Fractured (24 page)

Sarah, to her credit, only looked a little shaky; as though being plucked from the path of invisible non-existent jeopardy was something she regularly contended with.

‘Where did
what
go?’

‘The siren.’ And when she continued to look at me blankly, ‘You
must
have heard it? It was heading right towards us!’ My voice trailed off as it slowly began to penetrate through my panic that the sound of the siren was actually not there any more. A horrible feeling of déjà vu came over me.

‘You didn’t hear it, did you?’

She shook her head.

‘But it was so deafening, as though it was almost on top of us.’

Another slow shake of the head.

I didn’t need her to tell me that no one had heard the sound but me, I could already see it in her eyes.

‘Has this happened before?’ she asked gently.

I thought of the alarm clock that wasn’t there, beeping in the night, and the numerous times my father’s aftershave had surrounded me like a cloud.

‘There’ve been a couple of times,’ I admitted slowly, ‘where I’ve heard things, smelt things even…’ My words died away.

‘You have to tell the doctor about this when you see him this week,’ she urged, and I knew she was right, even though I was loath to add another inexplicable symptom to my ever-increasing accumulation.

‘It might be something that’s really common with amnesia cases,’ she suggested, then seeing my gloomy response she tried a different tack altogether. ‘Or maybe, since you bumped your head, you now have these incredibly acute senses, and can hear and smell things the rest of us can’t.’

‘What, like a dog, you mean?’

She laughed then and gave me a hug. ‘Yeah, but a really pretty pedigree one.’

The doctor’s words stayed with me all the way down the marble flight of steps of the clinic, down the length of the exclusive London road, reserved primarily for offices of the medical profession, and into the busy bustling shopping street, heaving as it was with Christmas shoppers. It had been too much to anticipate a simple solution to my problems from the one consultation. But I had hoped for some answers at the very least; only what I had actually ended up with were a hundred more questions.

Nothing about the session had gone entirely as I had imagined, I mused, as I allowed myself to be carried along on a wave of shoppers and tourists, all busily trying to seize whatever bargains there were to be had in the days before Christmas. The clinic itself had been far more elegant and exclusive than I had expected, while the doctor’s offices had been far less intimidating; no scary leather consultation couch, no men in white jackets waiting in the wings to escort me to some secure facility if my story sounded just too outlandish to allow me to continue to live among ‘normal’ people.

Even the doctor had been unexpected: female, when I had been expecting male, and far more maternal and warm than the Freudian-like physician I’d been anticipating. She had been professional enough to get me to open up completely about my bizarre misconception of the past five years, and kind enough to make me feel that nothing I said was even remotely weird enough for her to press the panic alarm, which must surely be hidden somewhere in her office.

What I hadn’t been expecting was that this would only be the first of many sessions we would have to share in order to piece together my lost past. Medically, I had already undergone all the tests and procedures that were necessary to diagnose any physiological problem, but I was still crushingly disappointed that there would be no quick-fix solution. I suppose I had secretly been harbouring hopes that some form of medication or treatment could be offered to dispel my illusions and make my new reality feel… well, feel real. Dr Andrews had been kind but firm when clearing up that particular delusion.

And when I asked the final question, the one whose response followed me now like a shadow on the busy London pavements, she had at least been honest.

‘Rachel, I cannot tell you when your memory will return. It could be tomorrow, or next week, or indeed it may take a good deal longer. And, although it is rare, I do have to be honest and tell you that in some very exceptional cases, the lost period of time remains just that, for ever lost.’

For ever lost. The words haunted me as I walked, echoing hollowly as my feet trod the glistening thoroughfares of the capital.

Not that the entire consultation session had been all doom and gloom. Dr Andrews had at least made me feel slightly better about the weird imagined sensations that I had been experiencing. Apparently auditory and olfactory hallucinations were by no means uncommon for those who had undergone head trauma, and when I questioned why the things I could smell and hear were so specific, she even had a reasonable theory for that too. The fragrance of my father’s aftershave would have very specific connotations of safety and security for me, and as the sense of smell is particularly evocative in taking us back to somewhere in our past, the doctor guessed that the hallucination probably mirrored feelings of physical safety I had felt as a child, when held by my parent. Her reasoning about the imagined sirens was even more prosaic – for she guessed that when I was taken to hospital after the mugging, I had not been entirely unconscious and the ambulance’s siren had somehow implanted itself into my memory, and was now being arbitrarily replayed as my confused mind struggled for a foothold in reality.

She was a little less sure of why I was also hearing alarms that were not there, but assured me that in time we would uncover all of the mysteries. In time. And there it was in a nutshell. I would have to be patient and let the truth uncover itself one fact at a time, and she assured me that with each emerging element I would then be able to let go of a comparable piece of my imagined history, until at last only the real past would remain.

It sounded like a very slow business to me, and I still couldn’t help but think it would have been so much better if I could have been given some short sharp treatment – however horrible – to make it all happen much more speedily.

The one thing I did like very much about Dr Andrews was the way she hadn’t laughed when I’d answered her question of why
I
thought I had two entirely different past lives. Her reaction was nothing like Jimmy’s had been when I offered up my earlier theory of parallel worlds. At least
she
didn’t laugh out loud and blame it all on my somewhat fantastical literary choices. I hastily slammed the door shut on that line of thought. I had resolutely not allowed myself to think of Jimmy all week, and now, in the offices of a psychiatrist who was skilled at probing out a person’s innermost secrets, was definitely not the time to journey down that path again.

And even though I hadn’t spoken to Jimmy myself, I did know he had been in daily contact with my dad, for I’d overheard several whispered conversations behind doors which hadn’t been as securely closed as my secretive parent thought they’d been. So, despite the fact that he clearly wasn’t anxious to speak to me, Jimmy still wanted to know how I was on a daily basis. And while part of me was pleased to know he cared enough to call, the other part was becoming increasingly angry that it was my father he chose to speak to and not me. It confirmed my worst suspicions: that he was still so uncomfortable with what had happened between us at the hotel that he could neither face nor forgive me. I wondered if he would ever be able to do either again.

Tired of being buffeted by the determined holiday shoppers, I slipped inside a small coffee shop and found an empty table. At the last moment my doctor’s appointment had been rescheduled from late in the afternoon to early morning. I hadn’t minded having to get the early fast train into London, but it did leave me now with many hours to kill before the time I was supposed to meet up with Matt for dinner and a lift back home to Great Bishopsford. It had been too late to reach Matt the previous day to let him know of the change of plans, and while I had thought the extra time in London could be spent Christmas shopping, the doctor’s appointment had taken more out of me mentally than I’d expected, and I’d now lost any appetite for pushing and shoving through hoards of people in the department stores.

I glanced at my watch. It was only late morning but there was a possibility that Matt might be free for an early lunch. It would be good to explain to him some of the things Dr Andrews had said while they were still fresh in my mind. Perhaps it would help him to understand why I was finding it so hard to fall straight back into my role as his fiancée, as I know he had been expecting. Acting on impulse, I pulled out my mobile phone and scrolled down the address book until I reached
Matt Office
.

His secretary answered the call on the second ring, her cool professional tone warming considerably as she recognised my voice. Which was more than I did for hers.

‘Oh, Rachel, I’m sorry, you’ve just missed him. He left about ten minutes ago for his flat, but you’re meeting him there for lunch anyway, aren’t you?’

‘Umm…’ I never knew why I didn’t immediately correct her assumption but some small warning voice told me not to. And I listened to it.

‘He should be back there really soon, traffic permitting. And could you let him know I’ve managed to cancel those meetings he had this afternoon, like he asked?’

‘Oh… good. I’ll tell him.’

‘It was nice speaking to you again. I do hope you enjoy your lunch today. We’re all so glad to hear you’re getting better.’

‘Thank you…’ I struggled for her name, but obviously nothing was forthcoming, so I just repeated again, ‘Thank you.’

I sat looking at my phone for a long time before finally flipping the lid back into position and replacing it in my handbag. I don’t recall finishing my coffee, or paying the bill, but as no one ran after me yelling ‘thief’ as I left the coffee shop, I guessed I must have taken care of it.

There were a hundred different reasons why Matt’s secretary could have misunderstood what he’d told her about his plans. We had, after all, been intending to meet for dinner that night, and when he asked her to cancel his appointments this afternoon, she might have become confused and believed we were meeting instead for lunch. And yet she had sounded so positive he was on his way to meet me at his flat. How could she possibly have misinterpreted that?

But perhaps I was ignoring the even bigger question. What was so pressing that it was enough to make a workaholic like Matt cancel his entire schedule in the middle of the day? Because it certainly wasn’t to have lunch with his fiancée.

It was easy enough to hail a cab, although I did have to consult my address book for the precise location of Matt’s flat. As the taxi crawled through the midday traffic I tried to keep my mind deliberately blank and completely refused to listen to the voice in my head that was screaming out a prediction of the outcome of this surprise visit. I kept reminding myself that I knew so little of Matt’s working practices that disappearing like this in the middle of the day might be perfectly usual behaviour on his part.
Yeah right
, said the voice.

Eventually, the cab pulled up in front of an exclusive-looking apartment block.

‘Here you are, love, Hanbury Mansions.’

I tried a smile that felt a little too stiff to be natural and reached into my wallet to extract a note for the driver. I saw then that my hand had begun to tremble, ever so slightly. This is ridiculous, I chided myself. Why was I getting so worked up about something that no doubt would have the simplest of explanations? I was seeing mysteries where there were none, and surely I had enough real drama going on in my life that I didn’t need to be inventing a whole new episode?

I almost told the cabbie then that I’d changed my mind, but that was before I looked out through the rain-speckled window and saw Matt’s car discreetly parked to one side of the forecourt in a private bay. OK, so he
was
here. That still meant absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, my hand, which had been hesitating over the door latch, pressed down on the lever and I climbed out of the cab.

My resolve wavered slightly as I looked up at the tall, red-brick and glass building. How stupid was I going to look when all this turned out to be nothing more than a wild goose chase? Not to mention paranoid. No doubt this would give me something else to have to work on with Dr Andrews at our next session.

Yet still my feet continued to walk towards the building. Even knowing that Matt could have any one of a hundred valid reasons for going home in the middle of the day, reasons he chose not to share with his secretary, I still couldn’t ignore the impulse that had set me off on this journey after that phone call to his office.

But for the first time it occurred to me to question if I really wanted to go through with this. Even though I had tried not to listen to the warning voice in my head, I wasn’t completely stupid. I knew that whatever was about to follow from this point on could very well end badly. But the secretary’s words had planted a question in my mind, which screamed out now for an answer. The taxi gunned into life behind me and sped quickly away from the forecourt, eliminating my last chance of escape. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and walked up to the building.

The large glass-fronted entrance was manned by a uniformed doorman, who politely held open the plate-glass doors to allow me to enter the building. It wasn’t until I was inside that it occurred to me that I didn’t have the slightest idea which flat was Matt’s. The only details I had were the address of the building. The bank of locked mailboxes to the left of the foyer showed that there were twenty or so flats in this block: Matt could live in any one of them. The obvious solution would be to ask the uniformed concierge at the reception desk which apartment was Mr Matt Randall’s. But if I did that, the protocol would probably be to call up to the apartment and let the owner know they had a visitor; it stands to reason that you don’t have this kind of security on the ground and let any old person simply walk in off the street. Clearly, if I went via the doorman I would lose the element of surprise, so the only solution was to somehow get past him and then try to locate which flat was Matt’s.