Splintered Memory (19 page)

“
Hi,” she said feeling somewhat awkward.

Charlie looked at her
as though trying to read her expression, and after what seemed like an age to Claire she finally said; “do you think I’m going to yell at you or something for not having visited me?”

“
No,” Claire answered defensively. “It’s just, just,” but as she desperately tried to search for an answer as to what it could
just
be Charlie hugged her tightly and whispered; “you’re a truly shit best friend to have in times of crisis, but I’ve really missed you none the less.”

Claire
pulled back from the hug unsurely, and it was her turn to try and size Charlie up. She scrutinised her face, but as she did Charlie held up her left hand showing Claire her palm.

“You’ve got your memory back
?” Claire asked excitedly, her whole face lighting up, but it was less of a question and more a statement of fact.

Charlie looked at her
for a second and then flicked her eyebrows up and smiled cheekily at the same time. Claire screamed and jumped up and down, before pulling Charlie into a massive hug and making her hop up and down with excitement too.

The p
eople walking past stared at them irritably, whilst other people heading for the station tutted at the fact that they were taking up too much room on the busy pavement in front of it.

“When
, how? I need to know everything,” Claire said.

“
Okay, but is there somewhere we can go and talk? Maybe even get some food and a glass of wine?” Charlie asked.

Claire nodded and said
; “yeah there’s loads of places around here. Let’s head up the Northcote road.” She indicated the direction with her hand, and as they started walking together she kept looking at Charlie and grinning.

“I’m going to tell you everything
, but can you please stop grinning at me like that. People are going to think we’re a couple or something,” Charlie said laughing lightly.

“Alright darlin’
, it’s London. They don’t mind a bit of okey pokey down ’ere,” Claire said in a terrible mock cockney accent which made them both laugh.

***

The orders were in and the wine had been poured, and Claire was now eager for answers.

“Come on Charlie
. You said somewhere to sit and talk, a bit of food and maybe some wine. I’ve done my bit,” she said; “so now
you
owe me an explanation.”

Charlie smiled
, and the first thing she said was; “I’ve missed you. It feels like a lifetime ago since we were last sat chatting together.”

Claire nodded solemnly
, and then she reached out for Charlie’s hand which was on the table and said; “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you.”

Charlie squeezed Claire’s hand and then let go
of it. “I honestly don’t think it would’ve made the slightest bit of difference. If you had been around,” she said with a sad smile; “I might’ve just ended up losing my best friend as well as my husband.”

There was a
moment’s silence, and Claire watched Charlie take a rather large sip of wine.

“So I take it that you already know that I left Matt and Birmingham about seven months ago
?” Charlie asked Claire; “And that I went back to Cheddar to live with my parents?”

C
laire nodded and so Charlie continued; “okay. Well, when I got back to Cheddar it was rubbish. Everyone was tip toeing around me, the same way that Matt and Rich and all the others had in Birmingham, and they were being annoyingly positive and optimistic about my inevitable recovery.”

“I was miserable, and none of the diatribe that all of our parent’s were spewing in my direction was helping. Also, by the end of my first week in Cheddar I think that everyone that I’d ever come into contact with had visited me. Each giving me their version of a full re-cap of everything tha
t had happened in my life,” she said rolling her eyes. “Well, everything that they thought I’d benefit from knowing.”

Claire smiled.

“But none of it meant anything to me. It just felt like a story about this perfect girl, who’d fallen in love with this perfect boy that she’d known her entire life. It was all so romanticised that I couldn’t connect with it. I didn’t know if I’d really been popular, or if I’d really been the girl that all the boys had been after until this one special guy had swept me off my feet. What was more frustrating was that none of what I was hearing was triggering anything in my memory. They could’ve been reading me an autobiography of someone else’s life for all the difference it was making to me,” Charlie said.

Claire
looked slightly confused, and she didn’t understand the reference that Charlie had made to her memory needing to be triggered. She saw Charlie recognise the confusion in her face and smile.

“The doctor’s
that I saw after my accident all told me that if I was to regain my memory, something would have to trigger it. They thought that it was likely that the trauma of my accident, and the memory of being trapped inside the car, had caused my memory to seal itself to protect me from having to re-live it,” Charlie said before she took another sip of her wine.

“
They explained that they believed that I had retrograde amnesia, which is basically where you have the ability to retain new memories but you can’t remember your old ones. The trigger that they spoke about could be anything. It could be a person, a thing, a reaction to something or someone. It could even be a certain word. The most frustrating thing about it is that until the memory is triggered,” Charlie said; “you won’t actually know what the trigger is.”

Claire smiled at the way in which Charlie kept
making quotation mark signs with her fingers each time she referred to the word trigger.

“Is it wrong if I say that it’s kind of interesting though? You know, how your brain can remember new stuff but not any
of the old stuff?” Claire asked before smiling awkwardly at Charlie, who she could see didn’t look like she agreed with her that it was interesting.

“
So,” Charlie continued smiling at Claire as she did. “At the end of that first week, I was miserable and disheartened. The search for the needle in a haystack continued, and I had no idea what I was looking for to trigger my memory. Plus everyone was already getting on my nerves, and I really felt like I just needed some time on my own. I wanted to just be able to wonder around, get on with things, and not have to sit in my parent’s house hour after hour listening to people talk at me. But it was difficult you know. I didn’t want to be rude to anyone, and I also didn’t have anything to do.”

Claire looked at her confusedly
, and Charlie smiled again and said; “I haven’t been able to work, because I haven’t been able to remember what it was that I did for a living. Or even what being a solicitor entailed. So as you can imagine, I was getting pretty down beat. But luckily my dad could see it, and he asked me if I wanted to go to school with him. He said that I could spend some time in the library, or even just sit in his office reading. He said that if I liked it and enjoyed being in the school, and I carried on with my plan of going back to school to re-take some exams, then maybe I might want to consider teaching as a new profession.”

“At Kings of Wessex
,” Claire said sounding surprised.

“Weird isn’t it
,” Charlie said still smiling. “I never thought that I’d go back to our old senior school, but it gave me the chance to get out of the house. It was a way to get away from my mum, your mum, Matt’s mum, and everyone else’s mum and dad for that matter,” she added shaking her head. “I’d forgotten how claustrophobic our parents make life in Cheddar.”

“That’s why we all packed up and shipped out
,” Claire said smiling.

“Yeah I know
,” Charlie said returning Claire’s smile.

“Anyway, I think that my dad was keen for me to go to school with him. I got the sense that he wanted to impress me. You know
make me proud of him and his school,” Charlie said smiling yet again.

Claire smiled again too. She knew that Charlie was proud of her father having become the headmaster of their old school, and she knew that Charlie and her dad had always been close.

“So I went into school with him, and it was really nice. The kids didn’t care who I was, or that I’d lost my memory. They were just loud and energetic and full of their own traumas and end of the world situations. The teachers were all stressed, and so they were also completely uninterested in my woes. Most of them were new as well, and there was no one from our days still there that I had to worry about not recognising.”

Charlie took another sip of wine before continuing
. “After the first day out of the house and in school, I came back home feeling really good. My spirits were lifted and for the first time in a very long time, I hadn’t spent the whole day trying to be someone that I couldn’t remember ever being. I had spent the day just being me, and that felt really good. Actually it felt great.”

Claire nodded
, but she also smiled sympathetically at Charlie. She’d had no idea what her best friend had been through before now, and she couldn’t imagine how awful it must’ve been for her.

“I started to go to school two or three times a week. I’d sit and talk with my dad when he wasn’t in meetings, and he’d make sure that he kept the conversation based around his pupils and teachers. He would ask my advice about things, and we
’d discuss all of his options. It was nice to be able to think about other things, and it kept me totally distracted from my own worries.”

Claire nodded again.

“When I wasn’t in my dad’s office, I’d either be in the library or the teacher’s lounge. I’d read, or try to see if I could remember any of the stuff from the books that were left lying around. All the teachers were really nice, and some of them even offered to help me with any studies I might want to do. It was pretty obvious that whilst they didn’t necessarily care about my memory, they’d all been fully briefed on my predicament. Although in fairness I don’t think my dad had told them. It was probably more likely to have been Matt’s mum or Rich’s mum, who are both still on the PTA!”

“Who ordered the salmon
?” The waiter asked appearing behind Claire and carrying two plates.

“Me
,” Claire said.

“So the chicken Caesar salad is for you
?” He asked Charlie, and she nodded.

“Ca
n I get you ladies anymore wine?” He asked them.

“No thanks
we’re fine for now,” Claire said eager for him to leave so that Charlie could continue.

Charlie put an overly large
sized forkful of chicken and salad into her mouth, and Claire rolled her eyes and said; “still a lady then I see?”

Charlie nodded smiling
, and then swallowed her food swilling it down afterwards with a sip of wine.

“Okay
,” she said seeing Claire’s eagerness for her to continue. “Well, that’s how I spent my time over the next few months. I wasn’t remembering anything, but I was excited at the prospect of going back to school for myself. I also thought that I might even like to train as a teacher, assuming that I could get all the relevant qualifications of course.”

Claire gave her a look that made Charlie smile
, and she knew that Charlie had understood without words that she wanted her to get to the more interesting parts of the story. She wanted to know how her memory had come back, and what had caused it.

“When the school shut for the holidays my dad still had to go in to oversee some maintenance work that was needed, but he said that I could go with him. He warned me that it would be dull, but I was keen to help. To be honest I was keen to do anything to get me out the house and away from my mum, who I knew would start harking on again about the days when I was
happily married,
” Charlie said raising her eyebrows slightly before eating some more of her salad.

“You found something at the school didn’t you?” Claire asked
eagerly.

Charlie nodded
and said; “I was in one of the classrooms with a bunch of desks that the teachers had identified as needing to be discarded. My job was to have a look at them and make sure that they really were at the end of their life. If they still had a couple more terms in them, I was under strict orders from my dad to put a sticker on them for them to be returned. It was pretty dull work, although it was quite amusing to read some of the graffiti on the desks. Messages either pencilled or penned onto the desk, or engraved into the wood with either a sharp pen or…”

“A
compass,” Claire said interrupting Charlie and smiling reminiscently.

“Some
of the messages seemed to act as a kind of timeline for certain pupils,” Charlie said; “and they detailed their relationships and melodramas.”

“What s
o there weren’t any I was ’ere messages, or I heart so and so?” Claire asked smiling.

“Well yeah
, obviously, there were loads of those. Let’s face it kids from any generation aren’t very original, but I didn’t bother with those. My eyes fell on the more heartfelt messages, or the poems or quips that had been jotted down by previous pupils,” Charlie said.