A Traitor to Memory

“And?” Katja asked. Still so calm, Yasmin thought, still so sure of herself or at least still so capable of looking that way. And why? Because she knew that no one was at home during the day. She believed that anyone ringing the bell would have no luck learning who lived within. Or perhaps she was just buying time to think how to explain it all away.

Yasmin said, “No one was home.”

“I see.”

“So I went to a neighbour and asked who lives there.” She felt the betrayal swelling inside her, like a balloon too inflated that climbed to her throat. She forced herself to say, “Noreen McKay,” and she waited to hear her lover's response. What's it going to be? she thought. An excuse? A declaration of misunderstanding? An attempt at a reasonable explanation?

Katja said, “Yas …” Then she murmured, “Bloody hell,” and the Englishism sounded so strange coming from her that Yasmin felt, if only for an instant, as if she were talking to a different person entirely to the Katja Wolff she'd loved for the last three of her years in prison and all of the five years that had followed them. “I do not know what to say,” she sighed. She came round the coffee table and joined Yasmin on the sofa. Yasmin flinched at her nearness. Katja moved away.

“I packed your things,” Yasmin said. “They're in the bedroom. I didn't want Dan to see … I'll tell him tomorrow. He's used to you not being here some nights anyway.”

“Yas, it wasn't always—”

Yasmin could hear her voice go higher as she said, “There's dirty clothes to be washed. I put them separate in a Sainsbury's bag. You can do them tomorrow or borrow a washing machine tonight or stop at a launderette or—”

“Yasmin, you must hear me. We were not always … Noreen and I … We were not always together as you're thinking we were. This is something …” Katja moved closer again. She put her hand on Yasmin's thigh, and Yasmin felt her body go rigid at the touch and that tensing of muscles, that hardening of joints, brought too much back, brought everything back, shot her into her past, where the faces overhung her….

She leapt to her feet. She covered her ears. “Stop it! You burn in hell!” she cried.

Katja held out her hand but didn't rise from the sofa. She said, “Yasmin, listen to me. This is something I cannot explain. It's here inside and it's been here forever. I cannot get it out of my system. I try. It fades. Then it comes back again. With you, Yasmin, you must listen to me. With you, I thought … I hoped …”

“You used,” Yasmin said. “No thinking, no hoping. Using, Katja. Because what you thought was if things looked like you moved on from her, she'd finally have to step forward and say who she really was. But she didn't do that when you were inside. And she didn't do that when you came out. But you keep thinking she's going to do that, so you set up with me to force her hand. Only that's not how it works 'less she knows what you're up to and with who, right? And it sure's hell don't work 'less you give her a taste now and then of what she's missing.”

“That is not how it is.”

“You telling me you haven't done it, the two of you? You haven't been with her since you got out? You haven't been slithering over there after work, after dinner, even after you been with me and say you can't sleep and need a walk and know I won't wake up till morning and I can see it all now, Katja. And I want you gone.”

“Yas, I have no place to go.”

Yasmin breathed out a laugh. “I expect one phone call'll sort that out.”

“Please, Yasmin. Come. Sit. Let me tell you how it has been.”

“How it's been is you waiting. Oh, I d'n't see't at first. I thought you 're trying to adjust to outside. I thought you 're getting ready to make a life for yourself—for you and me and Dan, Katja—but all the time you were waiting for her. You were always waiting. You were waiting to make yourself part of her life and once you got there, everything in yours'd be taken care of just fine.”

“That's not how it is.”

“No? Really? You make one move to get yourself together since you been out? You phone up design schools? You talk to anyone? You walk into one of those Knightsbridge shops and offer yourself as a 'prentice?”

“No. I have not done that.”

“And we both know why. You don't need to make a life for yourself if she does it for you.”

“That is not the case.” Katja rose from the sofa, crushing out her cigarette in the ashtray, spilling ash onto the table top, where it lay like the remnants of disappointed dreams. “I make my own life as always,” she said. “It's different from the life I thought I 'd have, yes. It's different from the life I spoke of inside, yes. But Noreen doesn't make that life for me any more than you do, Yasmin. I make it myself. And that is what I have been doing since I was released. That is what Harriet is helping me to do. That is why I spent twenty years in prison and did not go mad. Because I knew—I knew—what waited for me when I got out.”

“Her,” Yasmin said. “She waited, right? So go to her. Leave.”

“No. You must understand. I will make you—”