Perhaps that is what this is all about.
A tear rolls out of the corner of my eye, and I immediately wipe it away. I am not a man for showing emotion, and normally I force myself to bottle it all up inside. Never in my life…this one, or any other, have I cried in front of my father, and I'm not about to start now.
My father sits down on the side of my bed, and smiles at me.
It is three hours before he finally leaves, asked by the nurse to give me some rest, and when he goes I feel happier than I have done for years. We’ve had a good old father-to-son and man-to-man discussion. And in spite of myself, the old eyes do leak, and I cry again, only this time I do nothing to stop them flowing. Nothing at all.
Chapter Twelve
Effingham Road, Surbiton
.
The taxi pulls up at a house in Effingham Road in Surbiton. It is a large house, one which I recognize and have driven past many times before. Detached, spread over four floors, with its own driveway and wrought iron gates, it is impressive. Only someone who had money could buy this house and it’s the sort of house that I have always aspired to owning myself one day. So it is hard to believe Jane when she insists that I have already owned this particular house for almost six years.
As I pay the taxi driver in the blue euros, the front door opens and two screaming children, my children, coming running down the path and jump up at me demanding my attention.
They say that when you go for an interview the person asking the question and conducting the interrogation makes up their mind about you in the first few moments after you walk through the door. The rest of the interview is just a formality. I would never have thought that the same maxim could have been applied to your own children, but truth be told, I disliked them the first moment I saw them. Of course, how was I to know that they were my children: that these were the kids I had fathered and whom I was meant to love unconditionally, to protect and nurture for all their years?
Yes, I must love them, and that love must start now.
I reach down and pick them up in my arms, and smile, kissing them both on their little foreheads and squeezing them, before putting them down again.
"Go inside, and help your mother with the bag…" I start to say, but thankfully they have already gone, to find something more exciting to do.
"Son, are you okay?" my mother asks, engulfing me in her arms before I can reply. My mother. From what I can see, she is the only true point of continuity so far in my personal life.
As I approach the front door of my house, my new house, I make a decision. One of those gut instinct decisions that I have only made a couple of times. Like the day I decided to marry Sarah…no, bad example…, like the day I decided to study Physics at University (did I?). Perhaps that’s a bad example too. Maybe in this life there are no good examples to compare with… But that is exactly the point. I make a decision, that from now on I will assume that this is indeed my real life.
Lying in hospital all night with the doctors checking me over every few hours was a pretty sobering experience. It changes a person's perspective and it has become apparent that there is probably nothing wrong with me at all, apart from concussion. So I must assume that everything which I remember as being true can really only be a dream. It will be hard, but I can see no other way. I cannot keep second guessing everything, and confusing myself as to what is real, and what was real.
If I can physically touch the door, and I can touch Jane, and the two children, whom I will love, must love, and if I can breathe the air, the same air as they breathe, and if I can feel the pain on the back of my head, then this has to be real, and this is real. Yes, from now on, this is my life, and I must learn to live again.
I turn to Jane, who is behind me, carrying my overnight bag. I smile at her, swooping her up in my arms before she can say anything, and carry her over the threshold of my new life. Our new life. For a few seconds there is a momentary vision of me doing the same thing with Sarah ten years ago, but I blink hard and mentally erase the picture. It goes slowly, the last thing I remember being the smell of the perfume she wore, and the sound of her laughter. But then it is gone, and I am inside the hallway of my new house with Jane in my arms, and the smell of her perfume and her laughter.
My house is large. Very large. We enter through a large hallway with a chequer board floor of white and black tiles. A large wooden staircase leads up to a landing with a small hallway leading off it, before the staircase turns and disappears further upstairs to the first floor proper. Bright light floods down into the stairwell from above, presumably from a large window or cupola in the roof. A small table sits on the first landing, a large bowl of yellow flowers looking impressive and inviting.
On the ground floor there are three large reception areas. And I mean large. The room at the front of the house has a large bay window and a white baby grand piano in the window alcove. More flowers sit on top of the piano filling the room with beautiful fresh scent. One whole wall is lined with bookshelves, the other dominated by a white marble fireplace, and in front of it, two large white leather sofas sit in the middle of the room upon a white, deep, shag-pile carpet. It’s a fantastic room, and I fall in love with it immediately. Either Jane or I have excellent taste.
The next room is a sizeable dining room, centered around a huge mahogany table. This leads onto an impressive music room cum TV room. If you can call it a TV. It's like a small cinema, with one wall covered by a massive plasma TV, and surround-sound speakers in every corner.
I walk out of the cinema into the kitchen. A gorgeous kitchen. Large windows overlook a forest of a garden, the four walls covered in expensive cupboards, kitchen appliances, washing machines, two floor-to-ceiling American style freezers, and a massive red Aga cooker. The focal point is a central podium, encircled by six high stools, with what seem like fifty shining copper pots hung from ceiling hooks above it. All the surfaces in the kitchen are either shining steel, or expensive polished black granite. The floor is made up of large red kitchen tiles. It looks… it looks just great.
A side door takes me into a large conservatory, and then out through a door into the garden, full of flowers, and equally as impressive as the rest of the house. It's amazing.
Jane is following me around, hanging onto my arm. She smiles as she can see the pleasure on my face at seeing the house, as if for the first time, not fully grasping yet that for me this is the first time.
My mother follows us out into the garden. A taxi has arrived to take her home and she has to get back to cook dinner for my father. I thank her for babysitting, and kiss her goodbye. She goes, leaving Jane and I alone again.
"So, where do we sleep?" I turn and ask her.
"You honestly can't remember?…How can you forget that?" she winks at me. "Come..." she says, grabbing my hand and leading the way. "Come with me…".
She leads me upstairs, past the landing on which there is a large playroom for the children and a bathroom, then up more stairs to the first floor. Three bedrooms, and another bathroom. She takes me into the largest of them all, the one at the back of the house, and closes the door behind me.
A plush white carpet, a large bed with the biggest down pillows I have ever seen, and massive windows overlooking the gardens, with sumptuous white curtains. One wall is covered in mirrored wardrobes, and there is a half-open door leading to an en-suite. And on the large dresser a white orchid.
Like all the rooms I have seen so far, this one is immaculate. Clean. Ordered. Not a thing out of place.
I sit down on the bed and look around. Jane stands in front of me, running her hands through my hair.
"Welcome home, James…" she kisses me, then pauses, and sits down beside me. "James, can you honestly not remember anything about us? Not even…well, …" and she looks suggestively at the pillows and the bed behind us.
"No". I say truthfully. How can I tell her that in my dream I have spent the past ten years making love to another woman?
I can see in h
er eyes that Jane is trying her best. She is trying to be as positive as possible, but I know that inside she is confused, worried and full of questions. But what can I say to her?
"Just think," I whisper, holding her hand. "When we make love, it will be like making love for the first time again." And for me, it will be.
She smiles.
"Jane, can we go and talk to the children? Maybe I should talk to them and explain what has happened to Daddy…?"
As we get up to go and find the children I notice a framed photograph on the dressing table. It’s a wedding photograph of two young people, both of whom I recognize immediately.
One is Jane, and the other is me.
I pick it up and stare at it, scared by what I see. In my hands I am holding the proof that I really am not dreaming this. I can see with my own eyes that I married Jane, and even more, I can see that on the day of our wedding we both looked incredibly happy. Very happy. And yet, even as I look at it, I see another photo superimposed on top of it in my mind. One of me wearing a kilt, and holding the hand of Sarah, on the steps of a church in the East End of Edinburgh.
I put the picture back and leave the room, closing the door behind me as if I were in somebody else's house.
Following the sound of the children's voices upstairs to the second floor, I find them both sitting with Jane on a bed in one of the rooms at the front of the house. A big sign on the door of the room proudly announces, "Keep Out. Allison's Room."
So what is the other one called? And which one is Allison?
As I walk into the room, both of the kids look up at me, and I see that the older one has tears in her eyes. She begins to cry. The younger one stares at her sister for a second, and then immediately copies her. Jane looks over at me.
"I've just told them that you are not very well, and that the doctor says we should let you rest for a few days…and that, for a while, you might not remember some things…"
"…but Mummy says that you'll soon be better, and that it was only because you were feeling ill that you shouted at me", the large one immediately says in-between her tears.
"..and me," repeats the little one.
"Mummy's right." I lie, kneeling down in front of them both. I don't know how long it will take for me learn about my new life, and to forget the dreams of the other one. As I look at the two girls, I think immediately of my own two daughters,… at least, I think of Keira and Nicole, and I miss them. How can I miss a dream? How can my memories of them be so strong if they're not real? What is real? I remember everything about Keira and Nicole…their births, their christenings, their first words and their first steps, their first teeth, their first days at school, times they were ill,…how can all of that be a dream?
"…Mummy's right", I continue, "...but Daddy might behave a little strangely for a while, until I get better…I might forget things that we did in the past together. I might do strange things or say silly things…but don't worry and don't be scared. It’s not that Daddy doesn't love you both very much …" - or at all - "it's just that daddy banged his head and everything inside got all shook up, and now it'll just take a while for all the thoughts and memories to find their way back into the correct boxes in my head. I'm hoping that you can help me remember everything. Daddy would love that."
What else can I say?
"I know..." Jane exclaims to the girls aloud, coming to the rescue. "Why not go and get your birthday and christening books, and your favorite photo albums, and we'll all go downstairs and have a cup of orange juice. Then you can play a little game with Daddy and show him all your photographs. And first one downstairs gets an extra chocolate biscuit."
The two girls both jump up, and the little one runs out the room. The larger one, obviously Allison, runs across to the other side of the room and starts looking through her shelves. I look over at Jane. Tears are running down her cheeks and she is wiping them away with a clean, white handkerchief. She smiles, then looks away. "I'd better go and help Elspeth," she says, "She can't reach the shelves…"
I am instantly alone. In my head I hear the voices of Sarah and Keira and Nicole, and in my heart I can feel a longing for them like I have never felt before. But then it is gone, and Allison is pulling on my hand.
"Daddy, here. Can you carry these?"
So together we go down the stairs to look at photographs and find out who I have become, and to learn about a life lived without memories, a life spent growing up in another world. A life lived and yet not lived at all.
My life.
Chapter Thirteen
Memory Lane
.
Jane was a June bride, married on the 4th June 2000, a long silk dress which trailed gracefully around her feet, holding a posy of beautiful rare red orchids, with four of the cutest bridesmaids I've ever seen. Standing beside her on the steps of a church which I cannot place, is a young man, spotty, dressed in a green Gordon Highlander kilt, but looking immensely proud, and actually, if I may say so, damned good looking.
It's me.
I smile in spite of myself, and Elspeth giggles. She reaches forward to the photograph and points to Jane's stomach, and says, "That's me. In mummy's tummy."
"Yes darling, that's where you lived until mummy and daddy decided to have you, but that wasn't until a few years later. I wasn't pregnant when I married daddy."
Elspeth laughs, jumping up and down on the spot with her thumb in her mouth and from the way they anticipate the photographs as we turn the pages, it's not hard to tell that we've all looked together at the photographs a hundred times before.
Although most of the people in the photographs are complete strangers, I do recognize a few faces at the wedding reception, which appears to have been held in the grounds of some large stately home. My oldest friends in the world are there, Alex, and his brother Iain, with whom I played football when I was six, my parents, my gran, some aunts and uncles and a bunch of friends from University.
In a few of the photos there is someone who appears to have been my best man, but whom I have never seen before. Sadly I recognize none of Jane's family, apart from her brother, whose face rings a bell. As I try to place him, I suddenly remember that he was a prefect in the year above me at school.
Over a hundred people must have come to the evening do, and some of the photographs were hilarious. Especially the one of my friend Alex lying in a small fountain, his legs kicking in the air, the surprised look on his face just typical of him.
"He got very drunk…fell in, then his brother climbed in to get him out, and he slipped…"
And sure enough, the photograph on the next page was of Alex and Iain both sitting in the fountain together, laughing and hugging each other, a water lily dangling from the top of Iain’s head. It looks like it was a wonderful day. I almost wish that I had been there.
We look at two whole albums of wedding photographs, and just when I thought I was done, Allison reappears from upstairs with four new, large ones.
"All right, darling. But Daddy and I will look at them ourselves. It's off to bed with you both. You've got school in the morning."
Quite unexpectedly, a very attractive blonde woman suddenly appears at the door to the room and starts speaking to Jane in broken English.
"Shall I take babies in bed, now, Mrs Quinn?"
"Yes, thank you Margareta. That would be nice."
Margareta rounds up the children, ignoring the protests of Elspeth who tries to hide behind one of the large white leather chairs, and only volunteers to cooperate when a lollipop appears magically out of Margareta's jeans.
"Who's she?" I ask as the door closes and silence returns to the room.
"Our Polish Au Pair girl. We've had her almost a whole year now…It was your idea darling. You chose her…" then quietly. "Since they're out, do you want to look at our honeymoon pictures?"
I look at the daunting pile of albums that Allison has dropped on the floor in front of us.
"So many photographs from on honeymoon?" I ask.
"Well, it was more than just a honeymoon. When we got married we gave up work darling. We both wanted to take time off and see the world before we settled down to our careers and had children." Jane explains. "…Look, there we are at the Oktoberfest in Munich, and here, look, that’s you in Florence, pretending to be the statue of David. Not quite so big, but much more beautiful…"
Who Stole My Life? Page 9