‘You have the key to the house?’ Claire asked to break the silence.
‘Of course I do. You and I are like sisters. I went to school with Paul. That’s how we met.’
While Claire arranged the flowers in a vase she had found, Gaby walked into the kitchen and poured two glasses of red wine. A sudden thought occurred to Claire. Didn’t a person tell their best friends everything? If that was the case, Gaby would have all the answers she was so desperately searching for.
Gaby handed Claire her wine. Taking a careful sip, Claire put her glass down.
‘You don’t like it?’ asked Gaby. ‘It’s your favourite.’
Claire found it hard to believe. Her taste buds seemed unacquainted with the sharpness of the wine. She was desperate for a sip of water to get rid of the bitter taste but didn’t want Gaby to think less of her. She felt a little intimidated by her old self, who would have enjoyed the wine and known what to say to this beautiful stranger.
In the first week at the hospital, many people dropped in to see her, faces and conversations she could hardly remember now, so confused and drugged up she had been back then. Little by little, however, the stream of visitors dwindled, before finally disappearing altogether. There was only so much one-sided conversation even a good friend could take. Only so much small talk with someone who did nothing but sit in her bed, staring into space, not knowing what to say, not knowing who she was.
What if she couldn’t live up to the person she had once been? And how could she, if she remembered nothing about her? ‘I’m not sure I’m allowed wine. I’m on all sorts of medication.’ She pushed the glass away.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you in hospital. I’ve been away for work. My first time in Japan, what a fascinating place …’ Gaby spoke fast, and her cheeks looked flushed. ‘Yesterday we went to that amazing Thai place you love. What is it called?’ She looked at Claire expectantly. ‘Oh yes. Thai Basil. Tina, Ruth and Betty were there. We were talking about you. Let me tell you, I was absolutely beside myself when I heard. I wanted to cut my trip short, of course, but there was still so much to do. And I thought, you’re already in hospital. Paul and your mum are there. There’s nothing I can do.’
‘My mum wasn’t there.’
Gaby’s eyebrows shot up in surprise but she didn’t comment. Instead, she told Claire all about Nijo Castle (‘I’ve never seen anything like it!) and Mount Fuji (‘We went on the most amazing boat.’ A boat on the mountain? Claire wanted to know. But apparently there was the most amazing lake there, too.). Finally, Gaby lowered her voice and said, ‘I’m sorry about your dad.’
‘My dad’s awake. He’s going to be okay. Paul is taking me to the hospital to see him later.’ Impatiently she looked at the clock. Another two hours to go. ‘Have you met him? What is he like?’
‘Paul?’
‘My dad.’
‘I’ve met him a few times. I thought he was quite the flirt.’
‘He was?’ asked Claire, wondering if Gaby was making things up, embellishing to make her stories more exciting. She seemed just the type to do something like that.
‘All completely innocent, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘He seemed besotted with your mother. I remember wondering if I would ever meet anyone who loved me that much. The guys I meet …’ She shook her head. ‘Never mind. So, are you telling me you don’t remember—’ Gaby leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper ‘—anything? Not even your birthday party last month? Come on, no one could forget that night.’
Dejectedly Claire shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Wow,’ Gaby whispered, staring at Claire like an entomologist studying a particularly rare beetle. ‘What does it feel like?’
‘It just feels …’ Claire thought about it. ‘It feels blank.’
‘Sometimes I wish I could forget my life.’ Gaby seemed lost in thought for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Enough about me. You have to promise you are looking after yourself. It must be so terrible. I can’t even imagine.’
Now it was Claire’s turn to shrug. ‘Tell me something about me. A story to jog my memory.’
‘How about some photographs? Let me have your phone.’ Gaby grabbed Claire’s phone and pressed a few buttons. ‘Here is your Facebook page. You must have thousands of photos up there.’
She scrolled through pictures, telling Claire funny anecdotes about all the people in them. Claire had spent hours in the hospital staring at the photos. But it was one thing looking at faces of strangers and quite another listening to Gaby bringing these strangers to live. ‘This is Tiffany,’ Gaby was saying. ‘You went to ballet school together.’ Tiffany was wearing a tight-fitting business suit, as if she had just stepped out of a job interview, but her posture, her body, the way she carried herself betrayed a dancer.
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘You call her the cow behind her back. And sometimes even to her face.’ Another photo popped up. ‘And this is Kevin. He tried to kiss you at your birthday last year. And when you turned him down, he kissed three other people just to prove it didn’t mean anything.’
‘Three other women?’
‘Not all of them women.’ There must have been shock on her face because Gaby laughed and added, ‘Dancers, what can I say?’ She had a good laugh, loud and infectious. It lit up her face and made her eyes twinkle. Suddenly Claire felt like a ray of light had illuminated her otherwise dark universe. She had a friend. She was no longer alone.
When a photo of a blonde woman in her fifties appeared, Claire exclaimed, ‘That’s Mum!’
‘You remember?’
‘I just knew.’ But she didn’t know how she knew. She pondered it for a moment, wondering if it was a memory or just intuition. Her mother was looking straight at Claire from the screen, her light hair pulled away from her face, her arms around the man Claire had spent hours watching at the hospital.
‘This is her with your dad at a barbecue a few years ago.’
Angela looked tiny next to Tony. She seemed lost in his embrace, and he hovered over her, holding her close as if he wanted the whole world to know she was his.
Claire couldn’t stop looking at her mother. She was so beautiful, her eyes so kind, her features delicate. Suddenly she found herself unable to speak or smile at Gaby or think of anything else. Tears filled her eyes and she didn’t know why. To change the subject, she asked, ‘What about me and Paul? Are we happy?’
Gaby seemed thrown off balance by her question. She emptied half her wine glass before she replied, ‘If you need to ask, the answer is probably no.’
‘We’re not happy?’ As if Paul’s cold smile and distant eyes hadn’t already alerted Claire that something was wrong.
‘Let’s just say, you have some issues.’
‘What kind of issues?’
‘It’s not my place to tell you.’
‘If you won’t tell me, no one else will.’
Gaby stepped from foot to foot, as if she wanted to be anywhere but here, having this conversation with Claire. ‘Maybe that’s for the best. I have to run, anyway. I’m always late, to everything. How do I look?’
Claire assured Gaby she looked fine, better than fine. But what she wanted to do instead was ask her friend not to go because for an hour in her grim morning she had laughter and joy. Gaby almost made her forget that she had forgotten her whole