Mike had started visiting, claiming to be Ben. I had discharged myself, signed all the paperwork. I had left voluntarily. They couldn’t have stopped me, even if they’d believed there was a reason for them to try. When I left I took with me the few photographs and personal possessions that I still had.
‘That was why Mike had those pictures?’ I said. ‘The ones of me, and Adam. That’s why he had the letter that Adam had written to Santa Claus? His birth certificate?’
‘Yes,’ said Dr Nash. ‘They were with you at Waring House, and they went with you when you left. At some point Mike must have destroyed all the pictures that showed you with Ben. Possibly even before you were discharged from Waring House — the staff turnover is fairly high and they had no idea what your husband really looked like.’
‘But how would he have got access to the photographs?’
‘They were in an album in a drawer in your room. It would have been easy enough for him to get to them once he started visiting you. He might even have slipped in a few photographs of himself. He must have had some of the two of you taken during … well, when you were seeing each other, years ago. The staff at Waring House were convinced that the man who had been visiting you was the same one as in the photo album.’
‘So I brought my photos back to Mike’s house and he hid them in a metal box? Then he invented a fire, to explain why there were so few?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He looked tired, and guilty. I wondered whether he blamed himself for any of what had happened, and hoped he didn’t. He had helped me, after all. He had rescued me. I hoped he would still be able to write his paper and present my case. I hoped he would be recognized for what he had done for me. After all, without him I’d—
I don’t want to think about where I’d be.
‘How did you find me?’ I said. He explained that Claire had been frantic with worry after we’d spoken, but she had waited for me to call the next day. ‘Mike must have removed the pages from your journal that night. That was why you didn’t think anything was wrong when you gave me the journal on Tuesday, and neither did I. When you didn’t call her Claire tried to phone you, but she only had the number for the mobile phone I had given you and Mike had taken that, too. I should have known something was wrong when I called you on that number this morning and you didn’t answer. But I didn’t think. I just called you on your other phone …’ He shook his head.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s fair to assume he’d been reading your journal for at least the last week or so, probably longer. At first Claire couldn’t get hold of Adam and didn’t have Ben’s number, so she called Waring House. They only had one number that they thought was for Ben but in fact it was Mike’s. Claire didn’t have my number. She called the school he worked at and persuaded them to give her Mike’s address and phone number, but both were false. She was at a dead end.’
I think of this man discovering my journal, reading it every day. Why didn’t he destroy it?
Because I’d written that I loved him. And because that was what he wanted me to carry on believing.
Or maybe I am being too kind to him. Maybe he just wanted me to see it burn.
‘Claire didn’t call the police?’
‘She did.’ He nodded. ‘But it was a few days before they really took it seriously. In the meantime she’d got hold of Adam and he’d told her that Ben had been abroad for a while and that as far as he knew you were still in Waring House. She contacted them and, though they wouldn’t give her your home address, they eventually relented and gave Adam my number. They must have thought that was a good compromise, as I am a doctor. Claire only got through to me this afternoon.’
‘This afternoon?’
‘Yes. Claire convinced me something was wrong, and of course finding out that Adam was alive confirmed it. We came to see you at home, but by then you’d already left for Brighton.’
‘How did you know to find me there?’
‘You told me this morning that Ben — sorry, Mike — had told you that you were going away for the weekend. You said he’d told you that you were going to the coast. Once Claire told me what was going on I guessed where he was taking you.’
I lay back. I felt tired. Exhausted. I wanted only to sleep, but was frightened to. Frightened of what I might forget.
‘But you told me Adam was dead,’ I said. ‘You said he’d been killed. When we were sitting in the car park. And the fire, too. You told me there’d been a fire.’
He smiled, sadly. ‘Because that’s what you told me.’ I told him I didn’t understand. ‘One day, a couple of weeks after we first met, you told me Adam was dead. Evidently Mike had told you, and you had believed him and told me. When you asked me in the car park I told you the truth as I believed it. It was the same with the fire. I believed there’d been one, because that’s what you told me.’
‘But I remembered Adam’s funeral,’ I said. ‘His coffin …’
Again the sad smile. ‘Your imagination …’
‘But I saw pictures,’ I said. ‘That man’ — I found it impossible to say Mike’s name — ‘he showed me pictures of me and him together, of us getting married. I found a picture of a gravestone. It had Adam’s name—’
‘He must have faked them,’ he said.
‘Faked them?’
‘Yes. On a computer. It’s really quite easy to mock up photos these days. He must have guessed you were suspecting the truth and left them where he knew you’d find them. It’s quite likely that some of the photos you thought were of the two of you were also faked.’
I thought of the times I had written that Mike was in his office. Working. Is that what he’d been doing? How thoroughly he had betrayed me.
‘Are you OK?’ said Dr Nash.
I smiled. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so.’ I looked at him, and realized I could picture him in a different suit, with his hair cut much shorter.
‘I can remember things,’ I said.
His expression did not change. ‘What things?’ he said.
‘I remember you with a different haircut,’ I said. ‘And I recognized Ben, too. And Adam and Claire, in the ambulance. And I can remember seeing her the other day. We went to the cafe at Alexandra Palace. We had coffee. She has a son called Toby.’
His eyes were sad.
‘Have you read your journal today?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But don’t you see? I can remember things that I didn’t write down. I can remember the earrings that she was wearing. They’re the same ones she has on now. I asked her. She said I was right. And I can remember that Toby was wearing a blue parka, and he had cartoons on his socks, and I remember he was upset because he wanted apple juice and they only had orange or blackcurrant. Don’t you see? I didn’t write those things down. I can remember them.’
He looked pleased, then, though still cautious.
‘Dr Paxton did say that he could find no obvious organic cause for your amnesia. That it seemed likely that it was at least partly caused by the emotional trauma of what had happened to you, as well as the physical. I suppose it’s possible that another trauma might reverse that, at least to some degree.’
I leapt on what he was suggesting. ‘So I might be cured?’ I said.
He looked at me intently. I had the feeling he was weighing up what to say, how much of the truth I could stand.
‘I have to say it’s unlikely,’ he said. ‘There’s been a degree of improvement over the last few weeks, but nothing like a complete return of memory. But it is possible.’
I felt a rush of joy. ‘Doesn’t the fact that I remember what happened a week ago mean that I can form new memories again? And keep them?’
He spoke hesitantly. ‘It would suggest that, yes. But, Christine, I want you to be prepared for the fact that the effect may well be temporary. We won’t know until tomorrow.’
‘When I wake up?’
‘Yes. It’s entirely possible that after you sleep tonight all the memories you have from today will be gone. All the new ones, and all the old ones.’
