The Doll's House

Imogen had enormous memory gaps. She was unable to remember the names of any of her teachers in National School. She had no recollection of making her first Holy Communion, other than how she had looked in an old photograph. She found it difficult to piece together a cognitive stream of events from childhood, apart from the day her grandmother had died when she was six years old. Unlike her other childhood memories, Imogen could take Kate step by step through the events that had happened, not only on the day of her grandmother’s death but on the days that had followed, from her mother’s initial screams at finding her dead, to the gleam from the brass handles of the coffin being lowered into the ground.

Imogen’s keen observation skills, coupled with the memory gaps, pointed Kate in one direction: disassociation. Opting out of certain times in your life, especially at critical moments, is not uncommon. It is a basic human technique we’re all equipped with, especially for those events when emotion may get in the way of survival. In Imogen’s case, her inability to remember the commonest details, even from a relatively short time back, illustrated that her disassociation was more than a one-off reaction to a particular event. It had progressed, and done so for the most part without Imogen being consciously aware of it.

Kate watched Imogen tuck her hair behind her ears, closing her lips tightly. She waited, sensing that today the girl had something to say.

Imogen sat upright. ‘That thing you were telling me about last week, about how the mind doesn’t always store things in straight lines.’

‘In fragments, you mean?’

‘Yeah, that.’ Again Imogen fiddled with her hair. ‘You said the bits get divided up, then can be put together differently from how they might have happened.’

‘That’s right, Imogen – it’s something we all do. Our minds don’t operate in an unbroken line of consciousness, rather a stream of discontinuous fragments. It can make recalling certain events tricky, which is why memory can’t always be relied on.’

‘I remembered something. It mightn’t mean anything.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘I could have imagined it.’

‘Go on, Imogen. It’s good to talk these things out.’

‘I’m not sure. But once I thought about it, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.’

‘Thought about what?’

‘A smell.’

‘What kind of smell?’

‘Of a wet dog.’

‘A wet dog?’ Kate was intrigued.

‘We used to have a dog when I was younger. I don’t remember him, but my sister, Jilly, she does. His name was Busker, a Jack Russell. Jilly says he was snappy. You know, kind of aggressive when he got excited.’

‘And you remember his smell.’

‘I don’t know if it was his smell, but last week at my friend Alicia’s house, her dog came in from the rain. He came over to me, licking my hand like, and that’s when I got it – the stench.’

Imogen turned away, looking out of the only window in Kate’s office, as if the October sun held answers to this confusing chink in memory. ‘It was so strong. It wasn’t only the smell of the wet dog. It was more than that.’

‘What else?’

‘I thought I remembered Busker. I remembered noises too – doors slamming – and then I must have leaned in closer, because in the memory, the smell became stronger. I could feel Busker’s heart when I put my hands on his body. It was jerking in and out really fast. It was then I realised I’d never remembered him before. Do you think I imagined it, Kate?’

‘I’m not sure. You could have – but the recall, the feeling, it seems important to you.’

‘Yeah. Like it shouldn’t have meant anything at all when Alicia’s dog licked me, but it felt familiar somehow. Then it was gone, without me knowing why.’

‘That’s not unusual.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Not really. As we discussed, the mind often cuts things up, hides them. As one part of your brain is opening a memory, another part could be shutting it down.’

‘So you think it’s important?’

‘What else did you remember?’

‘Right then, nothing. It was like I’d caught hold of something, only for it to go away again. Later, when I got home, I went to my room. I tried to push myself, to think really hard about it. It felt like an opening.’

‘Go on.’

‘I thought if I tried hard enough, more would come back – but I drew a blank. Then I felt exhausted again, as if I needed sleep. I went to bed. At four o’clock in the afternoon, I curled up under the covers and slept.’

Kate believed Imogen’s intermittent bouts of exhaustion were another side effect of her condition, but she continued to encourage her. ‘And then what? How did you feel when you woke up?’

‘I couldn’t remember my dream, but the dog, the one with his heart thumping inside his chest, the one I thought was Busker – I remembered something else.’

Kate waited.

‘His breathing stopped. I rubbed his coat, and there was that smell again, but he didn’t move.’

‘Did you ask your sister, or your parents, about what had happened?’

‘Not straight away – I wanted to get my thoughts right – but, yeah, I did.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘They said it couldn’t have happened that way because I was at school when Busker was knocked down.’

‘But you felt sure that you’d been there when he died?’

‘Completely, and that was the thing. It wasn’t a happy memory, I knew that, but it felt real. As I said, I stayed in my bedroom for ages, getting more bits, feelings, smells, dragging pieces from my mind, until I felt sure I had it right.’

‘So what happened then?’