I took one. Caramel.
'There are words now that hold different meanings for me than they do for, say, you,' I said. 'Darkness. Silence. Winter.' I took another chocolate. 'Memory,' I added, and put the chocolate into my mouth.
Ben picked up my hand, the one that wasn't wrapped round his wooden egg. He held it against his face. 'I do love you,' he said.
'I think I was mad for a bit. That's all over.'
'You look different,' he said. 'Beautiful.'
'I feel different.'
'What are you going to do next?'
'Earn some money. Grow my hair. Go to Venice.'
'Do you want to come back?'
'Ben .. .'
'I'd like you to.'
'No. I mean, no, you probably wouldn't like me to although it's very nice of you to ask. And, no, I won't.'
'I see.' He put my hand on the bed and smoothed its fingers, one by one, not looking at me.
'You could ask me out,' I said. 'We could go on a date. See a movie. Drink cocktails. Eat swanky meals in restaurants.'
He started to smile at me, eager and uncertain. It made his eyes crinkle up. He was a nice man, really. I'd invented all the rest.
'Spring is coming,' I said. 'You never know what may happen.'
There was someone else who came to see me. Well, of course, lots of people came to see me. My friends, singly or in groups, clutching flowers, tearful or giggly or embarrassed. I hugged people until my ribs hurt. It was like a non-stop party in my room. It was like the party I'd thought I would have the first time I returned from the dead, only to enter instead a world of silence and shame yet now I found that I was a stranger at my party, looking in on the fun, laughing but not really getting the joke.
But someone else came, too. He knocked on the door, even though it was half open, and stood on the threshold until I told him to come in.
'I don't know if you remember me,' he said. 'I'm .. .'
'Of course I remember,' I said. 'You told me that I had a very good brain. You're Professor Mulligan, the memory man, the only person I really want to see.'
'I didn't bring flowers.'
'That's good, because I'm leaving here this afternoon.'
'How are you?'
'Fine.'
'Well done,' he said.
I remembered from before the sense of approval he brought with him. It made me feel warm. 'Jack Cross told me you stood up for me.'
'Well .. .' He waved his hands vaguely in the air.
'You walked out of the meeting.'
'It didn't do any good. Tell me, did your memory come back at all?'
'No. Not really,' I said. 'Sometimes I think there's something there, just on the fringes of my consciousness, but I can't catch it and if I turn my head it's gone. And sometimes I think that the lost time is like a tide that flooded me and that's now ebbing away. It's so infinitesimally slow that I can't possibly detect it and perhaps I'm imagining it. Or maybe, bit by bit, memory will return. Do you think that's possible?'
He leant forward and looked at me. 'Don't count on it,' he said. 'Anything's possible but everything's a mystery.'
'For a long time I thought that there would be an answer in the end,' I said. 'I thought if I saw him I would remember. I thought that the things that were lost could be found again. But it's not going to happen like that, is it?'
'What did you want to find?'
'I wanted to find me.'
'Ah. Well, then.'
'I'll never get that lost me back, will I?'
Professor Mulligan took one of the flowers and sniffed it. He tore off the end of the stalk and inserted it into his lapel.
'Do you mind?' he said. I smiled and shook my head. 'Try not to dwell on what you don't remember. Think of the things that you do.'
Things I don't remember. I count them up on my fingers: leaving Terry, meeting Jo, meeting Ben, meeting him. I still think of him as nameless, just 'him', the man, a dark shape, a voice in the darkness. I don't remember falling in love. I don't remember that week of being simply and gloriously happy. I don't remember being snatched out of my life. I don't remember losing myself.
Things I do remember: a hood on my head, a wire on my neck, a gag in my mouth, a sob in my throat, a voice in the night, a laugh in the darkness, invisible hands touching me, eyes watching me, terror, loneliness, madness, shame. I remember dying and I remember being dead. And I remember the sound of my beating heart, the sound of my continuing breath, a yellow butterfly on a green leaf, a silver tree on a small hill, a calm river, a clear lake; things I haven't seen and will never forget. Being alive. I remember.
