‘At first, I couldn’t remember anything. I had no idea what had happened to me. They told me amnesia was common among people who’ve suffered a trauma, without telling me what the trauma actually was. I heard the doctors and nurses whispering about me. They told me I needed to rest and get strong before I could leave. So I let them look after me.’
She stared through the window at the London street. A couple walked by, hand-in-hand. A homeless man begged for change across the road. Red buses and black cabs. After sixteen years in Boston it all seemed so strange.
‘It took me a couple of days to remember the fire and Stephen. I think I started screaming when I remembered. All the nurses came running and, well, I guess I was sedated. When I woke up again there was this man who came and sat by my bed and talked to me about how I felt. I assumed he was a therapist. He told me I had missed the funeral. He kept asking me what else I could remember. I told him that I could remember going into the Unit, and then the fire. That was it. You know, thinking about it now, I got the impression he seemed relieved when I told him that.’
Paul was shaking his head. Now he was the one who looked as if he was going to cry.
‘Are you OK?’ Kate asked.
‘Sorry. You just reminded me of the funeral – it was so horrible, knowing that Stephen was in that coffin, so badly burned that my folks couldn’t even identify him. It had to be done by his dental records . . .’
Kate bit her lip. When would she stop feeling so over-emotional?
‘Go on,’ said Paul. ‘I’m fine now.’
They smiled watery smiles at each other.
‘I stayed in the hospital for another three weeks after that. It seems like a dream now. White walls, white sheets, people in white coats like angels coming to see me and talk to me in quiet voices. They brought me books and puzzles to do. No TV or radio. Great food. But I don’t remember what, if anything, was physically wrong with me. I wasn’t in plaster, or in pain. I can’t imagine why I needed to stay there for so long.’
‘So it wasn’t a normal NHS hospital?’
‘No. They said it was a private clinic. Actually, no one told me very much at all. Whenever I asked questions I’d be told that I needn’t worry, that I was in safe hands. And the thing was, I was so tired that I didn’t have the energy to ask too many questions. There were other patients there. I would see them sometimes if I got up to go for a walk around, although I was always escorted and never got the chance to talk to anybody else. I heard a woman crying in the night a few times. Perhaps the other patients heard me crying in the night. Though most of the time I felt alright.’
‘Did they have you on drugs?’
‘I was given a ton of pills every day. I was told they would help me get better quicker, and help my memory come back.’
‘And what about your aunt? Did she visit you?’
‘I asked to see her and they said it was difficult. Apparently, according to them, she’d been to visit me when I was first brought in, which I obviously had no recollection of. Eventually, after I kept asking, they let her visit me. She seemed uneasy. She told me she’d asked for me to be transferred to the local hospital, but that the doctors had told her I was better off here, in the private clinic. Aunt Lil was of the generation that trusted doctors one hundred per cent, so she didn’t argue. And she said that Leonard himself had phoned her and reassured her I was in good hands.’
Another memory came to her. ‘Leonard came to see me towards the end of my stay in the hospital.’
‘What was his surname?’
‘Bainbridge.’
Paul tapped the name into the search engine and found a page about Leonard Bainbridge. ‘An obituary. He died two years ago. Cancer. There’s a paragraph here about the CRU but it’s just the usual brief history stuff. It says he left behind a wife, Jean, but had no children. So what happened when this Bainbridge guy came to see you?’
Kate felt sad for the loss of the avuncular, warm-hearted man she’d only met a handful of times, but who had made a deep impression on her. She stared at the computer screen until the words blurred together, recalling the scene when Leonard had come to visit.
Leonard perched on a hard chair beside her bed, his smile adding warmth to the room. He was a distinguished-looking man in a tweed suit, with sharp blue eyes, a head full of white hair and a neatly trimmed white beard.
Now that he sat here beside her she could remember his visits to her parents when they lived in the big house on the South Downs, before they moved to Africa. Kate had been eight or nine. When Kate’s father heard that Leonard was coming to see them he became quite agitated, nipping into Lewes in the car to buy proper coffee and fresh bread. He sent Kate into the garden to choose flowers. Kate protested – she would rather see flowers in the ground than in a vase – but her father insisted. She doubted if this old bloke, this Leonard, whoever he was, would even notice, so she was surprised when the third thing he commented on, after Kate’s prettiness and the well-being of her parents, was the vase of flowers sitting on the mantel and how beautiful they were.
‘Though I’ve always thought flowers might be happier in the earth. Don’t you agree, Kate?’ he said.
It was as if he’d read her mind, and from that moment she found him fascinating. She was so glad that Miranda had gone to play at a friend’s that day – she could do without any competition from her cute little sister. Leonard and her father went into the garden to talk, and she shadowed them, trying to eavesdrop. When her Dad turned and told her to run along, Leonard beckoned her closer and produced a chocolate bar, a Curly-Wurly, from his jacket pocket. She retreated to the house where she shared it with Charlie, their black labrador.
Lying in her bed in the clinic, she said, ‘You gave me chocolate.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. I think you were trying to get rid of me.’
He laughed and patted her hand where it lay on the edge of the mattress. ‘I expect I was trying to make you like me.’
‘It worked. I always looked forward to your visits after that. Not because of the chocolate,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I was intrigued by you. You seemed like the grandfather I always wanted. Kind, and wise.’
Something about the way he reacted to that made her think she’d said the wrong thing, and she blushed. He appeared troubled, but then the benign smile returned and he reached into his inner pocket and brought out a brown envelope. He handed it to her.
She studied it warily. ‘What is it?’
‘Your exam results.’
‘Oh my God. I totally forgot about this. How could it have just slipped my mind? I feel like I’m losing my mind.’
He patted her hand. ‘Having problems with your memory, are you? Hmm, well, you’ve been through a lot, Kate. I’m not surprised things are . . . hazy.’
Kate ran a finger along the edge of the envelope. ‘I’m frightened.’
‘Don’t be. There’s no need.’
‘I haven’t thought about Oxford or my exams for months, but when you gave me this I suddenly realised something: that I want this degree. I really need it.’
He smiled at her again. ‘Open the envelope, Kate.’
Her hands shook as she slid a fingernail beneath the flap and tore open the envelope. She removed the sheet of paper that she’d imagined herself receiving so many times, back in the past, in her old life. She could hardly bear to look.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you