Then and Always

by Dani Atkins

  Multiple Personality Disorder: Medical Fact or Fiction?

  And there in smaller italicized writing was the byline:

  By Rachel Wiltshire.

  8

  I don’t remember leaving the building. Jimmy took charge, returning the magazines to Dee and then steering me smoothly toward the bank of lifts. Once we were inside the carriage and heading back to the ground floor, the other occupants gave us a wide berth when they saw my deathly white complexion and Jimmy’s supporting arm hooked around my waist. I guess I did look sick, but not in the way that they imagined.

  The cold wind outside took my breath away and I gave a huge gasp as I inhaled it, like a drowning person coming up for air.

  “Just breathe slowly,” Jimmy said. “There’s no rush, just take it easy.” He had switched automatically into his professional role; he was trained to deal with someone in shock. And I guess that shock was a pretty accurate description of what I was feeling.

  The jigsaw pieces were suddenly all fitting together, but instead of the clarification and explanation I had sought, the puzzle was coming together all wrong and the picture it was revealing filled me with terror.

  “It’s all true. It’s all true. How can it all be true?” I hadn’t realized I was speaking so loudly until I saw the wary stares being cast my way from passersby. I must have looked a little unhinged.

  “Come on, hon, let’s get out of here,” Jimmy recommended, and I numbly allowed him to lead me to the underground car park where we had left the car.

  He settled me in the seat as though I were a child, before shutting the passenger door and walking around to the driver’s side. I watched him through the windscreen, wondering how he could appear so calm. Shouldn’t he be on the phone to the nearest hospital to have me committed? But he didn’t look worried. Perhaps he was as insane as I was. He started the car and we slid out into the busy London streets before either of us spoke.

  “Well,” he finally broke the ice with, “that was a bit of a surprise.”

  “That’s the understatement of the century.”

  We drove on for a further ten minutes before he spoke again. “I’m going round in circles here.”

  “Welcome to my world,” I replied darkly.

  “No, Rach, literally. I’m going round in circles; we’ve driven round this block half a dozen times. Where do you want to go now? Do you still want to find the other flat and the engineering company?”

  I turned to look out the window, hoping to hide the despondency in my eyes.

  “What’s the point? We both know what we’ll find when we get there. I can’t be living in two places at once, holding down two jobs simultaneously. I guess it’s time I stopped being so pigheaded and started listening to what everyone has been telling me all along.”

  He took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at his watch.

  “It not all that late yet. Would you like to head back to Great Bishopsford tonight?”

  I sighed unhappily and considered the options for a moment. Our original plan had been to spend the night in London, believing that we would need that time to explore the two locations in the city where I appeared to reside and the two separate places where I was believed to be employed. In my stupid optimism I had envisioned our quest ending with us spending the evening in my small flat, perhaps sharing a bottle of wine and a take-away, piecing together at last the final mystery of my broken memories. Now there would be no such ending to the day, but the thought of going back and facing my father with this new revelation seemed too hard to bear.

  “I don’t want to go back tonight.” I spoke in a quiet determined voice. “I need time to think this all through properly: time to get it all straight in my head, before I’m ready to deal with what will happen next.”

  Jimmy gave an understanding nod of his head, and I was pleased he wasn’t about to insist on driving me straight back to my father’s.

  “I think I’d be better off alone tonight,” I ventured.

  He kept his attention on the road as he negotiated our passage through a narrow gap, before he turned to me with a smile.

  “Absolutely. Of course. Couldn’t agree more. As long as you realize that my definition of ‘alone’ incorporates me staying right by your side. I have absolutely no intention of leaving you by yourself tonight, Rachel.”

  We compromised in the end.

  Yes, we would stay in London and not attempt the journey back while there was still so much to think through.

  And no, we wouldn’t be spending the night in the only accommodation in London that seemed to belong to me. I didn’t feel anywhere near ready to accept the Victorian apartment as my home yet, and I think the association the place held with Matt easily decided Jimmy against opting for that location. That really only left us with one option: to find a hotel.

  It was already after six o’clock on a busy Friday night in central London, so we were lucky to secure accommodation in the first place we tried. We left the car in the hotel’s car park, and Jimmy carried both our bags into the reception area. I hung back while he went to inquire about availability, staring unseeingly into the hotel gift shop’s window.

  It was only when he returned to my side several minutes later that I saw he had been successful in booking us in for the night. For the first time a rather obvious question that I had completely ignored up until then occurred to me: had he booked us into one room or two? The query was answered before I could give it voice, when he pressed one plastic entry card into my palm, retaining a second in his own.

  “Adjacent rooms,” he explained as I turned the plastic card over in my hand.

  I smiled back at him but couldn’t decide if I felt relief or disappointment.

  At Jimmy’s suggestion, we agreed that we would find somewhere to eat, somewhere quiet where we could talk without interruption. He said he’d seen a small Italian restaurant just around the corner when we approached the hotel, so we settled on that and he gave me fifteen minutes to freshen up before meeting him back out in the corridor.

  I used my time alone to splash reviving cold water on my face and attempted to drag a comb through my wind-tangled hair. I hadn’t brought much makeup with me, so I just did what little repairs I could and then sat on the bed until the remainder of the fifteen minutes ticked away. The room, although pleasant enough, was hotel-bland, and there was precious little in it to distract my incoherent thoughts from running wildly away from me.

  The restaurant was within easy walking distance, situated down a side road only a few minutes away from the hotel. As we walked past the large glass frontage to the front entrance, I peered inside and couldn’t escape the feeling that the place looked strangely familiar. It really felt like I’d seen it somewhere before. The answer came to me as we waited for the waiter to confirm whether or not they could accommodate us.

  “Lady and the Tramp!”

  Jimmy looked down at the fresh pair of jeans he had changed into and his crisp white shirt.

  “Tramp? That’s charming, I must say. I didn’t think I looked that bad!”

  “Not you, you idiot. This place.” I nodded to indicate the room around us, and it was true, the cartoonist could have used the restaurant as the inspirational blueprint for his design. Here were the checkered cloths on the intimate tables for two, each one of which held a flickering red candle trickling its wax down onto an empty Chianti bottle. Lilting violin music, played discreetly through concealed speakers, completed the picture.

  Jimmy saw what I meant and grinned back, just as the waiter offered to take us to our table.

  “If you think I’m sharing my spaghetti strand with you—forget it. And as for the last meatball … that’s definitely mine. I don’t love you that much!”

  “Just as long as you don’t start singing ‘Bella Notte,’ we’ll be fine,” I retorted, remembering his inability to hold a note.

  And even though we were both still smiling at the banter as we walked to our table, I couldn’t help b
ut replay his last casual comment in my mind.

  But the frivolity between us was only a mask we had taken up to disguise the real purpose of the evening, and once our order was placed, the reality of what we needed to discuss could be ignored no longer.

  “Are things any clearer in your mind now? Now that you’ve had some time to think about them?”

  I took a long sip of my wine before answering as honestly as I could. “ ‘Clear’ might not be the right word exactly. If you’re asking if I suddenly remember the last five years the way you all say that they happened, then no, I don’t. For me, the only reality is still the one I explained to you the other day. The only difference between then and now is that now I know that none of it could actually have happened the way I thought it did.”

  He reached across the table and took both of my hands in his own.

  “That in itself is a huge step forward,” he said. “At least when you meet with the amnesia specialist, you’ll be more receptive to hearing how you can get back your true memories.”

  “I suppose so.” My voice still sounded heavy with a skepticism I couldn’t disguise.

  “When is your appointment, anyway?”

  “The end of next week.” I wondered if he was going to volunteer to accompany me, then realized that Matt would be back in the country by then, and as my fiancé it would be his place to go with me, rather than Jimmy’s. It surprised me that I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted it to be Matt. If the choice was entirely mine, which man would I rather have at my side?

  Jimmy released my hands as the waiter arrived with our plates, and I felt strangely bereft at the loss of his grasp. “You know, many of the things you thought had happened to you are really beginning to make sense now, when you think it all through.”

  “They are?”

  “Absolutely.” Clearly he had been giving the matter some serious thought. Or perhaps his policeman’s mind had been unable to stop itself from seeking out the rational and logical in a situation that seemed to defy both.

  As we devoured the deliciously steaming pasta and crisp green salad, and the bottle of surprisingly good house wine, Jimmy, time and time again, found evidence to rationalize and clarify the minutiae of my imagined reality.

  “But what about the explicit details that I knew? For instance, how did I know the name and number of that woman in Human Resources at Anderson’s Engineering?”

  “That’s simple. You could have applied for a job there at some time in the past. Those details could all have been lodged somewhere in your head. I’m sure I remember hearing once that anything you know is never entirely forgotten.”

  I supposed it was feasible, although it seemed highly unlikely. I tried a different tack.

  “Okay then, why would I have conjured up such an awful idea as my father dying of cancer?”

  He paused to consider for a moment before a solution presented itself to him.

  “Well, you did make him stop smoking many, many years ago when we were kids. You were terrified of him dying after seeing some TV ad campaign or something. So perhaps that fear had never really gone away, it was only buried somewhere in your mind.”

  He had a point. I had always had an irrational hatred of people smoking.

  “And,” Jimmy continued, clearly on a roll now with his theory, “the idea of people having a second, completely fictitious identity would already have been planted in your head after interviewing Dr. Whittaker for your article.”

  I gave a humorless laugh. “It does explain why his number was on my mobile.” It also explained why I thought I’d seen an article on that subject. It should have been familiar—after all, I’d written it.

  “You see?” Jimmy said. “Once you start to break it down, detail by detail, almost everything there can be explained.”

  I took a moment to absorb his words, and could so far find no hole in his theory. But one question still remained.

  “But why was everything I created so terrible? So bleak and tragic? Why did my mind conjure up my father’s illness—my own too, for that matter? Why was I alone and lonely? Why hadn’t I imagined a perfectly happy second life for myself?”

  I stopped, knowing I had forgotten to include the largest of all the tragedies I had created in my imagined nightmare world.

  “Why did I think that you had been killed?”

  He was quiet for a very long time. So long, in fact, that I thought he wasn’t going to reply at all.

  “Perhaps your real life was, or rather is, your perfect reality. You were already living it. So you manufactured something that was the exact opposite. And as for me being”—he hesitated before saying the word—“dead … maybe that’s because I haven’t been a part of your life for quite some time.” His voice was full of sadness. “We grew apart; we hadn’t seen each other for a very long time. Perhaps it was more symbolic of the death of our friendship?”

  Or perhaps it was more than that, I thought. Perhaps my subconscious mind had realized something that the rest of me had refused to acknowledge. That a life without Jimmy was like a living death and suffering through it was the worst sort of hell I could ever imagine.

  THE PLATES HAD been cleared, and the wine we had drunk had taken the edge off the anxiety that had threatened to overwhelm me when we’d left the magazine offices. Jimmy too had relaxed his guard. I didn’t know if he was aware of his hand absently playing with mine as we spoke. But the electric charge I felt as his fingers entwined and circled about my own was a real and physical thing. His hand and mine must have been linked together a thousand times before. Why did his touch inflame me now? Why was I suddenly overcome by these feelings; why now, when I belonged to another man?

  “So tell me, Rachel. Now that we think we have sorted out the mystery, what explanation had you come up with to explain away your dual past?”

  I plucked a breadstick from the basket on the table and began to twist it, baton-style, between my fingers.

  “Nothing really. Nothing that made much sense.”

  The stick rolled and twirled; I kept my eyes upon it, knowing he would probe further.

  “Come on then, tell me what you had figured out.”

  I rolled the stick back and forth between my thumb and forefinger, so fast I could feel the generated heat.

  “It’s all a little silly, really.”

  “I promise I won’t laugh.”

  The breadstick rolled faster.

  “I thought that something had happened on the night of the accident. Something to do with time. I thought that reality had …” I hesitated; this was sounding really stupid now that I was saying it out loud. “That reality had somehow split in two.”

  There was a snap as the fragile breadstick broke into two pieces. I didn’t dare look at Jimmy to see his reaction. He’d spent the whole of the evening patiently pointing out that I was not, in fact, insane, and I had a feeling that my own theory of what had occurred was going to get him doubting me all over again.

  “Split in two?”

  I couldn’t tell from his tone if he was incredulous or horrified at the idea.

  “Yes, you know, as though my life, all our lives, had somehow … fractured … at the moment of the accident.”

  “Fractured?”

  “Uh-huh. And in one life we were all okay, and everything continued as it should have. But in the other … it was the exact opposite. I was maimed, and everything was ruined from that moment on. And you, well, you …”

  “Died.”

  That one word gave it away. I looked up and saw the agony he had been in to suppress his mirth at my theory. I threw the breadstick pieces at him as he burst out in laughter so hearty that half the other diners turned to look at us in amazement.

  “Shut up,” I hissed, acutely embarrassed at the attention he was drawing upon us. “It was only a theory.”

  Eventually, when the tears had stopped rolling down his cheeks, he managed to control himself long enough to say, as though in dire warning, “And that’s
what happens when you spend your entire youth reading nothing but Stephen King novels!”

  WE LEFT THE restaurant in good spirits, surprisingly so, considering the emotional trauma of the day. It had just started to snow as we began the short walk back to the hotel, and the soft white flakes falling around us, combined with the twinkling Christmas lights laced in the avenue of trees, made everything look magical.

  The pavements were already becoming icy and Jimmy took my arm without comment after I slipped a second time.

  “It’s these shoes,” I protested as his arm reached out with lightning speed, catching and steadying me before I managed to totally embarrass myself. “My other wardrobe was much more sensible.”

  Jimmy chose not to remind me that my “other wardrobe” was, in fact, imaginary, but commented instead, “It’s not the shoes. It’s you. You’re a liability—you need constant looking after.”

  “Well, isn’t that what policemen are supposed to do? Isn’t that your motto: ‘Protect and serve’?”

  Jimmy laughed. “I think you’ll find that’s just the American police.”

  “I stand corrected,” I murmured at the precise moment that I once again lost my footing and almost fell.

  “Really? From what I can see, it looks like you can hardly stand at all!”

  We were both still laughing when we entered the warm and brightly lit hotel foyer.

  We parted company in the hallway outside our adjacent rooms, but before saying good night, I reached up to hug him tightly.

  “Thank you for being with me today,” I whispered in his ear. “I was wrong, I couldn’t have done this by myself. I’m so glad you came with me.”

  His response was the gentlest of smiles, then he bent down and kissed me softly upon the lips. I drew back slightly, a little surprised, but while there was immeasurable warmth in his eyes, there was no fire. It was a kiss that said, You’re welcome; don’t mention it; anytime. It was wholly appropriate and completely innocent. So why was it that, when we slid our respective pass cards into the locks and entered our rooms, I was left feeling as though I had wanted that kiss to say something else entirely?