Before he left this morning, Stephen asked what I was planning to do today, and I didn’t know how to answer. With no reference as to how I usually fill my days, the prospect of the empty hours ahead was like being given the script to a play only to find the pages blank. I told him I might go for a walk, try to reacclimatise myself to the neighbourhood. But he shook his head, the now-familiar furrow of concern forming a deep ridge across his forehead. ‘It’s still early days, my love. I know your short-term memory has been fine so far, but we just don’t know how reliable it is, and I’d be so worried that you might get lost. I know it’ll be boring, stuck inside all day, but I’ll get home as early as I can. Please just rest up.’
Getting up from the chair, I stretch my arms above my head, pace from one end of the room to the other like a caged tiger. The watch on my wrist tells me it is just past three o’clock. Stephen has been gone for seven hours already. He has told me he is rarely home before eight, and the next five hours stretch before me like an interminable yawn.
Yesterday, I asked Stephen whether he could show me some photo albums of our life together, and he told me that he will fetch them down from the loft at the weekend, agreed it would be good for me to see them. But I am overcome by a sudden impatience to look at them now, do not want to wait another four days. Heading up the stairs, I pull a chair from the spare room, place it underneath the loft hatch, hear Stephen’s voice echoing in my ear: The loft ladder’s pretty treacherous – I need to get someone to come and fix it – so don’t venture up there if I’m not here. I reassure myself that I will be careful, that I need to do this. I cannot just sit around and wait for my memories to return; I have to attempt to coax them back.
With one hand on the back of the chair, I place a foot flat on its seat, check it’s sturdy, feel the muscles in my thigh tighten as I lift myself off the ground. Bringing my other foot onto it, I wobble for a moment, and my heart skips as I fling one arm out to the side to steady myself, keep the other firmly attached to the chair’s wooden frame. Regaining my balance, I tentatively bring myself to full height, exhale a sigh of relief that I have got this far. Reaching a hand above my head, I look up to where a silver hasp and staple latch sits across the loft hatch, and it is then that I notice it: a small brass padlock hooked through the metal hoop. Releasing my hand from the back of the chair and extending my arm above my head, I tug at it, but it is fixed, the shackle locked tightly in its body, refusing to pull free.
My head begins to spin, as though filled with an eddying rush of air. I grab for the back of the chair, but my vision is blurred, hazy, and my hand flails uselessly. A voice in my head tells me that I shouldn’t be up here, standing on chairs, trying to get into lofts when I am only one day out of hospital. The muscles in my legs feel weak and I have a vision of falling, tumbling down the stairs, landing in a slump at the bottom and nobody finding me until Stephen gets home, hours from now. My head reels and I force myself to keep my eyes open, know that if they are closed there will be nothing to anchor me to the material world. My hand manages to find the back of the chair and I seize hold of it, fingers aching with the strength of my grasp. My heart thuds and I order myself to breathe steadily, in and then out, know that I need to sit down but cannot risk climbing off the chair, do not trust my legs to make the necessary moves without stumbling.
The seconds pass, then a minute – maybe more – and gradually the dizziness begins to subside, the contents of my head beginning to feel solid again. I dare to take one foot off the chair, lower it to the ground, instruct the other to follow suit.
When I am sure my legs are stable, I take my hand off the chair, tread slowly down the stairs, clasping the banister all the way. I head into the sitting room, lie on the sofa. Within seconds, the dizziness disappears as though it was never there, and a part of me feels foolish for having become so panicky.
I think about the padlock on the loft, try to imagine why we have put it there, resolve to ask Stephen about it when he gets home later.
On the coffee table in front of me sits the trio of novels, and I feel a stab of guilt like a stitch between my ribs that I have not begun to read them. The claustrophobia of being stuck indoors all day is making me feel trapped, as though I may suffocate by breathing in the same, stale air. Outside, the sun is shining, and as I look out of the window and see the blue sky beyond, I feel a decision being made.
Ignoring the echo of Stephen’s voice in my head – I’d be so worried that you might get lost – disregarding the dizzy spell I just had, I walk into the hall, slip my feet into my trainers. Pulling my arms through the sleeves of my jacket, I open the front door and head out onto the street.
LIVVY
BRISTOL
Livvy sat on the sofa, laptop open, waiting for her seven p.m. Zoom call with Dominic.
On the video baby monitor, Leo slept soundly, and Livvy watched him on the screen, silently beseeching him not to wake up just as Dominic came online. One day last week, they’d barely said hello before a squawk interrupted them, Livvy rushing upstairs to soothe Leo back to sleep as quickly as she could. Twenty minutes later, she’d come back into the sitting room to find the video connection terminated and a text from Dominic saying he’d had a long day, was going to grab some dinner, and that he’d call her in the morning.
Pulling the laptop onto her thighs, she opened Facebook, scrolled through the home page: a succession of other people’s family photos and holiday snaps, news articles and adverts. Clicking on her profile page, her eyes scanned the most recent entries: newspaper features about climate change, friends’ JustGiving pages, promotions for local National Trust events. Fingers gliding along the trackpad, she slipped back in time, her postings rare and impersonal. Four months earlier she’d reposted a picture from Bea’s profile, taken of the two of them on Livvy’s birthday in the park. Before that there was nothing for weeks. Scrolling further, she found the last photo she’d uploaded: a fortnight after Leo’s birth, her newborn son lying in her arms, her parents proudly flanking them on either side. It was soon after she posted it that Dominic had confided how uncomfortable it made him feel having photos of Leo on social media, how he didn’t want their son to become one of those babies whose every move was documented online for all the world to see. ‘Why would we want complete strangers getting an intimate insight into our lives? And is it really fair to be creating a digital footprint for Leo when he’s not old enough to consent to it?’ Livvy had said she hadn’t realised he felt so strongly about it, had promised not to post any more personal pictures in the future. These days, she was a Facebook lurker, scrolling through other people’s timelines, occasionally reposting articles on things she cared about: the environment, conservation, education. She used Facebook so little, she hadn’t even bothered updating her profile since she and Dominic got married.
The waiting Zoom window morphed out of its stupor and there was Dominic, in his office at the construction site. Ten days ago, he’d arrived in Sheffield to find paper-thin walls in the studio flat that had been rented for him – ‘If I can hear every word my neighbours are saying, they can hear everything I’m saying too’ – so he preferred speaking to Livvy from the office, or in the car, where they could be guaranteed some privacy.