Then and Always (16 page)

“You have got your medication with you?”

I tapped the Gucci bag swung over my shoulder.

“And you’ll call me if you feel sick or … anything? You have your phone, right, and money and …”

“Relax, Dad. I’m only going for one night. I’ll be back tomorrow and hopefully I’ll have some answers.”

He still looked doubtful, so I reached up to hug him. “Don’t worry about me so much.” I smelled his aftershave then, and it suddenly reminded me of something. “And stop checking up on me all night long. You must be exhausted by morning—I’ve lost count of the number of times you keep coming in.”

Jimmy’s car pulled up outside, and I was bending to pick up the small soft bag I had at my feet, so I missed the initial look of confusion on my father’s face.

“Rachel, I haven’t been in your room at night to check up on you. Not even once. You must have been dreaming.”

THE JOURNEY TO
London confirmed that Jimmy had also reached a decision in the intervening hours between last night and this morning. Back once more was the warmhearted, teasing, platonic friend I had known all my life—or at least the bit that had led up to my eighteenth year. The man who had held my hand in the coffee shop, while I stumbled through the story of what my life had become since that time, had completely disappeared.

And if I was disappointed at having let that person slip through my fingers, at least I still had my old friend Jimmy back in my life, and compared to a week or so earlier, that was a vast improvement.

“So where do you want us to head to first? Have you given it any thought?”

I pulled a folded piece of paper from my bag.

“I guess it makes sense to go here first. The other places are all across on the other side of town.”

The paper fluttered in my hand from a light draft from the open car window.

“I have the address, but I’ve no idea where it is exactly. Dad had to write it down for me.”

Jimmy’s eyes flickered away from the road for an instant and glanced down at the scrap of lined paper.

“And that would be …?”

I sighed deeply and looked at the words on the sheet. They meant absolutely nothing to me.

“It’s where I live”—I paused, as though in court—“allegedly.”

I tried to relax, but as mile after mile passed by I began to get increasingly nervous. Going into London, to where I lived and worked, was my last hope of reclaiming my real life. But it was only now that I stopped to contemplate what exactly I
might find when I got there. There were keys in my bag that I didn’t recognize. Presumably they would fit the door of the address my father had given me that morning. But what of my other home, the flat I lived in above the launderette? What would everyone say when that too proved to be mine? Filled with belongings and paraphernalia from another life entirely. Could they both exist side by side? How could that even be possible?

A word formed like a whisper in my mind. A word much more scary and unknown than
amnesia: schizophrenia
. Couldn’t that take the form of multiple personalities? All at once I was convinced I had read an article quite recently about that very subject. Could that be what I was suffering from? Was I actually mentally ill?

To quiet the voice, I grabbed on to any random thought to fill the silence.

“Jimmy, I never thought to ask before now: are you married?”

Our car swerved slightly in its lane, earning an angry beep from the lorry behind us.

“Married? Er, no. Where did that come from? Don’t you think you would know by now if I was?”

I shrugged. “Not necessarily. I didn’t know
I
was engaged.”

“Point taken.”

A further mile clicked onto the display on the dashboard before I pursued it again. “So, is there anyone on the scene?”

He laughed softly under his breath but said nothing, which only piqued my curiosity more.

“Girlfriend? Lover? Boyfriend?”

“No, no, and definitely no, thank you very much.”

“Why not?”

“What are you asking me? Why aren’t I gay?”

I gave his arm a gentle nudge. “You know what I’m asking. Why is there no one? You’re a great guy. You’d make a terrific partner for someone. How come you’re alone?”

For the first time he looked uncomfortable and it surprised me that I had ventured into forbidden territory. There had been a time when nowhere was out of bounds. But perhaps it was all different now.

“The job, for one: long hours, weird shifts. It doesn’t help a relationship. Or maybe I just prefer it this way.”

“So there’s never been anyone serious? Not
ever
?”

He was silent for a long moment, seeming to give far more concentration than was necessary to passing a slow-moving vehicle in front of us. When at last he did speak, there was something guarded in his tone.

“There was someone once, a long time ago. But … things didn’t work out.”

I turned in my seat to study him. Whoever this woman had been, I already hated her for rejecting him. I longed to ask more, but I could tell I was probing somewhere he didn’t want me to go, so I negotiated my way around this conversational obstacle and asked him something else that had been bothering me even more.

“You and I, we don’t see each other very much anymore, do we?”

He gave a wry smile, and I guessed that “very much” was a euphemism. His answer confirmed it.

“Try ‘at all’ and you’re a little closer to the mark.”

“But why? I don’t understand it. We were always so close.”

He opened his mouth to speak, then paused and seemed to think better of it, and closed it again. More than anything, I really wanted to know what it was he’d been about to say. I suspected it might have been a whole lot more illuminating
than just, “People change, grow up, grow apart. It happens all the time.”

He took his eyes from the road and glanced over at me, and I sensed he could tell I was disappointed with his answer. He briefly took one hand from the wheel and reached across to squeeze mine.

“I missed you, though.”

I thought of the countless nights I had cried myself to sleep in grief and loss in the years since he had died.

“I missed you more.”

By then we were winding through the back streets of London, and it took us longer than we had thought to locate the address we were seeking. Eventually, after several wrong turns, we pulled up in front of an ornately porticoed Victorian building.

“Here we are,” announced Jimmy, swinging the car into a vacant parking bay in the small courtyard at the front of the building. “Home.”

“Not mine,” I muttered bleakly, but nevertheless reached for the handle and got out of the car. I stood for a moment in the cold morning air, looking up at the unfamiliar building.

“Come on then, let’s go check it out.” He reached out his hand, and with obvious reluctance I allowed him to lead me toward the building’s stone steps.

I thought we were going to be stymied at the first hurdle, for as we neared the entrance we could see that the building had a security door with a keypad entry system to gain access. I halted halfway up the three shallow steps.

“That’s that then,” I proclaimed, and knew the relief in my voice was obvious.

“Not so fast,” Jimmy urged, continuing to pull me toward the door. At that precise moment a blue-uniformed nurse
appeared on the inside of the glass entrance, clearly hurrying to exit the building. As she opened the door Jimmy hurried up the steps to catch it before it closed behind her. The nurse eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then saw me and clearly decided not to challenge our entry.

“Thank you,” said Jimmy as we passed the nurse on the threshold.

Automatically I too voiced our gratitude: “Yes, thanks.”

She was through the doorway and already descending the stone steps before she called out cheerfully over her shoulder.

“No problem, Rachel.”

WE WERE SILENT
in the lift as it ascended. And the tension followed us out when the doors slid open on the fifth floor. The corridor spread before us, leading both to the left and the right.

“Which way?” asked Jimmy.

“How should I know?” I snapped back.

He walked back to me then, kinder and more patient than I probably deserved.

“I know this is hard, Rachel. I really do. But we knew you’d have to face something like this. Don’t give up on it all just yet.”

He was right, of course he was. But I had
so
wanted this all not to be true.

My key opened the door to the flat: of course it did. We wandered through the rooms like prospective buyers, not really knowing where we were going. When I opened what I thought was the door to the bedroom and ended up stepping into a walk-in closet, we thankfully both found our sense
of humor. In the closet … Isn’t that always the last place you look for it?

I felt a little like a burglar, rummaging through drawers and closets looking for something of value. I recognized very little, but then every so often I would stumble across an item of clothing, or a piece of jewelry, and my pulse would quicken when I recognized it as one of mine. The passport and tax papers all neatly filed in a metal storage box only served to hammer home even more evidential nails in the coffin. I definitely lived here.

And that would have been far from a tragedy to accept in any other set of circumstances, for the flat was extremely nice, very tastefully decorated and about four times the size of my home above the launderette. Even so, my accommodation upgrade gave me no pleasure at all. If this
was
my home—and how could I refute it when surrounded by such unshakable evidence—then what possible grounds did that leave me for continuing to insist that this life was not mine?

While I was ransacking the bedroom, Jimmy had made his way to the kitchen, coming out a few minutes later with two steaming mugs of coffee.

“Black, I’m afraid,” he apologized, handing me one of the mugs. “You’re out of milk. Actually you’re pretty much out of everything; the cupboards are quite bare. I’m guessing you eat out a lot.”

That sounded logical and it would certainly fit the lifestyle I imagined Matt would have.

Holding on to the mug very carefully, I lowered myself onto a cream leather sofa. I cautiously shifted my weight, anxious not to spill any hot drink on the expensive-looking surface. I was an extremely nervous visitor in my own home.

“How can I afford all of this?” it suddenly occurred to me to ask. “I know what London prices are like. This place must cost a bomb; surely my new job doesn’t pay that well.”

Jimmy’s eyes darkened for a moment and he looked away from my questioning face before replying.

“I believe Matt’s family own this flat. Own several, I think, in this building. I guess you get it at a reduced rent, being almost one of the family.”

I felt myself blushing with embarrassment, although I wasn’t exactly sure why. It wasn’t as if I’d done anything to be ashamed of.

“Oh,” was my only response. For a journalist, I clearly wasn’t all that articulate.

We finished our inspection of the flat together. And though I kept on looking for evidence that this was
not
my home, all the clues around me screamed out in contradiction. And if the pile of bills and junk mail in my name wasn’t conclusive enough proof, there was a single silver-framed photograph on a small coffee table that seemed pretty indisputable.

Jimmy came up behind me, leaning with his chin upon my shoulder to see what I was staring at so intently in my hands. The image looking back at me from behind the glass was of Matt and me by the Eiffel Tower. He was standing behind me, much in the same way as Jimmy was at that precise moment. Matt and I were both laughing into the camera, and although the day must have been cold, for we were bundled up warmly with coats and scarves, there was such a feeling of warmth exuding from our faces that I felt winded by a kick of shock.

We both looked so happy and carefree and so … in love. I realized for the first time that since I’d returned to Great
Bishopsford, I’d been so busy trying to unearth the past that I’d somehow managed to bury all my feelings for Matt.

“I believe that was where he proposed to you.” Jimmy’s words were devoid of any betraying emotion.

I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off the photo, and a moment later I felt Jimmy step purposefully away from me.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Paris,” I said reflectively.

Jimmy didn’t reply, just bent down to take our empty cups back to the kitchen, so I don’t know if he heard me finish saying in a quiet emphatic voice, “… but I’ve never
been
there.”

THERE WAS NOTHING
left to hold us in the flat. I rejected Jimmy’s suggestion that I take a few more things with me back to my father’s. It would have felt too much like stealing.

Once back in the car, I felt I had to say something to break the awful cloud that had descended between us.

“Even though I’ve seen what I’ve seen, even now none of it seems real.” I waved my hand in the direction of the Victorian building. “Logically I can see the proof before me, I have to accept that, but in my mind, in my heart, it still all seems completely and utterly wrong.”

Jimmy also seemed to make a deliberate effort to shake off the suffocating shroud we were under.

“Don’t worry. You can’t expect it all to come back at once. Let’s go and get a bite to eat and then we’ll check out the magazine where you work. Perhaps we’ll find something there that will give us some answers.”

He had no idea how prophetic his words would turn out to be.

———

THANKFULLY, JIMMY HAD
suggested we telephone the magazine in advance to warn them we were coming, which was just as well, as the place was enormous and we’d never have found our way unaided to the section where I worked. We walked across an ice-rink-shiny reception floor to a large curved desk, behind which sat several receptionists. Everyone around us was incredibly smartly dressed and well put together, and while the clothes I was wearing definitely weren’t out of place, I certainly felt that I was.

I lost major points in poise when I forgot the name of the person we were meeting and had to hunt in my handbag for the piece of paper I’d written it down on.