Clearing his throat, he studies my face as if assessing whether he is about to do the right thing. He glances around the ward, where the other patients are already deep in conversation with their visitors, before turning back to me, his lips inching into a reassuring smile, and I see what perhaps first attracted me to him: there is a quiet confidence about him, an air of competence. A feeling that here is a man you would want with you if you were stranded on a desert island. A man who can take control of a difficult situation and know what needs to be done.
He holds my gaze as he begins to speak, and I listen as he relays the story of our relationship. How we met not long after I graduated, got married six years later, have been happily married now for twelve years. He tells me about his job as a university lecturer, about our two-bedroom cottage in north-west London, about our weekend walks around Hampstead Heath, Richmond Park, Kew Gardens. Stephen talks, and it is like listening to an audiobook or a story on the radio: I am intrigued by events, want to know what happens next, but I have no greater affinity with the details than if they were the lives of fictional characters. I wait for something to spark a recollection: a phrase, a sentence, or even just a word to unlock some fragment of memory. But the story of our marriage might just as well be a novel I’ve picked up in a bookshop, or a drama I’m watching on TV: however hard I try to translate the events Stephen is describing into images of real life – my life – I find myself stumbling in the dark, not even a pinprick of light to help guide my way.
‘I brought this to show you.’
From a brown leather messenger bag, Stephen pulls out a white wooden frame, hands it to me. Behind the glass is an arrangement of dried white flowers. ‘They’re from your wedding bouquet. Dendrobium orchids. You’ve had this up on the wall in our bedroom for the past twelve years. I thought it might help you remember.’
I stare at the flowers – all the moisture long since evaporated – and scour my brain for some wisp of memory. But if there’s anything there, it doesn’t want to be found.
I shake my head, cannot look Stephen in the eye. He rests a hand on my shoulder and I flinch instinctively, watch him withdraw his hand as though he has placed it in a hive of bees. Turning to face him, I expect to see frustration but find only sadness.
He leans forward in his chair but is careful to keep his hands away from the edge of the bed. ‘I know this must be so hard for you, my love. You don’t remember who I am. I’m sorry – I should be more sensitive to that. Would it help if I showed you some photos of us together?’
It is only now he says it that the fear dares to make itself known to me: Stephen has told me that he’s my husband, the hospital has confirmed it, but a part of me still cannot trust in the fact when I cannot remember for myself.
I nod, and Stephen pulls out his mobile phone, swipes at the screen, flicks for a few seconds, and then turns the phone to face me. ‘This was last year, for our anniversary – we had a weekend away in Bath.’
From Stephen’s phone gleams a selfie of the two of us together, Stephen’s arm around my shoulders. The sun is warm on our faces and behind us the houses of a narrow residential street peter out into the distance.
‘It was just a couple of nights but the weather was great and we had a lovely time visiting the baths and the Abbey.’
I feel his eyes hot on my face, but I cannot tear my gaze away from the photo. It is like looking at a parallel reality, one which I know must be real, but which seems to exist in a different realm of experience, one I cannot grasp hold of.
He takes the phone away, scrolls some more, turns it back towards me. ‘These are just some silly ones from a while back, taken at home.’
It is a portrait of me, pouting like a model in a magazine – clearly tongue-in-cheek – in front of a well-stocked bookcase.
Stephen bends his head towards mine, looks at the photo with me, swipes to the next, and then the next, all variations on the same theme. In the last one, Stephen joins me in the frame, both of us adopting faces of mock surprise, and I cannot decide whether these photos are encouraging or dispiriting – whether they speak of a happier time to which we will soon return, or whether they are a stark reminder of all I have temporarily lost.
‘Are you okay? Is it too much?’
I shake my head, swallow against the tightness in my throat. ‘I’m fine.’ I hear the uncertainty in my voice, look down at my nails, bitten to the quick, wonder what it says about me that I still chew my fingernails.
‘It must be so overwhelming. I thought it might help, showing you things, but perhaps it’s too soon.’ His voice is soft, placatory, the voice one might use to comfort a frightened child separated from their mother in a department store.
‘I’m sorry. I want to remember, I really am trying . . .’ My voice fractures and I do not know if it is from frustration or fear. I feel cut adrift, as though set loose in a dinghy in the middle of the ocean with no means of navigating my way back to land.
I look down at my hands and a thought jars in my head. ‘Why aren’t I wearing a wedding ring?’
Stephen follows my gaze down to my bare fourth finger. ‘That’s odd. You never take it off usually.’ He frowns, thinks for a moment. ‘Perhaps the nursing staff took it when you had your scan. Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ve got it safely stored somewhere. I’ll speak to them for you, get it back.’
I touch the bare skin of my finger, wonder whether, when my ring is returned, it will be like a talisman, restoring the memory of my marriage to me.
I glance across at Stephen, cannot hold back the question any longer. ‘What happened?’ Just two words and yet they feel dangerous in my mouth.
Stephen’s head tips slightly to one side, a pair of vertical ridges sculpting the skin between his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’
A part of me is unsure I want to know. I do not want to cast aspersions, have no interest in apportioning blame. But it feels important to understand the circumstances, to comprehend the events that have brought me here. ‘The accident. What actually happened?’
Stephen’s eyes flit down towards his hands, fingers interweaved as if in prayer. ‘We were driving along the A4 and a lorry careened into our lane. I had to swerve to avoid it, and we mounted the pavement and smashed into a brick wall. It all happened so quickly . . .’
‘Was anyone else hurt?’
Stephen shakes his head. ‘Thankfully not. But it should be me in that bed, not you. I was the one driving.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I hate seeing you like this.’
I return the squeeze, and it feels odd to be comforting a man with whom I must have shared much greater intimacies in the past and yet who is now little more than a stranger. ‘It’s not your fault. It sounds like it could have been a lot worse if we’d collided with the lorry.’
He responds with a grateful smile and we sit in silence as I try to pull some thread of recollection from my memory. But the imagined scene in my head is like a Hollywood movie, all screeching brakes and crunching metal, and I cannot locate any tangible detail.
In the cubicle opposite, a woman wipes the mouth of an elderly man I assume to be her father, and there is such tenderness in the gesture that it jolts something in me: not a memory but a visceral sensation of love and affection. Turning back to Stephen, the words spring from my lips before I know they are coming. ‘What about my parents? My family? Can you tell me about them?’