“A memory box helps when you’ve lost someone,” he says. “Select a few items which remind you of Hanna, a photograph or two, and place them in here. Maybe write her a letter saying how you feel.”
He has no idea. My whole head is a memory box.
“It helps to crystallize how you felt about the deceased, what they meant to you.” He positions the box of tissues nearer to me, as though he’s expecting an outpouring of tears over his cardboard box. “And as we move forward, you can compartmentalize your grief, looking in the box at certain times, say, birthdays or anniversaries,” he carries on. “It’s OK not to remember all the time. Grief doesn’t have to overwhelm you.” His usual non-stop stream of platitudes.
I never let grief overwhelm me. Not again. Not now. And certainly not over Hanna.
He sips at his tea then smiles at me smugly like he’s come up with something amazing such as a cure for cancer or the answer to all my problems, not handed me an ugly box. “So let’s talk through possible items to include, objects which sum up your friend?”
How do you sum someone up and cram them in a shoebox? I don’t want to play this game with him, but he started it. I take the only chocolate biscuit on the plate and nibble it slowly to stretch out the time and look like I’m thinking really hard about what could go in there. The clock hands tick round. I like to build the suspense. “I have something in mind, though it’s not what you’d call a sentimental item.”
“If it has meaning or resonance for you, then of course it counts as a sentimental item.” He smiles benignly.
“I’ve got some of her pills – like her contraceptive pills,” I say. “I suppose that sums up a certain aspect of her character.”
Dr Harrison splutters on his herbal tea. He’s staring at me like I’m a terrible human being, which I am.
“I’m not going to take any of them,” I say. I don’t want him to think I’m going to overdose on all her different medications. “I also have a pen pot,” I say, backtracking. “But I use it. It’s on my desk, not shut away in a box.” OK, so she didn’t actually give it to me. Her dad said I could choose one thing from the box of sorry bits and pieces we gathered together when we cleared out the room. I thought he was going to cry, right there, so I did what was expected and picked the pen pot, which I now have to keep on my desk forever.
The memory box sits accusingly still, waiting for a normal item. I wish I could shove Hanna into a tacky box decorated with roses and butterflies and shut the lid on her. I wish I could only remember her when I choose to peek inside, rather than these constant intrusions into my head.
“Do you want me to put the pen pot in there, then?” I ask him, thinking this might be a good solution all round as I wouldn’t have to look at it again.
“Session over for today,” says Dr Harrison. He stands and clears the cups. They clatter together as he carries the tray to the sink. He keeps his back turned, washing up, as I gather my stuff and go.
I’m relieved, even though I sense he’s disappointed with the reaction to his rubbish gift. I thought I had twenty minutes left of this claptrap. Another visit over but as usual I don’t feel any better.
18
Play the game: Jess packed a one-eyed teddy, a pendant, a wooden box, an envelope of old photos…
Work Your Memory
Dan and I are hanging out in my room for the evening, pretending to do homework. I need to chill after my session with Harrison. But Dan has no attention span tonight. He keeps walking around and picking things up and putting them down, slightly out of place.
“I’ve finally worked out what’s strange about your room,” he says. “You haven’t got any photos up. Not one.”
I look at the bare walls and clear surfaces. A timetable and homework schedule are pinned neatly to the noticeboard, next to the Hanna’s Hike poster. “I moved rooms, so…”
“You must have some photos on your phone of friends and family.” He goes to pick it up but I reach it first myself and put it in my pocket.
“No, not really. I don’t need to look at a photo to think about someone.”
“Most girls have knick-knacks, teddies, bracelets and earrings, a whole board of selfies with their friends…”
It sounds as though he’s been in a lot of girls’ bedrooms. Probably more than I’ve been in. I have a pang of jealousy.
“So where are you hiding your Hello Kitty pyjama case and your Sylvanian Families collection?” he asks.
“Seriously? Do I look as if I ever played with a Sylvanian Families treehouse?”
He opens the wardrobe doors and looks on the shelves.
I don’t want anyone going through my stuff. I need to stop this. I take a breath and say more quietly, “When you’ve never met your dad, and your mum dies, you don’t have a massive family portrait to put above the fireplace. We don’t all live in your perfect world at the vicarage.”
Dan looks horrified. “I didn’t mean… Your mum? I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” His cheeks are glowing red.
“I don’t tell everyone. I don’t want people feeling sorry for me. It’s nobody’s business.”
“No, of course. However you want to play it.” He sits on the floor next to me and puts his arm round my shoulders and kisses my cheek. “Your room’s great as it is,” he says. “Honest.”
“It’s barer now. Hanna was the one big on clutter. That pen pot was hers,” I say, pointing at the desk.
“And this.” Dan pulls at the chunky jumper I’m wearing.
“Yes, and her make-up bag that she was always precious about. It’s under the bed, not on display or anything. That would be weird. Satisfied?”
“I’m an idiot,” he says, gently kissing my forehead. I can feel my annoyance with him melting away. I want to trust him, I do.
“I do have a few photos of Mum, if you ask nicely,” I say.
“I’d love to see them. Please.” He kisses me again.
I hesitate for a moment when I go to get the key from the box of tampons in the bathroom. Part of me wants to share at least something of my real self, and part of me’s holding back, being paranoid and stupid. I look at myself in the mirror, hoping for an answer.
“Jess?” He’s knocking gently on the bathroom door. I can hear the concern in his voice. I need to trust my instincts more. Dan’s one of the good guys. Isn’t he?
“Jess, are you OK?”
“Yep, fine,” I call, flushing the loo and washing my hands.
He helps pull the trunk out from under the bed. I unlock it and push up the heavy lid. My old life’s in here. Mine and Mum’s life and now some of Hanna’s too. Mementos. I suppose it’s what Dr Harrison would call a giant memory box.
I move aside my summer clothes and Hanna’s makeup bag and pick up the inlaid wooden box of Mum’s ashes. “Dan, meet Mum. Mum, meet Dan.”
“Er, hi,” says Dan, awkwardly, reaching out to touch the box.
I place it safely back in the trunk and lift out a threadbare, one-eyed teddy with a ripped ear. He smells musty. Even I don’t really want to handle him. “And I do have a cuddly toy. See: Mr T.”
“AKA Spooky Bear,” says Dan. “He looks like he should be in a horror film, sitting in the deserted attic in a slowly rocking chair. What did you do to him?”
“A minor washing-machine injury, nothing sinister. Though I could never really look him in the face after that.”
“After you’d disfigured him permanently.”
“I did warn you I’m not a Hello Kitty type of person. Here’s the rest of my childhood.” I pass him an envelope secured with an elastic band. “There’s not much. Mum took a picture of me on my birthday every year and put it in a frame. Until I became a teenager and objected. And she was running out of space. By then I didn’t need any photos because of my memory – but she liked to have them. She always made a fuss on my birthday.”
He takes out the photos and inspects each one carefully. “You were sweet,” he says. “A strange choice of hairstyle every n
ow and then. But look how cute you were.”
The words ‘What the heck happened to you?’ hang in the air, waiting for one of us to say them.
“This must be your mum. You look like her.”
He shows me a shot of my sixth birthday. Me and Mum smiling into the lens, with her reaching forwards slightly as she wondered if she’d set the self-timer on the camera properly. Mum had made me a Wild West fort cake. Baking wasn’t her thing and she’d sworn her way through plastering the kitchen with butter icing and flour. I thought it was amazing at the time and wanted to play with it more than eat it. I can see now it was simply a square cake covered with upright chocolate fingers, a couple of plastic cowboys and six blue candles.
Then the memories come of later birthdays; live-action memories of Mum swooping out of their containment and into my head. I can smell her perfume, remember the sensation of her hand in mine, the swing of her pearl pendant, feel her brushing my hair stroke after stroke as she tried to tame it, hear her laughter as she failed. She’s singing ‘Happy Birthday’, every year, all of those teenage birthdays together in a colossal choir of Mums. It’s overwhelming. I sink back and lean against the bed, closing my eyes.
This is why I don’t open the trunk. It triggers too much.
Dan sits beside me, our shoulders and hips touching. “I can’t imagine losing your mum. I’ve lost people too. But a parent… What happened?”
“She was hit by a car.”
“Jesus, that’s terrible.” He puts his arm round me. I can feel the weight of his arm on my shoulders and lean into him.
“I see it in my head every day.”
“I bet.”
“Not like you would. I’m not just seeing the images again,” I say. “I’m replaying them, reliving them – the sights, the sounds. I feel them again. I remember everything that happens to me, not just what I read.” I hesitate to say it out loud. “My memory isn’t just photographic or eidetic. I remember everything.”
There, I’ve said it and the sky didn’t fall in. Trust him.
“Everything?”
“It kicked in when I was eleven,” I say. “No one knows why then exactly. It may be connected with puberty somehow. But after that, yes; pretty much everything.”
“So if you did something bad, something you were ashamed of, you’d never shake it off? And if someone does something bad to you?”
“Then I’d never forget it,” I say. He looks worried so I smile, nudge him with my elbow and add: “So watch it.”
“It makes a guy think,” he says. “You know if we ever … you’d always remember my … technique.” He’s blushing. Sweet. I tell him about my weird memory and he’s basically thinking about sex.
“Yep. For ever and ever.”
Dan lets out a long whistle.
“Is that really your main question? I’m going to set Mr T on you.”
“No, not Spooky Bear!” He tickles me until I promise to lock Mr T back in the trunk. He keeps asking me questions about my memory and I have to spell out hyperthymesia for him.
In the end, I pass him Coleman’s book, Principles of Memory. “Read this if you want to understand it better.”
Then I take a deep breath and a leap of faith and I tell him: “The unnamed research subject in chapters three to ten. That’s me.”
19
Try the following exercise using the Ancient Roman technique, placing what you want to remember in the familiar rooms or places: You’re in a beautiful house in Kensington. Everything is white. The staircase is wide and grand with a polished wooden handrail…
Work Your Memory
I jolt awake. I heard something outside, maybe a bottle kicked across the cobbles. I give up on trying to get back to sleep and get dressed in leggings and a top. I’ll go for a swim. I pull on Hanna’s jumper and grab my suit and towel from the radiator.
I enjoy having the place to myself at this time of night. I walk across the courtyard and sit for a moment by the shrine, watching the few remaining candles flickering in the breeze.
But I’ve a creeping feeling that I’m not alone. I see movement from the corner of my eye. Dr Harrison steps from the shadows. “Ah, Jess,” he says. “I thought for a minute…” He trails off. He’s unsteady on his feet and looks terrible. “Christ,” he says, rubbing at his eyes with the backs of his hands. His foot clips one of the votive candles and the glass holder skims across the cobbles, echoing in the silent courtyard. I take his arm before he falls over. He reeks of booze and stale cigarettes. I’d better move him back to Mandela Lodge, before someone else hears him and I have to explain why I’m wandering around college at night.
The lights are on in his office and there are papers all over the place, and a blanket and pillow on the sofa.
“Are you sleeping here?” I say, realizing I don’t even know where he lives. He and his wife must live in one of the staff houses in the grounds, or rent a place nearby.
“Too late to drive,” he says, looking guiltily at the half-empty whisky bottle on his desk.
Too pissed to drive, more like.
“He popped round for a chat and the time just flew,” he says. He stretches out his arm in a large gesture, knocking over a lamp. “It just flew away.”
I right the lamp and see several files strewn across the desk. Student files. Is my file on there? So much for Dr Harrison’s promise of confidentiality. I decide to linger and put the kettle on to make him a strong black coffee.
“He was so interested in my work,” slurs Harrison.
“Who was? Who do you mean?”
“So nice for someone to take an interest in little old me stuck out here in the annex,” he continues. “Not the main building, no, no, no. My wife calls – called – it the granny annex.” He falls back into his armchair. “Whoops-a-daisy.”
I pick up the papers and make it look as though I’m tidying them away. Dr Harrison’s eyes are closing and his head’s nodding on to his chest. A little dribble escapes down his chin. He really is a mess. I take advantage. Why not, I’m helping him out and deserve a little payment. I take my chance and look at the names on the files. The first one I recognize is Keira’s. Looks like she fixates on death and cries a lot. Big surprise. Not.
The next one I pick up is mine and I glance at Dr Harrison, now snoring, before scanning the contents. There are details of our last sessions and he’s written ‘holding back’ in pencil at the top and given me a rating out of ten. Only a three. God knows what his marks relate to. Interesting anecdotes? Shortness of skirt? I flick quickly through the other files. Someone’s recovering from a drug problem in my block – it’s always the quiet ones you wouldn’t suspect. The others are just the run-of-the-mill homesickness of the year below and a smattering of self-harm, depression and eating disorders. Your average teenage population.
I shove all the papers in the filing cabinet and slam the drawer shut. Dr Harrison stirs.
“We don’t want Principal Barker to see this mess, do we?” I say loudly, shaking him. Or the state you’re in.
“Barking Barker. Woof, woof, woof. Grrr.” Dr Harrison dissolves into giggles that shortly turn into gulping sobs. I’ve dealt with Hanna in this state before, making sure she didn’t walk around with her skirt up by her ears, or choke on her own vomit. But I’ve never had to cope with a weeping man having a midlife crisis.
I give him the coffee, fastening his hand round the handle in case he tips it over himself. I can’t believe he’s this drunk on a couple of glasses of whisky. With his other hand he reaches out and touches my hair. Inappropriate. I frown at him and step back.
“My wife, you see, she said that I should…” He stares down at his coffee like he’s only just noticed it’s there.
“What?”
“I thought you were her, you see. But the hair’s not quite right. I’m not a bad person, Jess.”
“No, I know that.” And thanks for thinking I was your frumpy wife. Her photo’s been knocked to the floor so I put it back on his d
esk. I know exactly where it goes.
“I didn’t imagine how it would turn out,” he says. “You believe me, don’t you?”
He’s rambling incoherently. I pass him the tissues for emotional emergencies. He works his way through the box while I wash the glasses and cups and tidy up. By the time I’ve finished, the room looks back to normal, save for the dozing drunk in the armchair. I put the blanket over him and prop the pillow round the back of his head.
“You owe me. Big time,” I say loudly, but he’s too far gone to hear. He grunts and shifts in the chair.
I draw the curtains and turn off the lights, pulling the door closed behind me, making sure it clicks shut. It’s two o’clock in the morning but my evening wasn’t entirely wasted. I learned a few things and, as an extra bonus, Harrison owes me now.
20
Traumatic memories trigger an emotional, sensory feeling in the amygdala part of the brain. Disconnecting the retrieval of the memory from the triggering of those repeated feelings of fear and anguish would reduce the trauma on recollection, if not remove it altogether.
Principles of Memory – Professor A.E. Coleman
I don’t see Dan until lunch. I ducked out of breakfast and we have different lessons in the morning. I’m worried that I shared too much about my memory. I haven’t told anyone all that before. He now knows I’m not only someone who can remember the useful stuff to win a competition or do well in exams, I can remember everything he ever says or does with me. If we argue, I’ll remember it forever. I can hold it against him forever.
As I’m clearing off my tray, shovelling uneaten chilli into the food bin, he comes up to me. “Not hungry?”
“No, I…”
“Have you been avoiding me today? That seems to happen a lot with you,” he says. “Always hiding. Come on.”
He leads me out into the gardens, away from the whispering and the gossipy looks of Keira and Maya. There’s a nervous flutter in my stomach I can’t swallow away. We stop at the bench on the edge of the rose garden. It’s damp from the morning drizzle so Dan puts down his sweatshirt for us to sit on and hands back Principles of Memory.
The Truth About Lies Page 8