One Small Act of Kindness

by Lucy Dillon

  Tired, and wary. Even though Kim had been encouraging, Pippa couldn’t quite share her positivity. The darkness was stirring, but something about it made her heart flutter in her chest, hard and quick. If she was being honest, Pippa wasn’t sure whether she wanted to know what was behind that curtain. Whatever it was, her body didn’t seem to want her to remember. And that had to mean something.

  Back home, a pleasant peacefulness had fallen over the hotel, the builders having left for the day. It was a warm, light evening and Margaret went out to the garden to do some weeding, while Jason settled himself on the sofa to watch a football match.

  Pippa and Libby sat in the kitchen with a glass of wine to celebrate Libby’s new status as approved PAT volunteer, talking and flicking through interiors magazines and discussing decoration ideas until at eight o’clock, Jason appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Can someone take Bob out for his constitutional? I don’t want to miss the second half . . .’ He was already inching backwards.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Pippa, pushing back her chair.

  ‘No, I’ll come with you,’ said Libby. ‘Now I’m his official handler. Come on,’ she said to Lord Bob, who was affecting sleepy oblivion on the kitchen sofa. ‘Out you go.’

  No response.

  ‘Come on,’ said Libby. ‘Is he ignoring me? I mean, is that a sarcastic sleep?’

  ‘Watch this,’ said Pippa, and broke a piece of biscuit in half. She said nothing, but put it on the floor just by the side of the sofa where Bob was.

  They watched for a moment, then another; then the edge of Bob’s nose twitched in the air. Without opening his eyes, he moved his head, locating the biscuit; then, like an omelette being slid out of a pan, he slid precisely off the sofa, snaffling the biscuit as he went, ending up by Pippa’s feet, where he shook himself awake. The tremor ran along his long body, finishing with a rapid flick of the tail. The ears were the last to stop shaking.

  ‘You have a knack,’ said Jason admiringly. ‘Must have had a dog in a previous life.’

  ‘Or even this one,’ said Pippa, and felt a strange twitch inside.

  They walked out of the hotel, and Libby was about to turn out of the gate towards the footpath that ran behind the building when Pippa felt an impulse to turn the other way. She’d driven past the scene of the accident but hadn’t actually stood there since it happened, and suddenly she had an urge to see it.

  ‘Can we?’ she said. ‘I feel like I want to walk down there.’

  Libby stopped trying to drag Lord Bob out of a patch of nettles and looked concerned. ‘Are you sure it wouldn’t be upsetting?’

  Pippa shook her head. ‘I want to see. I feel as if something’s . . . something’s starting to come together. I can’t explain.’

  There was no pavement, just a grass verge, and they walked slowly down it, listening out for cars, until they reached the spot Libby said she’d found her. Pippa was listening to her own instincts too, trying to feel any flickers inside, but there was nothing, until she heard Libby shout, ‘Wait!’

  She’d stopped a few metres back and was holding out her hand. Something glinted on her palm: it was a silver shape, a pendant in the form of an ‘A’, with a strand of broken silver chain still attached.

  ‘Look!’ she said excitedly. ‘Is this yours? Could it have come off when you were hit by the car?’

  Pippa walked back to her and picked up the ‘A’. As she touched the cool metal, a shapeless thought bulged in the back of her mind, bigger and bigger, while at the same time a pin-sharp memory appeared, not in her head but somewhere in her chest. The two spread up and out and merged until it wasn’t so much a visual memory as a feeling coming back to her, flooding her whole body: of being loved, of being given something precious. She closed her eyes and felt hot tears fill them as she let the memory submerge her.

  Of feeling absolutely happy between her mum and her dad, in a booth in a pizza place. The best birthday ever.

  ‘My birthday.’ Her voice sounded miles away; she didn’t know where it was coming from. ‘My mum and dad gave me a special necklace.’

  She smelled the pizza, Dad’s wool jacket that smelled of their terrier, who sometimes travelled in his pocket, Mum’s going-out perfume. A first grown-up birthday lunch, just her and Mum and Dad. No washing-up! An ice-cream sundae with two sparklers and the most exciting box in the world, with a white ribbon round it.

  ‘Pippa?’ She heard Libby’s voice and shook her head. Something was moving up, up, up in her brain, coming into focus, words pushing onto her lips.

  ‘Pippi,’ she said. ‘Dad used to call me his little Pippi. Not Pippa. Pippi Longstocking. I had plaits. Mum used to plait them for me before bed.’ She couldn’t bear it; somewhere in her chest, somewhere behind her head, she felt the sleepy sensation of Dad’s warm weight as he sat reading at the end of her bed, his voice softening, softening as she drifted into sleep, secure and loved. His voice low and clear as if he were speaking to her now.

  Night-night, Alice.

  It wasn’t a voice; it was a feeling in her heart. Tears streamed down her face as a powerful longing swept through her like a gale, rattling her chest, her stomach. It was so real, so physical. The longing to climb into her own head and be in that moment again, with Dad, with Mum just outside the door, waiting to put out the light.

  God bless, Alice.

  The images were jumbling now, one slipping into another as her memory shot them across her mind. Mum giggling as she Incy Wincy Spidered her fingers up Alice’s freckly arm, sun hot on their skin, her short red nails like glossy ladybirds. Alice ached to stretch out and touch her, hug her, one more time, a yearning so hard it took her breath away.

  Alice. Alice. She was somebody. She existed. She had an anchor in the world, a past, a history. She was Alice Robinson.

  I’m not lost, she thought. I’m Alice. But the relief only lasted a second before the images faded, stuck in their short loop, and pain caught up with her. Dad was gone. Mum was gone. A cold, thin ache wound round her heart, spreading up into her head, as she lost them all over again. The memory was all she had, that look of love, that feeling of warmth and belonging – she’d never touch them, or tell them her secrets, or have fresh memories to replace these.

  Alice closed her eyes, desperate to stay in the memory, not see the rough hedgerow, the roadside of the present. Was not knowing this better than the pain of knowing it?

  She was someone, but she was no one’s. There was no one trying to find her. No one. She hadn’t realised until then how much she’d secretly hoped there would be.

  Alice looked up and saw Libby’s excited grin turn to horror when she saw her crumpled, bereft face.

  ‘Pippa?’ said Libby. ‘Pippa!’

  ‘Alice,’ she managed. Then suddenly, she was being crushed into Libby’s chest and hugged tightly, and she let herself go at last and cried for the parents who would never come and get her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alice and Libby stood for a while by the side of the road, not speaking, until Alice managed to smile through the hiccups. Libby put her arm round her waist and they walked slowly back to the hotel, Bob following obediently on his lead for once.

  Libby’s concern was touched with barely concealed excitement. ‘Now you’ve got a name, we could be taking you home in the morning!’ she said, in her comforting ‘everything will be fine’ manner. ‘Ten minutes on the internet and I bet we’ll be able to find out all sorts.’

  Alice nodded, but didn’t know what to say. Emotions were flying back and forth in her head too fast for her to explain how she felt. She was relieved that her memory was obviously starting to mend, even if it broke her heart to remember and lose her parents like that, but under the relief were other, darker questions.

  Why hadn’t everything come back?

  Was her brain prioritising memories? Could it choose what t
o repair, or was it random?

  What if only half her memories were there? Would she have lost half of herself, half of her experiences, half of her life? What if she met people who remembered things about her she couldn’t?

  And why couldn’t she remember anything more recent, like why she was here? With these people who were strangers, but familiar?

  Alice shook her pounding head. Stop it, she thought. Stop thinking.

  But she couldn’t. The idea that her brain was repairing itself freaked her out: the invisible electrical impulses shooting back and forth, mending the bridges, reopening flashes of information? How would she ever know what she was unable to remember . . . if she couldn’t remember it?

  Alice felt as if she’d got her name back, but not enough else. She was unbalanced, still half in that aching moment, half anxious for the next unexpected lurch forwards.

  Libby was too excited to notice her quietness as they pushed open the doors to the reception, the dark furniture shrouded in dust sheets. She took off Lord Bob’s lead, shooed him away towards the flat, then took Alice straight into the office.

  ‘You start searching the internet,’ she instructed, opening up her laptop, ‘and I’ll make you a drink and tell Jason the good news.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Oh my God, I’m so pleased for you, Pip— Alice!’ She made a face. ‘Alice. Must get used to that! Do you think we should ring the hospital?’

  ‘It’s ten past nine.’ Alice couldn’t face more questions. More analysis. ‘I think it can wait till morning.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You never know, now this has started – you might have a lot more to tell them by morning!’

  It’s a game to her, Alice thought, smiling back automatically. The final part in a television drama, the happy conclusion.

  Libby left, and she faced the laptop, the bland screen that could tell her things about herself she didn’t know. Her stomach churned. Come on, Alice told herself. Be brave. What can be worse than remembering your parents are dead?

  Alice’s fingers hovered over the keys, but she couldn’t make them move. After what felt like no time, Libby returned with Jason, and together, they started searching for her life on the internet, while Alice watched, her shaking hands clutched round a hot mug of sweet tea. But it soon became clear that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

  For a start, there were nearly two hundred thousand results for ‘Alice Robinson’ on Google. None of them, she noted, were newspaper reports searching for a missing friend.

  ‘Is this you, on LinkedIn?’ Libby asked, pointing to the first entry.

  That Alice Robinson was about the right age, but she was a political analyst who’d won several industry awards and had qualifications coming out of her ears. For a moment, Alice wished that was her, but she knew it wasn’t.

  ‘I don’t think so. I think I’d remember being that dynamic.’

  ‘You’d also be a long way from home if you were.’ Jason pointed out the New York background.

  ‘Ha! Oh yes. I’m glad you’re not her, actually. She doesn’t look as if she’s got many pairs of flip-flops in her wardrobe.’ Libby glanced up. ‘You were wearing flip-flops when you were run over. You don’t remember? In the hospital bag?’

  Alice blinked. ‘Oh yes.’ She’d got so used to wearing Libby’s clothes; they fitted her and, more to the point, suited her so well she’d almost forgotten they weren’t hers. Her own clothes were somewhere else. Waiting for her, in a wardrobe, every item a clue to her personality.

  Libby was clicking on, and on. ‘Don’t worry – there are loads more Alice Robinsons. Can you remember what sort of job you did? Did you work in an office? Can you remember what you studied at university?’

  Had she gone to university? Alice dutifully closed her eyes and tried to picture herself at work. Odd images came back now, as if they’d never been away, but with bits missing – no sound, a blur where names were. It was as if one solid fact had linked another, and another, giving each a foothold in her mind where they’d slipped away before. A crammed Tube carriage at rush hour. Aching feet in stiff court shoes. The wet smell of London at night, summer-evening drinkers spilling from a pub onto the pavement, taxi lights glowing yellow in the dusk.

  ‘I worked in the City,’ she said slowly. ‘In an office? I can’t remember which company.’

  ‘Forget work – start with Facebook,’ suggested Jason. ‘You’re bound to be on there. I bet your page will be full of mates wondering where you are.’

  They scrolled through pages and pages of Facebook entries, but Alice’s face didn’t appear in any of them. As they clicked from one chunk of results to the next, trying to joke that she was bound to be on the next page, Alice was aware that Libby was getting more flustered and embarrassed.

  ‘Well, that’s interesting,’ said Jason, as they came to the tail end of the Alice Robinsons. ‘You’re not on Facebook. Are you sure you’re not in some sort of witness relocation programme? Or are your security settings really, really tight for some reason?’

  ‘Would I remember if I were in MI5?’ said Alice, only half joking.

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ said Libby quickly, shooting a glare at Jason. ‘Plenty of people aren’t on Facebook. Teachers, or policemen . . . I don’t go on it much myself these days,’ she added. ‘People get very competitive about it, don’t they?’

  ‘You’re definitely Robinson?’ Jason tapped a pen against his teeth. ‘Would you have forgotten getting married? Or changing your name?’

  ‘No.’ Her head felt tight and dark again. ‘I don’t know. The more I think about something, the harder it gets to work out what I’m remembering, and what I’m wanting to remember.’

  Libby looked up from the laptop, then closed the lid with a firm click. ‘Sorry, Alice. We’re being selfish. You’ve had a huge shock . . . remembering about your dad and your mum. Do you want to leave it for tonight? Your brain might recover better while you’re in sleep mode. So to speak.’

  Alice managed a smile. She could tell Libby was dying to carry on, but it had been a long day and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to think and deal with what might emerge now. Fragments were flashing at the back of her mind like fireflies, bright enough to give her a jolt, not staying long enough to examine them properly.

  Dad’s scratchy fisherman’s jumper. Dark blue. Elbow patches.

  Mum’s red leather bag with the clip like a barrel and the pockets with sweets behind the zips.

  Dad, she thought. Mum. It was as if intense love were shining a torch into the blackness, picking out these precious memories. Another wave of sadness made her feel painfully alone.

  Libby saw it and rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘Time for bed,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow’s another day.’

  And who knows who I’ll be when I wake up? thought Alice.

  On Friday, after Libby had dealt with the hotel admin, then walked Bob, then had a testy conversation with Margaret about the ‘somewhat intrusive level’ of the builders’ radio, she settled into the office with Alice and finally got to use some of her rusty research skills. She tried to be tactful, seeing Alice’s anxious fidgeting each time they uncovered a fresh nugget of information, but it felt good to use her brain again – Libby hadn’t realised quite how much she’d missed her old job.

  By the end of the afternoon, they’d found Alice’s A-level results, from a girls’ grammar school in Bromley, and a Google Earth location for two flats she’d lived in after university, but no photographs or anything more recent than five years ago, when she’d sponsored someone to jump out of a plane dressed as Superman. From that, they worked out that she must have been working as a PA, temping in various legal firms across London.

  ‘It’s a start, isn’t it?’ said Libby encouragingly. ‘Maybe you can get in touch with the— Oh, hello!’

  ‘Hello, ladies!’ Jason had strolled in wearing jeans
and a rugby shirt, with a gym bag over his shoulder. He looked in a very good mood. ‘Just to let you know I won’t be around for supper tonight, so don’t bother making anything for me.’

  ‘Oh?’ Libby was disappointed. ‘I was going to do a fish pie to celebrate Alice’s news. Your mum’s going to teach me the “right” way to make it.’

  Jason frowned. ‘But your fish pie’s great.’

  ‘I know,’ said Libby. ‘But I think she enjoys teaching me how to do things her way.’

  Alice glanced between them, sensing the mood. ‘Don’t go to any bother for me, Libby. You’ve already done so much. I’ll take Bob upstairs for his supper, shall I?’ She got up and slipped out, Bob following behind, tail aloft.

  Jason and Libby watched with surprise.

  ‘He didn’t look that well trained when I was dragging him out of the rhododendrons earlier,’ Libby observed, impressed. ‘Anyway, so where are you going tonight?’

  ‘She said the magic word “supper”.’ He swung the bag onto his other shoulder. ‘It’s just rugby practice. I’ve got keys to the front door, so you can lock up for the night whenever you want.’

  ‘What time’s the practice?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s only five now.’

  ‘It’s six till eight, but we’ll probably have a drink or two in the clubhouse after. Did I tell you about the new clubhouse?’ Jason did ‘jazz hands’ to convey his excitement. ‘It’s new! It has guest ales as well as Stella! They’ve got a chef who just does pies! And – get this – an actual purpose-built ladies’ loo!’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Libby didn’t know why she felt jealous; she didn’t even like rugby that much. Maybe it was that her fish pie was being outgunned by a new loo. ‘So when’s ladies’ night?’

  ‘Sorry?’ He dropped his jazz hands and looked wary.