“So this is a temporary thing?”
The hard frozen don’t know time I’d been living since I opened my eyes on the carpet seemed to split a little. A warm splash of relief hit me under the ribs.
“I believe so,” the doctor smiled a reined-in smile. It reined in my relief too.
“But?”
“But we’re probably looking towards the long term, I’m afraid.”
“How long-term?”
She held up a gentle put on the brakes hand. “I think we might be getting ahead of ourselves. I’ll answer all your questions as honestly as I can, but before we get too deep into this, there’s something very important you need to hear. I think it’s best if you hear it now, at the beginning.”
I didn’t say anything. I just sat squeezing my cold sweaty-wet hands together in my lap, waiting for whatever life I was about to be given.
“There was an accident, Eric. I’m sorry to tell you your partner was killed.”
I just sat, blank.
“It happened in Greece. An accident at sea.”
Blank.
“Does any of this sound familiar?”
Nothing.
“No.”
All of it, everything, it suddenly made me feel very sick. Stupid, inhuman and sick. I rubbed the sides of my nose with my finger and thumb. I looked up. I looked away. The questions were hot and prickly as I asked them, two grabbed stupidly and randomly from thousands. “Who was she? What did she do?”
“Her name was Clio Aames and she was training to be a lawyer.”
“Was it my fault? I mean – was there anything I could have done?”
“No, it was an accident. I doubt there was anything anyone could have done.”
“Are there arrangements? Things I need to be doing now?” I came to these things as I said them. “Family? The funeral? Who’s taking care of that?”
Dr Randle’s heavy eyes pressed down on me from behind her cup. “Clio’s memorial service has already happened. You organised a wake for her yourself.”
I sat very still.
“Why don’t I remember any of this?”
“We’ll get to that.”
“When?”
“Well, would you like to talk about it now?”
“No, I mean when did I organise it?”
“Clio died just over three years ago, Eric.”
All the gathered, clutched-at and recently bolted-together facts of my life snapped, sheared and collapsed under my weight.
“I’ve been waking up without a thing in my head for three years?”
“No, no,” Dr Randle came forward, big blotchy forearms on big tartan knees. “The condition you have, well, I’m afraid it’s quite unusual.”
•
When I left the bedroom I found myself on a small landing. I saw a second door but it was locked so I made my way downstairs.
The threadbare staircase led to a thin hallway with a front door at the far end. Next to the front door was a hallstand table and on the hallstand table was a big blue envelope, propped up and facing the stairs so I couldn’t miss it. On the front of the envelope were big black felt-tip words: THIS IS ADDRESSED TO YOU, and underneath, OPEN NOW.
As I got nearer, I saw the envelope was only the most obvious of a cluster of objects arranged on the table. To the left was a telephone. A Post-it note stuck across the buttons had a biro arrow pointing at the receiver and the words: SPEED DIAL 1 – USE ME. To the right, a set of car keys; to the right of them, a Polaroid of an old yellow Jeep; and to the right of that, another Post-it, this one saying: DRIVE ME. A brown battered leather jacket hung from a hook on the stand.
I opened the envelope and found two sheets of paper – a typed letter and a hand-drawn map. This is what the letter said:
Eric,
First things first, stay calm.
If you are reading this, I’m not around anymore. Take the phone and speed dial 1. Tell the woman who answers that you are Eric Sanderson. The woman is Dr Randle. She’ll understand what has happened and you will be able to see her straight away. Take the car keys and drive the yellow Jeep to Dr Randle’s house. If you haven’t found it yet, there’s a map in the envelope – it isn’t too far and it’s not hard to find.
Dr Randle will be able to answer all your questions. It’s very important that you go straight away. Do not pass go.
Do not explore. Do not collect two hundred pounds.
The house keys are hanging from a nail on the banister at the bottom of the stairs. Don’t forget them.
With regret and also hope,
The First Eric Sanderson
I read through the letter a couple more times. The First Eric Sanderson. What did that make me?
I took the jacket from the stand and picked up the map. The door keys were hanging just where the letter said they’d be. I called the number.
“Randle,” a voice said.
“Dr Randle?” I pushed the car keys into my pocket. “This is Eric Sanderson.”
•
Dr Randle came back into the conservatory with more tea and biscuits and a box of tissues on a tray. The brown dog under the cheese plant lifted its head, sniffed in a sleepy, going-through-the-motions sort of a way, then closed its eyes again.
“Dissociative disorders,” Randle descended slowly into her creaking wicker chair, “are quite uncommon. They sometimes occur in response to severe psychological trauma, blocking out memories which are too painful or difficult for the mind to deal with. A circuit breaker for the brain, you could say.”
“But I don’t feel like I’ve forgotten anything,” I said, fumbling around again inside my head. “It’s just, there’s nothing there. I mean, I don’t think I feel anything about that girl. I don’t even –” I put my palms out in a gesture of emptiness and scale.
The Randle nebula shifted, strobed, stretched and rolled in on itself until a big meaty hand with a tissue in it was patting my knee.
“The first few hours are always difficult for you, Eric.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, as I said, your condition, I don’t like to use the term unique, but it’s quite distinctive in several –”
“How many times have we done this, Doctor?”
She didn’t even stop to think about it.
“This will be your eleventh recurrence,” she said.
•
“In the majority of cases, dissociative amnesias occur and resolve relatively quickly. Generally speaking, it’s the trigger event, the traumatic incident causing the condition, which is forgotten. Sometimes, the memory loss can be –” Dr Randle made a vague circle with her hand “– more general, but not often. A single recurrence of any kind is very, very unusual.”
“And eleven is off the charts.”
“Yes. These things are rarely black and white, Eric, but even so, I have to tell you –” she cast around for the right words, and then gave up.
“I see,” I said, scrunching the tissue.
Randle