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‘Gee, you mean I failed your exam, Doc?’ Ryan drawled, mocking his lecturing tone.
Dave took no offence. ‘There’s no pass or fail. Here, sign your full name for me.’ Pushing a spiral notebook across the table, he took out a pen from his shirt pocket and tossed it to Ryan, who, taken by surprise, still caught it easily but hesitated as soon as he touched pen to paper. ‘No? Try writing “Ryan”,’ Dave instructed and they watched as the letters traced smoothly off the end of the pen.
‘What does that prove?’ Nina asked impatiently. ‘You told him what to write.’
Dave grinned. ‘It proves that he’s naturally right-handed.’ He shrugged as they both stared at him. ‘The direct way isn’t always the best way to find pathways through the memory. While Ryan was concentrating on my question rather than on having to choose which hand to catch the pen or to write with, his response flowed naturally. His anxiety reflex wasn’t getting in the way. Now, if I’d simply asked him whether he was right-or left-handed, he mightn’t have been able to tell me.’
Just as Ryan hadn’t known how he liked his coffee—until he had tasted it, Nina thought.
‘But surely writing is a learned skill, and you said all his were intact,’ she argued.
‘Actually, most of our memory of ourselves involves some kind of learning process. Names, faces, personal experiences…something enters our short-term memory and if it does so with sufficient emotional impact, or we mentally rehearse it often enough by thinking or talking about it, it’s passed into permanent storage. Otherwise, it’s like writing in smoke on the wind.’
Nina didn’t want to hear any more. This wasn’t her problem, she told herself.
‘You said last night that this would only last a few hours!’ she protested.
‘I said it was probably temporary,’ he said. ‘And I still stand by that, but in some people the recovery comes in fragmentary bits and pieces over a period of time, rather like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, instead of conveniently all at once. Do you want to take a look in that bag now?’ he asked Ryan.
‘Sure,’ Ryan said, and got up slowly. Nina made a quick movement to follow but subsided at a discreet signal from Dave, warning her to give the man some space. She forced herself to pick up her half-finished mug of coffee and chat with Dave about the storm, all the while acutely attuned to the sounds from the kitchen.
Ryan crouched down on the floor to unzip the bag, his dark head disappearing below the line of the counter.
When he rose a few minutes later, Nina broke off her conversation and bounced up out of her chair. ‘Well? What’s in it?’ she demanded.
He shrugged. ‘Everything’s pretty wet, but…a few toiletries, some clothes, shoes—’
‘A weekend bag,’ she affirmed, impatient with his vagueness. ‘But is it yours?’
‘The clothes appear to be about the right size…’
Her heart zoomed into her sneakers. ‘Appear to be? So you don’t recognise anything?’
‘No, but then, I don’t have to when I have this.’ Ryan tossed a damp leather billfold onto the counter.
It fell open with a squelch, revealing a driver’s licence in the clear plastic window. The dark face stared up at her from the digitised photograph, and she quickly shifted her gaze from the icy blue eyes to the name printed beside the miniaturised image. ‘“Ryan Flint”.’ She lifted her head to gauge his reaction.
None was visible. His expression was impassive, waiting…
‘Ryan Liam Flint.’ He added the name she hadn’t bothered to read.
She ignored his correction, her eyes as transparent as green glass, as neutral as his own. ‘We were right about the cigarette lighter being yours, then.’
He held himself very still. ‘So it would seem.’
‘No credit cards, no business cards, very little money—’ Nina was shamelessly checking the rest of the billfold ‘—one stub of a return ferry ticket from Auckland. You seem to be travelling incredibly light for a man who must have paid a small fortune for his clothes.’
‘Perhaps that’s why,’ he said.
