'That's probably a sign of psychological good health. But I do. You know that when I was there, if I was there, I slept and I had dreams and I remember those dreams as well. Lakes, floating in water, a butterfly on a leaf. Does that prove anything? Is it possible to go to sleep and have a dream, and then in that dream go to sleep and have another dream? Is that possible?'
'I design taps and pen holders I don't know much about psychology.'
'It's neurology. I know. I've been seen by a psychologist and by a neurologist. The neurologist was the one who believed me. Anyway, that's my story. I've got this bit missing from my brain and I'm going around to see people who probably think I'm insane trying to fill in the gaps. At the same time I'm taking elaborate precautions to hide from someone who probably isn't looking for me. Did you ever do that as a child? You'd play a game of hide and seek and you'd find the most brilliant hiding place. You'd be there for ages, feeling triumphant at first and then bored, and you'd gradually realize that everyone else has given up the game. And furthermore I've got this feeling that I'm just babbling away like a lunatic and you're just standing there being strong and silent and not saying anything. You were wondering where Jo is and you were wondering what I was doing here. Well, I don't know where Jo is and I don't know what I'm doing here, so you can go back to your workshop now.'
Ben came over and took my mug and walked over to the sink with it. He washed up my mug and his own and laid them upside down on the draining-board. He looked around for a dishtowel. But there wasn't one and he had to shake the water off his hands.
'I think I know what you're doing here,' he said. 'At least, I know how you met Jo.'
'How?'
'I introduced you to her.'
Fourteen
For a moment I felt a wave of excitement as another space of my terra incognita was mapped but it quickly became a sickening lurch. 'What are you talking about? Why should you have done that? You didn't seem to know that when you arrived. You were as flabbergasted to see me as I was to see you.'
'I was,' he said. 'But that must have been what happened.' He paused. 'Are you serious? Do you really have no memory of meeting her?'
'I just watched this video that we must have made together of me and her. We seemed to be getting on. I seemed happy. I wish I could remember it. I could do with some happy memories. But, no, I'm sorry, there's nothing there. How did you introduce us? Why?' Ben started to reply and then hesitated. 'You're wondering whether to believe me, aren't you? That's great. The police and the doctors don't believe I was abducted. Now you don't believe that I can have lost my memory. Soon I'll probably meet people who don't believe I'm really Abbie Devereaux. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm just impersonating her. It may be a delusion. Maybe I'm really Jo and I'm hallucinating this person called Abbie.'
Ben made an attempt at a smile but then he looked away from me as if he was embarrassed.
'So I met her on Monday?' I said.
'Tuesday,' he said. 'Tuesday morning.'
'I thought you said before that we met on Monday. I'm sure you did.'
'You came back on Tuesday,' he said vaguely. 'With more questions.'
'Oh. And Jo was at your workshop?'
'We went and had a coffee down the road, in a cafe not so far from here that she goes to regularly. She was on her way to some appointment, I think. I introduced you. We talked for a bit, then I had to run off. If you want me to reconstruct your conversation, I suppose you told her about needing somewhere to stay. She must have said you could stay here. So there's one mystery solved. Nothing sinister.'
'I see.'
'And you think she's missing?'
'I told this detective I ... I sort of know. He thinks I'm mad. Well, not mad-mad, of course, but wrong. I hope I am too. I don't know what to do. And for some reason I feel responsible for her. Every time I look up and see her photograph, I feel terrible that I'm not doing more. When I was in that place, a prisoner, I kept thinking that people I knew, my friends, would be looking for me and making a great fuss and worrying all the time, and that kept me going. I had to believe it, it was crucial to feel I was alive in people's thoughts, and one of the worst things about coming back again was to realize that no one had missed me at all.'
'I think' He tried to interrupt.
'No one had noticed I wasn't around, or if they'd noticed it didn't matter much. It was as if I was invisible. Had died. I mean, it wasn't their fault in the slightest, I know that they're good friends and I think they love me, really, and I'd have done the same in their place. I wouldn't notice if someone wasn't around for a few days -why should I? We come and go in each other's lives, don't we? But I just mustn't do that with Jo. Because I know what it feels like. But I don't know what to do not to do that, if that makes sense. And I'm talking too much and I have this horrible feeling that if I stop talking I may burst into tears.'
I stopped and Ben leant forward and put a hand on my arm. I instinctively jerked away.
'Sorry,' he said, sounding as if he meant it. 'It must make you jumpy, having a strange man in your flat. I should have thought.'
'Kind of, I mean I'm sure that .. . Look, I'm like a person stumbling about in the pitch black, if you see what I mean, with my hands outstretched, trying not to fall off the edge. If there is an edge to fall off anyway. Sometimes I think there's some kind of glimmer at the edge of my vision, and I look round and it goes away. I just keep hoping I'll come into the light again but I don't. Without my memory, it's as if I've lost my map, I'm blundering about and bumping into things, and it's not just that I don't know where I am, I don't know who I am. What is there that's left of me? Especially when other people don't know whether to-' I stopped abruptly. 'I'm gabbling again, aren't I?' He didn't answer. He was staring at me in a way that made me nervous. 'What was I like when we met before?'
'What were you like?' He seemed not to understand the question.
'Yes.'
'Your hair was longer.'
'Well, I know that since it was me who had it cut, but what did I seem like to you? What kind of state was I in?'
'Um.' He looked uncertain and awkward for a moment. 'You seemed quite animated.'
'What did we talk about? Did I tell you anything?'
'Work,' he said. 'Problems at work.'
'Is that all?'
'You said you'd just left your boyfriend.'
'I said that to you?'
'You explained that you were of no fixed address, so you only had a mobile if I needed to call you on business.'
'Anything else? Did I talk about people I'd met recently? Had I met someone else? Did I tell you?'
'Not exactly,' he said. 'But I thought you had. At least, I got that impression.'
'You see, I'm thinking maybe the person I met was, you know, him.'
'Him?'
'The man who grabbed me.'
'I see,' he said, standing up. 'Tell you what, shall we go and have a drink? You'll probably feel safer with me in a crowd.'
'All right,' I said.
'Come on, then.' He picked up his coat from the chair.
'Nice coat.'
He looked down at it, almost with surprise, as if it were an unknown coat that had been put on him without his knowledge. 'It's new.'
'I like those long floppy coats.'
'They're like long cloaks,' Ben said. 'The sort that people used to wear a couple of hundred years ago.'
I frowned. 'Why does hearing that make me feel peculiar?'
'Maybe you agree.'
The pub was reassuringly crowded and full of the fug of cigarette smoke.
'I'm buying,' I said, and fought my way to the bar.
