‘I’m really sorry,’ he says suddenly. ‘About before. Was that earlier today, or was it yesterday?’
‘It was a few hours ago. And please, you don’t need to apologise, really.’ I trip over my words in my haste to console him. ‘You don’t remember anything at all about us?’ He shakes his head. ‘That must have been bewildering for you.’
‘It’s still bewildering,’ he says quietly. I can hear the uncertainty in his voice – he’s still not convinced that we are telling him the truth. I walk to the small table beside his bed and withdraw my handbag, then reach inside for my passport which I flip open and then sit on the blanket beside his thigh.
‘See? Molly Torrington-Stephens.’ I show him the text beside the obligatory bad photo and then I raise the fingers of my left hand towards him to draw attention to my rings. ‘And this, as I’m sure you remember, was your grandmother’s engagement ring. You had a new stone set in it because the old one was cracked, but the design will be familiar.’
He silently stares at the rings on my left hand. We have never talked about it, because Leo does not cry and he does not talk about crying – but I am sure I saw tears in his eyes when he slid this band onto my finger at our wedding. We made each other happy, at least that day. It was the kind of happiness that grows bigger than a person or a couple and engulfs everyone there to witness it. It was the best day of my life.
In spite of everything that came after, the idea that the memories of who we were together might be for ever lost to him is unbearable. We were good to each other – good for each other – at least for a time. I lift my eyes to his face and find him staring at the passport again, his expression unreadable.
‘If this is true,’ he says suddenly. ‘Why aren’t I wearing a ring?’
‘It’s at home,’ I say. His band is silver and, like mine, plain except for a single etched line around the middle. A line without an end, he’d pointed out to me as we stared at our hands in an exhausted bubble of bliss in the hours after the wedding. But quickly, that memory shatters and is replaced at the forefront of my mind by thoughts of the last time I saw Leo’s ring. I had walked into the bathroom to check the cabinets for make-up I’d missed when I packed. The sight of the ring was a punch to the gut and I completely lost my breath. It was sitting in the little soap-rest in the moulded bathroom counter-top – partially submerged in a tiny but still-sudsy puddle. I spent hours that night trying to convince myself that Leo might have left it there by accident; it seemed impossible that he would have been willing to take it off so quickly.
‘So, I took it off before I went to Libya,’ Leo says. He stops and carefully corrects himself, ‘to Syria – for safekeeping?’
I know I need to tell him the truth and this seems to be the right moment to do it – I’m just not sure how he’s going to react. I hesitate, and while I’m wondering about this, Leo continues without waiting for my response.
‘No,’ he says, and he shakes his head violently. I see the echoes of pain that cross his face as he does so, then he raises his eyes and his glare issues me with a determined challenge. ‘I don’t buy it. It doesn’t make any sense. What’s really going on here?’
I clear my throat and sit gingerly on the bed beside my passport, close to him, but careful to avoid touching him. I try to slow my thoughts down so that I can plot out the best response. Here I am worrying about how to tell him our marriage is all but over, and he still doesn’t believe it ever began.
‘It’s a long story,’ I say. ‘But I promise it will make sense once you remember the missing years. Why would I even lie about this? Why else would I be here? And I can prove the current date to you. I mean––’ I pick up the passport again and show it to him. ‘You think it’s 2011, right? Well, this passport was issued in 2014.’
‘It’s not the date I can’t believe,’ he says, and he’s impatient enough now to snap at me. He waves his hand between us. ‘It’s this. I know I wouldn’t have married you.’
His dismissive tone stings, and although I’m determined not to get into an argument with him, there is no way I’m going to let him speak to me like that. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ I ask him pointedly. Leo winces just a little.
‘Obviously we are just too different. If I was going to marry someone, and I wasn’t – it wouldn’t have been you.’
‘If you can’t remember past 2011, you don’t even know me,’ I raise an eyebrow at him. ‘Besides which, it’s too late to raise these objections now. Whether you remember it or not, we’ve been married for almost three years.’