‘Tell me what you remember,’ she says, but for a minute I say nothing, trying to read her beautiful, closed face. Her eyes meet mine, but I can’t tell anything. There is something she’s not telling me.
‘I remember …’ I speak slowly. ‘I remember running through the woods … and I remember car headlights and glass … and then after the accident, I remember stumbling along, I’d lost a shoe, and there were chunks of glass on the road.’ It’s coming back to me as I speak, the lowering tunnel of bare branches, pale in the headlights, and my limping run as I tried to flag down someone – anyone – to help. There was a van swinging along the road, headlights raking the dark. I stood, waving frantically, the tears streaming down my face, and I thought he wouldn’t stop, I thought for a moment he’d run me down. But he didn’t – he skidded to a halt, his face pale as he wound down the window. What the fuck? he said, and then, Have you been …? The rest of the sentence hovered unspoken.
‘But that’s it. Between that, it’s so jumbled … it’s like the images get more and more shaken up and then there’s just a blank spot. Listen, has something happened to Clare? She’s not …’
Oh my God.
Oh my God. It cannot be.
I feel my fingers close on the bedsheet, my bitten nails digging in so hard that my fingers hurt.
Is she dead?
‘She’s OK,’ Lamarr says slowly, carefully. ‘But she was in the accident, the same accident as you.’
‘Is she all right? Can I see her?’
‘No, I’m sorry. We’ve not been able to interview her yet. We need to get her version before …’
She trails off. I know what she is saying. She wants my truth, and Clare’s truth – separate, so they can compare our stories.
Yet again I have that cold, writhing feeling in the pit of my stomach. Am I a suspect? How can I find out without looking like one?
‘She’s still not really up to being interviewed,’ Lamarr says at last.
‘Does she know about James?’
‘I don’t believe so, no.’ There is compassion in Lamarr’s face. ‘She’s not been well enough to be told yet.’
I don’t know why, but it is this that rattles me more than anything else she has said so far today. I can’t bear the idea that Clare is lying somewhere in this very hospital and doesn’t know that James is gone.
Is she wondering why he hasn’t come? Or is she too ill even for that?
‘Is she going to be OK?’ My voice cracks and breaks on the last word, and I take a long, aching gulp of coffee to try to hide my distress.
‘The doctors say yes, but we’re waiting for her family to come, and then they’ll take a view about whether she’s stable enough to be told. I’m sorry – I wish I could tell you more, but it’s not really my place to be discussing her medical details.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I say dully. There are tears trapped at the back of my throat, making my head ache and my eyes swim as I blink angrily, trying to clear them. ‘What about Nina?’ I manage at last. ‘Can I see her?’
‘We’re still taking statements from everyone else at the house. But as soon as that’s concluded, I imagine she’ll be allowed to visit.’
‘Today?’
‘Hopefully today, yes. But it would be very, very helpful if you could remember what happened after you left the house. We want to get your version, not anyone else’s, and we’re worried that speaking to other people might … confuse things.’
I cannot tell what she means by this. Is she worried that I am waiting, pretending memory loss so I can get my story straight with someone else’s? Or is it simply that she’s concerned that in the vacuum of my own memories, I might implant someone else’s account unconsciously?
I know how easy that is to do – for years I ‘remembered’ a childhood holiday where I rode on a donkey. There was a photo of me doing it on the mantelpiece, I was about three or four, and I was silhouetted against the setting sun, just a dark blur with a halo of sun-lit hair. But I could remember the salt wind in my face, and the glint of the sun off the waves, and the feel of the scratchy blanket between my thighs. It was only when I was fifteen that my mum mentioned that it wasn’t me at all, but my cousin Rachel. I was never even there.
So what are they saying? Cough up the memories and we’ll let you speak to your friend?
‘I’m trying to remember,’ I say bitterly. ‘Believe me, I want to remember what happened even more than you want me to. You don’t have to hold Nina out like a carrot.’
‘That’s not it,’ Lamarr says. ‘We just want to get your account – I promise this isn’t some kind of penalty.’