In the jacket of my pocket is a folded piece of A4 paper and a pencil, and I have diligently mapped my route here – only ten minutes’ walk from home, but far enough, I know now, for me to get lost – every street name specified, every landmark noted. I have even written Stephen’s mobile number at the top in case history repeats itself and I have to ask a shopkeeper to use their telephone, admit to Stephen that I have broken my promise. But I won’t get lost. I need to prove to myself that I can do this, that I can leave the house without supervision or misadventure. I cannot stay cooped up indoors, locked inside a mind that seems determined to keep my past from me. I have to do something to try and unfreeze my memories.
In the six days since the crash – as Stephen and I have woken up together, eaten dinner, talked about our respective days – I have wondered how much this quotidian rhythm resembles our lives before the accident. Whether, since being made redundant, I have counted the hours until Stephen’s return, as I do now: the pivotal moment in an otherwise uneventful day. Whether our dinner-time conversations have always been dominated by Stephen’s anecdotes about university life. Or whether the tenor of our relationship has changed beyond all recognition. And, if it has, whether it will ever revert to the way it was before.
Yesterday evening, Stephen told me he has been researching amnesia online. He’s read that it’s best for now that we dwell not on the past but focus on the present, that by anchoring my experiences in the here and now we are more likely to help strengthen my memory. ‘Memory recovery isn’t something that can be rushed. We just have to be patient and let your brain have time to heal.’
Last night, after dinner, he suggested we watch one of our favourite films, The Royal Tenenbaums, telling me we’d seen it multiple times before. I managed to follow the plot but remembered nothing about it from previous viewings and found its eccentricity too pronounced, too self-conscious. But Stephen kept turning to me, asking with such optimism whether I was enjoying it, that I had smiled and nodded, fabricated the response I knew he wanted.
There is a gust of breeze and my head feels light suddenly, as though my brain has been scooped out and replaced with helium. The sensation is debilitating and I wish I were at home, in familiar surroundings, where I could lie on the sofa or crawl under the duvet and wait until the episode passes.
I close my eyes, consciously regulate my breathing, hoping that a steady supply of oxygen to my brain will recalibrate my feelings. I sense my lungs expand and then contract, fill and then empty, until gradually the light-headedness begins to subside. It feels like a small moment of triumph, to have survived this dizzy spell away from home, and I try to use the knowledge of it to calm the pulse tapping at my wrists reminding me that this kind of episode is precisely why Stephen didn’t want me to leave the house alone.
There is a change of weight on the bench and I snap open my eyes, spin my head around, a surge of inexplicable fear flooding my veins.
‘God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump. Are you okay?’
There is a woman smiling at me, apology in her eyes, and it takes a few seconds for me to recall where I have seen her before. It is the woman from the playground a few days ago, the mother with the little boy wearing the blue tractor jumper. I follow the quick dart of her eyes to the sandpit, where the same little boy – now wearing a bright green sweatshirt – is dragging a plastic digger through the sand.
‘Yes, I’m fine.’ My voice feels strange in my mouth and I realise that I have spoken to no one other than Stephen and the police officers since leaving the hospital.
We smile at one another and then look away, fall into a silence which may or may not be comfortable, I cannot tell. The woman watches her son, and I watch with her as he scoops piles of sand into his digger, dumps them behind him, creating a hole on one side, a mound on the other.
‘He’s very sweet. How old is he?’ My words take me by surprise, as if they have chosen to leave my lips without prior consultation.
‘Just turned three, last month. He certainly has his moments. Have you got kids?’
I shake my head, my chest swelling with a feeling I cannot put a name to.
‘It’s a lovely park, isn’t it?’ The woman looks around, checks on her son before turning back to me. ‘I’m Zahira.’ Her voice is gentle, and she places the flat of her palm on her chest as she introduces herself, her manicured nails crisp against her white t-shirt. She is about the same age as me, perhaps a few years younger, dark hair sitting in sleek, straight lines just below her shoulders. Her eyes are watchful, intelligent, her skin flawless. A thin black pencil line shapes the top of her eyes, a light sheen of blusher across her cheeks. She is objectively beautiful, and next to her I am acutely aware of my own shabbiness: my face free of make-up, pasty with sleeplessness, shadows hanging beneath my eyes like crescent bruises.
‘I’m Anna. Anna Bradshaw.’ I state my full name as if to affirm my identity and yet there is something uncanny in it, as though I have not yet earned the right to say it out loud. ‘It’s only the second time I’ve been here but, yes, I really like it.’ Even as I speak, it strikes me as probably untrue. Stephen and I have lived in our house for over a year: I imagine we must have walked through this park many times.
‘Mama! Look!’
We both turn our heads to where Zahira’s son is pointing to the mound of sand he has created, a twig stuck in the top. ‘I made a castle!’
‘Well done, little bear. What are you going to build next?’
The boy places a finger on his chin, gazes up at the sky, thinks for a few seconds before responding. ‘A choo-choo train!’
Zahira laughs. ‘Okay, I’ll come and have a look when you’re done.’ She turns back to me, leans against the arm of the bench. ‘So have you not lived around here long?’
I think about her question, realise there are two possible answers: the factual and the experiential. ‘I’ve lived here for over a year, but I had an accident recently and lost my memory so I don’t remember anything about it.’ It is barely a chapter of my story and yet I feel as though I am standing at the top of a cliff as a strong wind threatens to force me over the edge.
‘God, I’m so sorry. That sounds awful. Are you okay?’ She glances towards her son, then looks back at me.
I am about to nod, offer a platitudinal response, but then something shifts inside me, and the confusion about all that has happened suddenly feels unwieldy. Before I have time to consider it, the story is spilling from my lips, as though it knows the way and has no need for me to guide it. And even while I am telling this woman about the events of the past six days – about the crash and the concussion, the amnesia and the hospital, Stephen and the house and the life I do not remember – a voice in my head is telling me I am being absurd, unburdening myself to a complete stranger. And yet I do not stop, cannot stop, this need to confide so great that I have no power against it.
When I finish, I feel exhausted, spent. The telling has taken no more than a few minutes and yet I feel as though I have reached the end of a marathon. But there is also a sense of relief, like plunging into the sea on a hot summer’s day.