ANNA
LONDON
Stephen leans against the kitchen counter. ‘By the way, there was a message on the answerphone from the therapist – Carla, is it? She’s had to cancel your appointment on Friday but said she’ll be in touch with another date soon.’
Disappointment cramps in my chest. ‘Why?’
‘She didn’t say. Just that she’d be in touch. It’s hardly surprising, given how services are being cut. To be honest, I was amazed you got a referral so quickly in the first place.’
His words are like treacle in my ears. It is only now that the promise of therapy is taken away from me that I realise how much I was relying on it. ‘Why did she tell you? Why didn’t she tell me?’ I hear the panic in my voice, wish I could contain it.
Stephen frowns. ‘She did. She left a message on the answerphone.’
Confusion darts in my head like a fish trapped in a barrel. ‘But you’ve only just got home. How have you heard it already?’
‘I can access it remotely. I often check it during the day, see if there’s anything important. I don’t want you worrying about messages from the landlord or anything like that.’ He looks perplexed by my questions. ‘What’s the matter?’
The kettle boils and I pour steaming water into the saucepan, cover the rice. I do not know how to answer, cannot find the words to articulate the depth of my disappointment. I feel like a deep-sea diver, submerged beneath gallons of ocean water, the prospect of the therapy appointment my oxygen tank, keeping me breathing.
‘Anna?’
I swallow hard, stir the rice around the pan to prevent it sticking. ‘I’m fine.’
There is an expectant pause. ‘I’m sure you’ll get another appointment soon.’
I nod, even though we have no way of knowing if it is true.
We are interrupted by the shrill ringing of Stephen’s mobile. Pulling it from his trouser pocket, he stares at the screen, mutters under his breath. He glances up at me, cheeks stretching into an apologetic smile. ‘It’s work, I’d better take it.’ There is a sliver of hesitation, like the flit of a shadow through the window of a night train. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
He hurries from the room, phone still ringing, and I hear his feet bounding up the stairs. I am aware of stilling my movements, waiting, listening. There is a muffled greeting before the scrape of wood against carpet and the rest of the conversation disappears behind our closed bedroom door.
I reduce the heat beneath the rice, think about the cancelled session with the therapist, and feel a sudden urge to take back some control over my life.
Hurrying into the sitting room, I head for the side table where the phone lives, the white notepad next to it, and notice immediately that the piece of paper I’m looking for is missing. I flick through the notepad, thinking perhaps it has become detached from its gummy binding, but only empty pages stare back at me. My heart begins to race as I search under the phone’s cradle, crouch down on my hands and knees to see if it has somehow slipped to the floor like a helicopter seed from a sycamore tree. But there is nothing. No scrap of paper containing the name and telephone number for an appointment that has begun to feel like a lifeline out of my amnesia.
‘What are you doing?’
I jerk my head around to find Stephen standing over me, frowning. ‘The therapist’s number. The piece of paper I’d written it on. I can’t find it. Have you seen it?’
He shakes his head. ‘Why do you need it?’
‘I just want it.’
‘Why?’
‘I just do.’ There is frenzy in my voice and it does not sound like me, or at least not the me I have come to know over the past two weeks. ‘You must have taken it, thrown it away.’ I resume my search, under the bookshelves, behind the television. I have to find that scrap of paper, need to know I can phone the therapist, that the lifebuoy she has thrown me is not out of reach.
I sense Stephen behind me, feel a hand on my shoulder. ‘Anna, come on. Why don’t we have dinner? It smells amazing.’ His voice is patient, placatory, but I do not want mollification. I want that piece of paper.
‘You must have thrown it away. It was here, only a few days ago. It was attached to the top of the pad. I saw it.’ I return to the notepad, run my fingers across it, feel the indentations of my pen marks. I tear the top sheet off, hold it up to the light to prove to myself that it was once there, try to decipher the alphanumerics, but the marks are too faint.
Stephen places his hands on my arms, lifts me to my feet. ‘Look at me, Anna. Look at me. I haven’t touched the notepad. The piece of paper must have got lost somehow.’ He speaks in slow, deliberate tones, enunciating each word carefully, a micropause between each one, as though attempting to pacify a recalcitrant child. ‘Maybe you threw it away by accident. But you don’t need it. The therapist said she’d call back to rearrange your appointment. There’s nothing to get upset about.’
He pulls me into his arms, and a part of me wants to resist, wants to search for that piece of paper until I have found it. But Stephen holds me close, runs his fingers through my hair, and I am overcome by a bewildering sense of uncertainty.
‘Shall we have dinner? I think the rice is probably ready by now.’ There is light-heartedness in Stephen’s voice, and I extricate myself from his arms, try to return his smile. But as I follow Stephen into the kitchen, I glance over my shoulder to where the name and telephone number of the therapist should be. I know that I did not move that piece of paper, that I would not have thrown it away. It was too important for me to be so careless. And yet now it is gone, and I will just have to hope that Carla calls me back and that she does not leave it too long.
LIVVY
BRISTOL
Livvy opened the door to her wardrobe, surveyed the jumble of shoeboxes stacked at the bottom. From downstairs she could hear the faint murmur of music, something classical, Radio 3 no doubt. Dominic was down there, packing his books in preparation for the move next weekend. Checking the time, she figured she had a couple of hours before Leo was likely to wake from his post-lunch nap.
Turning around, she caught sight of herself in the mirror, experienced a moment’s discombobulation. Her hand shot to the back of her neck, made contact with her bare skin, and she readjusted her expectations, reminded herself that this was her reflection now: the short bob, the swept fringe, the wispy ends she would probably never have time to blow-dry the way the hairdresser had done. It was almost twenty-four hours since she’d had her hair cut and still the sight of her own reflection took her by surprise.
When Dominic had returned from Sheffield the previous evening, the expression on his face had morphed from shock to delight. He had turned her around, his hands on her shoulders, examining her from every angle, as though she were a delicately carved statue on a plinth in a museum. He’d taken copious photos of her on his phone, shown them to her, beaming: ‘I told you it would suit you.’ In the hours since, she had caught him looking at her when he thought she wouldn’t notice, a curious expression on his face she couldn’t quite decipher.
Her phone buzzed and she picked it up, found a message from Bea, opened it even as a knot pulled taut in her stomach.