“No, notinthe memory itself, but when I recall it, it scares me.”
“Do you think this memory explains how you ended up on the beach nine days ago?”
“Er, I don’t think so.” He hesitates. “This memory is old. Maybe years ago. It was at night. There was someone there with me. Something went wrong.” He closes his eyes sharply as if to block a thought. I notice his fingers start to tremble in his lap.
“It’s okay, Matthew.” I move to him and place a gentle hand on his shoulder. He lets me, and I feel the warmth of his skin through his cotton T-shirt. “We don’t need to go back over it right now. Why don’t you tell me about something else? What other things do you remember?”
He looks up reluctantly; there are dark circles under his eyes. “Little things,” he answers. “About people, the people here. I seem to remember these strange things about them. Or rather I know them. What makes them tick, things that have happened to them, things I shouldn’t know, but somehow I do. How could that be?” He asks in such a reasonable way I almost try to answer, but I stop myself. I shake my head instead.
“What kind of things do you know about people, Matthew?” I ask calmly, trying to keep my desperate need to know at bay.
“About you, you mean? What do I know about you?”
It’s like he can see right through me. He’s smart and yet there doesn’t seem to be any edge to what he says. How does he know my name? How does he know what happened that night? My heartbeat is so loud it’s hard to think. Was he there? Could this be him, somehow?
“If you like.” I manage to keep my voice steady, professional.
He raises a hand tentatively toward mine, his touch light and warm. He turns my palm and studies my fingertips. I realize what he’s looking for and my breath catches in my throat. He finds it. The tiny dashes of white. The almost invisible scars on the sides of my two fingers and thumb. The little burn marks I’ve had since that last Bonfire Night. His thumb gently brushes the mark and his gaze finds mine.
Yes, he knows what happened that night.
It’s a crazy thought but it hits me so hard a wave of emotion rolls up from inside me. He looks sorry. Sorry for what happened. I break his gaze and gently pull back my hand.
“I asked your name earlier,” he says. “It’s not Marni anymore? They told me it was Emma Lewis. Why did you change it? Was it because of me?”
I inhale deeply to mask the shudder I feel run through me. But I can’t escape the fact that he really does remind me of someone. There’s just something about him, I can’t quite place my finger on it yet. I know it can’t be him—he died fourteen years ago. “Why would that be because of you? Who is it that you think you are, Matthew?”
“I don’t know yet. I just have this awful feeling that I did something. To you. Did I do something terrible to you?”
I suddenly feel sick. I look at his face, it’s ridiculous to think it. This isn’t him. He looks nothing like him, and besides, I saw the body. This must be some kind of sick joke. But Matthew doesn’t look like he’s joking—his eyes are earnest, a frown is forming between his brows. He’s worried by my silence.
But I’m genuinely lost for words. This is not a normal situation. I have no framework for this. A sudden instinct flares inside me: he could be dangerous, he could be here to hurt me. This can’t be the person I think he is, but he could be someone who knew him. Someone with a reason to come back. I remember what happened the last time I was here—before we left and tried to reinvent our lives—the very real death threats, the vile letters in the post, the terrifying phone calls. Anger and poisonous hate after what happened. People wanted revenge. Perhaps someone still does?
Matthew watches me from the bed, his handsome face concerned. He certainly doesn’t look angry, he looks sad.
In a way, isn’t that exactly what he would look like, if he came back?
Don’t be ridiculous, Emma, people don’tcome back.Of course it’s not him, he’s gone. He’s dead.
No, I do not know this man, he’s a stranger. He’s obviously overheard some things about me in the hospital and internalized the story. Memory-loss patients will cling to anything that fills the gaps; often they don’t even know where they’ve picked things up from.
It happens all the time. There was a famous psychological experiment done in the nineties, the “lost in the mall” experiment, where members of a family were reminded about four episodes that happened in their childhoods. Unbeknownst to them, one of the stories, about being lost in a mall, was entirely fabricated. They were then each asked to recall the details of what had happened to them in each of their four stories. The subjects of the test all ended up clearly recalling being lost in a mall. Each remembered something that never happened—and each had no idea he or she was doing it. We plant our own false memories. And we don’t even know we’re responsible for it.
Matthew must have heard someone say my old name here, heard the story, and subconsciously processed it. That would explain it.
However, that does mean that someone here in the hospital knows that I am Marni Beaufort. And the only way they could have known that I was coming back here was if they’d been keeping an eye on me. I study Matthew’s features. Could he have been the one keeping an eye on me? There’s one clear way to find out if he’s lying.
“Matthew, would you agree to undergo an fMRI test tomorrow? It’s relatively straightforward. It would involve us scanning your brain while I go over some of your memories with you. Do you think you’d be okay to try that with me?”
He scowls and adjusts his blankets. “What is it for?”
I think about equivocating but decide instead to show him my cards. “The test will tell us if you’re lying. What you’re suffering from—dissociative fugue—is extremely rare, but very easy to prove, or disprove, and I’d like to do that. It will show us if you can remember, or not, and to what extent.” Now it’s his turn to show me his cards.
He doesn’t hesitate. “I think that would be a very good idea, Dr. Lewis.”
I pause for a second before nodding. That wasn’t exactly how I thought that would go. He one hundred percent believes everything he’s saying.
He honestly thinks he knows me. The itch to know more is no longer bearable. “Matthew, what did you mean when you asked me if I had changed my name because of you?”
