Where the Memories Lie
By: Sibel Hodge
I drove to the supermarket with thoughts jumping around in my head.
Would Tom be OK? One heart attack didn’t necessarily mean he’d have another anytime soon. He could go on for years, but was it fairer on Tom if he did slip away quickly before the Alzheimer’s interfered with the part of his brain that made his lungs and heart stop functioning? Wasn’t it better not to suffer like that?
What did he mean about Katie, though? How could he possibly be telling the truth?
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Sibel Hodge
He couldn’t be. It was a simple as that. Yes, Katie had run away from home when she was eighteen, and no one had heard from her since, but she’d left a letter. A goodbye letter. So Tom couldn’t have killed her, could he?
What was it he’d said? It was an accident but he’d had to do it. Those two statements completely contradicted each other. He was confused. Delusional. Maybe even hallucinating. He obviously remembered that Katie had run away but had distorted things in his mind. He was getting mixed up again. His memories were lying to him, that was all.
I walked round the supermarket, flinging the usual things into the trolley. Wholemeal bread ? I kept trying to like it since it was supposed to be healthy ? orange juice with no ‘bits’ in as Anna hated that one ? milk, ham for sandwiches, butter, plus another butter since I obviously couldn’t have enough in my house and needed a spare, potatoes.
A picture of Katie swam before my eyes. It was during a netball lesson one day when we were about thirteen. She’d just dived to her side to catch the ball but misjudged it and went crashing to the floor, landing awkwardly on her arm and breaking it. She sat on the ground, staring at the bone which was actually poking through the skin. The teacher almost threw up when she saw it, as did several other girls, but Katie just stood up calmly, supporting her injured arm with the other and asking the teacher if she could have a lift to A&E. She never cried. I would’ve been screaming in agony, tears streaming down my face, but she never did. Not then.
Not ever.
Katie usually hid her feelings well, whereas I wore mine on my sleeve. If she was upset about something that had happened with Rose or Jack, she never really talked about it; she kept it all inside.
The only way I could tell things were really bad would be if she turned up at my house late at night after a row with her parents or 80
Where the Memories Lie something. She’d throw gravel up at my bedroom window to wake me up, not wanting to go back home, and I used to make up a bed for her on the floor with a couple of huge beanbags I had. The next morning she was always gone before I woke up. Even though I had repeatedly asked her over the years about her home life, she always refused to tell me.