be hard for him, too. He was Adam’s father and, well …’ I thought how he must be managing his own grief, as well as mine.
‘This is difficult for you, Christine,’ he said. ‘But you must try to remember that it is difficult for Ben, too. More difficult, in some ways. He loves you very much, I expect, and—’
‘—and yet I don’t even remember he exists.’
‘True,’ he said.
I sighed. ‘I must have loved him, once. After all, I married him.’ He said nothing. I thought of the stranger I had woken up with that morning, of the photos of our lives together I had seen, of the dream — or the memory — I had had in the middle of the night. I thought of Adam, and of Alfie, of what I had done, or thought about doing. A panic rose in me. I felt trapped, as though there was no way out, my mind skittering from one thing to another, searching for freedom and release.
